HILARY OF POITIERS AND THE EARLIEST LATIN HYMNS.
When Master Peter Abaelard was preparing his own hymns for use in the
Abbey of the Paraclete, he prefaced them with a brief treatise. There
were ninety-three of them, arranged for all the services of Heloise and
her nuns, and he answers the request of his abbess-wife by sending them,
somewhere in the neighborhood of the year 1135. “At the instance of thy
requests, my sister Heloise,” he writes, “formerly dear in the world and
now most dear in Christ, I have composed what are called in Greek,
‘hymns,’ and in Hebrew, ‘tillim.’” For it is plain that she has a vivid
recollection of his “wild, unhallowed rhymes, writ in his unbaptized
times,” and she would now have him tune his lyre, as Robert Herrick did,
to a loftier strain.
Hence he made for these gentle sisters a hymn-book of their own, and so
became the Watts or Wesley of their matins and vespers. With
characteristic self-confidence he only included what he had himself
prepared; but this introduction casts a great deal of light upon the
knowledge and piety of the time respecting hymns.
“I remember,” continues Abaelard, “that you asked me for an explanation.
‘We know,’ you said, ‘that the Latin, and especially the French Church,
have in psalms, and also in hymns, followed more a custom than an
authority.’” This was quite true; and the remark is eminently
characteristic of Heloise, whose scholarship was admirable, and whose
disposition was of a sort to crave for and cling to a stronger nature.
He then quotes for her the decree of the fourth Council of Toledo (A.D.
633), by which Hilary of Poitiers and Ambrose of Milan are established
as the great fathers of Christian song in the Western Church, and by
which the praise of God in hymns is sanctioned and commended.
To much the same effect are the words of Augustine of Hippo, centuries
earlier. His beloved mother, Monica, had died, and nothing appeared to
comfort him so much as one of these same holy songs. “Then I slept, and
woke up again and found my grief not a little softened; and as I was
alone in my bed, I remembered those true verses of thy Ambrose. For thou
art the
“‘Maker of all, the Lord
And Ruler of the height,
Who, robing day in light, hast poured
Soft slumbers o’er the night,
That to our limbs the power
Of toil may be renewed,
And hearts be raised that sink and cower,
And sorrows be subdued.’”
This is the _Deus creator omnium_ of the great bishop of Milan; and
this, in consequence of Augustine’s quotation, is among the best
authenticated and earliest hymns of the Latin Church.
But there were more ancient hymns than the Ambrosian or Augustinian.
They bear the name of Hilary, and with them Latin hymnology really
begins. It is true that in the previous century—the third—Cyprian of
Carthage had written religious poetry, but he composed nothing which
could be sung. There is, indeed, nothing previous to Hilary.
And now let us go back to the creation of this first and noblest light.
For Hilary had been a heathen—a heathen of the heathen—in Roman Gaul. He
was born in Poitiers (Pictavium) about the beginning of the fourth
century. His father’s name was Francarius, whose tomb—although he must
at first have lived as an idolater—is said by Bouchet to have been “for
upward of fifteen hundred years” in the parish church of Clissonium
(Clisson, near Nantes). We are indebted to Jerome for the main facts of
Hilary’s life, and to Fortunatus for a large share in the filling up of
the outlines. Hilary was so celebrated a man that contemporary
references are more abundant and helpful in his career even than in that
of Shakespeare. In those days he was at the summit of renown, a notable
exception to the case of the prophet, “not being without honor save in
his own country.” “For who,” says Augustine, “does not know Hilary the
Gallic bishop?” And Jerome wrote to St. Eustacia that Hilary and Cyprian
were the “two great cedars of the age.”
He was doubtless well educated. His Latin was good and copious, without
possessing very great polish. His Greek was sufficient to fit him to
translate the creeds of the Eastern Church, and to become familiar with
their hymns. We have his own testimony that he lived in comfort, if not
in luxury; and the inference is plain that his family were of
consequence in the place. It was in his leisure that he took up Moses
and the prophets; and there, in that famous old town of his birth, the
mists of his idolatry thinned away. We do not know that any external
pressure was brought to bear upon his mind, or that he was led by
anything except a natural curiosity into this new learning.
