 He is said to have composed more than 1,000 hymns or "kontakia" celebrating various festivals of the ecclesiastical year, the lives of the saints and other sacred subjects, some 60 to 80 of which survive (though not all those attributed to him may be genuine).Today, usually only the first strophe of each kontakion is chanted during the divine services, the full hymn having been replaced by the canon.A full kontakion was a poetic sermon composed of from 18 to 30 verses or "ikoi", each with a refrain, and united by an acrostic.