THE SALVE REGINA
Avitus I. and Avitus II.--St. Isidore--The story of St.
Fructuosus--The origin of duplex monasteries in Spain--One of the
favourite saints of Galicia--Almanzor comes to Santiago de
Compostela--San Pedro de Mezonzo--Almanzor returns to Cordova--The
_Salve Regina_--Who wrote the _Salve Regina_?--Alfonso _el
Sabio_--His Cantiga--The Mariner’s prayer--St. Gregory--Foreign
authorities--How the _Salve_ reached France and Italy--Dr. Oviedo’s
Thesis--A startling article--The Dogma of the Immaculate
Conception--_De Consolatione Rationis_--An allegory--Eadmer and
Pedro Compostelano
In our cursory survey of Galicia’s first golden age we have not
attempted to give a full and complete account of all the strong souls
who helped to make that age a golden one; we have been obliged to
content ourselves with giving a few meagre particulars about those whose
life and work have impressed us the most, and refer briefly often only
to the names of those who loom less distinctly out of that distant past;
such men, for instance, as the monk Bacchiarius, as Avitus I., and
Avitus II., as the poet Prudentius and the saint Fructuosus. Of these we
know for certain that the first three visited the East. Florez tells
very fully the story of Bacchiarius, and how he came to wander forth
from his monastery in search of that knowledge which he could not
extract from books alone. As for the two Aviti, they were both in
Jerusalem when Orosius was there, and one of them has been charged with
having become infected with gnostic errors during his stay in Palestine,
and having disseminated them in Galicia on his return thither. As for
the poet Prudentius, he is to-day known to Spanish writers as “the
Horace of the fourth century.” He was born in Galicia, in or near the
town of Braga, about the year 368, during the reign of Constantine the
Great. Two volumes of his lyric poetry have come down to us, both
bearing Greek names, _Kathemerion_ (Songs for Every Day) and
_Peristephanon_ (The Book of Garlands). Critics tell us that the lyrics
contained in the former bear distinct traces of the literary influence
of St. Ambrose; those contained in the latter, fourteen in number, are
dedicated to the glorious sufferings of the early martyrs. Boissier
calls Prudentius “un véritable Espagnol,” a poet who expressed the
thoughts and feelings of his own people, and he adds, “c’est là le
principal verité de la poèsie lyrique: jamais elle n’est plus grande que
quand elle traduit ainsi les sentiments populaires.”
St. Isidore, bishop of Seville, who was the most illustrious
representative of intellectual Spain at the close of Galicia’s first
golden age, and who earned for himself the title of “the oracle of the
Spanish Church,” died in 636. “God created at this time,” says a
contemporary monk, “two great suns to light these western shores with
the rays of that flaming truth which shone from the Apostolic See; the
one, Isidore of Seville, relighted among us, by his eloquence, his
writings, his wisdom, and active industry, the great light of dogmatic
truth issued by the Supreme Chair of Rome; the other, Fructuosus, by the
immaculate innocence of his life, by the spiritual fire of his
contemplations, made the virtues of the first fathers of the desert and
the prodigies of the Thebaid shine into our hearts.”[59]
St. Fructuosus was a son of a general of the Gothic army. We read that
when, as a boy, he was taken by his father into one of his estates upon
the frontiers of Galicia, to number his flocks, “he secretly noted in
his soul a site for a future monastery in that wild country.” Later on,
when he had become his own master, he retired to the spot he had chosen
as a child, and built a monastery, which he endowed with all he had.
