THE UNKNOWN AND THE LESS KNOWN HYMN-WRITERS.
[Tenth to Sixteenth Century.]
The tenth century—the century of the Danes, of the Normans, of the
Othos, of the Olafs, of Dunstan, and of Cordova as a centre of
philosophic and scientific culture—saw the general establishment of
Christianity among the Teutonic peoples of Northern Europe. It was not
rich in great Churchmen, great men of letters, or great hymn-writers. We
find in it no name great enough to deserve a separate chapter. Yet Odo
of Cluny and Fulbert of Chartres, the two Ekkehards, and Rupert of St.
Gall are enough to show that it was not altogether barren.
This dark age was a time when the worship of Mary and the saints,
already on the increase in previous ages, made rapid advances. The
practice of formal canonization of the saints dates from 993. Perhaps
the most characteristic hymn of the century is the _Ave Maris stella_,
which has been ascribed to Venantius Fortunatus of the sixth century,
but cannot be older than the tenth. Daniel’s final judgment was that a
St. Gall MS. proves it to belong here, although he formerly had thought
it might be as early as the sixth century. Moll and Mone, however, would
put it even later, on the theory that it borrows from one of Hermann of
Reichenau’s sequences. It is one of the favorite hymns of the Roman
Catholic Church, being found in all the breviaries, and assigned for use
not only at the Annunciation, to which it properly belongs, but to
others of the many festivals in honor of our Lord’s mother. In the
following version Mr. Duffield has given the easy form of the original:
Hail, thou star of ocean,
God’s own mother mortal,
Virgin ever perfect,
Heaven’s own blessed portal.
Bright with such a message,
Gabriel gave thee greeting;
Grant us, then, thy favor,
Eve’s defeat defeating.
Loose the prisoner’s bondage,
Give the blind their vision,
Drive all evils from us,
Pray for our condition.
Show thyself our mother,
Let thy prayer avail us
With thy Son, our Saviour,
Born that naught should fail us.
Virgin pure and only,
Mild among all others,
Make us free from sinning,
Meek beyond our brothers.
To this century or later we must assign the _Martyr Dei qui unicum_,
which (as _Invicte Martyr unicum_) still holds its place in the Roman
Breviary; and the _Jesu Redemptor omnium_, which is similarly honored.
Odo of Cluny (879-943) is the first of the three poets who have adorned
that famous monastic house. He was dedicated before his birth to St.
Martin, by his father, a courtier of the Duke of Aquitaine, and became a
monk at Tours in fulfilment of this vow. He got such education as the
times furnished, going to Paris for the sake of finding the best
schools. He then joined the congregation of three monasteries recently
founded by Bernon, who was abbot of them all. At the death of Bernon he
became the second abbot of Cluny, and it speaks ill for either Bernon or
the age that he found his work to be that of a monastic reformer even in
a young monastery. He was the most considerable figure in the French
Church of his time, and his advice and mediation were sought on all
sides. As his name was a very usual one, a long series of books he did
not write has been fathered on him, what he really left being a
collection of addresses to his monks (_Collationes_), some sermons, and
a few hymns, about four in all. Of these Dr. Neale has translated the
_Lauda, mater ecclesiae, lauda Christi_, and Mr. Chambers the _Aeterni
Patris unice_. They commemorate Mary Magdalene, identifying her, of
course, with Mary of Bethany, as Church tradition does.
Fulbert of Chartres (950-1028) was to France, in the second half of this
century of disorder and transition, what Odo was in the first. He also
was from Aquitaine, and possibly of a noble family, although he seems to
contradict his biographers on that point when he says,
“non opibus nec sanguine fretus
Conscendi cathedram, pauper, de sorde levatus.”
He studied at Rheims under the great scholar Gerbert, afterward Pope
Sylvester II.—“a pope,” as Dr. Döllinger says, “who was held in great
honor as the most learned scholar and the most enlightened spirit of his
time,” but afterward was regarded as an expert in the black art, and
even as having sold himself to Satan. From him Fulbert at least learned
no black arts. Transferred in 968 to Chartres as chancellor of the
cathedral, with charge of its school, he made the place a centre of
attraction to students from three nations. His scholars called him “the
Frankish Socrates,” and frequent is the reference in writers of the next
generation to the delightful fellowship they had with this bright-minded
and devout master, who taught the science of both natural and divine
things, entering into right human relations with each of them, and
pointing them to that knowledge which is life eternal. Even after Robert
II. elevated him to the bishopric of Chartres, in 1007, he found time to
take part in the work of teaching, which he so much loved. He died in
1028.
