RABANUS MAURUS, AUTHOR OF THE “VENI, CREATOR.”
None of the great Latin hymns is more regarded than the _Veni, Creator
Spiritus_. The _Dies Irae_ may be grander; the _Veni, Sancte Spiritus_
may be sweeter; the _Ad perennis vitae fontem_ may be lovelier; the
_Stabat mater_ may be more pathetic, but, after all, the _Veni, Creator_
holds a place of equal honor in the estimation of the Church. The Church
of England, while rejecting every other Latin hymn from her services,
nevertheless retained this in the offices for the ordering of priests
and consecration of bishops. This is only the carrying out, indeed, of
the account given by the famous but unknown monk of Salzburg who
rendered so many of the Latin hymns into the old High-German tongue. He
says, “Whoever repeats this hymn by day or by night, him shall no enemy
visible or invisible assail.” This has always been the repute of the
hymn, and there is no doubt that this attended it on its journey down
the ages in the worship of the Church.
Its authorship, however, has been less carefully preserved than its
text, which is notably free from mutilation and obscurity. It is really
singular to find a hymn which has been so universally employed, and
which has escaped in such a marvellous manner from the profane meddling
of prosaic or bigoted revisers. Its doxologic final stanza is one which
is not often to be found elsewhere—as though the hymn had taken and
maintained a place apart. If it were the product of the Ambrosian age
this would not be likely to have occurred, for all those doxologies are
formal and interchangeable to a marked degree. But this is the
appropriate conclusion of a unique ascription of praise to the third
person of the Trinity.
Its date is thus, to some extent, fixed for us. We cannot refer it to
the days of Ambrose, and, since it is found in nearly all the twelfth to
fourteenth-century breviaries, we are unable to attribute it to the
period of the Renaissance. Its very verse would prevent this, if nothing
else did. The word _spiritalis_ is a barbarism—an altogether
post-classical expression. The true usage is that in which the genitive
case is employed, thus “spiritual delight” would be _animi felicitas_,
not _spiritalis_ (or _spiritualis_) _felicitas_. _Perpetim_ is also a
word which purists of the new classic revival would avoid if they could.
So, too, there is a certain amount of stress to be put upon the scanning
of _Paraclitus_—where the _i_ is long, though Prudentius in the fifth
century and Adam of St. Victor in the twelfth both make it short. It has
therefore been said that the hymn was composed by a person who was
skilled in the Greek language. This altogether depends on the question
whether he pronounced the word by accent or by quantity. But still it is
not to be denied that the prosody of the poet gives us reason to think
that he did pronounce the word with the accent on the η. If this be so,
it would follow that he was a man of rare and fine scholarship in
comparison with the contemporaneous learning.
Another criticism is purely theological and aids in fixing the date by
the history of doctrine itself. At the Council of Toledo A.D. 589, the
word _filioque_ was added to the Creed to indicate the faith of the
Church in the procession of the Holy Spirit from both the Father and the
Son. This hymn preserves this point of the orthodox belief with such
care that there can be no doubt of its being subsequent in time to the
date of that council.
In coming more particularly to the various authors who have been
credited with its composition, it may be well to attend to each claim as
it is put forward in some sort of chronologic order.
George Fabricius of Chemnitz (1564) was ready enough to ascribe it to
Ambrose himself. The only ground for this conjecture is the structure of
the verse. And this is no more a proof of authorship than that a hymn
written in what we call “long metre” must be, because of that fact
alone, the production of Isaac Watts. On the other hand, it is plain
that the theological allusion and the doxology, when taken together,
remove the hymn far enough away from the days of the great Bishop of
Milan.
In later times of more critical scholarship the learned and accurate
Professor Hermann Adalbert Daniel has devoted much study to the hymn,
and has reached the conclusion that it belongs to that king whom the
Germans are never tired of praising—Charles the Great (Karl der Grosse),
by the French called Charlemagne. Led by his illustrious opinion the
compilers and translators have, without another question, set it down
for Charles’s work. So it has gone; the minor German collators, like
Königsfeld and others, following peacefully in the rear of an original
investigator. This was not true, however, of men who hunted for proof on
their own account, as, for instance, Mone and Wackernagel. But it is
distinctly true of the English scholars, among whom Archbishop Trench
appears to carry the most prevalent influence. They usually assent
without a murmur to this conjecture of Daniel indorsing Thomasius, who
was, so far as can be discovered, the parent of the opinion. The only
real exception is the Scotch hymnologist, Dr. H. M. MacGill, who doubts,
but conforms to the opinion which is in vogue.
