THE UNKNOWN AND THE LESS KNOWN HYMN-WRITERS.
[Fourth to Tenth Century.]
The known is but a fragment broken from the unknown. This is eminently
true as regards the authorship of the Latin hymns. When we have dealt as
tenderly as the historical conscience will permit with the traditions
which assign hymns to this and that author, we still find ourselves
unable to affix any name to the great majority. And while it is true
that the most part of the very great hymns are not left in this plight
of anonymity, it is true that no small number of the best are on the
record like Melchizedek—“without father or mother,” and many of them
also “without beginning of years,” for we can determine only
approximately the century of their origin. Nor is this at all
surprising. Fame was neither the object nor the expectation of the
writers of the Latin hymns of the early and Middle Ages. Their utmost
expectation, probably, was to be valued a little by their brethren in
their own and their sister monasteries as the author of a fine sequence
or an appropriate hymn for a yearly festival. It was enough for that
purpose that the report of their authorship passed from mouth to mouth
in the choir, without any record made of it. The love of glory as a
literary motive, came in, as Mr. Symonds reminds us, with the
Renaissance, which borrowed it from the old pagans. Many a devout singer
of the centuries before that practised the wisdom of à Kempis’s saying,
_Ama nesciri_, “Love to be unknown.” They wrote not for gain in renown,
but for use in the edification of their brethren and of the Church. And
to live for use rather than gain is to live Christianly, for, as
Swedenborg says, “The kingdom of heaven is a kingdom of uses.”
This and the next chapter we shall give partly to some of these orphaned
hymns, touching only on the greatest. And as we come down the centuries
we shall speak also of the less notable hymn-writers, some of them not
less notable as men or as Churchmen, but such as have made less of a
mark in hymnology.
At the outset we are met by two of the greatest of the sacred songs of
the Church, which are none the less hymns although classed technically
as canticles. Who wrote the _Gloria in Excelsis_ and the _Te Deum
laudamus_? As everybody knows, the opening words of the former are the
song of the angels who brought the good news to the shepherds—words
which authenticate their heavenly origin by their simplicity, beauty,
and force—“a master-song,” as Luther says, “which neither grew nor was
made on earth, but came down from heaven.” But the much longer
supplement, which evidently reflects the situation of the Church in the
days of the Arian controversy, must either have originated in the fourth
century and in the East, or must have been altered to adapt it to that
time. The original still exists in Greek, but in three forms, which
differ somewhat; and the Latin version is defective in that it follows a
later form than that which is given in the so-called _Apostolical
Constitutions_; and, of course, the English follows the Latin, except in
the part taken from the Gospel, where “good will to men” takes the place
of “to men of good will” (_hominibus bonae voluntatis_), the latter
being the reading adopted by the English translators of 1611, but
rejected by the revisers of 1883.[22]
Who made the Latin version? An untrustworthy tradition ascribes it to
Telesphorus, who was Bishop of Rome in 128-38. It is possible that he
prescribed the chanting of the Scripture words in the Church service;
but the whole hymn is of later date in Latin. There is much more
likelihood that it was, according to a tradition recorded by Alcuin in
the ninth century, the work of Hilary of Poitiers, the first Latin
hymn-writer.
The _Te Deum laudamus_ has some claims to be regarded as the greatest of
Christian hymns. Like the _Gloria in Excelsis_ it belongs to that first
period of Christian hymn-writing, when the Hebrew psalms still furnished
the models for Christian poets, and the same free movement of rhythmical
prose was all that was required or even tolerated. There is no mention
of it in Church literature before the sixth century, when the monastic
rules of both Caesarius of Arles (_c._ 527) and of Benedict of Nursia
(_c._ 530) prescribe its use, and the Council of Toledo mentions it. As
it uses the words of the Vulgate in verses 22-25 and 27 to the end, it
cannot, as it now stands, be much more than a century older than this,
as the date of the Vulgate is 382-404. Yet a tradition recorded by Abbot
Abbo of Fleury in the ninth century, ascribes this hymn also to Hilary
of Poitiers, who died fifteen years before Jerome put his hand to the
work of revising the Latin Bible. Daniel thinks to reconcile the
discrepancy by ascribing it to Hilary of Arles, who was born the year
before Jerome had finished his work, and by regarding it as a
translation from the Greek, as verses 22-26 certainly are. They are
found in the Appendix to the Alexandrian manuscript of the Greek New
Testament, where they follow the _Gloria in Excelsis_ with the
interruption only of an Amen. But is it not possible to regard the last
eight verses as a separate hymn, made up, with the exception of the
strong verse—
26. Dignare, Domine, die isto sine peccato nos custodire—
of verses from the Scriptures? These last verses have no internal
connection with the first twenty-two, and they differ decidedly in
style, form, and source. Those contain no Scripture quotations, except
the _Ter-Sanctus_ in verses 5 and 6, which is not taken from the Vulgate
version,[23] but apparently from the Itala. If, therefore, we consider
those twenty-two verses as a hymn by themselves, this may have been the
work of Hilary of Poitiers, and there is no necessity for assuming that
it was not an original Latin hymn. This becomes more probable if we drop
out verse 13, which interrupts the flow of the Christological thought,
and evidently was interpolated to make the hymn complete from a
Trinitarian point of view. When the _Gloria in Excelsis_ and the _Te
Deum_ were composed, it was the relation of the Son to the Father which
occupied the mind of the Church. Both hymns are the expression of “the
present truth” on that subject; the mention of the Holy Spirit in both
is probably by interpolation at a later date.
