St Romanos the Melodist's Hymns on the Passion of Christ

by Dr Andrew Mellas (Senior Lecturer in Church History and Liturgical Studies)
 

At the precipice of Holy Week, the death of Lazarus and the tears of those who mourn his passing make for one of the most emotive biblical stories.Even Jesus, who eventually commands Lazarus to rise up from Hades, weeps when he sees the tears of Mary and groans in the spirit.As the Son of God, Jesus’ tears represented a complex phenomenon, bespeaking a mysterious interaction of divine and human natures, and leaving many a church father and mother perplexed.

The early patristic tradition held that it was Christ’s appropriation of flesh that made it possible for the Logos to experience human emotions and transform them. Indeed, it was none other than one of the Trinity who — becoming “a partaker in flesh and blood”^[1] — “suffered in the flesh, [was] crucified in the flesh [and] tasted death in the flesh.”^[2] The emotions that formed part of Jesus’ humanity were stirred and felt by the one who was able to “sympathize with our weaknesses,” since he was “tempted as we are, yet without sin.”[3] In a similar fashion, the poetry and music of hymnography sought to arouse liturgical emotions and transform the passions of the faithful. This becomes increasingly evident in the sixth-century hymns of St Romanos the Melodist.

Romanos’ hymn On the Lament of Virgin Mary[4] was assigned to Holy Friday and continued to be performed for centuries after his death. The hymn also forms part of the received tradition (but only in a truncated form) and it is heard during the evening of Holy Thursday in the Orthodox and Catholic churches that follow the Byzantine rite. During the performance of this hymn, the faithful hear a familiar biblical story, but Romanos reimagines the narrative in striking ways, especially through the emotive dialogue between Mary and Jesus. The first strophe of Romanos’ hymn highlights Mary’s “deep grief”, which becomes a counterpoint that throws Chalcedonian Christology into relief. For the Melodist, it is the adventure of human emotion and maternal suffering that will initiate the congregation into the mystery of the incarnate Logos:

As she saw her own lamb being dragged to slaughter,

Mary, the ewe-lamb, worn out with grief followed

with other women, crying out,

“Where are you going, my child? For whose sake are you

completing the course so fast?

Is there once again another wedding in Cana?

And are you hurrying there now to make wine for them from water?

Should I go with you, my child, or rather wait for you?

Give me a word, O Word. Do not pass me by in silence,

you who kept me pure,

my Son and my God.

Whereas Mary is silent in the Gospel, in Romanos’ hymn, her feelings and thoughts are laid bare in a dramatic dialogue with her son. Romanos draws on early patristic imagery to portray Mary as the ewe who gave birth to the Lamb of God and, with this poetic gesture to the Incarnation, he evokes a visceral scene of sacrifice, echoing scenes where a mother animal cries when her young is taken. Of course, in this dramatic dialogue, Jesus entreats his mother to put away her grief:

…he turned to her, he that had come from her, and cried,

“Why are you weeping, Mother? Why are you carried away like the other women?

Should I not suffer? Not die? How then shall I save Adam?

Should I not dwell in a tomb? How then shall I draw to life those in hell?

And indeed, as you know, I am being crucified unjustly.

Why, then, do you weep, Mother? Rather shout out,

‘Willingly he suffered,

my Son and my God!’

In a dramatic reversal, the son consoles his mother by reframing her grief. Jesus acknowledges the maternal bond that is at the heart of Mary’s weeping, but he then destabilizes it with the paradox of his death engendering salvation. This is typical of how Romanos loves to interweave pathos and doctrine: he searches the thoughts and feelings of biblical characters but in doing so he gestures to Christology and soteriology. Indeed, the lines in this strophe are reminiscent of a striking scene that Romanos conjures in his second hymn for the Nativity of Christ,[5] when the newborn Jesus miraculously speaks to his Mother:

“I will bring all this [the Passion] to pass by my own will,

and the cause of all shall be the affection

that as of old until nowI have shown as God to humankind,

seeking to save them.”

When Mary heard these words, she sighed from the depths

crying out: “O my grape-cluster, let not the lawless crush you.

Now that you have blossomed forth, let me not see the slaughter of my child.” But he spoke to her with these words:

“Mother, cease weeping for what you do not understand. Unless this is accomplished, all those you plead for will perish.”

Indeed, in another of his hymns for the Passion of Christ,[6] Romanos weaves a striking juxtaposition between the death of Jesus and the joy of Adam:

You took what is mine, my Saviour, that I might acquire what is yours.

You accepted to suffer the passion, that I now

Might despise the passions. By your death I lived again.

You were placed in a tomb, and granted me Paradise for my dwelling.

By descending to the depths, you raised me up.

By destroying Hell’s gates, you opened for me the gates of Heaven.

Truly you bore all for the sake of the one who fell. You endured all,

So that Adam may dance.

However, here in his hymn on the Lament of the Mother of God, Romanos shows how Mary’s grief is transfigured into a theological proclamation through a poetic juxtaposition of bitterness and sweetness. Mary’s tears are transformed by the sweet manna from heaven that Christ embodies:

“Do not make the day of my Passion bitter,

because for it I, the sweet one, came down from heaven, like the manna,

not on to Mount Sinai, but into your womb.

