THOMAS À KEMPIS.
The contributions of Holland to the devotional poetry of Christendom
have not been extensive; but in the Middle Ages she could show several
Latin hymn-writers. The best known of these, however, is by far more
famous for his prose works. Thomas Hemerken, called afterward Thomas à
Kempis, was not by birth a Hollander. He was born in 1379 or 1380 at
Kempen, a small city in the diocese of Koeln (Cologne), not far from
what became the boundary line between the two nations. But in those
days, and, indeed, until the Peace of Westphalia, Holland, like
Switzerland, was reckoned a part of Germany. His father, John Hemerken,
was an artisan of the poorer class, probably a silversmith; and both his
parents were devout and God-fearing people. His elder brother John had
gone to Deventer to obtain an education, after the fashion of the times,
when boys wandered from city to city in search of instruction, and
supported themselves by singing, begging, and sometimes by thieving. But
at Deventer John had fallen in with some good people who had pity upon
these wandering scholars, and had made arrangements to furnish them
lodgings and copying-work in addition to what they would earn by singing
in the choir.
The chief person in this group was Gerard Groote, a man of wealthy
family and some strange vicissitudes in life. He had studied at the
universities of Paris and Prague, and had taken minor orders to qualify
himself to hold the two canonries family influence secured to him, but
without giving any indication of a vocation to the sacred office. He
seems even to have led a dissolute life. Then a great change came over
him, chiefly through the influence of a friend of his youth named Henry
Eger, now the prior of a Cistercian convent at Munkhuisen. Gerard
resigned his benefices, and spent five years in a monastic retreat, from
which he emerged as a zealous preacher of the Gospel to the clergy and
people of what now is Holland, using both Latin and Dutch as occasion
served. He especially dwelt on the utter worldliness of that dreary
time, when priests, nobles, and tradesmen alike had lost all idea of
serving God and men, and had set up gain and pleasure as the recognized
ends of life. His sharp rebukes, and his exaltation of humility,
simplicity, and poverty, attracted the lower classes, but roused the
opposition of both the burghers and the Mendicants against him. After a
brief and stormy career he was silenced by the Archbishop of Utrecht,
and was obliged to find vent for his zeal in some other channel.
His purity and unworldliness had gathered around him, in his native
Deventer, men and women like-minded with him, who, according to the
tendency of the time, drifted naturally into a kind of monastic life.
Brother-houses and sister-houses were organized, and they became known
as the Brethren and Sisters of the Common Life. They took no vows, and
yet practised celibacy, common ownership and labor, and obedience to the
rector of the house. They adopted no common dress, but came to wear the
simplest gray robe of the same cut. Both laymen and clergy lived
together in the brother-houses, and each took his turn in the common
services of the brotherhood. They observed no canonical hours beyond
what the Church exacted of the priests among them. They assumed none of
the professions of the monks, and yet they realized the monkish ideal
better than did the monks themselves. The four principles which governed
Gerard’s own life and became the four corner-stones of this fraternity,
were “contempt of the world and of self, imitation of the lowly life of
Christ, good-will, and the grace of devoutness” (_contemptus mundi et
sui ipsius, imitatio humilis vitae Christi, bona voluntas, gratia
devotionis_). All this was summed up in the phrase _moderna devotio_,
used both by the brethren and the outside world to designate the
distinctive character of the order.
The experience Christendom had had of the results of mendicancy led
Groote and his associates to base the new brotherhood on honest labor.
The shape this took reflects his own character. He was a great
book-lover—_semper avarus et peravarus librorum_, he says himself. When
in peril of his life in a storm by sea, he managed to save the six books
he had with him. He possessed a considerable library, and when the
brotherhood came to adopt the principle of community of goods, he and
the rest put their books into the common stock. And all who were able to
write were to labor in copying books for sale—the clergy in Latin, the
laymen in Dutch. It was this employment he extended to the poor scholars
of the Deventer school. Indeed, it seems not improbable that he began it
with them, and that the first brotherhood was composed of young friends
of this class, who had grown to manhood in this employment. It is
certain that in Deventer, in Zwolle, and for all we know in the other
cities where the brotherhood took root, near by the brother-house stood
a poor-scholars’ house, in which the boys attending the school of the
city were lodged, kept under discipline, and to some degree given work
also. But the Brethren of the Common Life were not an educating body, as
has been very generally supposed. They aimed only at saving boys from
the moral injury which too often attended their homeless life, at
keeping good discipline over them, and at imparting moral and religious
training. They aimed to do for the school-boys what the founders of
colleges in the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris tried to do
for the myriads of students who lived like vagrants in those seats of
learning.
