HERMANNUS CONTRACTUS AND THE “VENI SANCTE SPIRITUS.”
One of the surprises of history is the long-delayed honor which comes to
the modest and the meek. The notable and prominent attract to themselves
much of the repute of any age. They even gain the credit of achievements
to which they never put a finger. But by and by the “whirligig of time
brings in his revenges,” and they that were last become first.
Thoughts like these are sure to come to us when we encounter such a name
as this of the poor cripple of Reichenau. Whatever fame he had in his
own day gradually disappeared and he has been only a shadowy figure for
many years. It is true that Ersch and Gruber, in their great
encyclopaedia, say of him that he is “one of the most meritorious men of
the eleventh century.” It is also true that Ussermann—himself an almost
forgotten authority—has labored to give Hermann his proper meed of
praise; and that the Benedictines have patiently collated many little
particulars concerning him. Yet he still remains locked up in Latin or
in German or in French; and English readers can be pardoned for being
utterly ignorant of him and of his works.
This man merits no small share of our notice. He came of good blood, for
his father was the Count of Vöhringen in Suabia. He traced his kinship
to the famous St. Udalric, whose sister, named Leutgarde, is mentioned
(971) in the saintly bishop’s pages. Her son was Reginbald, slain in
battle against the Hungarians in 955. This Reginbald had a daughter
Bertha, who married Wolfrad, Count of Vöhringen, and died in 1032.
Wolfrad, dying in 1010, had a son Wolfrad, who married a lady named
Hiltrude and became the father of fifteen children—one of whom was
Hermann. This is the simplest form of a genealogy, which the learned
chronicler protracts in a marvellous manner, to the great confusion of
the modern mind. I have not cared to follow him into the remoter
affinities and alliances which add distinction to the poor little
paralytic child, who at seven years of age was carried to the great
school at St. Gall.
I have said that Hermann was a cripple. He was so completely helpless,
indeed, that he could not move without assistance; and his days and
nights were full of pain. He was “hump-backed and bow-breasted, crippled
and lame.” (_Gibosus ante et retro, et contractus, claudus_. Pertz:
_Monumenta: Scriptores:_ V., 268.) But his mind triumphed over these
infirmities. A pathetic legend concerning him assures us that in the
visions of the night the Virgin stood before him, radiant and beautiful.
As in the old story about the choice of Hercules—which was probably the
origin of this—she offers him strength of body combined with ignorance
and weakness of mind; or wisdom and ability in a body which should be
deficient and sickly to the day of his death. This “second Hercules”—as
the chronicler admiringly calls him—promptly chose the last.
He had been born (for his ancestral records and his own _Chronicon_ help
us to exactness) on July 18th, 1013. He was admitted to school,
probably, though not certainly, at St. Gall, on September 15th, 1020.
Hitherto his education had been absolutely neglected. He could not go
about alone nor even speak intelligibly (_Annales Augustani_ [1042-55].
In Pertz: _Mon. Ger._, VII., 126) owing to his paralysis. But he had a
devouring desire for knowledge, and rapidly mastered Latin, Greek,
Arabic, and (probably) Hebrew, so that he possessed them equally well
with his vernacular speech. The convent was the only place for such a
poor little waif as he, and thus, within the learned cloisters of St.
Gall, he followed reverently upon the shining path of Notker and Tutilo
and Ratpert and Hartmann, and added his name to theirs in the
development of the sequences and antiphons of the Church.
Nor was this all. He became an excellent historian, a distinguished
musician, and a renowned philosopher and theologian. In mathematics he
was equally skilled and ingenious. He is considered by some to have
invented the astrolabe, the first instrument by which the height and
distances of stars were calculated. Assuredly he wrote an exhaustive
treatise upon its use, whether he originated it or not; and it is said
that he added to his scientific studies the making of clocks and
watches. He has left us essays upon the monochord, on the squaring of
the circle, on computation and physiognomy and metrical rules and
astronomy. These are marked by the inferior attainments of the age, as
we might expect, but they display an amount of original research for
which we are unprepared.
He was also an excellent scribe, and the library of St. Gall still
contains a copy of a work ascribed to Anselm of Canterbury written by
him in the fulfilment of a vow. He resembled the Venerable Bede in the
universality of his knowledge, and, like Alcuin and Rabanus Maurus, he
is one of the great teachers of his time. Always, during these darkening
years, there appears to have been some ministering priest in the temple
of education—some self-devoted, God-fearing man, who patiently kept the
altar-fire burning, and spent his life, to the utmost verge, in climbing
those altar-steps with fresh fuel for the flame.
We do not know how much of this work was begun or completed during his
life at St. Gall. We are able to say that he translated Aristotle’s
Poetics and Rhetoric from the Arabic language, and this of itself should
award to him the very highest renown. It is impossible in a single
sentence to do justice to this achievement and we must take it more at
large.
