Stephen the Hymnographer
Our Venerable Father Stephen the Sabbaite, the Hymnographer
Venerable · d. 8th century (c. 794, if identical with the nephew of John of Damascus; otherwise later — see Disputed questions)
Commemorated 28 October
Stephen the Hymnographer, a monk of the Great Lavra of Saint Sabbas (Mar Saba) in the Judaean desert, is commemorated on October 28 as one of the makers of the Church's service-books. To him and to Andrew "the Blind" the tradition ascribes many of the idiomela — the proper stichera — sung through the Lenten Triodion, from the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee to Palm Sunday. His life is little recorded, and his identity is entangled with that of another Stephen of the same monastery, the wonderworker and nephew of John of Damascus (commemorated July 13); the sources do not agree whether the two are one man or two.
What is securely transmitted of Stephen is his monastery and his craft. He lived the ascetic life at the Lavra of Saint Sabbas in Palestine — the great desert house that in the eighth and ninth centuries was the workshop of Byzantine hymnography, the home of John of Damascus and Cosmas of Maiuma — and he is remembered there as a hymnographer. The particular work the calendars attach to his name is the composition, together with Andrew the Blind, of idiomela for the movable weeks of the Triodion, the cycle of Great Lent: it is his verses, in part, that the Church still sings in the pre-Lenten and Lenten Sundays. Beyond this the record is silent, and the Life is honestly a short one.
Feast and commemoration
October 28 (church date; Old Calendar civil November 10). The Greek Menaion and the Slavonic Menaion keep his memory on this day, appointing him the office of a venerable hymnographer.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8
O instructor of Orthodoxy, teacher of piety and of purity, luminary of the whole world, God-inspired adornment of monastics, O most wise Stephen: by thy teachings thou hast enlightened all, O spiritual harp. Entreat Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Kontakion — Tone 4
Thou hast planted a paradise of the virtues and watered it with the streams of thy tears, and, O all-glorious one, hast gained the tree of life. Save thy flock from corruption by thy prayers, and deliver from tribulations those who fervently honour thee, O Stephen; for in faith and love we have all gained thee as a most mighty intercessor.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Iconography
Stephen is depicted as a monk-hymnographer of the desert of Saint Sabbas: in the monastic habit, often bearing a scroll, in the manner of the melodists of that lavra. No pre-modern icon has been securely identified for this Stephen as distinct from his same-named fellow of Mar Saba, and none is stored: a seventeenth-century menaion tablet of "Stephen the Sabbaite" is catalogued under the July commemoration (the wonderworker, nephew of John of Damascus), and storing it here would prejudge the very identity question set out below.
Disputed questions
- Two Stephen Sabbaites. The Lavra of Saint Sabbas gave the calendar two saints named Stephen: this Stephen the Hymnographer of October 28, and Stephen of Mar Sabbas, the Sabbaite wonderworker (or "the Younger"), nephew and disciple of John of Damascus, who reposed in 794 and is commemorated on July 13. Whether they are the same man is an old and unresolved question. Much scholarship identifies the hymnographer with the †794 nephew; the OCA, by contrast, states plainly that the October 28 Stephen "does not appear to be the same Saint Stephen who is celebrated on July 13." This entry keeps the October 28 hymnographer, dates him to the eighth century with the caution that the identification with the nephew is not certain, and leaves the July 13 saint to be authored at his own day, with a reciprocal note. The July 13 entry has since been authored and carries the matching note. Flagged for verification.
- Not to be confused with Stephen the New (the New or the Younger, monastic-martyr of Mount Auxentius, †764, November 28), the iconodule martyr under Constantine V, nor with Stephen the Protomartyr (December 27).