But before Gerard Groote died the question was raised whether it would
not be advisable to establish a strictly monastic order of life for
those of the brethren who felt a vocation to it. To this he agreed, but
dissuaded his friends from adopting the severe rules of the Cistercians
and the Carthusians for the new order. Rather he suggested that of the
Canons Regular under the rule of St. Augustine as preferable, since it
would be more in keeping with the spirit of the brotherhood, and would
bind on no one too heavy burdens. This advice marks an advance upon
Dominic, Francis, and the “reformers” of the Benedictine and Mendicant
orders, in an evangelical direction. They all sought progress to
perfection in deeper austerity. In his case the preference perhaps was
caused by his friendship for the monastery of Canons Regular at
Groenendal, in Flanders, whose prior was Jan Rusbroek, the great Flemish
mystic. Gerard made several visits to Groenendal after his conversion,
and translated two of his friend’s books into Latin.
Gerard Groote was carried off by the great pestilence of 1384, in his
forty-fourth year. But he left the work in good hands, for a Deventer
priest named Florens Radewinzoon succeeded him as rector of the
brother-house, and proceeded with the building of the new monastery at
Windesheim, near Deventer. It was opened in 1386, and John à Kempis, who
had become a member of the brotherhood, was one of the six who first
assumed the monastic vows.
It was six years later, in 1392, that Thomas set out to seek his brother
at Deventer; for although the distance was not much over a hundred
miles, he had heard nothing of John’s profession at Windesheim, so
uncertain and irregular were the means of communication. On learning
what had happened, he proceeded to Windesheim, where his brother
welcomed him warmly. But there was no school at Windesheim, and John
advised him to return to Deventer to attend the city school and place
himself under the care of Florens. He did so and became an inmate of the
poor-scholars’ house, which had been given to the brotherhood by a
devout matron of the city. Here he lived for six years, attending school
under Master Johann Boehme, singing in the choir of the church of which
Florens was vicar, and earning a little money by copying books for him.
The good rector showed him very great kindness, and in 1398, when his
school studies were complete, he received him into the brotherhood. The
year before this another pestilence had visited Deventer, carrying off
Johann Kessel, the saintly cook of the brother-house, and prostrating
Thomas himself, who recovered with difficulty. Indeed, it seemed as
though the brotherhood would become extinct, and Florens and six others
withdrew for a time from the plague-smitten city to guard against this
catastrophe.
In 1399 Thomas, at Florens’s instance, decided to assume the monastic
vows. A second house of the order had been established at Agnietenberg
(or Mount St. Agnes) near the city of Zwolle. Of this John à Kempis had
been made the second prior in 1398, and held that office until 1408.
Thither Thomas proceeded in 1399, stopping at Zwolle to obtain the
indulgence lately proclaimed by the Pope for the benefit of a new church
in that city. After a novitiate of seven years he took the vows in 1406,
and in 1414 was ordained to the priesthood.
The monastic life is studiously and intentionally monotonous. It aims at
the exclusion of all that gives zest and interest to ordinary existence,
and at the reduction of life’s employments to a routine. Its variety and
color are to be sought in the inner life of its members, and that of
Thomas was not wanting in these elements. If his inner experience be
reflected in his _Soliloquy of the Soul_, he passed through those
shifting seasons of gloom and gladness which characterize the experience
of an introverted religion. His religious character was formed on the
lines of the modern devotion, as defined by Gerard Groote, and as
reflected in the lives and the writings of Florens Radewinzoon, Gerard
Zerbolt, Johann Mande, Gerlach Peterszoon, and Johann Brinckerinck, the
earlier notable men of the brotherhood or of the Windesheim
congregation. His was not a bold and originative mind to strike out new
paths for himself. He had not even those gifts of practical
administration for which Florens, John à Kempis, and others of the order
were notable. Even when he had attained recognition as the most eminent
man at Agnietenberg, his brethren twice passed him by in selecting their
prior, and never gave him any dignity higher than the sub-priorate,
which probably was a sinecure. An early biographer goes so far as to
describe him as sitting silent whenever ordinary and worldly matters
were discussed, because of his ignorance of the very terms used at such
times. But this is an exaggeration. His _Chronicle of the Monastery of
Mt. St. Agnes_ shows him taking a mild and not unintelligent interest in
the secular side of the monastic life, and sharing the joy of his
brethren in the fine apple-crop or the large take of fish, and the like.
