ABSTRACT
A few years ago in the Russian National Library in St Petersburg I came across a Syriac manuscript containing a number of hymnographical pieces dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In the catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in Leningrad (the former name of St Petersburg), published in 1960 by Nina V. Pigulevskaya, the content of the manuscript was described as the Akathistos Hymn. My research has revised this conclusion and identified the manuscript as a rare collection of the short Melkite hymns to the Virgin called theotokia translated from Greek into Syriac.2 The collection is divided into eight chapters according to the eight-tone (ὀκτὼ ἤχοι) structure of the Byzantine Octoechos (Ὀκτώηχος). I have named this remarkable collection of Marian hymns, to which this chapter for the most part is devoted, ‘Syriac theotokia’.
