Βυζαντινή Ορθοδοξία και λογοτεχνία

Abstract

This brief philological and literary study, necessarily restricted by the parameters
of the symposium held by the National Association of Greek Writers in Chios,
examines the literary forms and genres and the most representative literary trends in
Byzantine Orthodox Christianity as evidenced in prose and verse. The writer briefly
outlines the most characteristic areas of prose writing: i) polemics and dogmatics, ii)
hermeneutics, iii) ascetic or mystic literature, iv) rhetoric, v) epistolography, and vi)
hagiography (lives of saints and desert fathers, apophthegmata, "limonaria"). In the
sphere of poetry, the writer omits the early centuries, as also the later (which were a
time of inquiry, imitation, and decline), and deals chiefly with the two main forms or
genres of Byzantine hymnography, i) the kontakion, a kind of lyric encomium, the
chief exponent of which was St. Romanus the Melodist, and ii) the canon, a genre with
more dogmatic elements which was admirably represented by St. Andrew of Crete and
St. John of Damascus.