The grounds of this general confidence in Charles’s authorship it may be
proper to mention here in brief. We know it is said that he was a patron
of learning, a friend of scholars, and a devout believer in the orthodox
theology. In the year 809 he took an active part in a synod at
Aquisgranum which affirmed the doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeded
from both the Father and the Son. There is, furthermore, a statement,
quoted by Cardinal Thomasius from the _Acta Sanctorum_, which goes in
the direction of a positive assertion. In the life of the Blessed Notker
it is said that this hymn was composed by Carolus Magnus.
Now it has never been established that Charles was even a ready writer
of prose, to say nothing of verse. Berington, following Einhard,
Charles’s secretary, says in his _History of the Literature of the
Middle Ages_ (1814), that Charles was not a literary man. “He seems
never to have acquired the easy practice of writing,” is his strong
language (p. 102). The hymn, on the contrary, bears the evident marks of
accustomed skill and practice in the art of verse as well as the
accuracy of a mind trained in theologic discriminations. Moreover, if
Maitland (he of the Dark Ages) is to be credited, then this life of the
Blessed Notker, by Ekkehard Junior, is full of errors, of ignorance, and
wilful design. It naturally celebrates whatever is likely to add to the
credit of St. Gall. Hence we need not be astonished when it tells us
that Notker composed the sequence, _Spiritus Sancti adsit nobis gratia_,
and sent it to Charles the Great, receiving in return his composition
the _Veni, Creator Spiritus_. Nor should we be surprised when this turns
out (as it is now conceded to be) a mere legend without any historic
basis. When Thomasius follows this story, and Daniel follows Thomasius,
and Trench follows Daniel, and the compilers follow Trench, it really
appears that but little independent judgment has been exercised on the
subject.
Notker died in 912, and as Charles the Great was dead in 814, the absurd
anachronism of the Ekkehard legend is clear to a glance. It should
perhaps be added that Trench, although allowing Charles as author,
believes the hymn to be possibly of earlier date.
Mone takes a new departure when he gives up the common opinion and
announces that the hymn ought to be assigned to Gregory the Great
(540-606). In his first volume he taxes Daniel with having been
altogether too prompt to agree to the cardinal’s dictum. He finds no
reason to give the hymn to Charles, but he regards the classical style
of its composition to be very fitting to the culture and well-known
powers of Gregory. He rejects the doxology _Sit laus_, etc., and
considers, very justly, that the stanza _Per te sciamus_, etc., is the
true conclusion of the hymn.
Wackernagel agrees with Mone. He thinks that the only way in which
Charles could have secured the authorship would have been by getting the
composition effected by the intervention of Alcuin. He therefore
believes that Gregory was the poet of the _Veni, Creator_, and so
publishes it in his exhaustive work upon the German church hymns.
Professor March, always careful and scholarly in his assignments, adopts
this opinion also.
Against the Gregorian authorship, supported as it is by such eminent and
independent scholars, one must be slow to contend. But in fact there is
no great similarity between the hymn before us and those of Gregory. The
great Pope is not a great poet. He has not written one hymn which has
really endured. The _Audi benigne Conditor_ is quoted freely, and the
_Rex Christe, factor omnium_ received Luther’s highest approbation. But
these and other hymns from his pen are imitations of Ambrose—almost
slavish imitations. The lofty and grand largeness of the _Veni, Creator_
is wanting to them all. The argument, good as it may seem, is only
negative. The inference is that the hymn was written by him—nothing
more. On the same grounds we might as well go back to old George
Fabricius and give it into the hands of Ambrose as he did. The truth is
that Gregory’s writings do not contain it, and why they should not, if
he were its actual author, it is hard for any one to understand.
But we are not at the end of the inquiry yet. We positively know certain
facts. These are: That the earliest mention of the hymn is in the
_Delatio S. Marculfi_, A.D. 898; that it is found in the breviaries of
the twelfth to fourteenth centuries; that its author was a skilled
theologian and probably a master of the Greek language; that he was a
poet in the true sense and therefore quite certain to have written other
hymns and poems; that it was so soon and so generally adopted as to
prevent any corruption of its text; that all these ascriptions of it to
this or that person are nothing but tradition; and, finally, that the
hymn has such spiritual worth and power as to mark it for the production
of a devout as well as scholarly mind. All these requirements are met in
Rabanus Maurus, Bishop of Mainz, pupil of Alcuin, and laureate after
Alcuin and Theodulphus.