The dictator Sylla brought the works of the great Greek philosopher,
together with his library, to Rome, in the year B.C. 147. This was on
the capture of Athens, and these writings were still comparatively
unknown in Greece. The philosophy of the Peripatetic school was, of
course, familiar to their countrymen; but it was by and through the
Latin race and not the Greek, that the “Master of Syllogisms” was to
become most potent. Aristotle’s was the controlling system of the Middle
Ages. His rules of logic were imperative. They governed theology, and
indeed every other form of metaphysics. They restrained with an iron
grip the expanding ideas of men. It was against Aristotle, in the person
of William of Champeaux, future Bishop of Chalons and founder of the
school of St. Victor, that Peter Abelard laid his lance in rest. Even to
the days of Dean Swift these ideas bore sway, and when that brilliant
man sought his degree from Trinity College, Dublin, he was met by the
question whether he reasoned according to Aristotle. And his reply, that
he did well enough in his own fashion, was held to be little less than
atheism. Nor is this the only comparison which might be aptly instituted
between Swift and Abelard.
So Aristotle had his authority and held his sceptre down almost to our
own time. But at the commencement his writings were either used in the
Greek language or in the Arabic. In the twelfth century the schools of
the Moors in Spain were the true centre of philosophy. They first
applied his teachings to theology, and to these schools resorted many
scholars from other parts of the continent. But such translations as
these travelling students brought home were probably of a sort to make
intricacy and subtlety more intricate and subtle. A fog had gathered
over Europe, and the Dark Ages are indeed no myth. There were few points
of light anywhere, and among these few were the bright spots called St.
Gall and Reichenau.
Charles Jourdain asserts that only a part of Aristotle was known before
1200 A.D., and that this was through the translation of Boethius. (See
Ueberweg: Hist. Philos., I., 367.) So that if Hermannus Contractus
translated Aristotle at so early a date, it shows that his rendering was
in advance of most, if not of nearly all those which were used in the
Western schools. He had a brother, or uncle, Manegold, who died in
Palestine. He had another brother Werner, who afterward became a legate
to Gregory VII. (Hildebrand) in the fierce struggle between Pope and
Emperor in 1077. And he was further well placed both by his family
connections and his situation at a centre of learning, to secure the
best manuscripts and the best Arabic instruction. (See an elaborate
dissertation in Wegelin: _Thes. Rerum Suevicarum_, II., p. 120.) It
evinces decided wisdom and toil on his part to have undertaken and
completed this translation; and there is no doubt that the humble
paralytic from his bed of suffering influenced materially the scholastic
movements of the coming centuries. Could he have seen the swarming
thousands who built the abbey of the Paraclete; could he have witnessed
in vision the uprising of such schools as St. Victor in France and
Oxford in England; could he have heard Roger Bacon confess his
indebtedness to those pages; could he have foreseen the infinite
consequences both to the preservation and the hindrance of human
thought, with what strange zeal he would have traced each painful line!
But he could not know it. He had removed at thirty years of age to his
perpetual celibacy at Reichenau—Augia the Rich, as it is called in the
Latin tongue. It is built on an island in the western arm of the Lake of
Constance. And there, with great mountains to gaze upon and fair waters
to catch for him the rosy light of evening; with the brethren of the
convent laboring cheerfully in their fields or toiling in their cells,
Hermann of Vöhringen, Hermann of Reichenau, Hermannus Contractus,
Hermann der Gebrechliche, Hermann the Cripple, spent his uneventful
life.
Here he wrote the legends of some of the saints, and here he prepared
his valuable compendium of universal history. He calls it a _Chronicon_,
and condensed into its records the story of the world from A.D. 1 to the
year 1054, the date of his own death. It is very brief through the first
portion of its account of “the Six Ages.” Then its statements are
fuller. When it reaches contemporaneous events it becomes exceedingly
important to the historical student, for it is in the nature of a
chronicle. Here also the man’s own personality occasionally appears. He
speaks of Reichenau as _Augia nostra_ and mentions the basilica which
Henry III. (“the Black”) has erected to “our patron, St. Mark the
Evangelist.” This establishes the fact that Reichenau was his true
residence, and gives us the standpoint of the little isle in Lake from
which to look out across the dark-green and sometimes stormy waters upon
the confusions of the time. These were the days when the Truce of God
(1041 A.D.) was necessary in order to prevent the bloody feuds of the
barons during Advent, Lent, and from Wednesday evening of each week
until the following Monday morning. Yet amid all these conflicts Hermann
the Paralytic remained secure, guarded by religion and surrounded by the
peaceful lake. And like that lake the Rhine stream of secular affairs
flowed always through his life clear and undisturbed.
It is during these closing scenes that a touching entry is made in the
pages of the _Chronicon_. Under the year 1052 the crippled hand slowly
traces these words: “At the same time, on January 9th, my mother
Hiltrude, the wife of the Count Wolfrad, a pious, meek, generous, and
religious woman, and one who was as devoted to and happy in her husband
and her seven surviving children as any person could be, closed the last
day of her life in about the sixty-first year of her age and the
forty-fourth of her marriage, and was buried at the Villa of Altshausen,
in a sepulchre under the chapel of St. Udalric which she had herself
constructed.” And then follows a brief poem in which the merits and the
love of this dear mother are affectionately told.
Hermann, on the best of testimony, was a person of just this amiable and
beautiful spirit. He is called _hilarissimus_, as if to show his great
cheerfulness. He was always a strict vegetarian in his diet. He hated
injustice; scorned every sort of vice—and Heaven alone knows how much
there then was of nameless wickedness!—and finally, he was thoroughly
free from all envy and malice. It is a curious testimony to his breadth
of mind that one of his biographers says of him (quoting the old adage),
that he regarded nothing human as alien to his search.
