Books by Andrew Mellas
Brill, 2020
These papers explore the literature of Byzantine liturgical communities and provide a window into... more These papers explore the literature of Byzantine liturgical communities and provide a window into lived Christianity in this period. The liturgical performance of Christian hymns and sermons creatively engaged the faithful in biblical exegesis, invited them to experience theology in song, and shaped their identity. These sacred stories, affective scripts and salvific songs were the literature of a liturgical community – hymns and sermons were heard, and in some cases sung, by lay and monastic Christians throughout the life of Byzantium. In the field of Byzantine studies there is a growing appreciation of the importance of liturgical texts for understanding the many facets of Byzantine Christianity: we are in the midst of a liturgical turn. This book is a timely contribution to the emerging scholarship, illuminating the intersection between liturgical hymns, homiletics and hermeneutics.
Liturgy and the Emotions in Byzantium: Compunction and Hymnody, 2020
This book explores the liturgical experience of emotions in Byzantium through the hymns of Romano... more This book explores the liturgical experience of emotions in Byzantium through the hymns of Romanos the Melodist, Andrew of Crete and Kassia. It reimagines the performance of their hymns during Great Lent and Holy Week in Constantinople. In doing so, it understands compunction as a liturgical emotion, intertwined with paradisal nostalgia, a desire for repentance and a wellspring of tears. For the faithful, liturgical emotions were embodied experiences that were enacted through sacred song and mystagogy. The three hymnographers chosen for this study span a period of nearly four centuries and had an important connection to Constantinople, which forms the topographical and liturgical nexus of the study. Their work also covers three distinct genres of hymnography: kontakion, kanon and sticheron idiomelon. Through these lenses of period, place and genre this study examines the affective performativity hymns and the Byzantine experience of compunction.
Chapters by Andrew Mellas
Muzica în spaţiul liturgicInterferenţe, 2019
Romanian translation of "The Affective Experience of Wordless Song" in a volume edited by Alexand... more Romanian translation of "The Affective Experience of Wordless Song" in a volume edited by Alexandru Ioniţă & Teresa Leonhard: Kratimata sau Teriremuri: Experiența afectivă a cântării liturgice fără cuvinte (Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2019).
Imnografia liturgică bizantină. Perspective critice, 2019
Romanian translation of "Liturgical Emotions in Byzantine Hymns: Reimagining Romanos the Melodist... more Romanian translation of "Liturgical Emotions in Byzantine Hymns: Reimagining Romanos the Melodist’s On the Victory of the Cross," in a volume edited by Alexandru Ioniță, Imnografia liturgică bizantină. Perspective critice (Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2019).
Revisiting St Athanasius’ seminal hagiographical text in the wake of Jacques Derrida’s interpreta... more Revisiting St Athanasius’ seminal hagiographical text in the wake of Jacques Derrida’s interpretation of Plato’s concept of chora, this chapter examines the potential interplay between desert, demons and the abyss of chora. In withdrawing from the world, St Antony does not escape from it but enters its darkest recesses to face the obscure forces lurking therein. Indeed, readings of the Life of St Antony have often interpreted the encounter with demons as a metaphor for the ascetic life or the wholly other. This chapter approaches the text through the prism of chora and, more specifically, the chora within. Plato’s Timaeus and Derrida’s On the Name serve as points of departure in analysing Athanasian demonology and how Antony unearths “the interior person.” Chora then, in its Platonic, Christian and Derridean incarnations, frame this chapter’s approach.
Papers by Andrew Mellas
Liturgy & Music, 2019
This paper explores the significance of wordless melisma for the history of emotions in the Late ... more This paper explores the significance of wordless melisma for the history of emotions in the Late Byzantine agrypnia. Fourteenth-century Byzantium saw the convergence of Eastern Christianity’s mystical tradition of contemplative monasticism and the apogee of melismatic liturgical music. Edward V. Williams and Alexander Lingas have previously examined the relationship between Palamite Hesychasm and Kokouzelean melisma. Building on their research, this paper will investigate how the ritual of the agrypnia, with its virtuoso chanting and mystagogy, unveiled the emotive universe of Byzantine Christianity during what Sir Steven Runciman called the last Byzantine renaissance.
Phronema (forthcoming, 2018)
Reimagining Romanos the Melodist's On the Victory of the Cross, this paper explores the relations... more Reimagining Romanos the Melodist's On the Victory of the Cross, this paper explores the relationship between cognition and emotion in the performance of this hymn in Byzantium. It argues that the affective mysticism of Byzantine hymnody portrayed sacred music as a liturgical act that mirrored the heavenly choir of angels and shaped the passions of the singer's soul. Beginning with a brief overview of rhetoric, emotions and mystagogy in Byzantium, the paper then examines Romanos' On the Victory of the Cross and how its liturgical performance transformed emotions, placing them within an eschatological context. By reimagining the historical performance of Romanos' text-to the extent possible-this paper probes how hymnography and holy ritual embodied godly emotions, inviting the faithful to feel beyond their nature.
Creating Liturgically: Hymnography and Music, 2017
This paper explores the significance of compunction as a liturgical emotion in the Great Kanon of... more This paper explores the significance of compunction as a liturgical emotion in the Great Kanon of Andrew of Crete. It will consider the textual, musical and performative dimensions of the Great Kanon alongside its liturgical context in Byzantium. An important element of this investigation will be reimagining—to the extent possible—the historical performance of Andrew’s text within the Byzantine rite. After all, the Byzantines experienced hymnography as a liturgical event where sacred space, soundscape, ‘lightscape’, movement, gesture, scent and taste were infused with meaning. Hymnody and ritual embodied and mobilised godly passions amidst the mystagogy of the liturgy.