There was a certain Christopher Brower, a Jesuit and a profoundly
learned scholar, who was born in 1559 at Arnhem in Gelderland. In the
year 1580 he went to Cologne in pursuit of his studies. Then he studied
philosophy at Trier, and eventually became rector of the college at
Fulda. Here he wrote four books upon antiquarian topics. His diligent,
exhaustive style can be judged by the fact that he spent thirty years
upon a history of Trier. His _Antiquitates_ were printed in 1612, but in
1603 he had edited the writings of Fortunatus, and this book was
reissued in 1617, the year of his death, by Joannes Volmar at Cologne.
This edition has an appendix of 150 pp. 4to., in which is contained the
entire series of hymns and other poetical compositions which were due to
the aforesaid Bishop of Mainz, Rabanus Maurus. It was edited from a very
old MS. of undoubted veracity, and it contains the _Veni, Creator_ in
the precise text which we now employ. It is to be noticed that it does
not recognize the doxology _Sit laus_, etc., and this Mone assures us
was composed at a later period by Hincmar of Rheims, and is, as we have
said, unique. But it accents Paraclitus upon the second _a_ and not upon
the _i_.
The stanza _Da gaudiorum_, etc., was rejected some time ago by the best
scholars. It is from a hymn of later date. And we therefore find the
version which appears in Brewer’s editions of the poems of Rabanus
Maurus to be consonant with the most intelligent criticism of the text
of the _Veni, Creator_.
The hymn itself we can assign with very considerable certainty to the
author in whose pages it again is apparent, and we may believe in the
accuracy and scholarly acuteness of the Jesuit antiquarian.
It will not be amiss if we set our reasons in order, for a
long-established delusion is as hard to overthrow sometimes as the
stubbornest fact. They are such as the following:
1. The hymn is found in the writings of Rabanus Maurus, in a codex which
Brower calls “very ancient and well approved.”
2. It is the precise paraphrase of the learned bishop’s chapter on the
Holy Spirit. Thus he begins the chapter with an assertion of the
procession of the Holy Spirit from both the Father and the Son. He then
calls this Spirit _donum Dei_, and several times repeats the phrase. He
argues that the Spirit is coequal and coeternal God. He then discusses
the term _Paraclete_, and proceeds to speak of the _septiformis_ nature
of His power. Next follows a most significant and unusual
expression—namely, that the Holy Spirit is _digitus Dei_—the finger of
God. And the consecution and coincidence of thought is still further
increased by an allusion to the grace which bestowed the gift of
tongues. He then speaks of the Spirit as fire—which accords with the
word _accende_—and then he explains the simile of water, which
corresponds with the word _infunde_ and with the previous phrase _fons
vivus_. He also quotes from the Gospel of John to show that this “living
water” means no more nor less than the Holy Spirit. These coincidences
are doubly remarkable, for they not only exhibit the same ideas—some of
which, by the way, are quite uncommon—but they also set them forth in
the precise order in which the good bishop employs them in his hymn. It
is as if, being aroused and animated by his great and noble theme, he
had turned to verse as an appropriate medium of lofty praise and had
sung from his heart this immortal hymn.
3. To these reasons we may add a third—that the internal structure of
the hymn shows its author to have been a person of theological
soundness, spiritual insight, scriptural knowledge, genuine scholarship,
and a natural poetical capacity. These facts again agree with what we
know to have been the talents and learning of Rabanus Maurus.
4. If Gregory had written this hymn it would have appeared at an earlier
date and would have been undoubtedly attributed to its illustrious
author; whereas it is not in his carefully compiled writings nor is it
accredited to him by Thomasius or any hymnologist before the time of
Mone and Wackernagel.
5. Charles the Great had not the learning, and both he and his grandson,
Charles “the Bald,” are named on the strength of a long-exploded and
always anachronistic tradition.
6. Ambrose is out of the question by the theological limitation of the
stanza _Per te sciamus_, etc.
7. Finally, we have the right to believe that a man whose other hymns
have been so extensively, though anonymously, introduced into the
worship of the Church, was entirely competent to frame this present
hymn.
This last point is worthy of more than this terse remark. Rabanus
composed the hymns, _Adest dies sanctus Dei_, _Festum nunc celebre_,
_Fit porta Christi pervia_, _Tibi Christe splendor Patris_, _Christe
Redemptor omnium_, and _Jesu Salvator saeculi_, all of which display
great powers of sacred poetry and two of which are beyond any possible
doubt his authentic productions. Of the twenty-nine hymns found in
Brewer’s codex there are two which have been credited to Ambrose beside
the _Veni, Creator_, and there are seven which are classed by Daniel and
Fabricius as belonging between the tenth and fourteenth centuries and to
unknown authorship. The codex adds to our previous list eight entirely
new poems, and two others which raise a question on which we may pause
for a moment before conceding the current opinion.
