With The Virgin in Song, Thomas Arentzen has produced an important close reading of a key corpus for understanding the early development of devotion to the Virgin Mary. There has been tremendous recent interest in the Marian cult especially in late antique and early medieval Byzantium, but until now the work of Romanos called ‘the Melodist’, a Syrian living in sixth-century Constantinople, and the most prolific author of a new genre of liturgical hymn (the kontakion), had not received isolated study. Those kontakia written in honour of the Virgin Mary are placed at the centre of Arentzen's study as a window onto the rich and at times strange-sounding imaginings by Constantinopolitans of their patron saint and civic mother. Instead of attempting a synthesis of Romanos's works, Arentzen here takes a thematic approach, focusing on three separate characterisations of Mary reflected mainly in selected kontakia. This is a local study: throughout he places these images in their immediate historical context, drawing comparisons with lived experience in late antique Constantinople. As he reveals, such contextualisation is fundamental to understanding the representation of Mary displayed in the kontakia. A great strength of this study is therefore consideration of the genre itself and its performance context, a feature Arentzen rightfully emphasises as formative for the message these sermons in song transmit. Audience engagement determined the lively dramatic style, use of dialogue and vivid, even at times shocking imagery. The result was the production of revolutionary new images of Mary, crafted to appeal to lay Constantinopolitan audiences in a city dominated by competing forms of spectacle.
Following a very useful discussion of these contextual and genre questions in Chapter 1, Arentzen discusses the first of these radical images in Chapter 2: Mary as desirable young virgin at the Annunciation. If this depiction is not in itself so unusual, the event is framed as an encounter between her and Gabriel as earthly suitor, charged with eroticism. Through ambiguous language, double entendres and the complete erasure of the Holy Spirit, the kontakion relays a sensual scene of seduction, which Arentzen credits to a need to keep sleepy audiences awake! We might wonder whether this does not also reflect a less prudish aesthetic for describing spiritual love – one that challenges Origen's second-century warnings against reading the Song of Songs, which open the chapter.
In Chapter 3, Arentzen turns to a less charged but no less powerful image of Mary's earthy femininity: nursing. Here he argues that her nursing was not a way to show Christ's humility as God made man but rather to strengthen the link between mother and child: the divinification of humanity rather than the other way around. Presenting the opposite image of the masculine desert ‘mothers’ and their shrunken breasts, Mary's plentiful milk supply showed her to be fully female, a reconciliation with the maternal flesh that legitimised motherhood. By feeding Christ with her body, she was not just the bearer of God (Theotokos) of the great ecumenical councils, but also wholly his mother.
Romanos did not stop there, however, and depicted Mary as universal mother of all Christians. Arentzen explores the role of Mary as intermediary, intercessor and spokesperson in his final chapter. He concentrates on two fascinating kontakia, the first showing Mary literally rousing Adam and Eve to explain their redemption through the Crucifixion, a scene Arentzen memorably refers to as ‘Christmas in Hades’. In the second, we see Mary at the cross itself, in the first known lament of its kind that would go on to become a major liturgical genre: the planctus. We see her alone with Christ and weeping, in dialogue with her dying son, thereby legitimising the openly grieving mother and drawing the congregation in as they repeat her mournful refrain, ‘My Son and my God’. Throughout this discussion, Mary is shown to disturb the socially acceptable image of the silent virgin, asserting the power of her voice and making it speak even for the universal Christian body: Mary's voice becomes the voice of the Church, the individual Christian, and is heard loud and clear through Romanos's words voiced by the singer.
The Mary of Romanos can therefore best be understood in a civic cultic context. Her erotic desirability, her earthy motherhood and affection for her son all mark her as eminently human and relatable. She remains no less a paradox. Her bodiliness means she was no role model for ascetics, and her exceptionality as virgin mother made her a difficult example for lay women to follow. Mediator between heavenly and earthly spheres, Mary does not encourage imitation, but does encourage her audience to relate to her. It emerges that in order to shape Christian selves (what Derek Krueger has recently called ‘liturgical subjects’), Byzantine liturgical poetry had first to engage them on a human level, and this meant making Mary's unique struggles understandable through appeal to Byzantine social realities.
Arentzen's discussion brings Romanos's Mary to life in the same way that the kontakia themselves did. It is a pity we are missing the music. The lack of any surviving musical notation would make inclusion of it difficult, although some scholarly speculation on what the kontakia would have sounded like when performed in the great Constantinopolitan churches would have had a natural place in the sensory world Arentzen so effectively recreates. This reader was also left intrigued about the place of the kontakia in a wider liturgical construct; for example, in a more extended comparison with other hymns and sermons that can allow us a glimpse of how these original texts were embedded in the celebrations of which they were a part, and might further allow us to assess the degree to which they broke the Marian mould. That such further study is encouraged is a testament to the merits of Arentzen's book, which is an engaging and eminently readable addition to the insights emerging on Mary's multifaceted roles, providing yet another piece to the dazzling mosaic of Mary's early Christian meanings.