As the form, and in some places the meaning of the _Te Deum_ is
misrepresented in the current version, it may be worth while to
reproduce the original in a more literal version:
1. Thee as God we praise,
Thee as Lord we own,
2. Thee as eternal Father all the earth doth worship,
3. Thee all the angels—
To thee heaven and all its powers,
4. To thee cherubim and seraphim with unceasing voice cry aloud,
5. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth,
6. The heavens and the earth are full of the majesty of thy glory!
7. Thee the glorious choir of the apostles,
8. Thee the praiseworthy company of the prophets,
9. Thee the white-robed army of the martyrs praiseth.
10. Thee, through the circle of the lands, the Holy Church confesseth
11. Father of unbounded majesty;
12. Thy adorable, true and only Son.
13 (14). Thou King of glory, O Christ,
14 (15). Thou of the Father art the Son eternal.
15 (16). Thou, to deliver us, tookest manhood,
Thou didst not dread the Virgin’s womb.
16 (17). Thou, since thou hast overcome the sting of death,
Hast opened to believers the kingdom of heaven.
17 (18). Thou, at the right hand of God, sittest in the glory of the
Father;
18 (19). As our judge thou art believed to be coming.
19 (20) Thee therefore we beg,
Assist thy servants whom thou hast redeemed with precious blood.
20 (21). Cause us to be gifted, among thy saints, with eternal glory.
Amen.
There are no other unfathered hymns known to be of this century, and few
less notable hymn-writers. To Jerome is ascribed a hymn, _Te Bethlehem
celebrat_, which is not in any of the collections. His great
contemporary, Augustine of Hippo, has had more than one fine hymn
assigned to him, probably because his works have furnished the
suggestion for so many. Notably Peter Damiani and Hildebert of Tours
drew upon him. But the great theologian was not a poet, as we can see
from his one essay in that form, viz., his “psalm” against the
Donatists, in which he gives a popular and metrical exposition of the
parable of the net (Matt. 13:47-50). It is quite enough to prove that he
did not write the _Ad perennis vitae fontem_ (Damiani), or the _Quid,
tyranne, quid minaris_ (Damiani), or the _O gens beata coelitum_, or
even the _Domine Jesu, noverim me_, all of which have been given to him
at times.
To the fifth century—the century of Prudentius and Ennodius—we may
ascribe the earlier in the large group of hymns classed as Ambrosian,
which are the work of a series of writers who may be described as
constituting a school. It is one of the hardest problems in Latin
hymnology to distinguish between Ambrose’s own work and that of his
imitators, and to arrange the hymns composed by the latter between the
fifth and the eighth century in any chronological order. What can be
said positively has been shown in Chapter V. The chief authorities on
the subject are the early collectors, Clichtove, Cassander, and
Thomasius. Of considerable importance is the MS. given by Francis Junius
in the seventeenth century to the University of Oxford, and published in
1830 by Jacob Grimm. It contains a collection of twenty-six hymns by
Ambrose and the Ambrosians, with a translation into old High German,
probably made at St. Gall in the ninth century. But these do not exhaust
the list. Others have been pointed out by Mone and other collectors, as
proving their kinship to the school by their metrical form or their
contents and style. Schletterer enumerates ninety hymns of the school,
and of these he assigns fifteen to Ambrose himself.
Closely related to the group, and yet not assigned to it, are several
hymns to which a very early date is assigned by Mone at least. To this
fifth century he gives the _Unam duorum gloriam_, which he also claims
as of German origin, and describes as one of the oldest hymns of the
German Church. It is in commemoration of two martyrs, to whose honor a
church near Münster was dedicated, and is strictly classic in metre.
Here also he assigns the _Christi caterva clamitat_, an Advent hymn of
classic metre and primitive tone. He probably would agree with
Wackernagel in selecting the same century for the hymn on Stephen, the
protomartyr, _Primatis aulae coelicae_, in which he finds reminders of
the style of Prudentius. Lastly, he assigns this date to the Paschal
hymn, _Te lucis auctor personat_, which became obsolete when its special
reference to Easter as the time of the baptism of adult catechumens lost
its significance. It was used in France and probably other countries.
To the same fifth century belongs Paulinus, Bishop of Nola (353-431),
who has many better claims to remembrance than his hymns. He was one of
those men of whom their contemporaries cannot speak without enthusiasm,
and as Augustine, Jerome, and Ambrose are among his eulogists we may
assume that the praise was not undeserved. He came of a noble Gallic
stock; he inherited wealth and acquired from the teaching of the poet
Ausonius all the culture of his time; he filled high office in Italy and
Spain; he spent the last twenty-two years of his life in administering
with a faithful laboriousness the affairs of a Campanian bishopric. He
did not receive baptism until his thirty-fifth year, so that he may have
been brought up a pagan, although the inference is not necessary. In 378
he was made Roman consul to fill an unexpired term (_consul suffectus_),
and was sent into Campania at the end of the year. There he was so
deeply impressed by a festival in honor of the martyr Vincent of Nola,
that his affections were drawn strongly to the city. But soon after he
married a Spanish wife and went to live first at Bordeaux and then at
Barcelona. At the former in 389 he was received into the membership of
the Church; at the latter he and his wife, after the death of their
infant son, resolved to renounce the “secular” life and to give
themselves to asceticism and charity. He was ordained to the priesthood
in response to a general demand of the people during the Christmas
festivities. He removed to Nola, where he and his wife lived in the
service of the poor, in an age when the incursions of Goths and Vandals
were producing frightful wretchedness. He seems to have held right views
of the responsibility of property, and instead of divesting himself of
it at once, he kept it to use for his brethren. Nor did he separate from
his wife after the fashion of Ennodius and others of the age. They
labored together to the end. About 409 he was elected Bishop of Nola,
and occupied that see until his death. Among his gifts to his people was
a new aqueduct to supply their town with pure water, an evidence of his
breadth of mind and genuine humanity. When he died he was added to the
list of the recognized saints, and few with better right.
