CAELIUS SEDULIUS AND HIS ALPHABET HYMN.
Latin hymnology gives a distinguished place to a hymn of twenty-three
stanzas, each stanza containing four lines and beginning with a letter
of the alphabet in regular order. Thus from A to Z all the letters
appear except J, U, and W. Caterva is spelled Katerva, to answer for K.
Y is represented by _Ymnis_, which is another form of _Hymnis_. And at
last _Zelum_ concludes the list. The author struggles with a difficulty
when he takes _Xeromyrrham_ to answer for X, but otherwise the ideas and
versification are so excellent as to have made the hymn classic. The
Roman Breviary uses two selections from it. One commences _A solis ortus
cardine, ad usque_, and the other, _Hostis Herodes impie_. The general
subject is the Nativity, but the poem soon proceeds to the Miracles of
our Lord, and closes with an ascription of praise for His Resurrection.
There can be no doubt about the authorship. Old manuscript codices, and
the tradition of the Church, assign it definitely to Caelius
Sedulius—sometimes called Caius Caelius Sedulius—who flourished near the
middle of the fifth century. But his personal history is much harder to
come at, and the few facts which we possess only stimulate our curiosity
to know more. And besides, he is so entangled with another Sedulius—also
a poet, also a celebrated author, also a Scot, and also involved in much
obscurity—that nearly every notice of his name contains more or less of
error. This second Sedulius, however, wrote no hymn which has survived,
and therefore needs no further mention. He is always named Sedulius
_Scotus_, to distinguish him from our Sedulius, who is invariably called
_Caelius_ Sedulius. He flourished somewhere between 721 and 818, while
the best ascertained date of his predecessor’s life appears to be 434.
Our sources of information regarding Sedulius are Isidore of Seville and
Fortunatus of Poitiers. Jerome (Hieronymus) left a catalogue of authors
from the time of St. Peter to his own day. This was continued by
Gennadius, as Notker of St. Gall tells us, and then it was still further
extended by Isidore. Neither Jerome nor Gennadius mention our poet; the
first because he died in 420, before Sedulius had achieved distinction,
and the second possibly for the same reason, as his death occurred about
496 at Marseilles. Isidore (who died 636) then undertook to supply the
deficiencies of the catalogue and inserted a brief note respecting
Sedulius.
Earlier than Isidore, however, is Fortunatus (530-609), who names our
author as one of the five first Christian poets. Juvencus he dates at
330 A.D.; Sedulius flourished in the first half of the fifth century;
Prudentius was converted in 405; Paulinus died in 458, and Arator was at
his zenith in 560. This would seem to fix pretty closely the period to
which Sedulius belongs.
References in the manuscripts are of no additional value. They tell us
that he was a “Gentile layman,” or, in other words, a person not of
Italian birth; that he learned philosophy in Italy; was converted and
baptized by Macedonius, a presbyter; and that he wrote his theological
works in Arcadia, or, as some say, Achaia. The Vatican “Codex of the
Queen of Sweden” calls him a “verse-maker” and “teacher of the art of
heroic metre.” Another codex adds that he also taught other varieties of
metrical composition, and that all this happened in the days of the
younger Theodosius, son of Arcadius, and of Valentinian, son of
Constantine. Of his specific writings still another codex states that he
“put forth in Achaia this book against error and composed in verse a
commendation of the Christian faith.”
Some Sedulius, “notable for his writings,” appears to have found his way
into Spain where, in the year 428, Isicius, a Palestine monk, who had
become Bishop of Toledo, detained him for his good fellowship at Toledo.
With him is said to have tarried a certain Bishop Oretanus, and the
inference is that these three worthies held numerous symposia upon
theology and literature. But the story is denied by Nicolaus Antonius,
the historian of old Spanish scholarship.
Those minute and laborious investigators, the Benedictines, have, with
ant-like patience, threaded every corner of the labyrinth in which these
stray facts are gathered. They assert that Macedonius probably received
him after he had been baptized by some one else. And while we do not
know under what master he studied theology, nor even where the school
was located, we know that Sedulius became presbyter in a church whose
bishop’s name was Ursinus, and where Ursicinus, Laurentius, and
Gallicanus were his co-presbyters.
Ussher relates that the epithet _Scotigena_—the Scot—was frequently
applied to him. Trithemius gives us to understand that he was led by
love of learning to visit France, then Italy, then Asia, and then
Achaia, and that his reputation was gained in the city of Rome. Sixtus
Senensis compares him to Apollonius of Tyana in his zealous pursuit of
wisdom; and enlarges the list of countries which he traversed by adding
Britain and Spain. Under Theodosius and at Rome, he too declares
Sedulius to have been famous in prose and verse. But Ussher first
claimed him for Britain; and Ussher it was who maintained that he was a
pupil of that Hildebert who ranks among the earliest of the Irish
bishops. It must not be forgotten that somewhere in Britain in those
days there was the light of Christianity, for in 432 St. Patrick set out
from Scotland “to convert Ireland.” Nor can we omit to notice that
Ussher styles Sedulius “Scotus Hybernensis,” thus originating the
expression “Scotch-Irishman,” but using it in exactly the reverse of its
modern sense.
