IT was a bold move. Theophilus’s father had made possessing supposedly ‘idolatrous’ icons a serious criminal offence,* but whereas Theodora had merely seen her icons confiscated, Cassiani had been flogged. Nonetheless, with echoing step Emperor Theophilus came to her door, and entered her cell.
Cassiani was nowhere to be seen. But on her writing-desk lay unfinished a hymn of heart-stopping beauty, the song of a woman fallen into many sins, stumbling through a moonless night. “I shall kiss Thy most pure feet,” Theophilus read, “and wipe them with my tresses.”*
For a moment, he stood in silence. Then he took up her pen, and added: “those feet whose sound Eve heard at dusk in Paradise, and hid herself for fear.”* Then he was gone.
As his footsteps died away, Cassiani emerged from the cupboard where she had hidden herself. Her eyes fell on the Emperor’s words, and presently her pen scratched softly again. “Despise not Thine handmaiden,” she wrote. “For Thou hast mercy without measure.”
See our stories The Restoration of the Icons and The Keeper of the Gate.
A reference to the woman of many sins who sought Christ’s forgiveness while he was at table with Simon the Pharisee, in Luke 7:36-50. The services of Wednesday in Holy Week pass on the tradition that prostitution was among those sins, and when Cassiani’s hymn is sung at Mattins on that day (in practice, usually the night of Tuesday), it has long been customary for ‘fallen women’ to attend.
See Genesis 3:8: “And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.”