The Priest Ioannis Morezinos and His Hymnographic Work

The priest Ioannis Morezinos (mid-16th – early 17th century) became known primarily through the studies of Eleni Kakoulidi, as well as through the publication of his poetic work Klinē Solomōntos (The Bed of Solomon, ed. E. Kakoulidi-Panou, E. Karatzola, M. Chalvatzidaki). Morezinos emerges as a cultivated figure, not only as the owner of an impressive family library rich in manuscript codices, but also as the creator of hymnographic compositions. Among the codices of this library—which, after his death, passed successively to Venice, Holkham Hall in England, and finally to the Bodleian Library in Oxford—there are autograph, unpublished hymns that offer valuable testimony to Morezinos’s literary and hymnographic production. This paper will examine Morezinos’s hymnographic output in light of the textual tradition and the dispersion of his works, both within the Holkham Hall collection and in other manuscripts. The analysis will focus on the thematic and stylistic variety of his compositions, as well as on their place within the broader context of post-Byzantine hymnography.