His letters are his chief monument, and they give us an unattractive
picture of his age. One of them denounces bishops who have become
soldiers as unworthy of the name. Others tell of the murder, in the very
porch of the cathedral, of a priest he had made the sub-dean of the
cathedral at Sens. The friends of a rival candidate killed him, with the
alleged connivance of the bishop of Sens! In yet another he takes to
task Constance, the shrew whom a just Providence awarded to Robert II.
as his last wife. His sermons are less notable, and much given to
Mariolatry. His hymns are few in number, but one of them, the _Chorus
novae Hirusalem_, is a Whitsunday hymn of much beauty, yet it has not
commended itself to the compilers of the Roman Breviary. Mone remarks
that it unites classic metre with rhyme, which is true also of his hymn
in commemoration of Martin of Tours, _Inter patres monachalis_.
The fifth abbot of Cluny, Odilo (962-1048), was a dear friend of
Fulbert’s, and lamented his death. He continued the work of monastic
reform begun by Odo, which made Cluny the centre of monastic energy and
life in this age. Especially was the severity of the restored rule of
Benedict, as practised at Cluny, opposed to the laxer order established
by the Irish monks in Germany. So absorbed was he in this work that he
refused to be made Archbishop of Lyons. Fulbert called him “the
archangel of the monks.” He also wrote hymns, but there are none that we
can attach with certainty to his name.
The same is true of Salvus, abbot of a cloister in the Christian kingdom
of Navarre. Heriger, abbot of Lobbes (940-1009), a Flemish Benedictine
and hagiologist, of great renown as an educator and a scholar, has left
one hymn, _Ave per quam_, and two antiphons, in honor of the Apostle
Thomas. Theodoric of Monte Casino wrote a hymn in honor of St. Maurus.
To the eleventh century we owe the beginnings of many things—rag paper,
Gothic architecture, our modern musical notation, the crusades, the
troubadours, the peace of God, the Norman rule in England. It is the
century of Hildebrand, of Peter Damiani, of Anselm of Canterbury, of the
great struggle to establish the celibacy of the clergy and to abolish
lay patronage in the Church. It is not rich in hymn-writers, but it has
some minor names and anonymous hymns worthy of notice.
To this century belongs the manuscript collection of old English hymns
in Latin which the Rev. Joseph Stevenson edited for the Surtees Society
in 1851 (_Latin Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church, with an Interlinear
Saxon Gloss. From a manuscript of the Eleventh Century in Durham
Library_). While many of them are found equally in the breviaries and
hymnaries of the Continent, there is a large number which seem to be
peculiar to the English Church, and have not been traced to any
continental source. None of these are very great hymns, and their
importance to us is partly from our interest in the work of our English
ancestors, and partly from the preference shown to them by modern
English translators. But such work as _Annis peractis mensibus_ and
_Nuntium nobis fero de supernis_ is more than respectable. In this
manuscript is found the beautiful hymn for Septuagesima and succeeding
Sundays, _Alleluia, dulce carmen_, which therefore may be an old English
hymn. It was written in accordance with the old usage that “Alleluia!”
should be sung frequently on that and the following Sundays in
preparation for Lent. To this century Koch assigns the abecedarian hymn,
_A patre unigenitus_, which gets almost through the alphabet in twenty
lines, but is better than this would indicate, or Mr. Chambers would not
have translated it. Here belongs the _Audi, tellus, audi_, which
unfortunately is only partly preserved in its original and unexpanded
form. It is a judgment hymn, but not one of the greatest. The Lutherans
used it for some time after the Reformation, and Dr. Washburn has
translated it. The enlarged form recalls the _Cur mundus militat_ of
Jacoponus. Du Méril has published a Christmas hymn of this century,
_Congaudeat turba fidelium_, whose first six verses indicate its popular
use by their refrain, “In Bethlehem!” It bears a close resemblance to
many of the fifteenth century, and may have been their model. To the
same editor we owe the terse and spirited Easter hymn of this same
century, _Mitis agnus, leo fortis_, which has found several English
translators. To this century or, at latest, to the next, we must assign
the very beautiful hymn in commemoration of Stephen the Protomartyr,
_Sancte Dei pretiose_, whose popularity seems to have made it especially
tempting to the hymn-tinkers of the Middle Ages. It is found in two
other forms, both of them much watered; “but nobody likes inspiration
and water,” as Lowell says.
To Anselm of Canterbury, the great archbishop and theologian, seven
hymns are assigned in the collections. They are so much below the level
of the _Cur Deus Homo_, the _Monologion_, and the _Prosologion_ of that
great master, as to suggest that they are the work of one of the lesser
Anselms—for the name was a common one in that age—and that they have
been assigned to him by the eagerness of his editors to swell his works,
as has been done with many prose treatises. One of the best is a long
“Prayer to the Lord and all His Saints,” beginning _Deus, pater
credentium_, of which Mr. Duffield says, in a manuscript note, that it
“contains many excellent stanzas.” There is another, “To Mary and all
the Saints,” nearly as long, which shows the author’s training in a
French school by its use of the assonance. Yet another on Mary
alone—_Lux quae luces in tenebris_—which has been broken into eight
brief hymns for the canonical hours. Christ as the Son and Mary herself
are invoked in alternate verses.