His literary achievement was not great, although everything he has
written has its interest. His epistles and poems are reflections of both
his excellence and his faults. They show at once the good heart of the
man and his proneness to superstition. But his contemporaries thought
his poems wonderful, and even some of the moderns have re-echoed this
estimate. Erasmus calls him “the Christian Cicero,” a title more
frequently assigned to Lactantius. Caspar Barth, in his _Adversaria_
(1624), declines to rank any other Christian poet above him. His poems
exhibit the decadence of Latin verse, in that quantity is often
neglected and accent used to replace it. Only a few of them are hymns in
any sense, and these are narrative or reflective rather than lyric.
Bjorn gives two of them in his collection.
This fifth century also brings us the first woman among the Christian
singers. Elpis, identified by a somewhat doubtful tradition with Helpes,
the first wife of the pagan philosopher Boethius, has left a florid hymn
in honor of the Apostles Peter and Paul, which holds its place in
modified form in the Roman Breviary, and is divided into two hymns. She
employs accentuated verse, while the verses in Boethius’s classic work,
_De Consolatione Philosophiae_, conform to the quantitative prosody of
classic poetry. Another hymn on the same Apostles, _Felix per omnes
festum mundi cardines_, is ascribed to her and also to Paulinus of Nola.
The Breviary hymn, _Miris modis repente liber_, is a recast of part of
it.
There are several poems and chronicles which are ascribed to Prosper
Tyro, whom some identify with Prosper of Aquitaine (403-65), the Gallic
champion of strict Augustinian orthodoxy against the semi-Pelagian party
in that province—John Cassian, Vincent of Lerins, etc. This is the more
likely, as Prosper loved to “drop into poetry” even in his controversial
treatises. George Cassander includes a hymn from Prosper Tyro’s works in
his collection.
Many of the finest of Ambrosian hymns, which have taken rank among the
favorites of Western Christendom, as sharing the noble spirit and the
torrent-like power of utterance of the great Bishop of Milan, are
credited by the hymnologists to the sixth century—the age of Benedict of
Nursia, Caesarius of Arles, Belisarius, and Gregory the Great. We give
Mr. Duffield’s translation of two of the finest, regretting that he did
not live to translate others which he had marked with that view in his
Index:
CHRISTE QUI LUX ET DIES.
Christ who art the light and day,
Drive the shades of night away,
Thou, who art the Light of light,
Make our pathway glad and bright.
Now we pray thee, holy Lord,
Keep us safely by thy word;
Night and day at peace in thee
May our spirits rested be.
Let no evil dream appear,
Let no enemy draw near,
Let us bow to thee alone,
Thou who pitiest thine own!
While in sleep we close our eyes,
May our hearts forever rise
Unto thee, whose mighty hand
Keeps thine own in every land.
Look upon us, our Defence!
Drive all lurking traitors hence,
Rule thy children, O most Good,
Who are purchased with thy blood.
Be thou mindful of our state,
In this body profligate;
Guard our minds, and ever be
Near us, Lord, as we to thee.
TELLURIS INGENS CONDITOR.
Thou mighty Maker of earth’s frame,
Who gavest land and sea their name,
Hast swept the waters to their bound,
And fixed for aye the solid ground.
That soon upspringing should be seen
The herb with blossoms gold and green,
And fruit which ripely hangeth there,
And grass to which the herds repair.
Relieve the sorrows of the soul!
Our wounded spirits make thou whole,
That tears may sinful deeds allay,
And cleanse all baser lusts away.
Let us be swayed by thy decree,
From many evils set us free;
With goodness fill the waiting heart,
And keep all fear of death apart!
To the same sixth century belong some notable hymns which have not even
a school to which to assign their paternity. The most famous of these is
the
_Ad coenam Agni providi_,
which has been twice rewritten in conformity with the laws of classic
prosody, reappearing in the Roman Breviary as the _Ad regias Agni
dapes_, and in the Paris Breviary as the _Forti tegente brachio_. In
English there have been at least twelve versions since 1710. The great
merit of the hymn is the vigorous and terse way in which the mystical
correspondence of the Christian sacrament to the Jewish passover, and of
our deliverance from the yoke of Satan to the Jewish deliverance from
the Egyptian bondage, are worked out. As Daniel suggests, its first
stanza refers to the old usage that the catechumens, who had received
baptism just before Easter, partook of the other sacrament on the first
Sunday after Easter (_Dominicus in albis_), wearing the white robes of
their baptism (_stolis albis candidi_). Another notable but fatherless
hymn of this age is the _Sanctorum meritis inclyta gaudiis_—a beautiful
commemoration of the martyrs whose sufferings were still so vividly
remembered by the Church. Quite worthy of mention also is the Lenten
hymn, _Jam Christe, sol justitiae_, which expresses the early Christian
attitude toward God’s works, connecting the looked-for Easter with the
renewal of the world by the spring—
“Dies venit, dies tua
In qua reflorent omnia.”
The hymn for All Saints Day, _Psallat plebis sexus omnis voce corde
carmina_, is notable not only for its own vigor, but as being one of the
oldest in which the alliterative principle of the early Celtic and
Teutonic verse is employed in Latin. It therefore comes from the North
of Europe, with the chances in favor of Ireland.
