Abstract: This article has three main objectives. Firstly, it presents a review of some of the specific bibliography on the Byzantine hymnographer Romanos the Melodist (5th-6th century). Secondly, it discusses the traditional views about his hymnical corpus and systematises the main studies on his life and literary production, which belong to the past century, while updating the existing material by examining the diachronic course of research from the discovery of his first hymns to the present day. It also discusses the different taxonomies that have been applied to the poems of this author and, finally, it analyses the compositional data of both the genuine and the spurious part of his work, extracting percentages that can be very useful in making definitive judgements about the possible authorship or not of the Melodist, together with other criteria such as the form of the text, the content, the sources used or the style of each kontakion. Such a quantitative study of the Cantica of Romanos the Melodist has not yet been undertaken.

Author: Urbano-Ruiz, Miriam

DOI: 10.17846/CL.2024.17.2.3-14

Publication order reference: Miriam Urbano-Ruiz, PhD.; University of Granada, Department of Greek and Slavonic Philology, Campus Universitario de Cartuja CP, 18071 Granada, Spain; email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; ORCID ID: 0000-0003-1194-2100

Source: Konštantínove listy, 2024, vol.: 17, issue: 2, pages: 3-14 (PDF file)

Keywords: ROMANOS THE MELODIST, KONTAKIA, BIBLIOGRAPHY, REVIEW, HYMNOGRAPHICAL CORPUS, QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS

Language: ENGLISH

Recommended Citation:

Urbano-Ruiz, Miriam. 2024. Critical Review and Quantitative Study of Romanos the Melodist’s Hymnographical Corpus. In Konštantínove listy [Constantine’s Letters] 17/2, 3-14.