Saint Stephen the Hymnographer (725–807), also known as Stephen of St. Sabas, was a Syrian monk who is venerated as a saint in the Orthodox Church.
Stephen lived the ascetic life at the Lavra of Saint Sabas in Palestine. He was the nephew of St. John Damascene.[1]
Stephen was introduced to the monastic life by his uncle, and, at the age of ten, entered the same monastic community as his uncle. By his mid-twenties, he felt so drawn to a life of seclusion and contemplation, he asked the abbot of the community for permission to live as a hermit. Due to the great skill in giving spiritual direction he already showed at that young age, the abbot gave him limited permission. The condition was that he make himself available to others on weekends.[2]
He and Andrew the Blind were among the first to compose hymns (idiomela) in the Triodion (the liturgical book used during Great Lent), chanted during the period between the Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee and Palm Sunday. These idiomela are stichera of which two were written for each weekday of Great Lent. One is chanted at the aposticha of Vespers and one at the aposticha of Matins, each being chanted twice. The idiomela are "exceptionally rich in doctrinal content, summing up the whole theology of the Great Fast".[1]
His feast day is celebrated on October 28 on the Liturgical calendar of the Orthodox Church (for those Orthodox Churches which follow the traditional Julian Calendar, October 28 falls on November 10 of the modern Gregorian Calendar).