Of known but less important hymn-writers of the sixth century we have
only two, Columba and Flavius. The former is the great Irish missionary
known to his countrymen as Columcille (the Dove, or the Dove of the
Church), who lived A.D. 521 to 597. He was one of the O’Donnells of
Donegal, whose chiefs, something more than seventy years before his
birth, had offered especial opposition to Patrick’s preaching. He
studied in the great school founded at Clonard, on the upper waters of
the Boyne, by Finnian, the first of those teachers who made the Ireland
of this and the following centuries “the land of schools,” to which
students flocked from Great Britain and even the Continent. Finnian sent
him to Clonfad to obtain ordination as a bishop; but the bishop, who was
ploughing in the field when he came, made a mistake and gave him
ordination as a priest. And he never rose higher than this in
hierarchical dignity. Not that it mattered much in the very elastic
system of Church government Patrick had established in Ireland. The
tribal or sept system was copied in the Church arrangement. At the head
of each church sept stood a _coarb_, who might be a woman, and
frequently was a priest or deacon. Under this jurisdiction the bishops
took the same relative place that the bards held to the chiefs in the
civil tribes. Sometimes there would be a dozen of these right reverend
fathers in God in one small Irish town, all under the direction of a
female _coarb_, miscalled an abbess by later authors, as the Church sept
has been miscalled a monastery.
As a penance for having been the cause of a faction fight or civil
war—one hardly knows which to call it—over the ownership of a psalter,
Columba banished himself from Ireland and took up his abode at Iona (or
Hy), from which centre he preached the Gospel to the Scots (_i.e._,
Irish) and Picts (_i.e._, Welsh) of the Highlands and the Western
Islands. The former had conquered this region in the fifth century and
were yet to give their name to the whole country, although up to A.D.
1198 there is no instance of Scotus meaning Scotchman rather than
Irishman. But while Christianity had penetrated even the wilds of
Donegal in Ireland, these Irish of Scotland and their Cymric subjects
still were pagans. So as Patrick was Scotland’s gift to Ireland,
Columcille was Ireland’s to Scotland. He was the type of those
persuasive and successful missionaries which the Church of Patrick sent
through Great Britain and to the Continent. He used the power of song
very freely in his missionary labors, confounding the Druids and
attracting the people by the grave, sweet melody of the Church’s chants.
Like Whitefield and Summerfield, he had a wonderful, because pure voice
and could sing so as to be heard a mile away. He, too, was a poet of no
mean merit. The sorrows of his voluntary exile from the land of his
birth—the land which exercises such a weird fascination over her
children that all other lands are to her what prose is to poetry or
water to wine—seem to have wakened in him the gift of song. Less
beautiful than these patriotic elegies is the abecedarian hymn on the
spiritual history of our world, _Altus prositor, vetustus dierum, et
ingenitus_, which is given in the Appendix to the _Lyra Sacra Hibernica_
(Belfast, 1879) and in the second part of Dr. J. H. Todd’s _Liber
Hymnorum_. It is written in a very rude Latinity, and is intended for
instruction and edification rather than lyric expression. But it is an
interesting monument of the faith of the great missionary, as it brings
us nearer him than does the wonderful biography by Abbot Adamnan, his
seventh successor at Iona. It was first printed in 1657 by the Irish
scholar Colgan, and with it two other and shorter hymns (_In Te,
Christe, credentium_ and _Noli, Pater, indulgere_), which also may be
Columcille’s.
Flavius was Bishop of Chalons in the year 580, and has left one hymn,
_Tellus et aeth’ra jubilent_, which Daniel calls an excellent poem
(_carmen eximium_). Its theme is our Lord’s washing the feet of the
Apostles, and for this reason it was commonly sung after meals in some
monasteries.
Of the seventh century, the century of Heraclius and Mahomet, there is
not one great hymn-writer known as such, but there are some great hymns.
The greatest is the _Urbs beata Hirusalem, dicta pacis visio_, of which
the _Angulare fundamentum_ is a part, and which is of the seventh or
eighth century. Daniel, however, with the support of Schlosser, regards
this hymn as not certainly older than the tenth century, and has Neale’s
support in asserting that the last two verses are a later addition to
give it suitableness for singing at a dedication of a church.[24] The
earliest mention of its use in the tenth century is in the church of
Poitiers at the annual blessing of the font on Easter Sunday, which
tends to confirm the supposition that two verses have been added. He
thinks it of Spanish origin, as the metrical form is one usual in the
Mozarabic Breviary. In later days it underwent three revisions. In the
old Paris Breviary of 1527 it becomes the _Urbs Jerusalem beata_; in the
new Breviary of 1736 it becomes the _Urbs beata, vera pacis visio_ under
the hands of Abbé Besnault (_ob._ 1726). In the Roman Breviary of 1631
it is the _Coelestis Urbs Jerusalem_, the form, as usual, best known to
modern readers and translators, but not the best worth knowing. Along
with the _Urbs beata_ we may place the _Gloriosa Jerusalem_, probably of
Spanish origin, and of the same century as well as similar in contents,
but unequal in beauty and poetic worth.
Next in worth is the abecedarian judgment hymn, _Apparabet repentina
dies magna Domini_, which Neale speaks of as containing the germ of the
_Dies Irae_. It is little more than a rehearsal in a trochaic metre of
our Lord’s prediction of the Day of Judgment. It follows the Scripture
text much more closely than does Thomas of Celano. Bede mentions it in
the next century. Mrs. Charles has translated it.