Montalembert tells us how he was shortly joined by a numerous band of
monks, but that he himself, flying from the renown of his virtue, took
refuge in the woods and most precipitous rocks, that he might be
forgotten by all. One day, while he was at prayer in the forest, a
labourer passing by took him for a fugitive slave, questioned him, and,
dissatisfied with his answers, overwhelmed him with blows and led him
with a rope round his neck to a place where he was recognised. Another
time, like St. Bernard, he was taken for a wild beast. A hunter, seeing
him covered merely with a goat-skin, and prostrated upon the summit of a
rock, had aimed an arrow at him, when he perceived, by seeing him lift
his hands to heaven, that it was a man occupied in prayer.[60]
Eventually the example of Fructuosus became so contagious that he had to
build other monasteries to shelter his crowds of followers. Their number
became so great that the duke of one of the provinces wrote to the king
to warn him that if some obstacle were not interposed the country would
be so depopulated that there would be no men to fill up the ranks of the
army. The women imitated the men. A young girl of noble family, who was
about to be married to an officer of the Visigothic Court, fled from her
father’s house and hid in the woods near the monastery of Fructuosus, to
whom she wrote, begging him to have pity upon her as upon a sheep which
he must snatch from the fangs of the wolf. He received her, and built
her a little cell in the forest, which soon became the centre of a
community of eighty nuns. The officer endeavoured in vain to recover his
betrothed. He compelled the superior of the new monastery to bring her
to him; she came, but refused to look at him, and he remained mute in
her presence. Then the royal judge said: “Leave her to serve the Lord,
and find for yourself another wife.” Thus it was that Fructuosus
originated the system of duplex monasteries in Spain.
Fructuosus cultivated literature sedulously, and led his monks to do
likewise. He also wrote poetry, some of which is still extant; it is
quoted by Florez. His monks kept great flocks of sheep, the profit of
which they spent in charity. Some years before his death he was made
archbishop of Braga, but he did not cease to practise the rule of
monastic life, and he built many new monasteries. He surveyed all the
coasts of Spain from Cape Finisterre to Cape St. Vincent, crossed the
rivers Duero and Guadalquivir, reaching the promontories and islands,
even to the spot where Cadiz now stands, and seeking everywhere asylums
for prayer and solitude. “Thanks to him,” continues Montalembert, in a
prophetic strain, “the extreme frontiers of the West become guarded by a
line of monastic garrisons. The great waves of the ocean rushing from
the shores of another hemisphere, from that half of the world still
unknown to Christians, is met by the gaze and the prayers of the monks
from the lofty cliffs of the Iberian Peninsula. There they stand firm,
awaiting the Mohammedan invasion; there they endure and survive it;
there they preserve a nucleus of faith and Christian virtue, for those
incomparable days, when, from those shores freed by unwearied heroism,
Spain and Portugal shall spring forth to discover a new world and to
plant the Cross in Africa, in Asia, and in America.”
St. Fructuosus is still one of the favourite saints of Galicia. The
cathedral of Santiago has a chapel dedicated to him, built in 1696,[61]
and his day is honoured by every peasant in the land.
Galicia has some valuable archæological monuments of the eighth century,
to which we shall refer in a later chapter, but she produced no great
literary character whose history need detain us here. It was in this
century that the Moors first invaded the Peninsula; and Galicia, though
not then invaded, began from this time to send the flower of her youth
to fight the Saracens. In the ninth century there took place the
discovery of the tomb of the apostle St. James on the spot where the
cathedral of Santiago now stands, a discovery which led to the
concentration of the reverential love of all medieval Christendom upon
that distant corner of Spain, and eventually caused Santiago to rival
Jerusalem as a centre for holy pilgrimage from all parts of the known
world.
In the tenth century, in 997, the Moor Almanzor, a celebrated minister
of the Moorish Court, arrived with his devastating army at the gates of
Santiago, having reduced thirty monasteries and palaces to ruin on his
way. Troops of Moors had come over from Cordova to join forces with
Almanzor’s hosts. San Pedro de Mezonzo, the author of the _Salve
Regina_, was then archbishop. When the Moorish army reached Santiago,
they found to their surprise that its towers and its walls were
deserted, and that no resistance was being offered to their advance.
Penetrating into the heart of the city, they found stillness and
solitude everywhere; they found the doors of the cathedral open, but
there was only one living person inside it--an aged monk prostrate in
prayer.
“What are you doing here?” demanded Almanzor.
“I am praying before the sepulchre of St. James,” replied the monk.
“Pray as much as you wish,” replied Almanzor, and he thereupon gave
orders that none should molest him; after which, according to some, the
Moor stationed himself before the altar to protect it from desecration
at the hands of his followers.