The first of these hymns is the _Altus prosator_, of which the codex
gives us a much fuller and longer version. It is called ordinarily the
“Hymn of St. Columba,” and was reprinted by Dr. Todd from the _Liber
Hymnorum_ of old Irish hymns in the library of Trinity College, Dublin.
Our present line of inquiry would lead us to assign it to Rabanus, and
thus do away with the mere conjecture which makes Columba its author.
The second hymn is that usually credited to Elpis, the wife of Boethius.
But the designation of this hymn is as fanciful as the other. Brower in
his loyalty to the Church will not impugn the authorship which is
commonly received, but he is constrained to admit that a stanza is
appended which the popular version entirely omits. It seems far more
reasonable to think that Rabanus composed the whole hymn than that he
only added a few verses at the end. What Rabanus Maurus really did was
to construct an _hymnodia_ which had an appropriate sacred song for
every season. He was a poet and he lauded the verses of Hilary and of
Ambrose. Had he intended to make selections he would not have omitted
them. But he has certainly put his own compositions into this list.
Therefore it follows that he may well have included more than was at
first supposed. And when it is plain—for the index of hymns makes it
plain—that not one single hymn of the twenty-nine is the undoubted and
absolute property of any other poet, we are safe in assuming that they
all are what the codex declares them to be—the actual productions of the
Bishop Rabanus.
The hymn _Fit porta Christi pervia_ occurs in the midst of the Ambrosian
_A solis ortus cardine, et usque_, and was there inserted by the
Benedictines of St. Maur. Daniel says it is an entire hymn as it stands.
And so say we who find it standing alone in the codex of Brower.
At once, then, Rabanus Maurus ascends from comparative obscurity to a
front rank among hymn-writers. And we are ready for all the light upon
his personal history which we can obtain.
VENI, CREATOR SPIRITUS.
Veni, Creator Spiritus,
Mentes tuorum visita,
Imple superna gratia
Quae tu creasti pectora.
Qui Paraclitus diceris,
Donum Dei altissimi,
Fons vivus, ignis, charitas,
Et spiritalis unctio.
Tu septiformis munere,
Dextrae Dei tu digitus,
Tu rite promissum Patris,
Sermone ditans guttura.
Accende lumen sensibus,
Infunde amorem cordibus,
Infirma nostri corporis,
Virtute firmans perpetim.
Hostem repellas longius,
Pacemque dones protinus,
Ductore sic te praevio
Vitemus omne noxium.
Per te sciamus da Patrem
Noscamus atque Filium,
Te utriusque Spiritum,
Credamus omni tempore.
O Holy Ghost, Creator, come!
Thy people’s minds pervade;
And fill with thy supernal grace
The souls which thou hast made.
Thou who art called the Paraclete,
The gift of God most high;
Thou living fount, and fire, and love,
Our spirit’s pure ally;
Thou sevenfold Giver of all good;
Finger of God’s right hand;
Thou promise of the Father, rich
In words for every land;
Kindle our senses to a flame,
And fill our hearts with love,
And through our bodies’ weakness, still
Pour valor from above!
Drive farther off our enemy,
And straightway give us peace;
That, with thyself as such a guide,
We may from evil cease.
Through thee may we the Father know,
And thus confess the Son;
For thee (from both the Holy Ghost),
We praise while time shall run.
Rabanus Maurus, teacher and Abbot of Fulda and Archbishop of Mayence
(Mainz), was commonly called the “foremost German of his time.” Though
the centuries have somewhat obscured the lustre of his renown, they have
not deprived him of his place in history, nor have they dissociated his
name from that of his instructor, prototype, and model, the great
pedagogue Alcuin.
Of the birthplace of Rabanus we have no certain knowledge. Some have
said that he was Scotch or English, others that he was French; but the
more reliable authorities are convinced that he was a German, born
either at Fulda or Mainz. The epitaph written by himself affords
probably the solution of the question. It was composed at Mainz while
its author was archbishop, and contains these words:
“Urbe quidem hac genitus sum, ac sacro fonte renatus,
In Fulda post haec dogma sacrum didici.”
That is, he was born at the place where he was writing these verses—most
likely Mainz—and there he was baptized. Afterward he was educated in
Fulda. An additional reason for this belief is that his father was of a
family known in the records of Mainz.
Trithemius says that Rabanus was born in 788 _quarto nonas Februarii_,
the second of February. Mabillon adds, “I do not know whence he got the
day; the year is probably pretty close.” But the year itself, on the
strength of internal evidence found in the man’s writings and in the
monastic rules regarding the holding of office before the attainment of
a fixed age, Mabillon places at 776. This extension of twelve years is a
very important affair since it makes Rabanus a monk of thirty-three at
the date of the Council of Aquisgranum (Aix-la-Chapelle or Aachen),
called by Charlemagne to reannunciate the doctrine of the procession of
the Holy Spirit.