Poitiers itself is a noble situation for such an intellect. It is
perched on a promontory, and surrounded on all sides by gorges and
narrow valleys. The isthmus, which joins it back to the ridge, was once
walled and ditched across. The Pictavi, and afterward the Romans,
understood the military advantages of the spot. It has always been the
abode of scholars and of warriors. Here Francis Bacon once studied. Here
Clovis, founder of the Merovingian dynasty, beat Alaric II., in 507, in
fair battle. Here Radegunda the Holy lies buried. Here Fortunatus, the
poet-bishop, dwelled. Here Charles Martel hammered the Saracens in 732.
Here, in the Cathedral of St. Pierre, rest the ashes of Richard Coeur de
Lion. Here, beneath these walls, fought Edward the Black Prince against
King John of France, in 1356, when the English had the best of the day.
For they had learned—as Bishop Hugh Latimer says that he himself was
taught—how to draw the cloth-yard shaft to a head, and let it fly with a
deadly aim. “In my tyme,” said Latimer, “my poore father was as diligent
to teach me to shote as to learne anye other thynge, and so I thynke
other menne dyd theyr children. Hee taughte me how to drawe, how to laye
my bodye in my bowe, and not to drawe with strength of armes as other
nacions do, but with strength of the bodye. I had my bowes boughte me
accordyng to my age and strength; as I encreased in them, so my bowes
were made bigger and bigger; for men shall never shoot well excepte they
be broughte up in it.” (Sixth sermon before Edward VI.) It was such
archery as this that laid the flower of France in the dust, and put
John, their king, into prison.
Poitiers is thus a noble and appropriate birthplace for one who before
the time of Charles the Hammerer was called the “Hammer of the Arians”
(_Malleus Arianorum_), and who combined fighting with praying all
through his life. Places and circumstances and the untamable blood of
heroes have more to do with the making of men than we suppose; and
Hilary was so distinctly a son of Caesar’s Gaul that he became its
large, true, and free expression, appropriate to its landscape and
harmonized to its atmosphere.
And as to his emergence from heathenism, there can be nothing more
satisfactory to us than his own story. He has recorded that when he
found, in Exodus, how God was called “I am that I am,” and when he read
in Isaiah (40:12) of a deity who “held the wind in His fists,” and again
(66:1) of Him who said, “Heaven is My throne and earth is My footstool,”
then this _Deus immensus_ surpassed all his heathen conceptions of
grandeur and power. And when he read (in Ps. 138:7) how this great God
loved and cared for His children, so that one could say, “Though I walk
in the midst of trouble, Thou wilt revive me; Thou shalt stretch forth
Thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and Thy right hand shall
save me”—then he was drawn toward this mighty being by a sentiment of
confidence and trust. He also—turning the pages of the Wisdom of Solomon
(13:5) in the Apocrypha—found it written that “by the greatness and
beauty of the creatures proportionately the Maker of them is seen.” And
then, encountering the Gospel of John, its opening sentences clarified
his mind. All became plain. He accepted with calmness, firmness, and
dignity the great doctrines of the Christian faith. He was imbued with
John’s conception of that Word, “which was in the beginning” and “which
was God.” From that moment he had a theology which was as pure as
crystal and as indestructible as adamant. There is no muddiness about
his ideas from this time onward, though Arians buzz and sting, and
calamities rain upon him, and the path of duty is deep with mire and the
future is dark. Every one of these things passes away. His own language
as to this great change in his belief is as characteristic as it is
beautiful: “I extended my desires further, and longed that the good
thoughts I had about God, and the good life which I built on them, might
have an eternal reward.” Like one of his own favorite saints in the
Gospel and the Apocalypse of John, he was thus “led by the Spirit of
God” to become one of the chanting choir before the throne.
It matters very little, therefore, to us of to-day, that, in 1851, Pius
IX., himself a man of sweet and gentle temper, made Hilary a “Doctor of
the Church”—a distinction reserved for those greatest ones, like
Augustine and Chrysostom, whose learning and eloquence are
world-renowned. The dead bishop did not need this posthumous
distinction. He has long been recognized—to quote Professor Dorner—as
“one of the most original and profound,” albeit not the easiest to
understand at all times, of the great teachers of the Christian Church.
We may hereafter attach more value to his work even than we do at
present.
This then was the man who had determined to enter upon a Christian life.