For within it, as David prophesied, I was curdled like cheese.

Understand, honoured Lady, the ‘curdled mountain’.

I now exist, because being Word I became flesh in you.

In flesh I suffer, and in flesh I save.

So do not weep, Mother. Rather cry out with joy,

‘As he wills he accepts suffering,

my Son and my God!’”

Through some vivid and even audacious typological images, Romanos affirms the truth of the Incarnation, but also its mystery. As one scholar has noted, contrary to normal conception, as understood at the time of Romanos, in which the male seed was, as it were, curdled into a solid being, in the Incarnation there was nothing physical to incubate; the conception was without seed. Therefore, everything that is human in the incarnate Lord came from his mother.

Although Romanos is alluding the image of the manna as a prefiguration of Christ as the true Bread of Life, he also appears to be suggesting that the Word comes down from heaven like sweet milk, which is then ‘curdled’ into cheese. However, he weaves together different strands of typology to portray Mary’s womb as a site of embryonic formation and divine revelation. Indeed, we find a combination of dairy and orographic imagery in Psalm 67:16 (Septuagint):

ὄρος τοῦ Θεοῦ, ὄρος πῖον, ὄρος τετυρωμένον, ὄρος πῖον.

“O mountain of God, fertile mountain;

O curdled mountain, fertile mountain!”

In this typology, Mary herself becomes the mountain where God dwells, is curdled and becomes flesh. The flesh the Mother of God gave to one of the Trinity, is the flesh in which Christ suffers and saves. In the person of Mary, “it is human nature itself that is shown forth as the Theotokos” the birth-giver of God.[7]

Indeed, the hymn by Romanos for Holy Friday soon turns to the salvific significance of Christ’s suffering, and it is this moment that the refrain of the hymn, “my Son and my God”, which begins as an anguished cry that Mary utters, becomes a song of joy and triumph. The tools of the crucifixion are transformed into medical imagery: the cross becomes a splint, the vinegar is applied to the wound and the lance is used as scalpel, and they are used to heal Adam and Eve who betoken humanity itself.  Seeing this cosmic surgery, Mary sings a new song: “By suffering he has abolished suffering—my Son and my God.”

Even though the refrain of the hymn serves as the poetic thread that charts the emotional journey of Mary, it also becomes a doctrinal device, alluding to the human and divine natures of Christ. Moreover, it is a mystagogic tool, inviting the congregation to experience the paradox of the Cross. Romanos invites the faithful to enter the Gospel story and come face to face with this mystery. Indeed, we know from the research that musicologists and other scholars have undertaken that it is very likely the entire congregation joined in the singing of the refrain, whereas a soloist or an elite choir would perform the main parts of the hymn.

By transforming theology into poetry, song and prayer, Romanos taught the faithful to approach the paradox of God hanging on the Cross with piety and wonder; and not with a desire to find a logical resolution to this paradox. It is in the final strophe of the hymn that one sees the climax of this poetic strategy:

Son of the Virgin, God of the Virgin,

and maker of the world, yours is the suffering, yours the depth of wisdom.

You know what you were and what you have become.

As you were willing to suffer, you deigned to come to save humanity.

Like a lamb you took away our sins.

Putting them to death by your slaughter, O Saviour, you saved all humankind.

You are, both in suffering and in not suffering.

You are, dying and saving. You granted the honoured Lady

the freedom of speech to cry to you,

“My Son and my God.”

Romanos does not delve into the complexity of two natures in one person and its implications for the Passion of Christ. And yet, he echoes the Chalcedonian formula of two natures, divine and human, coming together in the one person of Christ without confusion (ἀσυγχύτως), without change (ἀτρέπτως), without division (ἀδιαιρέτως), and without separation (ἀχωρίστως). Christology becomes a song of faith.

For Romanos, Christology is not learned through a study of doctrine but as a grammar of doxology and a transformation of emotion that one encounters upon entering salvation history as a liturgical protagonist. His hymn On the Lament of the Mother of God bids the faithful to become part of the biblical event that is being liturgically enacted and experience theology, not as a speculative exercise or impersonal reality, but as communion with God and participation in the mystery of salvation. During the performance of the Melodist’s hymn, the faithful could feel the grief of Mary, but they could also experience the love of God for creation and the joy that the Cross betokens.  Amidst an overarching narrative of salvation, Romanos shaped an emotional and liturgical community through sacred songs and mystagogy, arousing and transforming the passions of the congregation.  As members of this community, as participants in the mysterious interaction between the flesh of the Theotokos and the Logos of God, the faithful were drawn into the experience of Christic affectivity.

About the Author

Dr Andrew Mellas Senior Lecturer in Church History and Liturgical Studies Andrew Mellas is Senior Lecturer in Byzantine History & Liturgical Studies at St Andrew's. In 2018, he completed a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney on the emotion of compunction in Byzantium. Andrew has published various chapters and articles on the history of Byzantium, liturgics and hymnody in peer-reviewed publications and journals, as well as presenting papers on these subjects at international conferences. He is also a member of the Australian Byzantine Choir... Read author's full bio here..

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