The name of Rabanus’s father was Ruthard and his mother was christened
Aldegunde. “She was a woman of the most honest conversation,” as
Trithemius declares, the fit helpmeet of a man “rich and powerful, who
for a long time served in the wars under the Frank princes.” There was a
brother, doubtless an elder brother, called Tutin, a person “noble among
the first,” and perhaps the father of a nephew, Gundram, whom Rabanus
mentions as the royal chaplain of Lewis of Germany.
The lad Raban—“the raven”—took on his dark garments at nine years of age
and went to be a little shaveling monk at Fulda. There he continued,
patiently toiling on at his studies according to the methods of a
benighted time, and it is plain that he progressed so well as to get the
favor of his abbot, Ratgar. Since Ratgar took office in 801 or 802, and
Alcuin died in May, 804, it must have been at or about the twenty-fifth
year of his age that Rabanus was directed to put himself under the care
of Alcuin. A record which has been preserved shows that in 801 our poet
had been made a deacon at Fulda, and it is natural for us to look upon
this journey to the monastic school of St. Martin at Tours as an honor
given to one who had already earned some distinction in scholarship.
Be this as it may it is certain that nearly the latest work of Alcuin’s
life was the preparation of the successor to his own ideas who should
hold high the torch of knowledge to his land and generation. To
him—though the old eyes at Tours should not see it—was to succeed
Walafrid Strabo, and to Walafrid Strabo were to be added the scholars of
St. Gall, and notably the marvellous cripple Herman of Reichenau. Ratgar
now was busy building a great church, and architectural notions befogged
his brain. But he had built better than he was aware when he sent off
Rabanus and Hatto to sit at the feet of the man who had brought the
system of Bede the Venerable into Gaul, and who was to commit his own
enthusiasm for learning to a greater scholar than Paul Winfrid, the
Deacon.
This Hatto was not the infamous bishop of the Rat Tower whom Southey has
immortalized in blood-curdling verses. That notorious prelate was indeed
Abbot of Fulda and Bishop of Mainz, but he died in 969 or 970, and the
swarming rats which devoured him for his avarice in keeping the corn
from the poor owe their original celebrity to those curious volumes, the
_Centuries of Magdeburg_. So far as we can discover, the Hatto who
accompanied Rabanus became neither famous nor infamous, unless it be
something to have obtained the abbacy of Fulda when his friend laid it
down.
In 804 Rabanus returned to Fulda. He had profited by the instruction he
had received, and was now the fittest person to be put at the head of
the school in the cloisters. To his original name the old teacher had
affixed the honorable title Maurus, and to this again Rabanus himself
added the descriptive adjective Magnentius. So that Rabanus Maurus
Magnentius is the full appellation of the man henceforth to be styled
with the largest truth, _Primus Germaniae preceptor_. This giving of
names was one of the features of those times. Alcuin was called Albinus
Flaccus, Paul Winfrid was known as Bonifacius, and Ratbert, the advocate
of transubstantiation, became Paschasius. Besides this, the spelling of
proper names was very much at sea. Thus, to the R of Rabanus there was
prefixed or suffixed a Greek “rough breathing,” making it HRabanus or
Rhabanus, precisely as we some times find HLudovicus or HLotharius.
It is at this time that the true skill and ability of Rabanus appear
before us. He was the first person to establish a school in Germany
which had in it the promise of modern education. He allowed pupils to
attend and be trained in the cloisters who had no vocation for a
monastic life. In point of fact he was the real founder of the school
system of Germany, and his fellow-countrymen have not been slow to
accredit him with the achievement. His life and accomplishments have
employed the pens of Buddeus, Schwarz, Dahl, Bach, Kunstmann, Spengler,
Köhler, Richter, and other writers on the history of _paedagogik_.[7] It
is beyond debate that the school at Fulda was a most remarkable place.
Rabanus was not the only teacher in the school. He was assisted by his
faithful friend Samuel of Worms, a fellow pupil under Alcuin. Together
these men developed and enlarged the minds of many of the future nobles
of Germany, and laid in Bible study and in the advanced opinions which
they announced, the foundations for a nation the most scholarly of any
on the earth. In these classes were to be seen such disciples of the new
learning as Walafrid Strabo, Servatus Lupus, Einhard (who subsequently
sent thither his son Wussin), and Rudolf who wrote the life of his
preceptor.