So far as these partial facts and conjectures go we are safe in
affirming that Sedulius was a learned and studious person, probably an
Irishman—for at that time Scot and Irishman were synonymous—and that he
gained renown about the year 434, having studied in Italy, travelled
extensively, and been a resident in Achaia. The temptation is, however,
irresistible to make him Irish rather than Scotch, upon the strength of
the most ancient “bull” on record. It is found in the Alphabet Hymn and
reads thus:
“Quarta die jam foetidus
Vitam recepit Lazarus,
Cunctisque liber vinculis
Factus superstes est sibi.”
“Upon the fourth day Lazarus
Revived, though all malodorous;
And freed from the enchaining ground
Himself his own survivor found!”
The writings of Sedulius are more numerous than might be supposed. Those
which have been preserved are nine, two in verse and the rest in prose.
The most elaborate is a commentary on the four Gospels, dedicated to the
abbot Macedonius and to which he prefixed his _Carmen Paschale_. He also
wrote on the Pauline Epistles, as did his namesake of the ninth century.
To Theodosius he addressed a book. He wrote treatises on the books of
Priscian and Donatus, the grammarians. He also treated of the miracles
of Christ in prose and sent out many “epistles of Sedulius Scotigena.”
His poetry is comprised in the Alphabet Hymn; in the _Carmen Paschale_
whence we get nothing for hymnology except the hexameter _Salve Sancta
Parens enixa_ (_puerpera regem_); and in the Elegy, from which comes the
_Cantemus socii_.
The _Carmen Paschale_ is an epic in the Virgilian style. The Elegy is an
exhortation to the faithful. But the Alphabet Hymn has enriched the
Church with two lyrics, one on the Nativity and one on the Slaughter of
the Innocents. By placing the first stanza side by side with the first
stanza of the famous Ambrosian hymn, it is easily seen that they are the
same.
_Ambrosian._
“A solis ortus cardine
Et usque terrae limitem
Christum canamus principem
Natum Mariae virginis.”
_Sedulian._
“A solis ortus cardine
Ad usque terrae limitem
Christum canamus principem
Natum Maria virgine.”
But this is no unusual occurrence in days when the language of the
Psalms was employed in the Ambrosian hymns, and when the Ambrosian hymns
themselves furnished a convenient foundation for the later praises of
the Church. Not only did Sedulius imitate them closely, but Ennodius,
Fortunatus, Gregory, Bede, Rabanus, and Damiani—with many other unknown
writers—studied and copied their metre and expression. A curious
instance of this same copying and following can be found in our own
hymn. In it the stanza, _Ibant magi quam viderant_, contains two lines
which have been inserted bodily in a production of the fourteenth or
fifteenth century. It is true that they are very suggestive and
beautiful, but when Sedulius wrote
“Stellam sequentes praeviam
Lumen requirunt lumine,”
he wrote what was original with him, but which was sheer theft in the
hands of the author of _Hymnis laudum preconiis_, who nevertheless takes
the couplet to grace the feast of the Three Kings.
Latin hymns are by no means all beautiful or all graceful. The earlier
pieces appear and reappear—fragments from the better workmanship of the
past—throughout the Dark Ages. And here we must leave Sedulius. If he
was indeed the companion of Hildebert, his story belongs to that
fabulous age of the British Church when bishops were but simple pastors
and when great purity and truth prevailed. In the Alphabet Hymn there
are references to the direct Scripture narrative; to the “enclosed John”
who greets the Saviour; to Him fed with a little milk, who Himself feeds
the birds; to the great Shepherd revealed to shepherds; to Herod who
seems to fear a King who does not covet earthly dignities; to the Magi
who seek their Light from the light; to the healing of the sick and the
raising of the dead; to the water that blushes into wine, as perhaps
Crashaw had read; to Peter who fears by nature and walks the wave by
faith; to Lazarus “his own survivor;” to Judas the _carnifex_ who
professed peace by his kiss which was not in his soul; to Him who
triumphing over Tartarus returned of Himself to heaven. Such is the
hymn, and upon reading it one is not surprised that Fortunatus called
its author _Sedulius dulcis_—the sweet Sedulius. Nay, Rudolph of
Dunstable goes so far as to perpetrate a pun, and declares that Sedulius
_sedulously_ sings of things that are old and new. And the dear man of
God, Dr. Martin Luther of blessed memory, who had no relish for
Ambrose’s hymns, called our Irishman a _poeta Christianissimus_, and
translated into his massive German both the hymns the Breviary had
extracted from his chief poem.