He was already married and had one daughter—Abra by name—and possessed a
certain repute as a man of reading and of affairs. His origin protected
him from a contempt of pagan learning; and his marriage protected him
from that one-sided development which has Romanized the once Catholic
Church. The period in which he lived was one of transition—from classic
literature to Christian literature, and from the Latin of far-off Virgil
and Cicero to the Latin which was to become the uniting tongue of all
scholars in that Babel of the Middle Ages. This language was now shaping
itself to its new work and becoming, like English under the genius of
Chaucer, a living speech. In the moulding hands of these first Christian
writers it became flexible, not always fluent or graceful or even
strictly grammatical, but capable at least to carry what would otherwise
have been lost. Greek was gone, and French and German and English had
not yet appeared. As a Gallo-Roman, then—a post-classic Latinist—Hilary
gives in his allegiance to Christianity, and his wife and daughter are
baptized with him into the true faith.
So far much is conjectural; and more is vague and to be derived from the
shadows cast upon the screen of history by the “spirit of the years to
come yearning to mix itself with life.” We emerge, however, into
historical certainty about the year 351. Then, on the death of their
bishop—who is thought to have been Maxentius, the brother of St. Maximin
of Trier—his townspeople clamored for Hilary. The _Histoire Litteraire
de la France_ sets this election down for the year 350; but that
authority, in this and a great many other instances, is profuse and
multitudinous and not absolutely safe. We are certainly not far out from
the correct date in saying 351.
It illustrates a condition of things which are suggestive of the
simplicity of the early Church, when we find that in spite of his being
a married man and a father—and in spite of Cyprian’s and of Tertullian’s
praises of celibacy—Hilary was heartily chosen and almost forced into
the episcopate. In this position he exhibited “all the excellent
qualities of the great bishops.” We are told that he was “gentle and
peaceable, given particularly to an ability to persuade and to
influence.” With these he joined “a holy vigor which held him firm
against rising heresies.” And Cassian says that Hilary “had all the
virtues of an incomparable man.” The fact, after all, speaks for itself
more loudly than these commendations. He was so much one of themselves
that the people of Poitiers would not have selected him, if they had not
known him to be the best man for the mitre.
From this time began that career of stainless honor which has outlasted
the very walls which echoed his voice. He was known from Great Britain
to the Indies. He ranks second only to Athanasius as a defender of the
faith; and—as we already noted—he is classed by Jerome with the great
bishop of Hippo whose portrait is given to us so vividly in Charles
Kingsley’s _Hypatia_. And to us of our century and of our convictions in
favor of charity and culture, it is particularly praiseworthy that he
never gave up his secular scholarship, and that he never flagged or
faltered in defending opinions which were as large and liberal as they
were undeniably orthodox. He was an oak which stood against the blast
unshaken, and which yet held, in the heart of its great branches, sweet
nests of singing birds and leafy coverts of shade and peace.
Hilary was not suffered to be inactive. It was the period at which the
Arian heresy was in full incandescence. No one holding the opinions of
the Bishop of Poitiers could well remain neutral. He had—in conformity
with a custom soon to become a law—separated his life from that of his
home; but he appears always to have cherished a warm love for his wife
and child. This placed him, however, in perfect freedom from other
cares, and at liberty to devote himself to the eradication of false
doctrine. Constantius, the Emperor, was an Arian, and this made the
perplexity of the position very great. An honest man might ruin all by
his blunt independence—but an honest man dare not be silent. And,
besides, Hilary had neither attended the Synod of Arles (353) nor that
of Milan (355), and was somewhat out of the ecclesiastical tide.
That he was no coward was soon shown to everybody’s satisfaction. He
prepared a letter to the Emperor as brave as it was keen, and which
touched up with a vigorous lash the cringing sycophants and shuffling
hypocrites about the court. Hilary is notably strong when he denounces
the substitution of force for reason—and perhaps his doctorate came to
him only in 1851 (when he could not well care much for it) because this
doctrine of his was not altogether what Mother Church has been in the
habit of teaching and practising! I may refer to the recent work of the
Rev. R. T. Smith upon _The Church in Roman Gaul_ as fully confirming
this statement. St. Martin of Tours is there called to bear testimony
that the Bishop of Poitiers held such opinions just as sturdily in his
days of power as in these times of trial and persecution. He was, in
short, a thoroughly sincere man, and it took him only a few years—until
355—to get into the hottest bubbling spot of all the caldron. At that
date, in company with other leaders of the church in Gaul, he drove out
a very pestilent fellow—Saturninus, the Bishop of Arles—as a seditious
and irreconcilable element in their midst. With him was cast out Valens,
and with Valens was cast out Ursacius. But of all these, Bishop
Saturninus was the angriest and the most revengeful.