He preserved this calmness and sweetness of temper to the farthest limit
of his days. Not long before he died he said to his faithful friend,
Berthold of Constance, “Do not, I say, do not ask me about this; but
rather attend to what I will tell you, for in you I do not a little
confide. I shall die doubtless in a very short time. I shall not live. I
shall not get well.” He added that he was so “seized with an ineffable
desire and delight toward that intransitory world and that eternal and
immortal life,” that all things of this passing existence seemed empty
and vain and dropped like motes (_flocci_) from him, in the breath of
that heavenly air.
And then he proceeded to detail a vision in which he fancied himself
reading and rereading the Hortensius of Cicero. His mind was clear; his
hopes for religion and for education were high; but all was now over and
he must depart. Therefore he quietly and pathetically ends by saying,
“_Taedet quidem me vivere_”—indeed it is wearisome to me to live. And
thus, on September 24th, 1054, he ceased from earth—in his forty-second
year, and having carried the story of the world down to the end of his
own career.
But his works follow him. I do most firmly believe him—and not Robert
the Second—to have been the author of the _Veni Sancte Spiritus_.
The first person to attribute this hymn to the King of France is Durand,
(_Rationale Divinorum Officiorum_, Lib. IV.) His book treats of
ceremonial observances and is among the rarest of printed volumes. The
splendid copy upon vellum in the Astor Library is not only beautiful in
itself, but it is extremely valuable as the _third_ specimen of
typography in existence. Only two works—one of them the Bible and
another the Psalter of Mainz—had been previously printed from movable
types. I have personally verified the reference and its English
rendering is as follows:
“Notker, Abbot of St. Gall, in Germany, first composed sequences with
notes of his own in the _Alleluia_. And Nicholaus the Pope [Nicholas
II., 1059-1061] granted that they should be sung at masses. But
Hermannus Contractus, a German, inventor of the astrolabe, composed
these sequences: _Rex omnipotens_ and _Sancti Spiritus_ and _Ave
Maria_ and the antiphons _Alma redemptoris mater_ and _Simon Barjona_.
Peter, Bishop of Compostella, made the _Salve regina_. And the King of
France, Robert by name, composed the sequence, _Veni Sancte Spiritus_
and the hymn _Chorus novae Hierusalem_.”
It is hard to crowd into a paragraph more errors than are in this.
Notker was _not_ Abbot of St. Gall. Innocent III. was very severe upon
Udalric of St. Gall, because such a spiritual and able man had lived and
died unhonored among them; a simple monk whose labors and death received
no special attention in their religious year.
Nor did Hermann write the _Sancti Spiritus adsit_; for this, on the best
of testimony, was Notker’s. It was so sung at Rome under Innocent III.;
and Ekkehard the Younger, in his history of Notker, pointedly claims it
for him.
It is very doubtful whether Hermann invented the astrolabe for measuring
the distances of stars. His two treatises are upon its use, and he is
evidently very familiar with it. But it was first made serviceable in
navigation by the Portuguese—if we are to believe Evelyn (in his
_Navigation_)—and the study of astronomy was greatly cultivated by the
Arabic schools in Spain and elsewhere about this period. J. A. Fabricius
indeed mentions that the astrolabe was “commonly employed in the days of
Ptolemy.”
The _Ave Maria_ is supposed by Koch to belong to the thirteenth century
and some have ascribed it to Adam of St. Victor. It is, perhaps, by
Heribert of Eichstettin (died 1042). Hermann wrote the _Ave praeclara
maris stella_, which might have been mistaken for this other.
The _Salve regina_ is assigned by Durand to Peter of Compostella.
Gerbert names several possible authors, but evidently follows the
leadership of Durand. (_De Cantu, etc._, II., 27.) And yet Trithemius,
with every really critical scholar, credits it to Hermann. It is
exhaustively considered by Wegelin and definitely conceded to him.
(_Thes. Rerum Suevicarum_, II., p. 120 _ff._)
Robert the Second cannot claim the _Chorus novae Hierusalem_. It is the
production of Fulbert of Chartres (died 1029), and is included without
question in every complete edition of his works.
Thus the absolute authority of Durand is much shaken. He was a lawyer in
the thirteenth century, who studied at Bologna and taught at Modena; a
legate of Pope Martin IV.; dean of the church at Chartres, and Bishop of
Mende. The fact that he was dean of Chartres, and yet ascribes the
_Chorus Novae_, not to Fulbert but to Hermannus, is suggestive, but not
convincing.
So Durand was the first person to affix the name of Robert II. to the
_Veni Sancte_. Trithemius comes next in order; the Abbot of Spanheim;
historian and scholar; indefatigable in researches, but erratic and
prejudiced; born 1462 and dying 1516. His true name is Johann von
Trittenheim and we derive this, and other information about authors and
their works, from his _Liber de Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis_—a
biographical dictionary like those of Jerome, Gennadius, and Isidore, to
whose works he really furnishes an Appendix. Egon (sometimes known as
Ego) in his account of Reichenau’s distinguished men (_De Viris
illustribus Augiae divitis_, quoted by Pez: _Thesaurus Anecdotorum_, I.,
3; 68. Cf. Migne, 143) declares that Trithemius was “unjustly hostile to
the monks of Reichenau” in asserting that “our Hermannus” was from St.
