Please reference as:  Tamboukou, Maria. 2025. 'Kassia', https://sites.google.com/site/mariatamboukoupersonalblog/home/research-projects/soundscapes-and-echoes/kassia

Kassia (c. 810 – c. 865): A Byzantine Voice in a Feminist Genealogy of Composition

Kassia, also known as Kassiani or Cassia, occupies a unique position in both Byzantine cultural history and the longer genealogy of women composers. Born into a prominent Constantinopolitan family in the early ninth century, she was noted for her intellect and rhetorical skill from a young age. According to later sources, she was among the women presented at the so-called “bride show” of Emperor Theophilos. In this anecdote, Theophilos tested Kassia with the remark that it was through woman that evil entered the world; Kassia’s retort—“but it was also through a woman that the better thing was brought forth”—became emblematic of her intellectual independence. 

Kassia went on to found a convent in Constantinople and became abbess, where she combined theological study, literary production, and musical composition. Over fifty of her hymns survive, many incorporated into the Byzantine liturgy, making her one of the earliest identifiable women composers whose music is still performed today. Her most famous work, the Hymn of Kassiani, chanted on Holy Wednesday in the Orthodox tradition, exemplifies her lyrical blending of penitential theology with a deeply personal voice.

Placing Kassia within a feminist genealogy of composition means recognizing not only the survival of her works but also their challenge to dominant historiographies. Kassia is not simply a rare exception; her oeuvre demonstrates that women’s musical authorship was possible, audible, and authoritative within a male-dominated tradition. At the same time, the framing of her life through the lens of the “bride show” anecdote illustrates how women’s creativity has often been mediated by stories of gendered contest and exclusion. To reclaim Kassia is to trace a counter-history of composition in which women’s voices are not marginal echoes but constitutive of the cultural and spiritual soundscape of their time.

Recordings

VocaMe : Kassia - Byzantine hymns of the first woman composer. Christophorus, Germany 2009. 

Kronos Quartet: Early Music (Lachrymæ Antiquæ), USA 1997. Includes an instrumental arrangement of Kassia's "Using the Apostate Tyrant as His Tool".

Sources, bibliography

Books and studies

Argyropoulos, Ioanis (1924) Ἡ Κασσιανή, ὁ Βίος καὶ τὸ Ποιητικὸν Ἔργον Αὐτῆς [Kassiani, her life and poetry]. Athens.

Burke, John ( ed., 2006) Byzantine Narrative: Papers in Honour of Roger Scott. Leiden: Brill.

Catafygiotu-Topping Eva (1987) Holy Mothers of Orthodoxy: Women and the Church. Minneapolis: Light and Life Publishing Company.

Handrulis, George (1937) Kassia, A romance of Byzantium. New York: Athaeneum.

Kazhdan, Alexander P., Sherry, Lee & Angelidi Christine. (1999) eds, A History of Byzantine Literature (650-850), Research Series no. 2. Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation / Institute for Byzantine Research.

Krumbacher, Karl (1897) “Kassia” Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Philologische und Historische Klasse, Jahrgang 1897, Heft 1, pp. 305-369.

Lauxtermann,  Marc, D.  (2003)  Byzantine Poetry from Pisides to Géomètres, vol. 1, Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press.

Sherry, Kurt (2013) Kassia the Nun in Context: The Religious Thought of a Ninth-Century Byzantine Monastic. New Jersey: Gorgias Press. 

Rochow, Ilse (1967) Studien zu der Person, den Werken und dem Nachleben der Dichterin Kassia. Berliner byzantinistische Arbeiten 38, Berlin.

Tripolitis, Antonia (ed. & trans., 1992) Kassia: The Legend, the Woman, and Her Work. Garland library of medieval literature, New York. 

Articles

Bodin, Per-Arne (2022). “Kaleidoscopic reception: An essay on some uses of Kassia”. Scandinavian Journal of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 9(8), 117-219.

Catafygiotu-Topping Eva (1981) “Kassiane the Nun and the Sinful Woman”, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 26, 201–209.

Catafygiotu-Topping Eva (1982) “The Psalmist, St. Luke and Kassia the Nun”, Byzantine Studies / Etudes Byzantines 9, pp. 199–210.

Catafygiotu-Topping Eva (1983) “Women Hymnographers in Byzantium”, Δίπτυχα 3 (1982–1983) 98–111.

Heszen, Agnieszka. (2014) “The Sinful Woman As an Example of Metanoia in the Byzantian Poetry”. Classica Cracoviensia 17 (December): 69-87, https://doi.org/10.12797/CC.17.2014.17.04.

Lauxtermann,  Marc, D.  (1998) “Three Biographical Notes”, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 91 (2), pp.  391-405, https://doi.org/10.1515/byzs.1998.91.2.391 . 

