Welcome to St. Romanos Press

Welcome to our new website

This website is dedicated to the study and development of ancient Christian hymnography. Many of these melodies originate from the 1st to the 9th centuries (see History Overview). Our desire is to make these ancient melodies more readily available — especially those that have recently been set to English texts — and to provide an introduction to the framework or structure of how they were traditionally used in the ancient Church. In order to do this we rely on the tremendous work done in the past and in recent years to make these wonderful resources available to the English-speaking world (see Sources).

At this point, we are a very small group of people and we seek your prayers, comments, corrections and any recommendations you might have as we embark on this noble — albeit somewhat overwhelming — new venture (see Contact Info).

Announcing our new music CD
“Christ is Born”
(Ancient Hymns of Nativity & Theophany)

Thanks be to God! We are very grateful and excited to announce our first music CD. It is a collection of ancient hymns for the weeks preceding the Nativity of Christ, Christmas day itself and the weeks following (including Theophany / Epiphany). Many of these original melodies and texts are attributed to St. Romanos (6th c.), St. Andrew of Crete (7-8th c.), St. John of Damascus (7-8th c.), St. Cosmas of Maiuma (7-8th c.), St. Theodore the Studite (9th c.), St. Theophanes the Branded (9th c.), and St. Joseph the Hymnographer (9th c.) to name a few. Some of these special melodies (Prosomia) are set to dozens of other texts throughout the year, as well, in the liturgical books. They have only recently been metered and transcribed into English.

(See Christ is Born CD for more details and mp3 samples of the tracks.)