Gall, when even Metzler conceded, on behalf of his own convent, that
Hermann had changed his residence from St. Gall to Reichenau. Be this as
it may, the positive statement of Trithemius, which gives the _Veni
Sancte_ to Robert II. instead of to Hermann, has been generally
accepted. Cardinal Bona (1677), Louis Archon (1704-11), and others agree
with him.
But there is a break in the continuity of faith. Clichtove—an authority
much esteemed—expresses no opinion about the author of the _Veni Sancte_
further than to say _quisquis is fuerit_—whoever he was.
Rambach, in his _Anthology_, comes now to the rescue. (_Anthologie_, I.,
227.) He says it is “_ganz unstreitig von Robert;_” and all the German
critics, with the single exception of Daniel, have followed this
authority blindly. Whatever the Germans said has usually been enough for
the English. Therefore the _Veni Sancte_ is in every collection
attributed, without a shadow of doubt, to Robert the King.
There should have been less positiveness about this if the accurate
Daniel had been noticed more carefully. He praises the language of
Clichtove, who says that the author, “whoever he was,” must have been
“inwardly filled with light,” and he italicizes the _quisquis is
fuerit_. But as Robert, with only three others, appears to have escaped
the wreck of the sequences in the sixteenth century, even Daniel allows
the _Veni Sancte_ to him; and Archbishop Trench finds that “there exists
no good reason why we should question” that Robert wrote it.
We may dismiss any conjectures about Innocent III. having been its
author, although great efforts have been made to credit this hymn to his
pen. Dom Remy Cellier and Migne seem the most strongly partisan, but
their remarks and references are weak. (_Scriptores Ecclesiastici_, vol.
xiii., p. 109, note. Also _Patrologia_, 141; 901.)
A sample of the general looseness of citation can be found in Kehrein
(No. 125), who announces that Gerbert “holds Hermannus Contractus to be
the author” of the _Veni Sancte_. Gerbert does nothing of the kind. He
names Hermann _with others_. It is quite true, though, that he does
_not_ name Robert.
Setting aside Innocent III. for cause—although Brander of St. Gall, in
his _Index Sequentiarum_, grants this to him—the authorship of the hymn
rests between the king and the monk. I say “for cause,” since Innocent
was at the summit of temporal power, and his position was a very
tempting one to posthumous flattery. He is credited with the _Ave mundi
spes Mariae_. He did not write the _Stabat Mater_, nor did he compose
the _Veni Sancte_. Let any one examine the _Ave mundi_ and he will
renounce all hope that the man who prepared this could ever have written
the others, or either of them. Besides, Wrangham is likely to be correct
when he assigns this latter sequence to Adam of St. Victor. It is
precisely in Adam’s style of metrical composition; it is not found
before the fourteenth century, and its tone is modern. It can therefore
be said that Innocent deserves no place among the Latin hymn-writers.
Now, Robert II. is much in the same condition as Innocent III. His is a
shining name to which to affix popular hymns. He has been credited with
the _Ave maris stella_—the parent of all hymns to the Virgin. The
sequence _Sancti Spiritus adsit_ is not his, on the testimony already
adduced; but in the year 1110 the “ancient customs of Cluny,” collected
by St. Udalric (Hermann’s ancestor) gives us this “at Pentecost”
(D’Achery: _Spicilegium_, I., 641), with the “response,” _Spiritus
sanctus_. This would serve to show that such praise to the Holy Spirit
was usual. With the _Chorus Novae_ we have already dealt. And the _Rex
omnipotens_ belongs to Hermann though it is ascribed to Robert—another
instance of inaccuracy, which casts a ray of light upon the present
problem.
Those sequences of which Robert was the possible author are printed in
Migne’s _Patrologia_ (141, 959 _ff._). Only one of them merits a word of
notice. It is the _Te lucis auctor personent_. Daniel assigns this to
the fourteenth or fifteenth century, but Mone and Koch to the fifth.
These last are probably right. It is early found in the Anglo-Saxon
Church and is among the old Vatican MSS. and the hymns collected by G.
Cassander. It is scarcely possible that it comes down as late as the
eleventh century.
