Venerable Rōmanos the Melodist

Saint Rōmanos of Blachernæ

Today is the first of October. In China it is the lunar Mid-Autumn Festival, a festival which celebrates home and hearth as well as the moon, and it is also National Day, the seventy-first anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. But in the Orthodox Church, it is the feast day of two great saints of Antioch: Apostle Ananias of the Seventy, and also the venerable Saint Rōmanos, one of the easternmost Orthodox Church’s greatest hymnographers and liturgical singers. The tale of Rōmanos, who is himself a moon reflecting the celestial glories of the Most Holy Theotokos, urges us to recall and to strive for a heavenly homeland.

Saint Rōmanos [Gk. Ρωμανóς, L. Romanus, Ar. Rûmânûs رومانوس] was born in the city of Emesa (that is to say, modern-day Homs), toward the end of the fifth century. Tradition holds that he was ‘of Hebrew stock’. Recent scholars have suggested that according to the available evidence, which includes a number of Semitic turns of phrase in the hymns he wrote, his parents may have been Jewish, or they may have been Syriac Christians themselves.

He served the Church in his youth, and was elevated to the office of deacon and sent to Beirut to serve the Church there. Sometime after this, during the reign of Emperor Anastasius of Eastern Rome, he was sent to Constantinople and served as a sacristan in the great Hagia Sophia Cathedral. He spent his nights at prayer at the chapel of the Holy Theotokos in Blachernæ. Legend has it that Rōmanos suffered from some form of speech impediment, and one time during the Nativity season he was called upon to read the Psalms from one kathisma. Poor Rōmanos stuttered and faltered so badly that another reader had to assist him, and the other members of the congregation, including those among the clergy, cruelly mocked and ridiculed him.

That night, which was Christmas Eve, he went despairing and in tears to Blachernæ and held vigil there. He was visited that night by a vision of the Most Holy Theotokos, who comforted him and told him not to despair. She lay her right hand upon Rōmanos’s head, and produced in her left hand a small scroll, which she told him to take that scroll… and eat it. Unlike Garak, Our Lady was not joking. Rōmanos took the scroll and ate it. When he arose from his vigil some time later, he gave thanks to God and returned to the city. On Christmas the faithful gathered in Hagia Sophia and, to their chagrin, saw Rōmanos again in his place as reader. Grimacing, they braced themselves for the painful stuttering that they knew would ensue. But when Rōmanos went to the lectern and began reciting the Nativity hymn: ‘Today the Virgin gives birth to the Transcendent One’, the congregants stood transfixed, because a wonder had occurred: it seemed to them that they were hearing the voice of an angel. When he finished the whole of the nave was hushed and awed into silence, and the same priest who had mocked him the day before stood flabbergasted, and motioned him to continue.

The Theotokos had not only lifted the speech impediment from him, but she had also gifted Rōmanos with a sublime inspiration for lyric poetry, melody and rhythm. Because Rōmanos had swallowed a ‘kontakion’ which had been given to him by Our Lady, all of his subsequent hymns, written in a set structure of twenty-five strophes with twenty-one verses each, came to be known as kontakia. From that Nativity on, in Constantinople, he was given the epithets of ‘Glykophōnos’ (‘Sweet-Voice’), ‘Melōdos’ (‘Melodist’) and ‘Psaltēs Dikaiosynēs’ (‘True-Singer’). Rōmanos may have composed over a thousand of these songs – this may be pious exaggeration, though given that no complete compilations of his undoubtedly prodigious work are extant, we may never actually know. His style, as commented above, relied upon Semitic poetic conceits and turns of phrase – he may have been inspired by the hymns of Mâr ’Afrâm. However, he wrote in clear and unpretentious language, the common tongue of his day, which even the simple communicants in Constantinople could understand and appreciate.

No mention is made of Rōmanos having ever become a priest. It is entirely likely that he continued as a deacon throughout his life: in his iconography he is always portrayed in the robes of a deacon. He lived the rest of his life in Constantinople, continuing his vigils at Blachernæ and continually enriching the church with his divinely-inspired hymnody. He died in peace on the first of October, 556, and was buried in the Church of the Holy Theotokos at Blachernæ. It was not long at all before his memory was venerated by those who sang in the Church, and he was glorified by the Church at Constantinople as well as those of Armenia and the Rus’, he continues to this day as the patron saint both of Church singers and of people afflicted with impediments of speech. Holy and venerable Rōmanos, humble deacon with the voice of angels, pray unto Christ our Lord that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion for Saint Rōmanos, Tone 4:

You gladdened Christ’s Church by your melodies
Like an inspired heavenly trumpet.
You were enlightened by the Mother of God
And shone on the world as God’s poet.
We lovingly honor you, righteous Rōmanos.