St Gregory of Nyssa’s allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs Christianised the Stoic ide... more St Gregory of Nyssa’s allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs Christianised the Stoic ideal of apatheia and spiritualised the erotic textuality of the Canticle. Nevertheless, far from eschewing all emotion, his hermeneutics paved the way for a transfiguration of the passions as a concept and the emergence of an affective mysticism in Byzantine hymnography. Unlocking the text’s spiritual sense, Gregory analogously read the lovers’ impassioned utterances as embodying a passion transcending earthly corporeality and touching divine eros. As allegory delves into the spiritual meaning of the Shulammite and her lover, human passion is anagogically immersed in divine passion and the mystical knowledge of the eschaton. This paper investigates the significance of Gregory’s In Canticum Canticorum for the history of emotions in Byzantium by examining its affinity with hymnography. It will particularly explore the nuptial metaphor in the Akathist Hymn and the transformation of passion in an epektasis of desire in St Romanos the Melodist’s kontakion on the harlot.
Studia Patristica, 2017
Revisiting John Chrysostom’s On Eutropius, this article explores compunction through the lens of ... more Revisiting John Chrysostom’s On Eutropius, this article explores compunction through the lens of the history of emotions by looking at how its textual meaning and theological significance were unveiled within liturgical action. It examines the affective stylistics and ecclesiastical setting of this work against the backdrop of compunction’s significance in the broader Chrysostomic corpus. Although texts like John’s letter To Demetrius, On Compunction vividly described the fire of compunction and streams of tears that continually raged in his recipient’s soul, it was homilies like those he delivered on the occasion of Eutropius’ fall from grace where emotions embedded in a text emerged. This article approaches compunction by reimagining the performance of a text that embodied, mobilised and enacted it within the affective field of its relationships — preacher, audience and liturgy. It argues that liturgy and homily opened an affective space where compunction could be perceived and felt not simply as part of the drama of Eutropius’ degradation but as part of the divine drama of the fall and salvation.
Phronema , 2014
Navigating the presupposition of divine impassibility, Nestorius’ charge of theopatheia and the i... more Navigating the presupposition of divine impassibility, Nestorius’ charge of theopatheia and the inevitable anthropomorphism in ascribing emotions to God, St Cyril of Alexandria paradoxically proclaimed that Christ suffered impassibly (ἁπαθώς ἔπαθεν). Yet he also stressed that Christ suffered in the flesh (σαρκὶ πέπονθεν) for our salvation. Likewise, the question of the Logos’ emotions was essentially a soteriological one. Drawing on recent studies in the history of emotions, this paper revisits Cyril’s position on the matter in his commentary on the gospel according to St John—the Evangelist who most profoundly narrated Christ’s feelings. In reconsidering the Cyrillian and early Byzantine understanding of emotions, this paper also explores whether an alliance between theology and emotionology can shed new light on the mystery of the person of Christ.
Phronema , 2013
Exploring the potential interplay between desert, demons and chora, this paper approaches St Atha... more Exploring the potential interplay between desert, demons and chora, this paper approaches St Athanasius’ Life of St Antony through the prism of the chora within. Plato’s Timaeus and Derrida’s On the Name serve as points of departure in analysing Athanasian demonology and how St Antony exemplified an emerging desire in late antiquity to champion an ever-expanding interiority through absolute introspection. In taming the unmasterable elements of the inner self, Athanasius’ protagonist elucidated and externalised a hitherto obscured interiority. His asceticism was not only a phenomenology of interiority; it caused the desert to bloom. St Antony’s own transformation also transfigured the desert, perpetuating creation and rendering the chora within as the space of personal revelation.
Modern Greek Studies Australia & New Zealand, 2004
Modern Greek Studies Australia & New Zealand: A Journal for Greek Letters, 2002
Book Reviews by Andrew Mellas
Journal of Religious History, 2020
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Books by Andrew Mellas
Chapters by Andrew Mellas
Papers by Andrew Mellas
Book Reviews by Andrew Mellas
Vampires and demons in Buffy may appear as uncanny and even surreal, but they possess a certain mythical force. They are a demon-stration of something in reality that is beyond us and yet within us. Angels and demons stand on the threshold of the world and what is beyond the world. They are a strange mixture of the human and the divine, or the human and the demonic, and perhaps what makes them so awesome or terrifying is that we see ourselves in them. Or, to be more precise, they manifest what is inside us, hidden in our hearts, lurking in our consciousness, on the edge of our mind.
It is a blessing and a privilege that His Eminence Archbishop Makarios and His Grace Bishop Emilianos of Meloa will open and close the series (on Saturday 4 July and Saturday 25 July, respectively), which will also feature contributions from reverend clergy and faculty and graduates of St Andrew's Greek Orthodox Theological College. The topics are varied and highly engaging, ranging from the Scriptures and the Divine Liturgy to Church history (early and modern) and Bioethics.
In light of the ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, places are limited for each talk. RSVP is therefore essential. For more details, please see the flyer.
Speakers:
Revd Fr Athanasios Giatsios, 'The Christian Parthenon: A Divine Chamber That Touched Heaven'
Dr Andrew Mellas, 'From Ancient Music to Christian Hymns: The Song of Theology'
Chris Baghos, 'The Church Fathers and Classical Culture'
For the video recording of the event, visit: https://www.facebook.com/kosmosnewspaper/videos/2521571558077929/