Blurb:

At the end of the IV century, the Syriac author Cyrillona wrote a poem, which was likely intended for liturgical purposes, about the scourges which were wasting the oriental part of the Roman Empire: Huns and locusts were for those times among the most terrible things that a society could tolerate. His vivid voice from his years shows us the way to withstand the situation. The community is lost, and it cries to his God via two personified characters: the Earth and the Church. The creation, this material world, is a possible way to directly contact God and try to find an intercession. By moving the previous analysis forward, our aim is to understand how a community could handle this situation in the poetic way that Cyrillona outlines. The preacher, the singer of this homily is the handler of the community: he leads it through the prayer by encouraging and inspiring his audience, i.e. the congregation. The external context is the attractive city of Edessa and in particular his “theological school” configured probably by Ephrem himself. The rich imaginary poetic world drawn up by Ephrem is developed and expanded by Cyrillona in order to create with his poems a liturgical space where the leader can take the hand of the congregation and
carry it out of the tremendous time of the scourges. With Ernesto de Martino, we can say that Cyrillona is the magician of the community, the only one which can take risks for the whole congregation and re-establish the previous order.