But this _Chronicle_ shows how limited his range of vision and interest.
He lived through the Papal Schism, the Asiatic conquests of Timour, the
Council of Constance, the Hussite wars, Henry the Fifth’s invasion of
France, the exploits of Jeanne d’Arc, the Council of Basle, the rise of
the Medici in Florence, and of the Duchy of Burgundy, the Council of
Florence, the exploits of Scanderberg and Hunyadi Janos, the Wars of the
Roses, the revival of letters, the invention of printing, the fall of
Constantinople, the Florentine Academy, the Portuguese discoveries in
the Atlantic, and much more that might be thought likely to be discussed
even within the walls of a Dutch monastery. But the record is silent as
to all these things; for the most part they are part of the doings of
that “world” which the disciples of the modern devotion trained
themselves to despise.
No doubt the great question of the Papal Schism was of interest at
Agnietenberg, and also the two great councils which brought it to an
end. At the Council of Constance the Brethren of the Common Life were
arraigned by a zealous Mendicant as violating Church law by observing
the three rules of the monastic life without belonging to any recognized
order. But this Mendicant notion was declared heretical, thanks to two
great French doctors, Pierre d’Ailly and John Gerson, the second of whom
was to be associated so closely with Thomas in a famous controversy.
In 1427 the troubles of the outside world did reach the convent at
Agnietenberg and its associates. There had been a disputed election to
the princely diocese of Utrecht, then one of the largest and wealthiest
in Latin Christendom. The Pope recognized one candidate and the people
of the cities another. To break down their obstinacy the diocese was
laid under an interdict, which put an end to every act of public
worship. Thereupon the brotherhood and the order were given their choice
by the citizens, either to go on with their services as usual in church
and chapel, or to leave the diocese. With one consent they chose the
latter alternative, and in 1429 they distributed themselves among the
associated brother-houses and monasteries outside the diocese. The
twenty-four clerical and lay brethren of Agnietenberg found a home at
Luvenkerk in Friesland, in a disordered monastery which had been placed
under the rule of the Windesheim congregation, and which they used this
opportunity to reform. After three years of exile they were allowed to
return, a new Pope having yielded to the people. But Thomas did not
return so soon, for he had been called away to Arnheim to the death-bed
of his brother John, the brother he had found at Windesheim instead of
Deventer, and under whose priorship at Agnietenberg he took the vows.
In 1451 Deventer was visited by a great Churchman and notable thinker,
the Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa, who, like Thomas, was born east of what is
now the German frontier, but had received his schooling in Deventer,
where he learned to love and honor the Brethren of the Common Life. He
came now as papal legate to reform the abuses which had arisen in the
churches of Germany during the great schism; and when he came to his
loved Deventer he hastened to indicate his especial regard for his old
friends. He granted a special indulgence to both the brotherhood and the
order, and permitted the Windesheim congregation to establish a second
congregation, with equal privileges, to accommodate the rapidly
increasing number of convents of Canons Regular.
Thomas survived his brother by nearly forty years. His cloister life
moved on through three decades with the external monotony of an
existence subjected to rule. Five years of the forty were years of
pestilence and popular distress, which he duly chronicles. But the only
real interruption of his routine which still has a living interest was
his acquaintance with young Johan Wessel, who came to pursue his studies
in Zwolle, being drawn by the charm of the _Imitation_ into the
neighborhood of its author. This probably was about 1460, when he sought
and made Thomas’s acquaintance, and often conversed with him upon the
greatest of themes. But the earliest biography of Wessel belongs to the
next century, and is by a Protestant pastor in Bremen; so the statements
that Wessel found Thomas and his brother monks all too superstitious,
and rebuked the Mariolatry of the author of the _Imitation_, are open to
doubt. That Wessel, the forerunner of Luther, influenced Thomas in the
writing of the _Imitation_ is a palpable absurdity.
For a short time he was procurator or steward of the monastery, a task
which must have been uncongenial to him, but which he would discharge
with his best diligence, as his first biographer, Jodocus Badius
Ascensius, says he did. Then he was sub-prior a second time in 1448.
The chronicle of Mount St. Agnes ends with January 17th, 1471; its
author died July 26th of the same year. His health had been singularly
good, but toward the close of his life he suffered from dropsy. His
eyesight never failed him, and he retained all his faculties in full
vigor to the last. As the end drew near, the sense of all he had been to
his brethren as a friend and counsellor deepened in them at the prospect
of losing him. All that their love could do and his ascetic principles
would permit, they did to lighten the burdens and relieve the pains of
his illness. He died in his ninety-second year, after having been
sixty-three years in the order and fifty-eight in the priesthood.
