The Collection and Transmission of Late Antique Liturgical Poetry: A Comparative Approach

This article examines the collection and transmission of late antique liturgical poetry from a comparative perspective, focusing on the work of three major poets: Ephrem (fourth century, Syriac), Romanos (sixth century, Greek), and Yannai (sixth century, Hebrew). While recent years have witnessed a growth in comparative study of these sources as witnesses to a broader poetic tradition, this work has tended to overlook the manuscript collections which transmit the poems. In this article, I argue that we must revise how we think about late antique liturgical poems, shifting from an emphasis solely on the original context of composition and recovering a “pure” original version, to a focus on the manifold ways in which communities interacted with the manuscripts of the poems over time. This approach, which draws on the insights of the “new philology,” places analysis of scribal cultures and textual fluidity at the forefront. Such a reframing, I argue, will have significant implications for our conceptions of authorship and authorial corpora, concepts which we traditionally elevate, but which were far more fluid for the religious communities who preserved the work of late antique liturgical poets.