Panagopoulos Spyros. (2007) “Kassia: A hymnographer of the 9th century”, Proceedings of the 1st International Conference of the The American Society of Byzantine Music and Hymnology [ASBMH], pp. 111‑123, http://www.asbmh.pitt.edu/page12/Panagopoulos.pdf 

Simic, Kosta (2011) “Kassia’s hymnography in the light of patristic sources and earlier hymnographical works,” Zbornik radova Vizantoloskog instituta 48: 7–37. 

Touliatos, Diane (2001) "Kassia.“Grove Music Online”. Oxford University Press, https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.40895. 

Touliatos-Banker, Diane (1984) “Women Composers of Medieval Byzantine Chant” . Journal of College Music Society, College Music Symposium 24 (St. Louis, MO: Universty of St. Louis, pp. 62-80. 

Touliatos-Banker, Diane (1982) “Medieval Women Composers in Byzantium and the West” Acta Scientifica "Musica Antiqua" , pp. 687-712.

Treadgold, W. T. (1979). THE BRIDE-SHOWS OF THE BYZANTINE EMPERORS. Byzantion, 49, 395–413, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44172691

Tsironis Niki (2003) “The body and the senses in the work of Cassia the Hymnographer: literary trends in the iconoclastic period”, Byzantina Symmeikta, 16, pp. 139‑157.

Tzedakis, Theodoros (1959) “Κασιανὴ ἡ Μεγάλη τῆς Ἐκκλησίας Μελῳδός” [Kassia the Great Hymnographer of the Church],  Ἀπόστολος Τίτος , Crete, pp. 72-109.

Wetenhall Tillyard, Henry Julius. (1911) “A Musical Study of the Hymns of Casia”. Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 20 (2), pp. 420‑485, https://doi.org/10.1515/byzs.1911.20.2.420 

Chapters

Borghetti, Laura "A 'euchologic' narrative in Byzantium? Towards a narratological approach to Kassia's female liturgical poetry" in Storytelling in Byzantium: Narratological approaches to Byzantine texts and images, edited by Ingela Nilson, Charis Messis and Margaret Mullett. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, pp. 111-136.

Kazhdan, Alexander P. (1999) “The Princely Nun: Kassia.” In A History of Byzantine Literature (650-850), edited by Alexander P. Kazhdan, Research Series no. 2. Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation / Institute for Byzantine Research, pp. 315-326. 

Kelly, Eamonn, HR (2006)  “From 'Fallen Women' to Theotokos: Music, Women's Voices and Byzantine Narratives of Gender Identity”, in Burke, John ( ed., 2006) Byzantine Narrative: Papers in Honour of Roger Scott, edited by John Burke. Leiden: Brill, pp. 164-181.

Mellas, Andrew (2020) “Kassia” in Liturgy and the Emotions in Byzantium, Cambridge University Press, pp. 141-168. 

Riehle, Alexander. (2014) “Authorship and Gender (and) Identity. Women’s Writing in the Middle Byzantine Period” In The Author in Middle Byzantine Literature: Modes, Functions, and Identities edited by Aglae Pizzone, 245-262. Berlin, München, Boston: De Gruyter, https: doi.org/10.1515/9781614515197.245

Savrami, Katia. (forthcoming) Cassia’s “Woman of Many Sins”: From the Two-Dimensional to the Three-Dimensional Interpretation of Byzantine Poetry . In Niki Tsironi (ed.) Performance in Late Antiquity and Byzantium, London: CHS- Harvard

Silvas, Anna M. (2006) “Kassia the Nun c. 810–865: An Appreciation” in Byzantine Women: Varieties of Experience 800–1200, ed. Lynda Garland, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 17–39. 

Touliatos, Diane. (1993) “The Traditional Role of Greek Women in Music from Antiquity to the End of the Byzantine Empire” in Rediscovering the Muses: Women’s Musical Traditions. Edited by Kimberly Marshall. Boston: Northeastern University Press, pp. 111-124.

Touliatos, Diane (1996) “Kassia”. In Schleifer, Martha Furman; Glickman, Sylvia (eds.). Women Composers: Music Through The Ages. Vol. 1: Composers Born Before 1599. New York: G. K. Hall.

Touliatos-Miles, Diane. (2004) “Kassia” in New Historical Anthology of Music by Women. Edited by James R. Briscoe. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Tsironis, Niki. (2002) “Εισαγωγή” [Introduction], in Κασσιανή ἡ ὑμνωδός [Kassiani, the hymnographer], 2nd ed.pp. 7-38,   Athens: Foinikas Publications.

Theses and Dissertations

Bentzen, J. A. A (1994) A Study of the Liturgical and Secular Works of Blessed Kassia, Byzantine Nun and Poet. Unpublished MA Thesis, Australia: University of New England.

Brashier, Rachel Nicole (2012) Voice of Women in Byzantine Music Within the Greek Orthodox Churches in America. Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Zugravu, Gheorghita (2013) Kassia the Melodist. And the Making of a Byzantine Hymnographer, PhD thesis, Columbia University