A year of something like good order followed, when lo, the Arians came
to the front with a synod of their own complexion at Beziers. Here
Hilary found himself in the vocative case altogether. The tables were
turned upon him, and it was he who must now go forth a banished man. The
power was against him, and he set out with bowed head and sad heart upon
one of those pride-humbling journeys which have not seldom brought the
greatest results to religion, and which not a few of the best men have
taken in their day. In this manner Bernard went to meet Abaelard; Martin
Luther went to the diet at Worms; and John Bunyan took his way to
Bedford jail.
Principal among the causes of his sadness was that he was snatched away
from his constant and congenial duty of explaining the Scriptures to the
people of his diocese. Still he had nothing for it but to go; and so,
somewhere about 356, we find him in Phrygia. He is accompanied by
Rodanius, Bishop of Toulouse, who had plucked up considerable courage by
seeing how well Hilary took his defeat.
In 357 the Church in Roman Gaul sent him their greeting, from which that
of his own Poitiers people was not absent. And the Gallic bishops,
having perceived him to be capable of much good service in his enforced
residence abroad, bade him inform himself and them upon the creeds and
customs of the Eastern Church. This he had already, to a degree,
undertaken. And in 359, whom do we find entering a convocation of
bishops at Seleucia but our very Hilary, opposing with a strong and
unflinching philosophic power all those—and there were many there—who
denied the consubstantiality of the Word.
There were one hundred and sixty of these bishops at Seleucia, of whom
one hundred and five—a very handsome majority—were “semi-Arians.” Of the
remaining fifty-five there were nineteen classed as Anomoeans—those who
held that the Son was _unlike_ the Father in essence, or ἀνόµοιος—and
the rest were heretics of different grades of badness. It was the
natural outcome of the difficulties with Athanasius, where the royal
authority was on the side of the Arians. The Roman Catholic historians
are therefore not complimentary to this synod—or rather “double council”
of Seleucia and Rimini—and this was assuredly no very comfortable body
of Christians for a banished bishop to exhort. But he did it with
effect, and proceeded to the council at Constantinople (360) and did it
again; and presently (361) Constantius died and the Nicene Creed was
victorious.
So was Hilary, who—in 360-61—returned to Poitiers, where, as soon as his
crozier was once more well in hand, he levelled Saturninus and compelled
him to abandon his diocese. He then turned upon Auxentius of Milan, who
only escaped the same or a worse fate by clinging to Valentinian, the
reigning Emperor, and was denounced by Hilary as a hypocrite for his
pains. Our bishop appears in these days to have been decidedly a member
of the Church Militant; and perhaps it was natural enough when one had
survived the reigns of Constantius, Julian the Apostate, and Jovian, for
him to be as he was. I am not commenting upon these exciting scenes; I
desire rather to go back and show how they produced the hymns of which
we are to speak.
It was in 357—at the same date with the letters from the bishops and
from the churches—that Abra, his daughter, wrote to him herself. From
this epistle we learn that her mother still lived, and we observe the
dutiful and loving daughter apparent in every line. In reply Hilary
sends a well-composed and even imaginative letter. Under the figures of
a pearl and a garment he charges her to keep her soul and her conduct
pure. He rather recommends a single life, but not in any such
extravagant eulogy of celibacy as some would have us suppose. It is more
after the style of what Grynaeus affirmed of him—that he was so moderate
in these opinions as to suffer his canons to marry—since it would be
hard for an unbiassed mind to draw any harsh conclusions from the
language; yet all this is of small consequence compared with the
enclosure—two Latin hymns, one for the morning and one for the evening,
which she may use in the worship of God. The first of these is the
_Lucis largitor splendide_; but the second is probably lost. It is said
that it was the hymn, _Ad coeli clara non sum dignus sidera_—“To the
clear stars of heaven I am not worthy,” etc. This is very doubtful
indeed, so much so that we may decline to receive it on several grounds.