St. Pedro de Mezonzo had fled to a neighbouring stronghold, bearing with
him as much of the treasure of the cathedral as he could manage to
carry.[62] It is clear that he at least was not one of the fighting
prelates for which Galicia has been famous. Ferreiro tells us that when
excavations were made in the cathedral of Santiago in 1878, traces of
fire were certainly found. He argues from this that the Moors must have
used fire in their attempt to destroy the building. Almanzor returned to
Cordova laden with booty, and driving before him four thousand Christian
captives, bearing on their shoulders the gates of Santiago Cathedral and
its smaller bells, which, according to Fernandez Sandez, served as lamps
in the great mosque of Cordova until the day when Ferdinand took the
capital of the Calyphate, and caused captive Moors to bear them back to
Santiago on their shoulders and restore them to the cathedral.
Almanzor’s triumph was merely that of a successful expedition into the
heart of Galicia, for the Moors never conquered that province.
San Pedro de Mezonzo was a monk of the Benedictine Order before he was
raised to the archbishopric. The fact of his having been archbishop of
Santiago at the time of Almanzor’s entry is not the only one that
contributes to his fame. He is illustrious in the annals of Spanish
history as being the supposed author of that beautiful prayer to the
Virgin so universally revered throughout Catholic countries, the _Salve
Regina_,[63] a prayer which every Catholic child lisps at its mother’s
knee, and which has been translated into every language:--
“_Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae; vita, dulcedo et spes nostra,
salve. Ad te clamamus, exules filii Evae; ad te suspiramus gementes
et flentes in hac lacrymarum valle. Eia, ergo, advocata nostra,
illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte, et Jesum,
benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc exilium ostende: O
clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria._”
Of late years there has been much discussion among students of
ecclesiastical literature as to who was really the author of that
prayer. At a recent Catholic Congress held at Munich this question was
raised by a Benedictine monk. Florez devoted many pages to his argument
that St. Bernard was its author.[64] In 1892 a book on the subject was
published at Karlsruhe, in which W. Brambach tried to prove that
Hermanus Contractus, a Benedictine monk born in 1013 in Suabia, had
composed the _Salve_. There are French writers who support the claims of
a French priest, Ademar de Monteil, bishop of Puy-en-Velay about 1087,
said to have been one of the most active organisers of the first
European crusade. But the most recent as well as the most learned and
scholarly thesis[65] on this question is that of Dr. Eladio Oviedo,
professor of Ecclesiastical History and Archæology at the Pontifical
University of Santiago. Dr. Oviedo has spared no pains in his search for
the real author of the _Salve_; he has weighed every atom of available
evidence, and patiently searched through the religious literature of
centuries for traces of its influence, with the result that he is
convinced that--not St. Bernard, not Hermanus Contractus, not Ademar de
Monteil, but Pedro de Mezonzo of Galicia was the author of this prayer
so dear to the Catholic heart.
The idea is not a new one. I have met with it in several old works on
Galicia, but the proofs brought forward by Dr. Oviedo are more
convincing than any others that have as yet appeared in print. He shows,
and I think conclusively, that the _Salve_ was known in Spain long
before any allusion to it or sign of its influence appeared in French,
German, or Italian literature. Gonzalo de Berceo, in the thirteenth
century, introduced it into his _Milagros de Nuestra Señora_. Alfonso
_el Sabio_ relates in his Cantiga 262 a legend of how an old woman, who
was deaf and dumb, was cured by the Holy Virgin, and straightway taught
her townspeople the memorable _Salve_, which she, in her turn, had been
taught by the angels. According to Alfonso _el Sabio_, it was sung for
the first time in the church of Santa Maria del Puy.
In the sixteenth century the _Salve_ was known to the fisherfolk on the
Spanish coast as “The mariner’s prayer.” In the sixteenth century it had
already become popular in France, Portugal, and Italy. It is mentioned
in the Legends of St. Francis of Assisi by St. Buenaventura in 1274.