Robert’s other sequences are six in number and of no importance. His
personal history is pathetic enough. He was the son of Hugh Capet; born
at Orleans in 970 and died at Melun, July 20th, 1031, having been sole
king since 996, though he had been crowned in 988. His first wife was
Susanne, an Italian princess; and we learn from his contemporary, Richer
of Rheims, that one of his first public acts was to repudiate her on the
plea that she was too old for him, and that he refused to restore her
dowry. His next marriage was with his distant cousin Bertha—a cousin
four times removed—the widow of the Count of Blois. This marriage was
inconvenient to the Emperor Otho, as it would have brought the House of
Capet into the line of succession to certain lordships in the old
Kingdom of Burgundy. So Pope Gregory V., the kinsman of Otho, required
Robert to give up Bertha, not because Susanne was still alive, but
because the Church forbade the marriage of cousins in even the fourth
degree. At first Robert refused, but when his kingdom was laid under an
interdict, he showed as little manhood in standing by his second wife as
he had shown humanity and justice to his first. Such a ban was too
severe to be borne and the king yielded, though Baronius says he tried
to take back his wife Bertha in spite of it all. His life and kingship
belong to French history, and can be found there. His disposition was
that of a monk and not of a monarch. He founded four monasteries and
built seven churches. He supported three hundred paupers entirely and a
thousand in part. His reign lasted—thanks to ecclesiastical
influence—for thirty-four years. It was troubled and not especially
pleasant; and for his third wife the king had married the handsome shrew
Constance, the daughter of William Count of Arles. Pious and excellent
man that he is reputed to have been, he had a natural son, Amauri, who
was great-great-grandfather to Simon de Montfort. Truly, when all is
said and done, Robert II. is hardly the author in whom we would like to
believe with all our hearts when we sing—
“Holy Spirit, come and shine
Sweetly in this heart of mine.”
_Per contra_, Hermann of Reichenau grows more interesting the more he is
studied. He has been so unfortunate as to be confused with other persons
in two or three cases. By Brander he is identified with Hartmann of St.
Gall, and the sequence _Rex omnipotens_ is taken from him.[8] The pretty
little sequence, _Veni Sancte Spiritus et reple_, which Königsfeld
thinks to be his, is doubtless no earlier than the fourteenth century
and by some anonymous composer who has merely imitated the great
masters.
Beside the _Rex omnipotens_ he composed the _Ave praeclara maris
stella_, where his name gains another misprint and becomes “Heinricus,
monachus San Gallensis.” This poem was thought worthy of the authorship
of Albertus Magnus (Albert von Regensburg), and to him accordingly
Wackernagel and Koch credit it. Mone has vindicated the claim of Hermann
which is set forth in Migne. (_Patrologia_, 143; 20 _ff._) So that we
are again sure of a piece which has been meritorious enough to be
coveted.
Then comes the antiphon _Simon Barjona_, which Du Meril calls _Simon
Baronia_ and of which no trace remains. Two other sequences are,
however, extant, and are beyond any question or debate. They are the
_Salve regina_, which Daniel calls a “most celebrated antiphon,” and the
_Alma redemptoris mater_, the refrain of which Chaucer used in that
“Prioress’s Tale,” which Wordsworth has modernized.
In addition we must observe that the _Veni Sancte_ is attributed to
Hermann simultaneously and by the same authority as that which credits
him with the other sequences. Two pieces—_Vox haec melos pangat_ and
_Gratus honos hierarchia_—are lost. But the _Salve regina_ was worth
contending for; and Gerbert names Gregory II., Peter of Compostella, St.
Bernard, and “Adhemar, Episcopus Podiensis” (Bishop of Puy and his own
candidate) together with Hermannus Contractus. Nevertheless, Trithemius,
Gerbert, and, indeed, everybody are heard to declare that Hermann was
“the marvel of the age,” the best man of his time in music and the
author of a work on metrical rules. He is known as Doctor Egregius, and
it is beyond any peradventure that he was _capable_ of writing the _Veni
Sancte_.
The only arguments that are employed to prove that Robert was the author
are very weak. The _first_ is that there was no sufficient competitor.
But surely Hermannus Contractus is now a competitor of real merit and
importance. Then, too, the king was a kind of religious pet, and such
persons receive more than their due. But the _second_ argument is weaker
still. It amounts in brief to the harmony displayed in the poem between
the king’s life and his lovely verses. It strikes one, however, that an
invalid like Hermann might have had fully as deep a religious experience
as any such king. Moreover—and this is a vital fact—the _Veni Sancte_ is
found in the _German_ hymnaries almost exclusively. This point was
insisted upon in the controversy about the _Veni, Creator_; and Charles
the Great in this respect had the advantage over Gregory the Great,
until the claim of Rabanus Maurus, another German, was thoroughly
examined. But among all the sources carefully edited by Kehrein from
Daniel, Mone, and elsewhere, the French collections do not present
themselves. On the contrary, in this elaborate list we find St. Gall,
Kreuzlingen, Freiburg, Karlsruhe, Mainz, Ebersberg, Rome (1481), Venice
(1497), with later examples printed at Cologne, Prague, Eichstettin,
Lubeck, and Basel. Brander also found the hymn in the earliest codices
of the three great neighboring cloisters of St. Gall, Einsiedeln, and
Reichenau. Meanwhile the only notice of it in France comes from the
Paris Breviary, which is of recent date.
There is but one consideration further. I trust that I have established
the perfect possibility that Hermannus Contractus might have been the
author equally as well as Robert. The men lived in the same period to
which, on the testimony of the best critics, the hymn is considered to
belong. They were alike in possibilities of Christian experience and of
musical and poetical temperament. But here they begin to diverge; and
the preference is decidedly in favor of Hermann, whose hymn is found in
the three oldest codices of his own neighborhood; of St. Gall, where he
studied; of Einsiedeln, where it is possible that he was a resident; and
of Reichenau, where he certainly lived from the age of thirty until his
death. He could scarcely have gone about very much in his helpless and
crippled condition; and these three conventual establishments are within
a moderate distance of each other. From his seventh year he was to be
discovered always somewhere in that vicinity, and the historians of St.
