This chapter investigates a liturgical mode of knowledge-creation in the sixth century. Romanos the Melodist, a late ancient hymnographer, and Leontius, a preacher in Constantinople, each attempt to build knowledge and understanding of the divine by immersing their listeners in an emotional, sensory, and dramatic liturgical world. Through narrative techniques interwoven with ritual performance, Romanos and Leontius work to shape their listeners’ emotional responses to and sensory appreciation of the divine. This chapter argues that these sixth-century writers put their listeners through a liturgical purification of the mind (senses, emotions, intellect) so that they may grow into a higher spiritual knowledge.

This chapter examines the significance of compunction for Christianity in Late Antiquity and Byzantium. It argues that the feeling of compunction was intertwined with the experience of paradisal nostalgia and an outpouring of tears. After briefly considering the portrayal of the emotions in patristic literature and the emergence of compunction in the Psalms, this chapter introduces the history of emotions as a field of research, arguing that the performativity of hymns paves the way to understanding emotions in Byzantium as embodied and liturgical phenomena. Finally, it foreshadows how this book will show that hymnody evoked scriptural stories, inviting the faithful to enter into the sacred drama of salvation unfolding before them and feel liturgically.

Aleksei Shakhmatov proved over a century ago that the Rus Primary Chronicle combines two separate traditions about Prince Vladimir’s conversion: one about a Greek philosopher who travels to Kiev and another about the prince’s baptism following the siege of Cherson. The problem that Shakhmatov never treated, however, was why these two passages were redacted together in the first place. Chapter 5 examines this problem and argues that the redactions were made for liturgical reasons so that the chronicle would show Prince Vladimir establishing Christianity in Kiev much like the Byzantine rite shows ‘the apostle Constantine’ establishing it in the Roman Empire. The prince does precisely those things that the sainted emperor does in the hymnography: he converts because of a miracle and conquers his enemies with the ‘image of the Cross’. A detailed parsing of the liturgical elements reveals, moreover, that Vladimir imitates the deeds of Constantine in a rather unexpected way: he performs the liturgical roles prescribed for a bishop during the celebration of the divine liturgy. This discovery allows for the provocative new hypothesis that the Rus Primary Chronicle—when understood in its native liturgical context—actually depicts Prince Vladimir as the first bishop of Rus.

The final chapter of the book puts forward a new theory about the canonization of royal saints in early Rus. I suggest that there was a long-overlooked dimension to the creation of these sacred heroes: one that was not exclusively a matter of miracles and investigations, but of narratives and ritual myth-making. Indeed, the medieval hymnography for Vladimir and his kin indicates that an important, and hitherto undiscovered, process had taken place in Rus in the first few centuries after the conversion. The baptismal rites of the Byzantine church had informed the story of Olga’s baptism, and this story later became a part of her liturgical office. The episcopal prayers said during the divine liturgy had helped to inspire the chronicle accounts for Vladimir, which had in turn helped to inspire the hymns chanted on his feast day. The Eucharistic rites had shaped the writing of the chronicle tale of Boris and Gleb, which then subsequently shaped the writing of their early liturgical offices. Hymns became history and became hymns again. Prayers became the written past and became prayers again. Ultimately, it was this liturgical-historiographical-liturgical loop that permitted select members of the Rurikid dynasty to enter into the liturgical past.