To this seventh century or the next Mone refers the _Salvator mundi,
Domine_, which is most probably an Anglo-Saxon hymn, although of the
Ambrosian school. It reappears in the Anglican _Orarium_ of 1560 and the
_Preces Privatae_ of 1564, and is said to have been familiar to Sir
Thomas Browne and Bishop Ken through its use at Wykeham’s school in
Winchester. It, along with the _Te lucis ante terminum_, also sung at
Winchester, may have suggested both Bishop Ken’s “Glory to thee, my God,
this night,” and Browne’s “The night is come, like to the day,” given in
his _Religio Medici_. To the seventh century we also may refer the
_Quicunque vultesse salvus_, a hymn better known as the Athanasian
Creed.
Besides these there are two groups of hymns whose temporal limits do not
lie within the seventh century on either side, but which may be as well
discussed here as anywhere. The first are the early Spanish
hymn-writers. We know by name three of the seventh century. The first is
Isidore, Archbishop of Seville (570-636), the scholar of encyclopaedic
range, who did so much to adapt the learning of the Romans to the wants
of the Gothic community in Spain. To him are ascribed, somewhat
doubtfully, three ballad-hymns in honor of as many martyrs and two
abecedarian poems on repentance. More certainly authentic are three or
four ascribed to his contemporary Eugenius, who was Archbishop of Toledo
from 646 to 657. He has left us thirty-two Latin poems in classic
metres, none of which, strictly speaking, are hymns, but his _Rex Deus
immense_ has found its way into the collections. In his day he worked
hard to improve the singing and other services of the Church. Lastly,
there is the Spanish magistrate Cyxilla, who built a church in honor of
the martyr Thyrsus of Toledo, and wrote a hymn for the dedication,
though some say he got Isidore to do it for him. Daniel (I., 190) gives
it in full from the Mozarabic[25] Breviary. But far more important are
the anonymous hymns of that Breviary, which constituted the hymnary of
the old Spanish Church at the date of the conquest of the country by the
Saracens (711-14), and which through the temporary prostration of the
Church’s energy was preserved from additions and alterations. The
collection therefore is interesting as containing nothing of later date
than the eighth century, and probably very little that is later than the
seventh. Besides a large number of hymns traceable to other authors,
from Hilary to Gregory—most of them from Ambrose and his school—there
are forty-eight hymns peculiar to this ancient Breviary. Of these the
best known are the _Alleluia piis edite laudibus_, the _Cunctorum rex
omnipotens_, the _Jesu defensor omnium_, the _O Dei perenne Verbum_ of
Bishop Arturus Serranus of Toledo, the _Sacer octavarum dies_, the
_Sacrata Christi tempora_, and the _Surgentes ad Te, Domine_. It is well
known that the hymns of Ambrose and his school enjoyed great repute in
Spain. These unnamed writers evidently have studied at his feet, their
mode of dealing with the great themes of Christian praise having much in
common with his. The country, however, which gave Seneca, Lucan, and
Quinctilian to Latin literature was under no necessity merely to imitate
an Italian model; and we find these Spanish poets departing widely from
Ambrose’s school as regards the form of their verse. The four-lined
stanza, with four iambic feet (u -) in each line—a line used by the
tragedian Seneca before it was adopted by the Christian poets—is the
form of verse employed almost exclusively by the Ambrosian school. The
Mozarabic writers also use it (_Convexa solis orbita_), but they also
employ as a substitute a trochaic verse of eleven syllables (_Lucis
auctor clemens, lumen immensum_) and more complex choriambic forms
(_Alleluia piis edite laudibus_, etc.). But their hymns, as a whole,
lack pith and force; not one of them has earned a place by itself in the
affections of Latin Christendom.
The second national group is that of the early Irish writers of Latin
hymns. There are not so many of these, and still fewer names have been
preserved. But they deserve notice as monuments of that aggressive
Church whose missionary labors rendered such grand service in the
Christianization of Western Europe. Of Caelius Sedulius there is enough
said in the chapter devoted to him and his acrostic hymn. Of Columcille
and the _Altus Deus prositor_ we have spoken above. The next name which
meets us is that of Ladkenus or Lathacan, an Irishman of the seventh
century, to whom is ascribed a hymn of the class called in Irish
_Luireach_ (or _lorica_), meaning a shield. There are two hymns of this
class ascribed to Patrick and to Columcille. The former, best known by
James Clarence Mangan’s version,
“At Tara to-day, in this awful hour,
I call on the holy Trinity!”
is probably not the work of the Apostle of Ireland; but as it, like that
of Columcille, is in Irish, it need not detain us here. The latter
begins,
“Alone am I upon the mountain,
O King of heaven, prosper my way,
And then nothing need I fear,
More than if guarded by six thousand.”
That of Lathacan, while possessing the same general character, as aiming
at a Christian substitute for the Druidical charms of the pagans, is on
a lower level both religiously and poetically. No less than eleven of
its twenty-three quatrains are occupied with the enumeration of the
parts of the human body, which are placed under divine protection, and
these may be not without interest to the students of the history of
physiological knowledge.
Many of the early Irish hymns are in the national language, which was at
that time the vehicle of a vigorous native poetry. Of those in Latin the
most beautiful is the Communion hymn,
“Sancti venite,
Christi corpus sumite,”
which both Daniel and Neale praise for its noble simplicity. An old
Irish legend, to which we need not pin our faith, represents Patrick and
his nephew Sechnall as hearing the angels sing it first, during the
offertory before the communion, and adds, “So from that time to the
present that hymn is chanted in Erinn when the body of Christ is
received.” Singing at the communion was not unusual in the early Church,
and Gregory of Tours has preserved an antiphon used at that sacrament
which closely resembles the Irish hymn. But it is now disused.