It is to be found in the superb folio edition of Hilary’s works (Paris,
1693) prepared by the Benedictines of St. Maur. Yet if internal evidence
is to weigh at all we must reject it without scruple. It is not a hymn
in any true sense, and certainly has no reference to the _evening_ hour
of worship. It contains a gross phrase or two, which are not suggestive
of Hilary, who would scarcely have said that he would “despise Arius” by
“modulating a hymn” against him, nor would he have spoken of the
“barking Sabellius” or the “grunting Simon.” The verses are unpleasantly
flavored with earthliness, and to think that a young girl would be
inclined to sing ninety-six lines of an abecedary—or “alphabet-hymn”—is
absurd. Moreover, the editors of the edition of 1693 only print four
stanzas, and express their own disbelief that Hilary wrote it, based
upon these facts and upon their no less important criticism of the
style, which is _masculine_ throughout, and refers to ideas highly
inappropriate to the use intended. Mone is nearer to the correct
doctrine when he assigns it to a period between the sixth and eighth
centuries. Daniel (4:130) prints it in full and quotes Mone’s remark
that an Irish monk is likely to have been its author. It is in the metre
familiar to modern eyes in the _Integer vitae_ of Horace, but it
displays neither taste nor poetry nor any religious fervor. That it
begins each stanza with a consecutive letter of the alphabet is no proof
of anything except wasted ingenuity. So that, I repeat, we do well to
reject it and to leave it rejected.
All, then, that is left us is the _Lucis largitor splendide_—“Thou
splendid giver of the light.” The letter went back from Seleucia to
Poitiers and carried this hymn, at least, with it. Hilary had sent this
and its companion, _ut memor mei semper sis_—“that you may always
remember me.” And we may fancy the lovely high-born daughter of that
earnest and scholarly man as, daily and nightly, she sits at her
window—perchance with her gaze wistfully turned to the eastward. There
she sang these simple, beautiful hymns—she the first singer of the new
hymns of the Latin Church. Among the themes for Christian art yet left
to us there is hardly one more suggestive than this—for Abra doubtless
sang her father’s hymns to her father’s loyal people. It may even be
supposed that he gave her the tunes as well as the words, and that, by
morning and by night, the battle-scarred Poitiers re-echoed this voice
of the exiled bishop.
Of the hymn itself as much can be said in favor as we have just said
against its pretended and ill-matched companion. It breathes the
Johannean sentiments throughout. It celebrates the Light, the Son of
God, the glory of the Father, “clearer than the full sun, the perfect
light and day itself.” To one who is acquainted with the Greek hymns it
is instantly suggestive of those pellucid songs—its atmosphere is all
peace and its trust is as restful to the tired spirit as the quiet
coming of the rising day. It may easily have been a translation from the
Greek, or, even more easily, the natural up-gush of melody which was
touched into life by the frequent hearing of the Eastern hymns. Hilary
never learned it in an Arian church, nor did he find it among
controversialists. Its nest, where it was first reared, was in some
corner of a catacomb or in some nook of the Holy Land. This hymn, then,
we may safely accept as the oldest authentic original Latin “song of
praise to Christ as God.”
Whether the Bishop of Poitiers had much or little learning, he wrote a
valuable book on _Synods_, and translated for us many useful and
otherwise inaccessible confessions of faith and statements of doctrine.
Erasmus—himself no brave man, nor one likely to estimate moral courage
properly—calls this letter to Abra “_nugamentum hominis otiose
indocti_”—the trifling production of a man lazily uneducated! Well,
perhaps it would have been as well if some of that same “luxurious
ignorance” of Hilary could have secured the “laborious learning” of
Erasmus from exhibiting, at the end of life, its own inefficiency.
Jerome said that whoever found fault with Hilary’s knowledge was
compelled to concede his philosophic skill; and it reminds one of the
remark of Dante Rossetti, who said that nothing in our age could stand
comparison with a sonnet of Shakespeare, for, rough as it might seem,
_Shakespeare wrote it_. It was this manhood behind the Latin which went
for more than all Rotterdam!