Gall and of Reichenau positively claim the _Veni Sancte_ as his.
It is only left for us to lay the _Salve regina_ side by side with the
_Veni Sancte_. A man who wrote upon metre ought to possess some
excellence in the art of which he wrote, and these pieces placed
together display a graceful and ingenious versification which is not at
all usual in that century. It is not claimed that either Robert or
Hermann wrote other hymns in the identical stanza form of the _Veni
Sancte_. Therefore nothing is available for direct comparison. But as to
the spirit of each there can be no debate. Robert never composed
anything else like the _Veni Sancte_, and it certainly seems as if
Hermann did compose a sequence which bears a passing resemblance; and
which I have endeavored to translate with its occasional rhymes and
assonances:
Salve regina, mater misericordiae
Vita, dulcedo et spes nostra, salve.
Ad te clamamus exules filii Hevae.
Ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum 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.
Hail O queen, mother of pitifulness!
Life and delight and our confidence, hail!
To thee we exiles, children of Eve, are crying.
To thee we aspire, groaning and moaning in this the vale of our
sorrow.
Lo, thou therefore, our advocate, turn upon us those pitiful eyes of
thine,
And after this exile show us Jesus, the blessed fruit of thy womb,
O merciful, O pious, O sweet Virgin Maria.
This is another of his sequences, the _Rex regum Dei agne_, found by
Brander among the antiquities of St. Gall:
King of kings, Lamb of God, mighty Lion of Judah,
The death of sin by the merit of the cross and the life of justice;
giving the fruit of the tree of life for the taste of
wisdom; the medicine of grace for the loss of glory,
Since thy blood restrained the might of the sword of flame, opening
the garden of paradise, the seed of obedience, the
medicine of grace.
This day is illustrious to the Lord; peace is on the earth, lightning
to the shades below and light to the saints above; the day
of the double baptism of law and gospel.
Christ is the passover to man; while the old passes the new arises;
rejoice my heart, freed from ferment, full of the bread
unleavened.
Since the enemy are overwhelmed, with stained door-posts eat the
sacrifice on the paschal night, at home, with the bitter
herb of the field,
Let your loins be girt and your shoes bound on, have the staff in the
hand, and eat the head with the legs and the purtenance
thereof.
Wash us this day, O Christ, cleansing us with hyssop; and make us
worthy of this mystery, drying the sea, boring the jaw of
Leviathan with a mighty hook.
Rejoice us with the cup and fill us; arouse us, drinking from the
brook in the way, thou our propitiation, thou priest and
sacrifice, thou wine-press and stone of offence and grape!
O fragrant flower of the virgin rod,
O light full of sevenfold dew,
Fairer in beauty than the juice of the grape,
The blush of the rose, the candor of the lily.
How camest thou with such pity to bend to the help of this little
world; that thou mightest share our sorrows and be our
Redeemer from the birthmark of sin, bearing the curse of
sin?
O Lord, Kinsman of thy servants,
The hope of the first and of the last resurrection,
Confirm thy covenant to the seed of Abraham, and us, O Leader
immortal, reviving with thyself, who are dead with thee to
our old father Adam, strengthen, joining us to thy
mightier members.
Give us the paschal feast of the life eternal, thou Paschal Lamb!
The question before us is not one of theology but of literature. Did the
man who wrote those verses write these also?
Veni, Sancte Spiritus,
Et emitte coelitus
Lucis tuae radium.
Veni, pater pauperum,
Veni, dator munerum,
Veni, lumen cordium;
Consolator optime,
Dulcis hospes animae,
Dulce refrigerium:
In labore requies,
In aestu temperies,
In fletu solatium.
O lux beatissima,
Reple cordis intima
Tuorum fidelium!
Sine tuo numine
Nihil est in homine,
Nihil est innoxium.
Lava quod est sordidum,
Riga quod est aridum,
Sana quod est saucium;
Flecte quod est rigidum,
Fove quod est frigidum,
Rege quod est devium!
Da tuis fidelibus
In te confidentibus
Sacrum septenarium;
Da virtutis meritum,
Da salutis exitum,
Da perenne gaudium!
Come Holy Spirit,
And send forth the heavenly
Ray of thy light.
Come, Father of the poor;
Come, giver of gifts;
Come, light of hearts.
Thou best consoler,
Sweet guest of the soul,
Sweet coolness;
In labor, rest;
In heat, refreshment;
In tears, solace.
O blessedest light,
Fill the inmost parts
Of the heart of thy faithful!
Without thy divinity
Nothing is in man,
Nothing is harmless.
Wash what is base;
Bedew what is dry;
Heal what is hurt;
Bend what is harsh;
Warm what is chilled;
Rule what is astray.
Give to thy faithful,
In thee confiding,
Thy sevenfold gift.
Give the reward of virtue;
Give the death of safety;
Give eternal joy.
This very singular construction of clauses is apparent to the eye at
once. Let it be remembered that Robert uses it nowhere else, and that
the most of Hermann’s writings are gone. This chance for the “higher
criticism” is therefore taken from us. If it could be shown, however,
that this was a method employed by the monk of Reichenau in his prose
works, the case might be regarded as absolutely proven, in so far as it
demonstrates that the bulk of the presumptive evidence is in his favor.
