The third rank is occupied by St. Theophanes, surnamed the Branded,^452 one of the most
fruitful poets. He attended the second Council of Nicaea (787). During the reign of Leo the Arminian
(813) he suffered imprisonment, banishment and mutilation for his devotion to the Icons, and died
about 820. His "Chronography" is one of the chief sources for the history of the image-controversy.^453
The following specimen from Adam’s lament of his fall is interesting:
"Adam sat right against the Eastern gate,
By many a storm of sad remembrance tost:
O me! so ruined by the serpent’s hate!
O me! so glorious once, and now so lost!
So mad that bitter lot to choose!
Beguil’d of all I had to lose!
Must I then, gladness of my eyes, —
Must I then leave thee, Paradise,
And as an exile go?
And must I never cease to grieve
How once my God, at cool of eve,
Came down to walk below?
O Merciful! on Thee I call:
O Pitiful! forgive my fall!"
The other Byzantine hymnists who preceded or succeeded those three masters, are the
following. Their chronology is mostly uncertain or disputed.
Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople in the reign of Heracleus (610–641), figures in the
beginning of the Monotheletic controversy, and probably suggested the union formula to that
emperor. He is supposed by Christ to be the author of a famous and favorite hymn Akathistos, in
praise of Mary as the deliverer of Constantinople from the siege of the Persians (630), but it is
usually ascribed to Georgius Pisida.^454
(^452) ̔οΓραπτός,with reference to his sufferings.
(^453) According to Christ (Prol. XLIV), he was after the restoration of the images in the churches of Constantinople, 842,
elected metropolitan of Nicaea and died in peace. But according to the Bollandists and other authorities, he died much earlier
in exile at Samothrace about 818 or 820, in consequence of his sufferings for the Icons. Neale reports that Theophanes was
betrothed in childhood to a lady named Megalis, but persuaded her, on their wedding day, to retire to a convent. Christ gives
several of his idiomela and stichera necrosima, p. 121-130. See also Daniel, III. 110-112, and Neale’s translations of the idiomela
on Friday of Cheese-Sunday (i.e. Quinquagesima), and the stichera at the first vespers of Cheese-Sunday (90-95). The last is
entitled by Neale: "Adam’s Complaint," and he thinks that Milton, "as an universal scholar," must, in Eve’s lamentation, have
had in his eye the last stanza which we give in the text. But this is very doubtful. The Chronographiaof Theophanes is
published in the Bonn. ed. of the Byzantine historians, 1839, and in Migne’s "Patrol. Graeca," Tom. 108 (1861). His biography
see in the Acta Sanct. ed. Bolland. in XII. Martii.
(^454) Christ (p. LII sq., p. 140-147) reasons chiefly from chronological considerations. The poem is calledἀκάθιστος(sc.
υ μνος) τη̑ςθεοτόκου, because it was chanted while priest and people were standing. During the singing of other hymns
they were seated; hence the latter are calledκαθίσματα, (fromκαθίζεσθαι). See Christ, Prol. p. LXII and p. 54 sqq. Jacobi says
of the Akathistos (l.c.p. 230): " Was Enthusiasmus für die heilige Jungfrau, was Kenntniss biblischer Typen, überhaupt religiöser
Gegenstände und Gedanken zu leisten vermochten, was Schmuck der Sprache. Gewandtheit des Ausdrucks, Kunst der
Rhythmen und der Reime hinzufügen komnten, das ist hier in unübertroffenem Masse bewirkt."