The hymn is found in the Bangor Antiphonary, an old Irish manuscript of
the seventh century, first published by Muratori in his _Anecdota_
(1697-98). From Bangor it had been carried to Bobbio, the famous
monastery founded on Italian soil by the Irish missionary Columbanus
after he had been driven out of Burgundy by the reigning powers. From
Bobbio it made its way to the Ambrosian Library at Milan, where Muratori
found it. It is one of the most interesting monuments of the early Irish
Church, and its hymns are given or indicated by Daniel in his fourth
volume. The first is a series of quintains, each for one of the
canonical hours. Then the _Hymnum dicat turba fratrum_, which already
Beda described as _hymnus ille pulcherrimus_, is found in a mutilated
form in the Antiphonary, and ascribed to Hilary. It is a terse rehearsal
of the facts of our Lord’s birth, life, passion, and resurrection.
Daniel suggests that it is one of the primitive hymns of the martyr-ages
of the Church to which Pliny refers, and brought into Latin from the
original Greek by some scholarly Briton or Irish man. Then a hymn in
commemoration of the Apostles (_Precamur Patrem_), of which also Daniel
thinks that Irish scholarship may have rendered from the Greek. Then a
morning hymn based on the Constantinopolitan creed (_Spiritus divinae
lucis gloriae_); and another in honor of the martyrs (_Sacratissimi
Martyres summi Dei_); the _Lorica_ of Lathacan; and two hymns in honor
of St. Patrick, one by Sechnall and the other by Fiacc. Daniel gives
only the former, which is an abecedary hymn. Both are full of the
marvellous—an element not wanting even in the contemporary documents of
Patrick’s life, and quite abundant in those of later date.
Besides these there are four other hymns which Mone has shown to be of
Irish authorship. The first is the _Jesus refulsit omnium_, which has
been ascribed to Hilary, but is shown not to be his not only by the
rhyme, but by the alliteration which marks it as originating in the
North of Europe. It is found in manuscripts, German and English, of the
eleventh century; but Mone ascribes it to an Irish author both because
of the strophe employed and because of the mixture of Greek words with
the Latin, the Irish being the best Greek scholars of the West, and
being not disinclined to show off their erudition in this way. Another
is an abecedary hymn, _Ad coeli clara non sum dignus sidera_, famous as
having been supposed by some stupid critic to be the lost evening hymn
which Hilary sent from the East to his daughter along with the _Lucis
largitor splendide_. It probably is as old as the sixth or seventh
century, both the structure of the verse and the allusions to pagan
beliefs and Christian heresies indicating that antiquity. The use of
alliteration and other peculiarities indicate an Irish author, but
probably a monk of Bobbio, as the accentuated Sapphic verse was in use
in that country. Here are seven of its most characteristic stanzas:
To the clear stars of heaven I am not worthy
The base eyes of my most sad behavior
Even to lift: weighed down with sorrows earthy,
Spare me, O Saviour.
Boon which I ought to show I have neglected,
Evil I did: no limit might resist me;
Crime by no secret conscience was rejected;
O Christ, assist me.
* * * * * * *
Leave me, O Lord, alone with my repenting,
Me from my birth all evil who inherit,
Give me but tears from depths of my consenting
Penitent spirit.
Mine, as I think, are vices so appalling
That the worst torments still will not withhold me,
Save as thy pity on a wretch is calling,
Glad to enfold me.
* * * * * * *
Rescue of earth, the only hope of mortals,
Equal with Father and with Holy Spirit
Three, and yet one beyond those viewless portals
Save by thy merit.
* * * * * * *
Xrist have I ever, in the faith most holy,
Praised with my lips and made a true confession;
Purely I spurned all heresy, nor slowly
Wrought my profession.
HYmns have I sung in Arius’s derision,
Barking Sabellian dog I have not favored,
Simon the swine, whose covetous base vision
Mine never favored.
S. W. D.
Besides this we have the _Cantemus omni die concenentes variae_, which
furnishes a remarkable combination of sustained rhyme with a free use of
alliteration; and two hymns in honor of Michael the Archangel, of which
the first is an abecedary, and has the same structural peculiarity.
Besides these there are other hymns in the _Leabhur Jomann_, or “Book of
Hymns,” in honor of St. Brigid (often confounded with the St. Birgitta
of Sweden) and other Irish saints—some in Latin and some in Irish. They
have been edited for the Irish Archaeological Society by Dr. J. H. Todd
(Dublin, 1855-69).
To the eighth century, the age of the Iconoclasts, of John of Damascus
and of Beda, we trace but few anonymous hymns. As we have said, the
_Urbs beata Hirusalem_ (with the _Angulare fundamentum_) may belong
here, and so may some in the Mozarabic Breviary. But as only the
manuscripts we have named and the “Psalter of the Queen of Sweden”—so
called because it once was the property of Queen Christine—go back to
this time, we can only guess which of the hymns marked as “very old” in
manuscripts of the eleventh and later centuries date back to this.
Niebuhr found in a tenth-century manuscript the pilgrim hymn _O Roma
nobilis, orbis et domina_, and published it in the _Rheinisches Museum_
(1829), and traced its accentual form of verse back to the old
folk-songs of Rome, such as the Roman soldiers may well have sung at the
triumph of Camillus, and certainly did so behind the golden triumphal
chariots of Caesar and Aurelian.