He was buried within the cloisters of the monastery. There his bones
continued to rest even after the dissolution of the monastery at the
Reformation in 1573, and thence they were disinterred in 1672 and placed
in a shrine. But no miracles were wrought at his grave or by his bones.
Whatever the faults of the Brethren of the Common Life, it was not in
the atmosphere of the modern devotion that men learned to crave after
such evidence of sanctity in the servants of God. So the brotherhood and
its affiliated order have made no contributions to the list of Roman
Catholic saints. There is room in that long and motley list for Giovanni
da Capistrano, the cruel and implacable inquisitor, whose path across
Europe was marked with blood and fire. But none has been found for the
gentle and loving Thomas à Kempis, who has wooed millions of souls to a
closer communion with his Master, and whose own life preached humility,
patience, gentleness, renunciation of the world, conformity to the will
of God, and likeness to Christ, as distinctly as does his great book.
Well, he is content. _Ama nesciri_—love to be unknown—was a precept
often on his lips and illustrated in his life. Of small matter to him
would have been the attempt to deny his authorship of the _Imitation_,
and the controversy of two centuries’ duration it provoked. Of no
greater moment the refusal of the name of saint to one whose only
miracles were wrought upon the spirits of his brethren. But the Church
catholic says of him, “Surely this was a holy man of God.”
While the copying of books was the general employment of the brotherhood
and of the order, there was from the first a good deal of independent
authorship among them, and always on the lines of the “modern devotion.”
Groote himself labored chiefly by preaching and correspondence. But some
of his letters are tracts in that form, and had a wide circulation as
such. Florens was not much even of a letter-writer, but he wrote one
devotional tract which has been discovered. It was in Gerard Zerbolt of
Zutphen, his _altera manus_, that he found a fit organ for the
expression of his ideas in writing. To us Protestants Zerbolt is
memorable as the author of a treatise asserting the right and duty of
unlearned men to have good books—the Bible and their prayer-books
included—in their own tongue. But he was much better known by his
writing certain widely circulated books of devotion—modern, of course.
Hendrik Mande, the Seer, was a Windesheim monk whose mysticism took the
bolder and more ecstatic flight of Rusbroek, and like Rusbroek he found
his native tongue more suitable than Latin. Lastly, Gerlach Peterszoon,
sometimes called “the second Thomas à Kempis,” although he died in 1411,
before Thomas himself had become an author, wrote in both Latin and
Dutch sundry works, one of which still is reprinted for edification even
by Protestants. Through all this literature runs the same strain of
thought and feeling, in spite of personal differences. They all insist
on a deeper renunciation of the world than is satisfied by any external
monastic compliances. They all hold forth the imitation of Christ’s
humility and meekness as the essence of the Christian life. They all
insist on devotion to the will of God and good-will to men as the two
essential channels in which the Christian life must run.
Thomas à Kempis’s works as a whole fit into the writings of this group
of disciples of Gerard Groote, just as his _Imitation of Christ_ fits
into the rest of his works. He simply is the best writer they had, as
the _Imitation_ is the best thing he ever wrote. If none of the many
manuscripts of the _Imitation_ bore his name, as nearly all of them do;
and if none of the contemporaries who knew him had certified to his
authorship of it, as so many of them do; and if none of the printed
editions bore his name, as twenty-one of the fifteenth century and forty
of the sixteenth do, we still would have been obliged to ascribe it to
him. No other century than his could have produced it. It reflects the
ideas of no other group than that of the disciples of Gerard and
Florens. The very title, _De Imitatione Christi, et de Contemptu Omnium
Vanitatum Mundi_, expresses the twofold aspect of the _moderna devotio_
of which Gerard and Florens were the sponsors. Among those disciples
there is no one but the author of the _Soliloquy of the Soul_ and the
_Valley of Lilies_, to whom we could give it. It differs no more in
point of worth from Thomas’s other books than does the _Pilgrim’s
Progress_ from Bunyan’s other writings, _Grace Abounding_ always
excepted.