Dr. Oviedo points out that the melody of the _Salve_ is written in the
purest Gregorian style, and evidently composed at a date anterior to the
musical innovation which first showed itself at the beginning of the
eleventh century, and was fully consummated in the first half of the
twelfth. In order to perceive the archaic character of the musical style
of the _Salve_, Dr. Oviedo observes, it is sufficient to compare it with
the melodies of the first period of liturgic song, which begins with its
creator, St. Gregory,[66] and terminates with the tenth century. Our
friend has made the comparison, he has noted the beauty, the freshness,
the spontaneity of the ancient melodies that sprang from the musical
vein of St. Gregory, Charlemagne, Paul Varnefried, and others, and he
has decided that this is the school in which the _Salve_ must be
classed; he has studied it also from a paleographical point of view, and
made himself acquainted with its primitive form and with the various
changes through which it has passed. Those who wish to follow these
interesting investigations step by step can do so by perusing Dr.
Oviedo’s own account of them.
A set of homilies preached upon the _Salve Regina_ in the thirteenth
century has been attributed by many, but without any foundation, to St.
Bernard. It was in the sixteenth century that this prayer became
crystallised into its present form. The first instance of its
translation into a romance language occurs in the Cantiga 262 of Alfonso
_el Sabio_. Yepes, the first Spaniard to claim for Spain the glory of
being the birthplace of the _Salve_, wrote: “It has been usual for
Germans and other authors to say that a Benedictine monk called Herman
Contractus was the composer of this impassioned _antiphona_ so
celebrated in the Church. But Claudio de Rota, Antonio de Mocares, and
Durando think that St. Pedro Mezonzo (or Mozonzo) composed the _Salve_;
and I do not see why we Spaniards need let our hands be tied and assent
unquestioningly to the statement that a German was its author.” Dr.
Oviedo laughs to scorn the absurd theory that it was originally composed
in Greek by one of the Apostles, and only translated by Pedro de
Mezonzo.
Having fixed, then, the period within which the _Salve_ must have first
appeared, namely, the eleventh century, Dr. Oviedo goes on to search for
the precise moment in that century at which the prayer became a
historical fact. St. Pedro de Mezonzo died in 1003, Herman Contractus in
1054, and Ademar de Monteil in 1098. One of these three must have been
the author of the _Salve_. In the eighteenth century the famous
poet-priest of Fruime, in Galicia,[67] published a little work entitled
_Who Wrote the Salve?_ and he brought all his erudition, all his power
of literary criticism, to bear upon the subject, with the result that he
was able to successfully combat the theory upheld by Florez, that St.
Bernard was its author, as well as to prove that it was not written by
Contractus or by Monteil. His judgment has been upheld by the most
eminent writers of Galicia in our own time, including Lopez
Ferreiro.[68] Among foreign authorities who have held this view may be
mentioned Mabillon, Du Cange, and Pope Benedict XIV. Dr. Oviedo in his
recent thesis brings forward two important witnesses. The first is
Guillermo Durando, a canon of the school of Bologna, who became bishop
of Menda in 1285, best known as the author of a book on ancient
ecclesiastical institutions, entitled _Rationale Divinorum Officeorum_.
The second is Ricobaldo de Ferrara, canon of the cathedral of Ravenna,
who was a contemporary of Durando, and who is best known as the author
of a Universal History. Both these writers clearly affirm that St. Pedro
de Mezonzo was the author of the _Salve Regina_. Dr. Oviedo has copied
out their words on the subject with full contexts. I have them before me
as I write. “If anyone should ask,” says Dr. Oviedo, “how it comes that
the _Salve_ was known in France and Italy in those remote times, I reply
that it was from Provence in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that the
greater number of the pilgrims who visited Galicia came. Thence also
there came those pious caravans who, attracted by the throngs of French,
Belgians, Germans, Hungarians, Poles, juglares and troubadours, who
animated the streets and palaces of Compostela, the Holy City of the
West, the emporium and centre of a powerful movement which carried
multitudes of clever men from Galicia to occupy the professional chairs
of the most celebrated schools of the Middle Ages, and multitudes of
inspired Gallegan poets to sing before the most splendid courts of
Europe. Who doubts that by means of these troubadours, of these
scholars, the glorious traditions which join the name of _Salve_ to that
of St. Pedro de Mezonzo should have been spread far and wide?”
