Stephen the Melodist

STEPHEN THE MELODIST. - He lived from the beginning of the fourth decade to the end of the 11th century approximately. A native of southern Italy, perhaps Calabrian, he was a monk, it seems, of the monastery of Grottaferrata, the famous cenobium of St. Nilus.

He is to be distinguished from other namesakes of the Greek East, the Hagiopolite, the Sabbaite, the Studite, as well as from another not yet identified, but certainly Eastern. The hymns that can be attributed to him on the basis of the manuscript tradition, style and geographical references are ten: two canons and eight syntoma; all, with the exception of two, acrostics, some perhaps interpolated in a more recent era. They are dedicated to St. Gregory the Great, to St. Nicholas of Bari, to St. Eustace, to Sts. Cosmas and Damian, to St. Gregory of Agrigento, to St. John Chrysostom, to St. Agatha, to the Sts. Forty Martyrs, to St. Stephen, to the Virgin (on the eve of the Purification).

S. often draws inspiration from hagiographic sources, but does not neglect oral traditions. As for his art, it must be said that he, while not departing from the formalism of the Eastern hymnographic tradition, knows how sometimes to vary his compositions with dialogue (e.g., in the canon for St. Nicholas, perhaps the best hymn) or with the evocation of miracles, and does not lack sincere accents of piety; more monotonous and less original appear the syntoma, in which the too rigid metrical scheme prevented the poet from adequately developing his own thought.

Raffaele Cantarella