To this century some ascribe the hymn for martyrs, _Sanctorum meritis
inclyta gaudia_, which holds its place in a recast in the Roman
Breviary, and has occupied the attention of at least four English
translators. In the history of theology it is memorable as giving
Gottschalk a point by its use of the phrase _trina deitas_, to which
Archbishop Hincmar strongly objected.
Of the less notable hymn-writers of this century three belong to the
group of literary men whom Charles the Great gathered at his court or
employed in his administration. That Charles himself was a poet in any
sense we have no evidence, much less that he wrote the _Veni, Creator
Spiritus_. His biographer, Eginhard, tells us that although he spoke
Latin fluently—his native language, of course, being German—he never
fully acquired the art of writing, although he kept a tablet under his
pillow for the sake of practising. He was a keen lover of learning and a
generous patron of education. In one of his trips to Italy he
encountered at Parma an Englishman, chief of the Cathedral school at
York, and then on his way to Rome to obtain the _pallium_ for Archbishop
Eanbald. Charles offered him sufficient inducement to remove to the
Continent, and for fourteen years (782-96) Alcuin of York (735-804) was
Charles’s minister of education and head of the palace school, in which
both the king and his children studied. He was rewarded with various
abbacies, and in 796 he retired to one of them—that of St. Martin at
Tours—withdrawing from the not very admirable court of his patron to
spend his eight last years in study and devotion. He was succeeded by an
Irishman named Clemens, who brought over the Irish preference for Greek
philosophy, especially that of Plato, to Alcuin’s keen annoyance. In the
collections there are some half-dozen hymns ascribed to Alcuin, none of
which have made any marked impression. He was an honest, plodding,
unimaginative Englishman, such as still writes Latin verses at Eton or
Harrow, _invitâ Minervâ_, and as a matter of duty, not of necessity.
More notable for personal qualities was the Lombard, Paul Warnefried
(730-96), better known as Paul the Deacon (_Paulus Diaconus_), who had
witnessed the overthrow of the Lombard kingdom by Charles in 774, and
then withdrew to Monte Casino, where he became a Benedictine monk. He
attracted Charles’s attention in 781 by a poetical petition in behalf of
his brother Arichis, who had been carried beyond the Alps as a prisoner;
and the king invited him to his court. He returned to Monte Casino in
787. His most important work, the _De Gestis Longobardorum Libri Sex_,
is marked by a lively and patriotic interest in the legends, habits, and
fortunes of his own people. He has preserved for us much early Teutonic
lore, such as the poetical explanation of the origin of the name
“Lombard,” which Kingsley has worked into a poem in _Hypatia_. A Frank
he never became, and the rough soldiers of Charles’s court proposed to
cut off his hands and put out his eyes by way of resenting this. “God
forbid,” replied Charles, “that I should thus treat so excellent a poet
and a historian.” There are but two hymns which bear Paul Warnefried’s
name: one in commemoration of John the Baptist, and the other on the
miracles of Benedict of Nursia. The former, which frequently is divided
into three parts for different services on St. John’s day, is a hymn of
much merit, and still holds its place in the Roman Breviary. Its widest
fame is in connection with the history of music, as from its first verse
we derive the ordinary names of our musical notes. The verse runs,
_Ut_ queant laxis
_Re_sonare fibris
_Mi_ra gestorum
_Fa_muli tuorum,
_Sol_ve polluti
_La_bii reatum,
Sancte Johannes.
The tune composed for the hymn in the Middle Ages, or adapted to it, had
the peculiarity that each half verse began on one of the bars of the
staff, and each a note higher than the last. This suggested, possibly to
Guido of Arezzo in the eleventh century, the possibility of using these
first syllables as a mnemonic device to fix the pitch of each note on
the memory of those who were learning to sing. Guido, in a letter to his
friend Michael, describes the device in terms which suggest that it was
his own. But there is no warrant for the assumption often made in this
connection that he devised the musical staff. That was in use in England
as early as 1016, while Guido wrote about 1067.
A third of Charles’s _protégés_ was Paulinus, whom he made patriarch of
Aquileia (726-804), and who is specified by George Cassander as the
author of three extant hymns. One of these, the _Refulgit omnia luce
mundus aurea_, is thought by Mone to belong to the sixth or seventh
century. It is in the ornate style of his namesake of Nola and his
imitator Elpis, so that it may be the work of the older Paulinus. It
possesses a philological interest as being written in the _lingua
rustica_, or provincial and countrified Latin, out of which the Romance
languages were developed. Paulinus of Aquileia was a German, who took an
active part in the controversies of his times, as may be seen from his
prose works. Walafrid Strabo in the next century speaks of him as a
hymn-writer; but it is impossible to say how many, if any, of the hymns
which stand in his name are his work.
The ninth century is much more fertile in hymns than either the seventh
or the eighth. It is the age of Charles the Great as Emperor, of Rabanus
Maurus and Hincmar, and of John Scotus Erigena; and it witnessed the
founding of the school of sequence-singers at St. Gall. To this century
has been traced the beautiful paschal sequence _Victimae paschali laudes
immolent Christiani_, one of the few which hold their place in the Roman
Missal. Kehrein, on what seems to him good authority, ascribes the
sequence to Wipo, the Burgundian chaplain of the Emperor Conrad II., and
the tutor of Henry II., who has left us several poems on historical
events of his time, besides a prose life of Conrad and two didactic
poems for the edification of Henry. He was a man of unusual acquaintance
with classical literature, which probably led to his selection as tutor
to the young prince. All this makes Kehrein’s ascription of the sequence
to him have an air of probability, which, however, is weakened, if not
destroyed, by a comparison of this with his undoubted poems. These
employ both the classic hexameter and the rhymed verse of his own age;
but in neither does he show the fine ear for rhythm which the author of
the _Victimae paschali laudes_ must have possessed. The sequence was one
of those Easter hymns in which Luther took such delight, and which he
describes in general terms in his _House-Postill_: “In the time of
popery many fine hymns were sung! He that broke up hell, and overcame
the very Devil therein, therewith the Lord redeemed his Christendom.”
