09/07/2026
On Monday, September 7th, Orthodox Christians celebrate St. Kassiane (c. 810-865AD) the abbess, poet, composer and hymn-writer, many of whose hymns are still sung in the Church today. Perhaps her most famous hymn is simply called "The Hymn of Kassiane" and is sung on Great and Holy Tuesday evening.
St. Kassiani was the well-educated daughter of an aristocratic family in Constantinople. A candidate to be the wife of the iconoclastic emperor Theophilos (who reigned 830-842 AD), she participated in a “bride show” in 830 AD, during which the emperor was to choose his wife. Theophilos, fixing his eyes on Kassiani, said: “From woman came the worst in the world” (referring to Eve and original sin); to which Kassiani calmly replied, “From woman also came the best” (referring to the Virgin Mary giving birth to Christ). Not wanting a wife that was his intellectual superior, Theophilos chose another woman to be empress.
This freed Kassiani to follow her heart’s desire and enter a convent where she could devote her life completely to Christ. She began writing poetic hymns of subtle beauty that earned the praise of another saint and hymn writer, St. Theodore the Studite, with whom she corresponded.
Of her 24 surviving compositions, the most famous is still sung on Holy Tuesday evening and is simply called, “The Hymn of Kassiani.” This hymn, filled with repentance and love for Christ, is based on the story of the sinful woman who washed and anointed the feet of the Lord Jesus and then dried them with her hair, as recorded in the Gospel of Luke 7:36-50.
Within the Greek Orthodox tradition it is considered one of the most beautiful and moving hymns sung in all of Holy Week:
"Lord, the woman who had fallen into many sins, perceiving Your divinity, has joined the myrrh-bearing women; and with lamentations she brought sweet-smelling oil of myrrh to You before Your burial. ‘Woe is me,’ she said, ‘for night is upon me, dark and moonless, and stings my lustful passions with the love of sin. Accept the fountain of my tears, O You who draws down from the clouds the waters of the sea. Hear the groans of my heart, You who in Your ineffable self-emptying bowed down the heavens. I shall kiss Your most pure feet and wipe them with the hair of my head - those feet whose sound Eve heard at dusk in Paradise and hid herself for fear. Who can search out the multitude of my sins and the abyss of Your judgments, O Savior of my soul? Do not despise me, Your servant, for Your mercy is without measure."
