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The Church Fathers · c. 512–518; surviving in Syriac
The Hymns
Severus of Antioch · c. 465 – 538
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What it is
Around three hundred short hymns for the cathedral office at Antioch, arranged by the eight tones — for the feasts, for the martyrs of the city, for earthquakes, for the dead, and for rain.
Why it lasted
The oldest complete hymn collection in the eight-tone system that still orders Byzantine and Syriac worship, preserved entire in Syriac after the Greek was destroyed with the rest of Severus's works.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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