Elsewhere in the same book he calls this “a very beautiful hymn,”
especially finding delight in the second verse, _Mors et Vita duello
conflixere mirando: Dux vitae mortuus regnat vivus_. “Make it who will,
he must have had a high and Christian understanding to have painted this
picture with such fine gracefulness.” In his commentary on Hosea, he
again quotes it with especial praise.
To this ninth century Koch assigns the _Virginis proles opifexque
matris_, which still holds its place in the Roman Breviary in a revised
form. Less offensive to Protestant ears is the brief and beautiful
sequence, probably of this century, _Quod chorus vatum_, which Mr. Blew
has translated for his _Church Hymn and Tune-Book_ (1855), and the
editor of the _Lyra Messianica_ has copied. Here also belongs the _Ad
Dominum clamaveram_, which is one of the earliest attempts at a metrical
treatment of the Psalms. It consists largely of extracts from the
fifteen Psalms of Degrees. Here also belongs the _Iste confessor
Domini_, which still holds its place in the Roman Breviary.
Of the less-known hymn-writers we may name the younger Prudentius, who,
like his greater namesake, was a Spaniard by birth, his family probably
being one of the many which took refuge in France from the rule of the
Saracens. Indeed, he assumed the name out of compliment to the elder
poet—a practice very reprehensible in the eyes of hymnologists, as
increasing the amply sufficient confusion which hangs around the
identity of hymn-writers. He was one of the most learned men of his
time, and had the manliness to defend the Augustinian doctrine of
predestination against Hincmar of Rheims, at the time when Gottschalk
had brought it into ill repute by his paradoxical statement of it. But
he and Hincmar found common ground in opposing John Scotus Erigena, who
asserted that the whole controversy grew out of the ascription of
temporal existence to the divine and eternal mind. His hymns are lost to
us, those ascribed to him being certainly not of his authorship, unless
perhaps the _Virgo Dei genetrix_.
Servatus Lupus (805-63), abbot of Ferrières, was one of the many pupils
of Rabanus Maurus, who rose to eminence in the Church of this age, and
were employed by the Karling kings in public affairs. His best monument
is his letters, which give us a vivid picture of a time of disorder, and
of a man of genuine capacity and honest purpose. His hymns in praise of
St. Wigbert are of less worth.
Much more important is Theodulph of Orleans (_ob._ 821), the author of a
single hymn, which has preserved his memory not less by its own merits
than by its association with a beautiful but unhistorical legend of its
authorship. He, too, was of Spanish birth and Gothic stock. He was
honored and trusted by Charles the Great, and was one of the witnesses
to his will. He was strongly imperialist in his politics, both before
and after Charles’s death opposing the inevitable separation of France
from Germany, especially in his poems to Charles and his sons, which are
among the best of that age. In 818, however, he was implicated justly or
unjustly in the rebellion of Bernard, King of Italy, against his uncle
the emperor, and was imprisoned three years. While in prison he
composed, tradition says, the hymn for Palm Sunday, _Gloria, laus et
honor_, together with other poems, as the pastime of weary hours. The
story runs that it was to the hymn he owed his liberation. On Palm
Sunday of 821 the Emperor Lewis the Pious was at Angers, where the
Bishop of Orleans was imprisoned in a monastery. Through an open window,
when the emperor was within hearing, he sang the hymn, which so moved
his heart that he gave orders to set the prisoner at liberty. Another
version of the story is that he had taught it to the children of the
church, who sang it before the emperor. The legend is discredited by the
fact that in 821 there was a general amnesty for political offenders,
which must have given him his liberty. He died within the year, by
poison it is said.
To make the list complete we add the names of Ermanrich (_ob._ 840),
abbot of Ellwangen in Würtemberg; Drepanius Florus (_ob._ 860), deacon
of the church of Lyons; Eric, a monk at Saint-Germain at Auxerre, and
Paul Alvarez of Cordova (_ob._ 861)—all of whom have left us hymns in
commemoration of saints.
In the chapter on Notker a full account has been given of the three
principal singers of St. Gall—Notker Balbulus, Tutilo, and Hartmann.
There are two lesser sequence-writers of that monastery who belong to
the same (ninth) century—Ratpert and Waltram. Ratpert (_ob._ 900), like
Notker, was a pupil of the Irishman Möngal. He was of noble family and
born in the neighborhood of Zurich, and made such proficiency that he
was entrusted with the oversight of the outer school at St. Gall. His
“proses” were composed especially for processional use and for
pilgrimages, and therefore are not sequences in the strict sense. To
adapt them to this use he fitted them with refrains, which might be
caught up by those who had little familiarity with Latin. The _Rex
sanctorum angelorum_ is the best known of them. But most important is
his position as the first in point of time of the German hymn-writers.
He wrote a German hymn in honor of St. Gall (_fecit carmen barbaricum
populo in laude Sancti Galli canendum_), of which unfortunately we have
only Ekkehard’s Latin translation, made a century later.
Waltram never rose above the rank of deacon at St. Gall. He was more
famous for his poems on secular themes, written to the music of the
sequences, than for sequences proper. But one of the latter is ascribed
to him.