Leaving the manner of that ancient school life for the present, we are
struck with astonishment at the broad and liberal tone of the
instruction. Rabanus followed Bede in providing an encyclopaedia of
human knowledge for his pupils. He entitled it _De Universis_ and based
it on the previous work of Isidore of Seville. Additionally he abridged
the grammar of Priscian, a treatise which furnished, even as late as the
days of Richard Braythwaite and his _Drunken Barnabee_, the suggestive
line,
“Fregi frontem Prisciani.”
“I’ve broke Priscian’s forehead mainly.”
He also furnished a text-book in arithmetic, drawn mostly from Boethius,
and an etymology in which he depends to some extent on Isidore. He
utilized Bede for chronology, and Gregory for ecclesiastical forms, and
Augustine for doctrine, and Cassiodorus for commentary and exegesis.
Moreover, he was free from much of the superstition of his age. He
objected to giving the liver of a mad dog to one who had been bitten by
it—that being then held a perfect cure. His letters show an independent
and almost an audacious mind. In all religious discussion his motto was,
“When the cause is Christ’s, the opposition of the bad counts for
naught.” In statecraft—for ecclesiastics were chief movers in these
affairs—he held with Ludwig the Pious. He wrote a great deal in the way
of Scripture commentary, and his intellect was of a mystical order. He
delighted in allegories, in enshrining the bones of saints and
confessors, and in making the most marvellous and intricate anagrams and
arrangements of verses and letters upon the subject of the Holy Cross,
whose praise he has elaborately set forth. Wimpfeling may well style
this production a “wonderful and highly elaborate work.” It dates from
the year 815, and no modern reader can view it without dismay at its
enormous expenditure of labor.
A man like this in the teacher’s seat of Fulda would not be long in
obscuring by his manifest talents the feebler light of his abbot. So
Ratgar found, and devoted himself and his monks with mistimed zeal to
the erection of a great addition to the cloister church. He grudged the
time given to the studies of the school. He would much prefer to have
had the full control of all that was passing in the cloisters, but this
was plainly impossible. So he devised a very satisfactory way of
interrupting the success of Rabanus. He took the books from the scholars
and he even forbade them to the teacher. This was the cause of some
pathetic verses in which Rabanus sets forth his petition for their
return. “Let thy clemency,” he exclaims, “concede me books, for the
poverty of knowledge suffocates me.” One grates his teeth in reading
farther on the words, “Whether you do this or not, yet let the divine
power of the Omnipotent always afford you all good things and complete a
good fight with an honest course, that you may ever be with Christ in
the height of heaven.”
Ratgar was a tyrant; there was no doubt of that. The only question was
how long this tyranny would survive the loss of students and the
defection of the monks, who had already begun to complain and resist.
There was not any hope, however, that this line of conduct would be
materially altered, and here again we have verses of Rabanus, lamenting
in moving terms the loss of scholars and the demoralization of the
school. It is not at all unlikely that the praises of the Holy Cross
were the solace of the poor pedagogue who had lost his favorite volumes.
He could scarcely otherwise have found the leisure for this elegant
trifling.
The poem just mentioned is imperfect. It breaks off abruptly and the
conclusion is missing. What it may have had to do with the outcome of
Ratgar’s tyranny we therefore cannot say, but the times upon which the
monastery had fallen were very grievous; and in 807 there was a
pestilence which depleted the list of monks from four hundred down to
one hundred and fifty, and these must, of course, have been more pressed
by the manual labor than ever. They toiled as did Israel in bondage, and
yet the end had not come. It was a period of the worst sort of misrule,
paralleled later at Cluny and not unknown in other conventual
establishments. In 814 Rabanus was ordained priest on December 23d, and,
as is supposed, after his withdrawal for a time from the monastery to
the refuge offered by a friend’s house. From a passage in one of his
commentaries it has been inferred that he used this suspense of his
labors to make a journey to Palestine.
In 811 there was, says Dahl, a great confusion (_Verwirrung_) in the
cloister. A libel was sent to Charles the Great criticising the conduct
of Ratgar—“libel” being used in its old sense of “little treatise.”
Nothing, as it would seem, was done about this, although the ordination
of Rabanus may have been a link in the chain.
But when Ludwig the Pious (Ludwig der Fromme) came to the kingdom Ratgar
was summarily deposed, and Egil, a kindly, book-loving man, created
abbot in his stead. This occurred in 817, three years after Ludwig began
to reign. All difficulties were now over. The school was reopened with
greater prosperity than before. The library was increased. The secular
scholars were taught outside the walls, for the number of students
surpassed the accommodation. And, in a word, Ratgar had merely held back
a constantly augmenting torrent which now poured itself in in an
intrepid tide. When Martin Luther, centuries later, cries out for
intelligent instruction and for the extension of the school system of
Germany, he is but repeating the cry which swelled in the ears of Ratgar
and drove him before it with execration from his abbacy.
