2020/07/04 by Andrew Mellas · 3 citations
Arts and Humanities · #Aesthetics #Ancient history #Archaeology #Art #Byzantine Studies and History #Byzantine architecture #Embodied cognition #Gender studies #Historical and Religious Studies of Rome #History #Literature #Liturgy #Medieval Literature and History #Performativity #Period (music) #Philosophy #Reformation and Early Modern Christianity #Repentance #Sociology #Theology
paper · doi:10.1017/9781108767361
published in Cambridge University Press eBooks (Cambridge University Press)
openalex publication_date 2020/07/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15
This book explores the liturgical experience of emotions in Byzantium through the hymns of Romanos the Melodist, Andrew of Crete and Kassia. It reimagines the performance of their hymns during Great Lent and Holy Week in Constantinople. In doing so, it understands compunction as a liturgical emotion, intertwined with paradisal nostalgia, a desire for repentance and a wellspring of tears. For the faithful, liturgical emotions were embodied experiences that were enacted through sacred song and mystagogy. The three hymnographers chosen for this study span a period of nearly four centuries and had an important connection to Constantinople, which forms the topographical and liturgical nexus of the study. Their work also covers three distinct genres of hymnography: kontakion, kanon and sticheron idiomelon. Through these lenses of period, place and genre this study examines the affective performativity hymns and the Byzantine experience of compunction