Hilary is credited with a great deal, doubtless, that he never wrote. So
he is, by Fortunatus, with miracles which he never performed. Alcuin and
others assign to him the _Gloria in Excelsis_, but this was certainly
more ancient than Hilary, being quoted by Athanasius in his treatise on
Virginity. He could at best merely have translated it. This he might
also have done for the _Te Deum laudamus_. And since we know that he
prepared a _Liber Hymnorum_—the first actual hymn-book of the Western
Church—we have some reason to think that he would not have altogether
forgotten the greatest chants of the early Christians. This hymn-book is
utterly lost to us. This is not the same as the _Liber Mysteriorum_—the
book of the mysteries—and its existence, like that of its companion
work, rests upon the testimony of Jerome. Doubtless in it there were
other poems and songs from which the Hilarian authorship has been broken
or lost. It was not the ancient custom either to preserve the author’s
name, or even to retain the precise form of his hymn. He threw his
little lyric—as the Israelites did their jewelry—into the common
treasury of the Church; and in the Breviaries, where so many of these
hymns are to be discovered, a later and more critical scholarship may
identify some of them hereafter. As delicate insects are preserved in
amber, we there find much that we should otherwise have lost; but, like
that very amber, when its electricity is excited, his was that sort of
reputation which attracted many anonymous trifles—as, for example, the
_Ad coeli clara_—to itself.
Of Hilary’s other writings, with exception of his work on the Councils
of Ariminum and Seleucia, we have the full text. His commentaries on the
Psalms and on Matthew; his controversial pamphlets against Constantius;
his book of _Synods_; his twelve books _De Trinitate_—these are
accessible in the _Patrologia_ of Migne.
It was undoubtedly believed at the time of the fourth Council of Toledo
that he had written many pieces “in favor of God, and of the triumphs of
apostles and martyrs;” and both Jerome and Isidore of Seville declare
him to have been the first among the Latins to write Christian verse.
But to show how uncertain is the conjecture that is thus started, I may
mention that the _Ut queant laxis_ of Paul Winfrid, the “Deacon,” is
credited to Hilary by the _Histoire Litteraire_. The same authority also
claims for him the first _Pange lingua_ (_Pange lingua gloriosi,
praelium certaminis_), which is sometimes assigned to Claudianus
Mamertus, but is the well-authenticated composition of Venantius
Fortunatus, the troubadour and friend of Radegunda, the wife of
Clotaire. We may as well admit that a great man did not necessarily do
all the great things of his day.
Besides, the search after truth in this matter is complicated
marvellously by the trade of the hymn-tinkers, who put new bottoms and
tops and sides to a great many religious lyrics. Here is a case in point
in Mone (vol. iii., p. 633). The hymn begins _Christum rogemus et
patrem_—“We call on Christ and on the Father.” It has seven stanzas. The
_first_ stanza is from a morning hymn, supposed to be by Hilary. The
_second_ is from an Ambrosian hymn. The _third_ and _fourth_ are from
another Ambrosian hymn to the Archangel Michael. The _fifth_ is from a
very noble Ambrosian hymn—the _Aeterna Christi munera_—of which Daniel
says that it itself has been “wretchedly torn to pieces by the Church”
(_ab ecclesia miser e dilaceratum_). The _sixth_ and _seventh_ stanzas
are also Ambrosian—from the _Jesu corona virginum_. Thus this single
hymn of seven stanzas is mere patchwork, gathered from that Ambrosian
hymnody which the Breviaries supply. And finding all the rest of it
credited to Ambrose and to his century, we are inclined to doubt that
Hilary should be considered as the author of any portion at all.
Indeed the identification of Hilary’s hymns—except the _Lucis
largitor_—is purely conjectural. It rests mainly on the hymnological
acumen of Cardinal Thomasius, which may or may not be liable to error.
Kayser refuses, on one ground or another, to positively endorse any,
except the one which all now concede. Next to this in probability stands
the _Beata nobis gaudia_ (though it is doubted by Professor March), and
then the _Deus pater ingenite_, which is taken from the Mozarabic
Breviary. The _Jam meta noctis transiit_, the _In matutinis surgimus_,
and the _Jesu refulsit omnium_, have only the authority of Thomasius.
The _Jesu quadragenariae_, Daniel says, is an old hymn, but very
certainly composed later than the time of Hilary. The _Ad coeli clara_
we have already rejected. Thus we have one authentic and five
conjectural Hilarian hymns. There is, however, great doubt resting on
the _Jesu refulsit omnium_; and if I consulted merely my own judgment, I
should declare against it, if only in view of the _rhymes_—a
characteristic which it would scarcely possess if it were genuinely of
the fourth century. And while we are upon this somewhat ungrateful duty
of trying to set matters right, shall we pass over the slip which Mrs.
Charles makes in her capital little book? (_Christian Life in Song._ Am.
ed., p. 74.) For she says that “The Hilary who wrote the hymns was the
canonized Bishop of Arles.” There was, much later, a Hilary of Arles;
and there was another Hilary of Rome, and there were also others of the
same name; but none of them wrote hymns. He of Arles assuredly did not.