In 822, when Egil died, by common consent Rabanus was invested with the
dignity of abbot. For a time things went smoothly enough, and such
scholars as Walafrid Strabo, Servatus Lupus, and Otfried of Weissenberg
were the glory of the Fulda schools. But the pendulum swung too far in
the rebound from Ratgar’s illiterate policy. The monks were kept at
writing and teaching with too little discrimination as to their tastes
and capacities. They began to grumble that the material interests of the
monastery were neglected, and that Fulda might be growing rich in books
and in bookworms, but was in danger of becoming poor in everything else.
The disaffection found a support in Archbishop Otgar of Mainz, a busy
political prelate, who seems to have become jealous of the prominence of
Rabanus. As a supporter of Lothar and of the policy of imperial unity,
he was in politics on the other side from Rabanus. Our abbot was a
Nationalist and a Home Ruler. He wished to foster the cultivation of the
German tongue and to maintain the distinctness of the German nation. He
had stood by poor, weak Ludwig the Pious, whose sorrow it was to have
succeeded to the work of Charles the Great. He addressed to him a letter
of consolation in his troubles, and wrote a treatise: _De Reverentia
Filiorum erga Patres et Subditorum erga Reges_, to recall his unfilial
children to a sense of their duty. In Ludwig the German he recognized
the most dutiful of the three. So when the Emperor Ludwig died in 840,
he supported the younger Ludwig in the demand for virtual German
independence against the high-handed imperialism of his elder brother
Lothar. He thus shared in the triumph of the victory at Fontanetum,
followed by the Compact of Verdun (843), which practically put an end to
Karling imperialism, and secured the national independence of France and
Germany. But in the mean time Otgar enabled the illiterate party at
Fulda to drive Rabanus into exile, and when he came back he found the
brethren had chosen another abbot, Hatto, in his stead. Waiving his own
rights, and laying aside all grudges, he betook himself to his books in
a priory or something of the sort on Mount St. Peter, not far off, and
resumed the work of teaching. Here he is thought to have composed his
great philosophical treatise on the All, which marks a distinct advance
in the development of mediaeval metaphysics and logic. Indeed, there was
but one thinker of the ninth century who surpassed him in penetration
and learning—the wonderful Irish monk, John Scotus Erigena, who wrote
Latin but thought in Greek and was filled with all the wisdom of the
Hellenes, from Plato to Dionysius the Areopagite.
In 847 Archbishop Otgar died, and Ludwig the German elevated his friend
Rabanus to the see of Mainz, the metropolitan see of Germany. Since
Boniface, the Anglo-Saxon “Apostle of Germany,” who had succeeded to
this dignity a century earlier, there had been no man of such eminence
at the head of the German Church, nor have any of his successors
surpassed him. His first care was the restoration of the discipline,
which had decayed under the confusions of those dark days of civil war.
A great synod met at Mainz in October, Rabanus having been consecrated
in June. Besides the prelates, abbots and monks of all orders attended,
and the canons adopted had reference to stricter life as the obligation
of the clergy.
The year was not over before news of fresh trouble reached him. One of
his own pupils at Fulda, the monk Gottschalk, a man of restless
intellect, was reported as spreading an exaggerated version of
Augustine’s doctrine of absolute predestination, and one which
threatened to overturn the very idea of human responsibility. Gottschalk
evidently was one of the people who love to walk on the fence rather
than in the road—to carry every principle with ruthless logic to its
remotest conclusion. The first news of his extravagances reached Rabanus
in a letter from Italy setting forth the doctrines his former pupil was
teaching. He at once responded in a letter (or rather a treatise) taking
the same ground as the semi-Pelagians had done in the controversy with
the school of Augustine, ground sanctioned by Gregory the Great, Beda,
and Alcuin, although thought unsafe when first defended by Gennadius and
John Cassian. Gottschalk seems to have accepted the reply as a sort of
challenge. The next year, 848, he made his way to Mainz, and when
Rabanus called together an assembly of churchmen and laymen—not a
regular synod—he appeared before it with a confession of his faith in
which he replied to the arguments of Rabanus. The assembly failed to
convince him of his being in error, and at the king’s suggestion a
pledge was exacted of him that he would never return to Germany. Hincmar
of Rheims, the metropolitan of the Church of France, made sure of his
keeping this pledge. As Gottschalk was handed over to him by King
Ludwig, with a letter of explanation from Rabanus, he had him condemned
by the Synod of Quiercy (853) to deposition from the priesthood,
corporal chastisement until he should burn his confession with his own
hands, and lifelong imprisonment. So ended, in 867, this Calvinist of
the ninth century, without much credit to anybody who had a hand in his
fate, but with least of discredit to Rabanus.