But here we are at fault. We can only add probability to probability and
leave all absolute demonstration alone. Pez has preserved not merely
Egon’s account of Hermann’s life, but he has edited Hermann’s treatises
on the astrolabe (_Thes. Anecdot. Tom._, III., pt. 2, p. 94) from a MS.
codex in the monastery of St. Peter at Salzburg. His musical treatise is
reprinted by Gerbert. (_Scriptores Eccl. de Musica_, vol. ii., p. 124.)
The didactic poem reciting the combat of the Sheep and the Flax—always
recognized as the production of Hermann—is in Migne’s _Patrologia_ and
also in Du Meril’s _Poesies Populaires_. Unfortunately none of these
writings are of a sort to help us. We cannot by their assistance make
any headway in critical analysis.
It is noticeable that J. A. Fabricius in his great work on the Middle
Age and later Latin writers, allows Hermann to be the author of the
_Veni Sancte_, following the testimony of Egon and Metzler. And it is
more than noticeable that Du Meril—himself a Frenchman—should also
apparently concede the hymn to this German.[9]
I have made an exhaustive search for everything bearing upon the life
and writings of Hermannus Contractus. I have pursued him and Robert
through the _Quellen_ of German history; through the writings and
compilations of Canisius and Despont and Urstitius and Martene and
Mabillon and D’Achery and Pertz and the _Monumenta Germaniae Historica_
of the “Society for Opening the Sources of German History.” In these and
in the encyclopaedias of La Rousse and Ersch-Gruber and the great
_Patrologia_ of Migne, I have investigated every by-path and blind
alley. It is abundantly clear that he was the most distinguished man of
his region, and, likely, of his period. Usserman and Possevin have
devoted attention to him. (_Prodromus Germ. Sacr. Tom._ I., p. 145
_sqq._, _De Apparatu_.) His didactic poem on the “Eight Principal Vices”
is in Haupt’s _Zeitschrift_, vol. xiii. His lives of Conrad and of Henry
III. have not been preserved. That he was a very voluminous writer is
also evident. After giving the names of some of his sequences Metzler
adds that there were _cetera mille alia_—a thousand more. So also speaks
Trithemius; and indeed this testimony is universal.
A single line of inquiry has been left to the American student. We have
lists of the MSS. in the various libraries of Europe. If it were only
possible to examine these with reference to the _Veni Sancte_ the matter
could be definitely settled. The Rheinau (Reichenau) library is rich in
hymnaries. Haenel’s “No. 53”—whose library number is 91—is, for
instance, a _Liber hymnorum_ of the tenth to the twelfth centuries.
There are several others—breviaries and collections of hymns—dating to
the twelfth century; and one book, “No. 124” (Lib. No. 75), which is
marked _Sequentiae propriae_, etc., and which is likely to have the
_Veni Sancte_. In the eleventh century at St. Gall they have “No. 381”
(St. Gall No. 486) which is a _codex insignis_—a very beautiful
MS.—containing the “earliest collection of hymns and poems of writers
dwelling at St. Gall.” In this same century appears the Anselm, which is
noted as a _codex nobiliter scriptus ab Herimanno, qui se hoc libri
decus ex voto perfecisse testatur_ (_pag._ 6), a manuscript elegantly
written by Hermann [“Herimann” is his own spelling of his name in the
_Chronicon_, by the way], who says on page 6 that he has accomplished
this excellent volume in pursuance of a vow. Among these St. Gall MSS.
can be found the _Salve regina_, bearing the date 1437. If it were made
a point of investigation it might be discovered that in both Reichenau
and St. Gall the _Veni, Sancte Spiritus_ is in codices which utterly
remove it from the perplexity of its authorship, and positively join it
to the name of Hermann.
One can sum up the whole discussion in a few sentences. Robert wrote no
other valuable hymns; Hermann did write several. Robert was not
specially skilled in metrical science; Hermann was the author of a
treatise on the subject. Robert was a poet and a musician; Hermann was
his superior in both departments. Robert had trouble and sorrow and
Christian experience; Hermann must certainly have had as much as he, and
more. Robert has had poems attributed to him which have failed of proof,
and none of his own verses seem ever to have been misappropriated or
missing; Hermann has had more taken from him than given to him.
In the matter of authority we are to note:
1. That the historians of St. Gall and of Reichenau claim for Hermann
the _Veni Sancte_.
2. That the hymn is found in the earliest codices of both places; and of
Einsiedeln, which is in the neighborhood.
3. That Clichtove is in doubt and Daniel is in doubt; that J. A.
Fabricius and Du Meril incline toward Egon’s statement; that Trithemius
is not entirely unprejudiced; and that Migne, gathering nearly
everything (as I have verified from the originals), leaves a strong
presumption in Hermann’s favor.