Of our own Hilary it may be added that the rest of his life was earnest,
but comparatively quiet. We shall find Gregory of Tours and Fortunatus
asserting that he raised the dead and healed the sick, and cast out
devils (some of them in the shape of snakes) from a boy’s stomach; but
these stories belong naturally to a credulous and superstitious age.
More to the purpose is it to find that the bishop had entered upon the
composition of tunes for his hymns, and had taken up calligraphy and the
ornamentation of manuscripts. There was a book of the Gospels found, on
which was indorsed, “_Quem scripsit Hilarius Pictavensis quondam
sacerdos_”—“which Hilary of Poitiers, formerly a priest, wrote.” A
similar book was left by St. Perpetuus, Bishop of Tours, to Bishop
Euphronius, Fortunatus’s friend. This is attested by his will, executed
in 474. “I saw,” says Christian Druthmar (ninth century), “a book of the
Gospels, written in Greek, which was said to have been St. Hilary’s, in
which were Matthew and John,” etc. But whether Hilary wrote this is
naturally an open question.
The good bishop died at Poitiers—as Jerome and Gregory of Tours
declare—but the date is still a matter of some uncertainty. Valentinian
and Valens were upon the throne, and it is safe to say that 367-68 was
the year. January 14th has also been assigned by some authorities, but
with no better reason than a generally received tradition to this
effect, and the fact that this is his day in the Roman calendar. His
body was, however, scattered rather widely. It was removed from its tomb
in the time of Clovis—a bone of his arm was in Belgium, and some other
portions of his anatomy were in Limoges. About the year 638, Dagobert is
stated to have placed his remains in the Church of St. Dionysius, and so
confident of this fact were the people of Poitiers, in 1394, that they
vehemently asserted that they had his relics there in perfect safety.
“Calvinistic heretics” were said to have burned the mortal remnants of
the great “hammer of the Arians,” and the Pictavians took this method to
meet the calumny. For aught we know to the contrary they were perfectly
right, and the dust of their bishop is still resting peacefully in their
midst.
For his works, the Paris edition of 1693 is the best; but the
_Patrologia_ of J. P. Migne contains all that any one can need or care
to see. It is the full reprint of the Paris volumes, together with
biographical and critical notes, in Latin, prepared with great diligence
and research; but, of course, from the Roman Catholic point of view.
THE HYMNS OF HILARY.
I.
HYMNUS MATUTINUS.
1. Lucis largitor splendide,
Cujus sereno lumine
Post lapsa noctis tempora
Dies refusus panditur;
2. Tu verus mundi Lucifer,
Non is, qui parvi sideris
Venturae lucis nuntius
Angusto fulget lumine,
3. Sed toto sole clarior,
Lux ipse totus et dies,
Interna nostri pectoris
Illuminans praecordia:
4. Adesto, rerum conditor,
Paternae lucis gloria,
Cujus admota gratia
Nostra patescunt corpora;
5. Tuoque plena spiritu,
Secum Deum gestantia,
Ne rapientis perfidi
Diris patescant fraudibus,
6. Ut inter actus seculi
Vitae quos usus exigit,
Omni carentes crimine
Tuis vivamus legibus.
7. Probrosas mentis castitas
Carnis vincat libidines,
Sanctumque puri corporis
Delubrum servet Spiritus.
8. Haec spes precantis animae,
Haec sunt votiva munera,
Ut matutina nobis sit
Lux in noctis custodiam.
I.
A MORNING HYMN.
1. Thou splendid giver of the light,
By whose serene and lovely ray
Beyond the gloomy shades of night
Is opened wide another day!
2. Thou true Light-bearer of the earth,
Far more than he whose slender star,
Son of the morning, in its dearth
Of radiance sheds its beams afar!
3. But clearer than the sun may shine,
All light and day in Thee I find,
To fill my night with glory fine
And purify my inner mind.
4. Come near, Thou maker of the world,
Illustrious in thy Father’s light,
From whose free grace if we were hurled,
Body and soul were ruined quite.
5. Fill with Thy Spirit every sense,
That God’s divine and gracious love
May drive Satanic temptings hence,
And blight their falsehoods from above.
