Saint Stephen the Sabaite

Saint Stephen the Sabaite was an eighth-century Palestinian monk and hymnographer associated with the celebrated monastery of Mar Saba in the Judean wilderness near Jerusalem. Traditional accounts make him a nephew of John of Damascus and say that he entered Mar Saba while still a child, remaining there for most of his life. John Mason Neale placed him among the hymnographers of the second period of Greek Christian hymnody and credited him with several liturgical compositions.

Stephen has traditionally been connected with the Greek text Kopon te kai kamaton, which lies behind Neale's Art Thou Weary, Art Thou Languid. The attribution, however, requires caution. Neale himself noted that the Greek stanzas were not present in every edition of the Octoechos, and later hymnological scholarship has treated his English text as an unusually free rendering or composition based on the Greek rather than a close translation. Philip Schaff went so far as to describe Stephen as the inspirer rather than the author of the English hymn.

Stephen's historical role should therefore be distinguished from Neale's. The medieval monk belongs to the Greek source tradition; the literary form familiar in English hymnals is substantially Neale's nineteenth-century work. Stephen is traditionally commemorated as a saint and hymnographer within the Byzantine Christian tradition.