In 852, by order of King Ludwig, another synod convened at Mainz, to
discuss, it is supposed, the doctrine of transubstantiation, which
Paschasius Radbertus of Corbie had been setting forth in his treatise,
_De Corpore et Sanguine Christi_. Our Rabanus resisted the new dogma,
declaring that the participation of the Lord’s body and blood in the
sacrament is “not carnal but spiritual.” Nor is this the only point of
his agreement with Protestant teaching. Especially in his assertion that
the Bible is a book for every Christian, and clear and intelligible as a
rule of faith, he anticipates Luther.
In 850 a great famine desolated Germany, in whose course people were
driven to the terrible deeds which sometimes characterize such times.
Rabanus did his possible to relieve the terrible needs of his flock.
Three hundred of these poor people were fed daily from his resources as
archbishop, and his heart went out in pity to the multitudes he could
not aid. Pitiful scenes he must have witnessed. One poor woman fell dead
as she staggered to his threshold, with a babe at her breast. His
charity was too late to save her, but her child was rescued.
He lived six years more, seeing his diocese recover from the desolation
of that terrible winter, cherishing the literary and educational work of
the monasteries on the lines laid down in his _De Institutione
Clericorum_, keeping his clergy up to the ideal of the priestly life as
defined in his _De Disciplina Ecclesiastica_, and civilizing the rude
people of his great diocese. He died in 856, in his eightieth year, and
was buried in St. Alban’s church in Mainz. In the era of the Reformation
his bones were transferred to St. Maurice’s church in Halle. As Rome has
not inscribed the opponent of transubstantiation in the list of her
saints, they are allowed to rest together in peace, instead of being
distributed through a long series of churches as relics.
He had composed for himself an epitaph, as was the fashion of those
days, but it is pleasanter to read than some of those exaggeratedly
humble and prosaic treatises concerning which we hardly know whether
most to stand amazed at the badness of the Latin or the meanness of the
piety. Rabanus avoids these objectionable features. His language is that
of a poet and his sentiments those of a sincere Christian. Particularly
there are two lines which are notable because they give us a glimpse of
his personality:
“Promptus erat animus, sed tardans debile corpus;
Feci quod poteram, quodque Deus dederat.”
“Quick was my mind, but slow was my body through weakness;
That which I could I have done, and what the Lord gave me.”
One of his latest bequests was that of his books, which he devised, like
a true scholar, partly to his old abbey of Fulda and partly to the
monastery of St. Alban at Mainz.
John Trithemius eulogizes him in words which may, perhaps, be
transferred into our pages from their original Latin as a specimen of
the praise which Rabanus has always received—praise that is indeed
worthy of the man who wrote the _Veni, Creator_.
“Rabanus was first among the Germans; a scholar universally erudite;
profound in science; eloquent and strong in discourse; in life and
conversation he shone as most learned, religious, and holy; he was
always a prelate dignified, affable, and acceptable before God.”
This same Trithemius gives us a little notion of the bishop’s
appearance. In body, he says that he was tolerably robust; of a
sanguine, bilious temperament; rather fleshly in person than inclined to
meagreness (_macilentus_); with a “courageous and great” head; and of a
well-proportioned figure.
Of the other writings of Rabanus it is sufficient for us to name his
compendium of the grammar of Priscian; his great work upon _The
Universe_; his treatise upon the _Praises of the Holy Cross_, and his
elaborate commentaries upon the various books of the Bible. He also
prepared homilies and sundry compositions relative to ecclesiastical
matters. In the _Patrologia_ of Migne it requires six closely-printed
volumes to cover his contributions to sacred literature. Especially we
have occasion to note his theological writings, as it is in these that
his spiritual character is most apparent.
His works mostly are dead enough to modern interest, but not all. German
philology honors in him a great churchman who shared Charles the Great’s
respect for German speech and culture, and at whose feet Otto of
Weissenburg, the poet of the _Krist_, sat. German pedagogics recognizes
in him the first _Praeceptor Germaniae_, who transplanted to Fulda the
generous plans of education which Charles conceived, and which Alcuin
executed at Tours. German philosophy recognizes in him the first
forerunner of the great series of her metaphysicians. But to us he is
Rabanus the poet, who acquired the art of verse under Alcuin, who used
it at times to little purpose as in his _De Laudibus Sanctae Crucis_,
but who in a happy hour wrote the _Veni, Creator Spiritus_.