While it is by his formal hymns Thomas à Kempis acquires his right to a
place here, it is true at the same time that the _Imitation_ itself is a
great Christian poem, not only in substance but in form. A Belgian, who
was his contemporary, says he had written the book _metrice_, or in
rhythm and rhyme. As it was printed always as prose until our own times,
this statement was somewhat puzzling, as was the title, _Musica
Ecclesiastica_, found in some of the manuscripts. But Rev. Karl Hirsche,
Lutheran pastor in Hamburg, has vindicated both expressions by showing
that Thomas has followed such models as the sequence, _Victimae
paschali_, in the composition of his work. And he has given us an
edition based on Thomas’s autograph of the year 1441, in which this
peculiarity is made visible.[15] It is true that this way of writing
what we may call rhymed and rhythmical prose is not confined to Thomas
or to the _Imitation_ among his works. Among others Jan van
Schoonhooven, a Belgian disciple of Jan Rusbroek’s, uses this form
frequently; and Pastor Hirsche has pointed out its frequency in others
of Thomas’s works. But in no other book approaching the _Imitation_ in
length is the restriction of rhythm and rhyme so steadily accepted. As
an instance, take this brief passage from the fifth chapter of the third
book:
“Amans volat, currit, et laetatur;
Liber est, et non tenetur
Dat omnia pro omnibus,
Et habet omnia in omnibus;
Quia in uno summo super omnia quiescit
Ex quo omne bonum fluit et procedit.
Non respecit ad dona
Sed ad donantem se convertit super omnia bona.
Amor modo saepe nescit,
Sed super omnem modum fervescit.
Amor onus non sentit,
Labores non reputat;
Plus affectat quam valet;
De impossibilitate non causatur
Quia cuncta sibi posse et licere arbitrator.”
Or in Rev. W. Benham’s admirable version: “He who loveth flyeth,
runneth, and is glad; he is free and not hindered. He giveth all things
for all things, and has all things in all things, because he resteth in
One who is high above all, from whom every good floweth and proceedeth.
He looketh not for gifts, but turneth himself to the Giver, above all
good things. Love oftentimes knoweth no measure, but breaketh out above
all measure; love feeleth no burden, reckoneth not labors, striveth
after more than it is able to do, pleadeth not impossibility, because it
judgeth all things which are lawful for it to be possible.”[16]
The _Imitation_ has obtained a place next to the Bible in the devotional
literature of Christendom. The fact that the author was a Roman Catholic
and that the fourth book is a preparation for the devout reception of
the Eucharist in accordance with the Roman Catholic theory of its
nature, has not prevented stanch Protestants from translating and
commending it. Dr. Chalmers wrote a commendatory preface to a Scotch
reprint of John Payne’s translation. And in Germany, Holland, and
England the Protestant versions have far exceeded those made by Roman
Catholics. The first Protestant version was that from the mediaeval into
Ciceronian Latin, by Sebastian Castellio (Basle, 1556); the second was
into German by the great and good John Arndt. But the book has achieved
a still more notable conquest than this. In Corneille’s metrical version
(1651) it was a favorite with Auguste Comte, who recommended it to the
Benthamist, Sir William Molesworth, as well worth reading. It has
obtained a sort of recognition among Comtists as a canonical work, and
selections from it often are read at the Positivist services. And
English readers will remember the passage in which George Eliot, writing
in Comte’s spirit, describes its effect on the sensitive spirit of
Maggie Tulliver:
“She knew nothing of doctrines and systems—of mysticism or quietism; but
this voice out of the far-off Middle Ages was the direct human
communication of a human soul’s belief and experience, and came to
Maggie as an unquestioned message.
“I suppose that is the reason why the small, old-fashioned book, for
which you need pay only sixpence at a book-stall, works miracles to this
day, turning bitter waters into sweetness, while expensive sermons and
treatises, newly issued, leave all things as they were before. It was
written down by a hand that waited for the heart’s prompting; it is the
chronicle of a solitary hidden anguish, struggle, trust, and triumph—not
written on velvet cushions to teach endurance to those who are treading
with bleeding feet on the stones. And so it remains to all time a
lasting record of human needs and consolations; the voice of a brother
who, ages ago, felt and suffered and renounced, in the cloister,
perhaps, with serge gown and tonsured head, with much chanting and long
fasts, and with a fashion of speech different from ours, but under the
same silent, far-off heavens, and with the same passionate desires, and
with the same strivings, the same failures, the same weariness.”—_The
Mill on the Floss, Book IV., chap._ 3.
All true; but less than the truth; for Thomas’s power lies not in these
negations, but in his personal relation to “the supreme, invisible
Teacher, the pattern of sorrow, the source of all strength,” from whom
Marian Evans turned away to fill up her life with “yearnings and
strivings and failures,” while her only comfort was in the consideration
that she had stilled her pain by no “false anodynes.”