The _Salve Regina_ made its first appearance in history as the product
of Galician soil. We have seen that that royal troubadour of the
thirteenth century, King Alfonso _el Sabio_, introduced a legend of the
origin of the _Salve_ into his _Cantigas_.[69] “Where,” asks Dr. Oviedo,
“did he get that legend?” It is precisely those of his cantigas which
have to do with this legend that give us the most difficulty, and whose
source we are to-day unable to trace.[70] The fact is, that the source
of all _Canciones_ of the _Salve_, no matter whose name they bear, is
popular tradition, which had its rise in Santiago, at the tomb of St.
James, at the sepulchre of St. Pedro de Mezonzo. From this source the
story spread, first all over Galicia and then all over Spain. In the
last decade of the eleventh century the _Salve_--carried by the
pilgrims--was being intoned in countries far from the land of its birth.
But it gained such an early popularity in Spain as to be reflected in
Spanish lyric poetry in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, at which
time it had not yet begun to influence the poetry of France.
The reader cannot fail to be struck, while perusing the pages of Dr.
Oviedo’s thesis, with the patient perseverance and the stubborn
determination with which these battles over the authorship of the
_Salve_ has been carried on by French, German, and Spanish patriots
wishing to claim the glory for their own respective lands. But now, if
fresh combatants enter the lists, their efforts will have to be
superhuman indeed if they are to refute the proofs brought forward by
this valiant Gallegan to show that Galicia rightfully claims the
authorship of the _Salve Regina_.
In the summer of 1906 there appeared a startling article in the
newspapers of Galicia,[71] entitled “The Dogma of the Immaculate
Conception.” It began with the question, “Who was the first Western
Theologian to Defend the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception?” “Dr.
Eladio Oviedo,” it continued, “has brought about quite a revolution in
history by affirming that before Eadmer must be mentioned Pedro de
Compostela.” “Eadmer,” wrote Dr. Oviedo, “was an English monk of the
twelfth century, educated under the rule of St. Anselm in the celebrated
school of philosophy at Canterbury. He wrote about the year 1151 _De
Conceptione Sanctae Mariae_--in which he argued, against all the most
learned doctors of his time, that the Virgin Mary was born immaculate.
Not only England, but France, Belgium, Germany, and even Spain believed
till now that Eadmer was the first to defend this theory. But they were
all wrong. About the year 1140, Pedro Compostelano (Petrus Micha,
according to Lopez Ferreiro) wrote a treatise entitled _De Consolatione
Rationis_, of which a manuscript, possibly the original, is still
preserved in the Escurial Library, but, alas, unpublished. In this
treatise Pedro presents, in the form of an allegory to Catholic Reason,
the questions which occupied his mind, and, among them, that of the
Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. It is in the form of a dialogue,
and begins thus--
“_Compostellanus._--One doubt occupies my mind. Tell me, Was she who
merited the honour of becoming the mother of Christ conceived without
original sin, or with it? Truly, the former appears the most likely,
because I think that to the glorious Virgin Mother of our Lord were
granted all the virtues it was possible for Her to have; from this I
infer that Mary was sanctified in Her conception, and thus immune from
original sin.
“_Reason._--No one can deny that the Virgin was given every virtue, and
this is a sufficient answer to thy question. Further, it is evident that
before life she could not be sanctified, as she was not yet a rational
being, which alone is capable of receiving Divine grace, but I do not
vacillate an inch in affirming the fortunate Mary was enriched with the
plenitude of sanctity in the precise instant that her soul had its
birth, _in ipsa animae infusione omnium gratiarum plenitudine Eam beari
non ambigo_.”
“It was the seed sown,” wrote Dr. Oviedo, “by Pedro Compostelano, of the
Galician school of the twelfth century, that produced Cantiga 5 of the
_Festas de Sancta Maria_, which begins thus--
“E logo que foi viva (Maria),
no corpo de sa madre
foi quida do pecado,
lines which appear to be a romanced version of part of the book _De
Consolatione Rationis_, which was written in Galicia by Pedro before he
became a priest, and at least ten years before Eadmer in England took up
his pen to defend an opinion which was subsequently upheld by a host of
eminent Catholic writers, including Feijoó, and which has since been
incorporated among the unalterable dogmas of the Catholic Church.”