SAINT JOSEPH THE HYMNOGRAPHER. — A Basilian monk, born in Syracuse in 816, died in Constantinople on 3 April 886. He fled to the Peloponnese to escape the Saracen invasion, became a monk in Thessalonica (841), and later moved to Constantinople. While on a mission to Rome to visit the Pope, he was captured by pirates and taken to Crete; after being ransomed, he returned to Jerusalem, founded a monastery there (c. 850), and composed his celebrated hymns, which were incorporated into the liturgy and earned him the sobriquet “the Hymnographer” par excellence. He was exiled under Photius because of his friendship with Saint Ignatius the bishop (867), but after Ignatius’ death he was able to return to his monastery and live in good harmony with Photius.
GIUSEPPE L'INNOGRAFO, SANTO
BIBL.: Works in PG 105, 925–1426; others attributed to him in Anal. Boll., 65 (1947), pp. 134–38; and in Bollettino della badia greca di Grottaferrata, 11 (1948), pp. 87–98, 177–92. Life: the one written by John the Deacon in Acta SS. Aprilis, I, Paris 1865, cols. XXIX–XXXV; the earlier one by Theophanes in A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, Monum. ad hist. Photii pertinenti, II, Petroburgium 1901, pp. 1–14. Cf. also C. van de Vorst, Note sur st. Joseph l’Hymmographe, in Anal. Boll., 38 (1920), pp. 148–54.