Kassia
Kassia, Cassia or Kassiani (, ; – before 865) was a Byzantine-Greek composer, hymnographer and poet. She holds a unique place in Byzantine music as the only known woman whose music appears in the Byzantine liturgy. Approximately fifty of her hymns are extant, most of which are stichera, though at least 26 have uncertain attribution. The authenticity issues are due to many hymns being anonymous, and others ascribed to different authors in different manuscripts. She was an abbess of a convent in the west of Constantinople. Additionally, many epigrams and gnomic verses are attributed to her, at least 261. Kassia is notable as one of at least two women in the middle Byzantine period known to have written in their own names, the other being Anna Comnena. Like her predecessors Romanos the Melodist and Andrew of Crete, the earliest surviving manuscripts of her works are dated centuries after her lifetime. Name Her name is a feminine Greek form of the Latin name Cassius. It is variously spelled Κασσιανή (contemporary pronunciation ), Κασ(σ)ία (Kas[s]ia), Εικασία (Eikasia), Ικασία (Ikasia), Kassiani, Cas[s]ia, Cassiane, Kassiana. Modern English-language references to her as a composer generally use the name "Kassia," while references to her religious life tend to use Kassia or Kassiani. Life Kassia was born between 805 and 810 in Constantinople into a wealthy family and grew to be exceptionally beautiful and intelligent. Three Byzantine chroniclers, Pseudo-Symeon the Logothete, George the Monk (a.k.a. George the Sinner) and Leo the Grammarian, claim that she was a participant in the "bride show" (the means by which Byzantine princes/emperors sometimes chose a bride, by giving a golden apple to his choice) organized for the young bachelor Theophilos by his stepmother, the Empress Dowager Euphrosyne. Smitten by Kassia's beauty, the young emperor approached her and said: "Through a woman [came forth] the baser [things]," referring to the sin and suffering coming as a result of Eve's transgression. Kassia promptly responded, "And through a woman [came forth] the better [things]," referring to the hope of salvation resulting from the Incarnation of Christ through the Virgin Mary. According to tradition, the verbatim dialogue was: "-." "-." Unsatisfied with her response, Theophilos rejected her and chose Theodora as his wife. When next we hear of Kassia in 843 she had founded a convent in the west of Constantinople, near the Constantinian Walls, and became its first abbess. Although many scholars attribute this to bitterness at having failed to marry Theophilos and to become Empress, a letter from Theodore the Studite indicates that she had other motivations for wanting a monastic life. It had a close relationship with the nearby monastery of Stoudios, which was to play a central role in re-editing the Byzantine liturgical books in the 9th and 10th centuries, thus ensuring the survival of her work (Kurt Sherry, p. 56). However, since the monastic life was a common vocation in her day, religious zeal is as likely a motive as either depression or aspiration for artistic renown. The Emperor Theophilos