Un canone «giambico» per Basilio di Cesarea e la circoncisione del Signore e il suo raffinato acrostico tetrastico fra critica filologico-letteraria e teologia

Despite the criticism expressed by its first editor (Antonio Rocchi), the anonymous “iambic” canon for 1 January (feasts of the Circumcision of the Lord and of Basil of Caesarea) seems to be one of the best Byzantine liturgical hymns written in dodecasyllables. In this paper, after dealing with the manuscript tradition of the canon (of which Rocchi knew only one defective witness), the author analyzes its refined tetrastich acrostic, consisting in a couple of elegiac distichs formed by the initials of all the lines of the hymn, and discusses its uncertain authorship.