Performing Repentance in the Kontakia of Romanos the Melodist

Abstract

This article examines the performative nature of repentance in the kontakia of the sixth-century hymnographer Romanos the Melodist. As liturgical performances, Romanos's compositions create penitent communities situated in a larger drama of repentance. This article charts the contours of the emotional community the kontakia seek to establish, and draws attention to liturgically enacted and physically habituated penitence. Listeners are individually and collectively written into biblical narratives, experience characters' humility and performances of humble grief, and make them their own. As witnesses and through emotional involvement in penitential displays, they perform their own repentance. The liturgy is the place where the community comes together to perform its penitence, and Romanos crafts his kontakia to make baptism and eucharist central to his community's identity. This communal penitential identity is enacted physically, through bodily postures and fasting, and is situated in places given meaning through the kontakia. Romanos's performative repentance creates a new identity for individual worshippers, whose internal and external dispositions and behaviors are shaped and disciplined as they are drawn into the performance. Ultimately, his account of repentance moves from individuals to his whole congregation, which is constructed as a penitent community which joins the whole historical community of repentant Christians.