I may appear to make a good deal too much of this matter of mediaeval
jealousy. But no student of those times needs to be told that the
jealousy between the various cloisters was excessive. There is a letter
of the Reichenau monk Gunzo, written in 960. (_Martene_, I., 296.) It is
addressed to the “holy congregation at Reichenau” and describes his
journey to St. Gall. The distance was great enough to exhaust the
learned brother; he was lifted off of his beast and carried in by
hospitable hands. Notwithstanding which he vents his indignation upon
their methods and their lack of scholarship. They are self indulgent;
they are a fraud on the face of the earth. _Nihil inde sed fraudis
molamina parabantur_—they do nothing there except contrive a great mass
of deception, says the angry Gunzo. They attacked him on his grammar;
and he attacked them in turn on their loquacity. The epistle is grimly
humorous at this distance of time; but the bitterness was altogether too
genuine to be pleasant.
Far away from the most of these noises—separated by the waters of the
lake from the trampling pilgrim-bands who went to and fro between the
East and West—Hermann of Reichenau passed his quiet hours. His convent
was rich. Its abbot was said to be able to journey to Rome and not sleep
anywhere on the way except upon his own soil. It had been founded in 724
under the auspices of Charles Martel. Such was the admirable situation
of this religious house—sufficient to itself in the midst of all
changes.
They buried Hermann in his ancestral tomb at Altshausen. In 1631 “three
bones” of him were exhumed and carried “by force” to the monastery of
Ochsenhausen, but who took them and who resisted the taking of them, we
are not told. These are the meagre particulars of a life gentle,
patient, and unassuming—the life of a scholar and of a poet—who mastered
great obstacles by the genius of faith.
Three hundred years before Christ there came into Ceylon the Buddhist
missionary Mahinda. The king received him kindly and built for him and
his monks a convent on the hill Mihintale, to the east of the royal
city. On the western face of this hill Mahinda had his own retreat cut
out from the living rock. Still can be seen—though after two thousand
years—this study in which the great teacher of Ceylon “sat and thought
and worked through the long years of his peaceful and useful life.”
Under the cool shadow of his rock, with his stone couch on which to
repose, and with the busy plain, so far removed from him, sending its
faint noises up from below, there wrought the sage. And there he died at
last and was buried in the neighboring Dagāba. Modern times have nearly
forgotten him, but no story of that valley or that island is complete
without his name.
And so, in this later manner, lived and died Hermann Count of Vöhringen,
who laid down earthly honors to take up the pursuit of heavenly glory;
who overcame peevishness of mind and weakness of body by faith and hope
and love; who looked out upon his times from this serene distance, and
who went to his last sleep beneath the shadow of the rock.
Note.—I am not ignorant that Jourdain (_Recherches critiques sur l’Age
et l’Origine des Traductions latines d’Aristote_. Paris, 1819 and 1843)
has attacked the ascription of translations of Aristotle from the Arabic
to our Hermann, denying that the cripple of Reichenau possessed any
knowledge of that tongue. Briefly stated his arguments are these: 1.
That Trithemius followed Jacobus of Bergamo in ascribing to H.
Contractus a knowledge of Arabic. 2. That Metzler (whom he calls
_Mezler_) has added the statement about the Poetics and Rhetoric. 3.
That every one else has followed these two authorities. 4. That “H.
Alemannus” wrote in _Toledo_, to which the other Hermann could not have
journeyed. 5. That the translations were by this “H. Alemannus” (Hermann
the German) who flourished in the first half of the thirteenth century.
It is enough of a reply to say: 1. That the concluding words of a
manuscript relate, not to its author, but to its transcriber. The MS.
mentioned by Jourdain and the other MS. in the Bibliotheque Royale of
the fifteenth century (viz., _Doctrina Matumeti, quae apud Saracenos
magnae auctoritatis est, ab Hermanno latine translata._ Cod. MS., No.
6225) are both later than their original date. This second MS. may be by
Hermann de Schildis, a monk of the thirteenth century. 2. Every one has
not “followed” the authority of Metzler and Trithemius. The “Anonymus
Mellicensis” (twelfth century) enumerates treatises by Hermannus
Contractus upon Computation, Astronomy, Physiognomy and Poetry, which at
least imply that Aristotle had largely affected his studies. 3. It is
notable also to find H. _Alemannus_ quoting Cicero in his two
introductions, when we know H. _Contractus_ to have been very fond of
Cicero. 4. H. Alemannus says that he has met great “impediments” and
“difficulties” in accomplishing this translation, and that the
difference between Latin and Arabic poetry forbade a poetical rendering.
Which would coincide with H. Contractus’s personal obstacles and with
his natural desire as a poet to attempt a rendering in verse. 5. H.
Alemannus refers to “Johannes Burgensis” (John of Burgau, in Suabia) as
a bishop and the king’s chancellor and his personal friend and the
promoter of this work. I cannot find “John of Burgau;” but H. Contractus
was a Suabian, and Suabia is very near to Reichenau. H. Contractus was
also closely associated with Conrad and Henry III., whose lives he
wrote.
It is a curious question this. It is only another proof of the neglect
into which a great man has fallen. For Hermann is called “nostri
_miraculum_ seculi” by the next generation who came after him. And there
is no _absolute_ proof that, “without lexicon or grammar” (for so
Jourdain puts it), he could not have mastered Arabic. Observing the
topics of his other writings cognate to those of Aristotle, I am
therefore not in the least inclined to yield to even M. Charles
Jourdain.