6. That in the acts of common toil
Which life demands from us each day,
We may, without a stain or soil,
Live in Thy holy laws alway.
7. Let chastity of mind prevail
To conquer every fleshly lust;
And keep Thy temple without fail,
O Holy Ghost, from filth and dust.
8. This hope is in my praying heart—
These are my vows which now I pay;
That this sweet light may not depart,
But guide me purely through the day.
II.
HYMNUS MATUTINUS.
1. Deus, Pater ingenite,
Et Fili unigenite,
Quos Trinitatis unitas
Sancto connectit Spiritu.
2. Te frustra nullus invocat,
Nec cassis unquam vocibus
Amator tui luminis
Ad coelum vultus erigit.
3. Et tu suspirantem, Deus,
Vel vota supplicantium,
Vel corda confitentium
Semper benignus aspice.
4. Nos lucis ortus admonet
Grates deferre debitas,
Tibique laudes dicere,
Quod nox obscura praeterit.
5. [Et] diem precamur bonum,
Ut nostros, Salvator, actus
Sinceritate perpeti
Pius benigne instruas.
II.
A MORNING HYMN.
1. Eternal Father, God,
And sole-begotten Son,
Who with the Holy Ghost
Art ever Three in One.
2. None calleth Thee in vain,
Nor yet with empty cry
Doth he who seeks Thy light
Lift up his gaze on high.
3. Do Thou, O God, behold
With mercy them that pray;
Receive their earnest vows
And take their guilt away.
4. The kindling sky forewarns
Our souls what praise we owe
To Him at whose command
The night has ceased below.
5. We ask a happy day,
That Thou shouldst guide our ways
In constant faithfulness,
O Saviour, to Thy praise!
III.
HYMNUS PENTECOSTALIS.
1. Beata nobis gaudia
Anni reduxit orbita,
Cum Spiritus paraclitus
Illapsus est discipulis.
2. Ignis vibrante lumine
Linguae figuram detulit,
Verbis ut essent proflui,
Et charitate fervidi.
3. Linguis loquuntur omnium;
Turbae pavent gentilium:
Musto madere deputant,
Quos Spiritus repleverat.
4. Patrata sunt haec mystice,
Paschae peracto tempore,
Sacro dierum circulo,
Quo lege fit remissio.
5. Te nunc, Deus piissime,
Vultu precamur cernuo:
Illapsa nobis coelitus
Largire dona Spiritus!
6. Dudum sacrata pectora
Tua replesti gratia,
Dimitte nostra crimina,
Et da quieta tempora!
III.
WHITSUNDAY HYMN.
1. What blessed joys are ours,
When time renews our thought
Of that true Comforter
On the disciples brought.
2. With light of quivering flame
In fiery tongues He fell,
And hearts were warm with love
And lips were quick to tell.
3. All tongues were loosened then,
And fear, in men, awoke
Before that mighty power
By which the Spirit spoke.
4. Achieved in mystic sign
Has been that paschal feast,
Whose sacred list of days
The soul from sin released.
5. Thee then, O holiest Lord,
We pray in humble guise
To give such heavenly gifts
Before our later eyes.
6. Fill consecrated breasts
With grace to keep Thy ways;
Show us forgiveness now,
And grant us quiet days.
IV.
HYMNUS MATUTINUS.
1. Jam meta noctis transiit,
Somni quies jam praeterit
Aurora surgit fulgida
Et spargit coelum lux nova.
2. Sed cum diei spiculum
Cernamus, hinc nos omnium
Ad te, superne Lucifer,
Preces necesse est fundere.
3. Te lucis sancte Spiritus
Et caritatis actibus
Ad instar illud gloriae
Nos innovatos effice.
4. Praesta Pater piissime
Patrique compar unice,
Cum Spiritu paraclito
Nunc et per omne saeculum.
IV.
A MORNING HYMN.
1. The limit of the night is passed,
The quiet hour of sleep has fled;
Far up the lance of dawn is cast;
New light upon the heaven is spread.
2. But when this sparkle of the day
Our eyes discern, then, Lord of light,
To Thee our souls make haste to pray
And offer all their wants aright.
3. O Holy Spirit, by the deeds
Of Thine own light and charity,
Renew us through our earthly needs
And cause us to be like to Thee.
4. Grant this, O Father ever blessed;
And Holy Son, our heavenly friend;
And Holy Ghost, Thou comfort best!
Now and until all time shall end.