It is a little uncertain at what time the _Imitation_ was written. It
seems not improbable that it was begun in Thomas’s youth, when he had
assumed or was about to assume the responsibilities of the priesthood. A
lofty regard for the sanctity of that office was one of the traditions
of the brotherhood. Groote himself, in view of the stains of his earlier
life, never would assume it, although his ordination would have enabled
him to resume his work of preaching through the Archdiocese of Utrecht.
He never was more than deacon, and the order which silenced him merely
forbade deacons to preach without especial permission. It is not
impossible that in the case of Thomas, as in that of Luther, the
responsibility seemed greater than he could bear, and that it drove him
into a closer and more consecrated fellowship with his Master, which
bore fruit in the first book of this wonderful manual. He was ordained
priest in 1414; there seems good reason to believe that this first
book—the _Imitation_ proper—was known and read at Windesheim, and even
translated into Dutch by Jan Scutken, as early as the year 1420; and
that the other three were written, each as an independent work, before
1425, and then united as one manual of devotion.[17] The oldest
manuscript of the Latin still in existence bears the date 1425, and
testifies to his authorship. The oldest in Thomas’s own handwriting was
made in 1441, and forms part of a series of his works, which he then
collected probably for the first time.
Of Thomas’s purely poetical works, besides a few hortatory poems and
anagrams on the names of the saints, there were known until recently
sixteen _Cantica Spiritualia_, to wit:
_Adversa mundi tolera_,
_Agnetis Christi virginis_,
_Ama Jesum cum Agnete_,
_Ave florens rosa_,
_Christe Redemptor omnium, Vere salus_,
_Christe sanctorum gloria, Et piorum_,
_Cives coeli attendite_,
_En virginis Caeciliae_,
_Gaude, mater Ecclesia, De praecursoris_,
_Jesu Salvador seculi_,
_O dulcissime Jesu_,
_O Jesu mi dulcissime, Spes et solamen_,
_O qualis quantaque laetitia_,
_O vera summa Trinitas_,
_Tota vita Jesu Christi_,
_Vitam Jesu stude imitari_.
In 1882 Father O. A. Spitzen found in a manuscript in Zwolle ten other
_Cantica Spiritualia_, which he published that year as the work of
Thomas à Kempis, to wit:
_Angelorum si haberem_,
_Creaturarum omnium merita_,
_Cum sub cruce sedet moerens_,
_Jerusalem gloriosa_,
_Mirum est si non lugeat_,
_Nec quisquam oculis vidit_,
_O quid laudis, quis honoris_,
_Quanta Mihi cura de te_,
_Serve meus noli metuere_,
_Ubi modo est Jesus, ubi est Maria_.
Six of these had already appeared in Mone’s collection, and credited to
a fifteenth century manuscript found at Carlsruhe, a fact which does not
militate against Spitzen’s view of their authorship. The latter found
them along with the hymns generally ascribed to Thomas in a MS. which
had belonged to the brother-house in Zwolle, and had been written in the
latter half of that century, probably between 1477 and 1483. Most of
them bear the ear-marks of Thomas’s style, and have a congruity with the
matter of his works which lends probability to Father Spitzen’s
conjecture.
Of all these hymns two only have attained any recognition as
contributions to the sacred songs of Christendom. These two are the
_Adversa mundi tolera_,
which is rather an exhortation in the tone of the _Imitation_ than a
hymn; and the
_O qualis quantaque laetitia_,
better known, through the general omission of its first verse, as the
_Adstant angelorum chori_.
Dr. Trench well says that the whole of our author’s poetry will not
yield a second passage at all to be compared in beauty with this.
Indeed, most of Thomas’s poetry lacks the inspiration which
characterizes his best prose. He is a poet in prose and a prosy poet,
and writes in verse because he has been required to fill up some empty
place in the hymn-list of his monastery. His acquaintance with the
hymn-writer’s art is bounded by his daily familiarity with the hymns of
his breviary, and he betrays the fact by starting from the first lines
of well-known hymns in his own work. But in this hymn on the joys of
heaven he for once struck the right key, although even here he shows
some stiffness of the joints, like a monk more used to a seat in the
Scriptorium than to the saddle of Pegasus. The hymn is known to English
readers by the admirable version of Mrs. Charles:
“High the angel choirs are raising
Heart and voice in harmony.”