Kassiani

Today’s story is a 9th century adaptation of “The Bachelor.” Prospective brides were paraded before bachelor emperors, the customary way Byzantine emperors selected a wife. The parents of Kassiani (810-865) entered their daughter in the royal bridal show. The young single monarch, Theophilus, was smitten with Kassiani’s charm and beauty. In what must go down as one of the worst pick up lines ever, he said to her, “Through a woman came forth the baser things,” a dig on Eve’s role in the Garden of Eden debacle. Kassiani’s moxie was evident in her snappy comeback, “And through a woman came forth the better things,” a reference to Mary’s role in delivering Jesus the Savior. Theophilus put the emphasis on sin entering the world through a woman while Kassiani countered that salvation came into the world in the same manner.  The young king didn’t take kindly to her snub and chose someone else as his bride. Kassiani started a monastery in Constantinople and became a prodigious hymn writer. Her hymns functioned as musical prayers for her monastic community to sing in worship. She remains the only woman mentioned in the annals of ancient Byzantine liturgy. Fifty of her hymns survive and are still sung in Greek Orthodox churches. One of her compositions that follows here recounts the gospel story of the woman who interrupts a dinner party to anoint Jesus with costly ointment. She is the first person in the gospels who grasps the enormity of Jesus’ impending sacrifice. She offers praise to Jesus in this moving hymn which is still chanted in Greek churches during Holy Week: