The life of St Joseph the Hymnographer
There Joseph became known for two things above all: a firm defense of the veneration of icons at a time when that practice again came under renewed attack, and an extraordinary gift for writing hymns, producing a great many of the canons still sung from the Menaion and further hymns preserved in the Parakletike, the book of the Church's ordinary weekly cycle of prayer. His output placed him among the most prolific liturgical poets the Byzantine Church ever produced. Sources give differing years for his repose, either 883 or 886, a detail not fully settled among the accounts of his life, and his feast is kept a day apart between the Greek tradition, April 3, and the Slavic tradition, April 4, which OCA itself follows. What survives past any such uncertainty is the body of his hymns themselves, still carrying his voice into the Church's worship centuries after his death.