Better than any of these is a little hymn which is his in the sense of
being based on a fine passage of his prose meditations. This “second
Augustine,” like the first, was happier as an occasion of poetry in
other men, than in his own verses. Here it is:
TO THE HOLY SPIRIT.
Veni jam veni
Benignissime,
Dolentis animiae
Consolator,
Promptissimus
In opportunatibus
Et tribulationibus
Adjutor!
Veni fortitude fragilium,
Relevator labentium
Veni doctor humilium
Destructor superborum,
Pius pater orphanorum,
Dulcis vindex viduarum.
Veni spes pauperum,
Refocillator deficientium!
Veni navigantium
Sidus,
Naufragantium
Portus!
Veni omnium viventium
Singulare decus,
Morientium
Unica salus,
Veni Sancte Spiritus!
Come, yea and quickly come,
Thou gentlest guest,
To them of sorrowing mind,
Consoler blest!
Thou swiftest help and guide
In every chance,
And in our sharp distress
Deliverance.
Come, courage of the coward breast,
Who raisest them that sink oppressed!
Come, teacher of the humble, thou
Who bringest pride to dust,
Thou Father of the fatherless,
The widow’s stay and trust.
Come, thou hope of poverty,
Reviving from despondency.
Come, thou of sailing souls
The Star;
Come, thou the port of them
Which shipwrecked are!
Come, thou the one renown
Of all that live;
Come, thou the single trust
Which death can give;
Come, Holy Spirit!
Another Anselm of this century is the Bishop of Lucca, who died 1086,
and to whom is ascribed a long meditative poem on our Lord’s life, in a
kind of rhymed verse which is much more frequently met in the narrative
or humorous poems of the next century, called Goliardic. It does not
belong to the lyric poetry of the Church, although a spirited hymn has
been extracted by Herbert Kynaston from the passage given by Trench.
(See _Lyra Messianica_, pp. 283, 284.) Anselm was a weak man caught in
the storm of the controversy over investitures, and would have ended his
days as a monk of Cluny, if Gregory VII. had not forbidden him. It is
said that, although he had written in defence of the claims of Gregory
against the anti-pope Guibert, he finally joined Guibert’s party before
his death.
Godefroy or Geofroy, Abbot of Vendome, is another hymn-writer who was
mixed up in that controversy, but remained steadfast on the papal side.
He belongs both to this and the next century, having been made abbot in
1094, and lived on till 1129 at least. Twelve times he crossed the Alps
in the interest of the papacy, and was rewarded for his zeal by a
cardinalate. His letters still preserve for us the picture of a zealous
ultramontane churchman; but his four “proses”—one about our Lord’s
mother and three on Mary Magdalene—are of less importance.
To Heribert (_ob._ 1042), Bishop of Eichstetten, in modern Baden
(anciently part of Swabia), Migne (_Patrologia_, 141) ascribes a number
of hymns, which previously had borne no other name in the collections.
His dominant tendency as a hymn-writer is shown by the fact that he
wrote five hymns beginning _Ave Maria, gratia plena_, none of which,
however, is the well-known hymn beginning with those words. That belongs
to a later century. The best of his hymns are that to all saints, _Omnes
superni ordines_, and that to the cross, _Salve crux sancta, salve mundi
gloria_, of which Prior Aylward has furnished a spirited version to Mr.
Shipley’s _Annus Sanctus_. Of the author we can learn nothing more than
his date and location.
The succession of sequence-writers in Southern Germany was kept up
through this century by Gottschalk and the fourth Ekkehard of St. Gall.
Of Gottschalk we know little more than that he studied under a master,
Heinrich, in an unnamed monastery of South Germany, to whom Schubiger
(_Die Sängerschule St. Gallens_, 1858) assigns the _Ave praeclara Maris
stella_ (see p. 163), on the authority of a manuscript he believes to be
older than Hermann Contractus. Of Gottschalk’s own sequences there are
but three which certainly are his, and they all are prosy. If he and not
some French Gottschalk of this century be the author of the _O Deus,
miseri misereri servi_, which Daniel (IV., 173) copies from Du Méril, it
is better than any of his sequences. Du Méril inclines to ascribe it to
the Gottschalk of the ninth century, whom we met in the history of
Rabanus Maurus. Ekkehard IV. is memorable only for his Latin version of
the German hymn by Ratpert in honor of St. Gall, of which the original
is lost.
The twelfth century is that of the great Crusades, of Bernard and
Abelard, and Peter the Venerable, and Hildebert and Adam of St. Victor.
The age also of Thomas Becket, Peter Lombard, and Saladin. The Civil Law
was rediscovered at Amalfi; the Canon Law digested by Gratian; the
age-long conflict of Guelphs and Ghibellines began, to end only with the
political ruin of Germany and the dismemberment of the Empire.
It was a time of great intellectual activity in Western Europe. The
universities took their rise now, although not known by that name till
the next century. In the national literatures of France and Germany it
was the springtime of a new age—the age of the troubadours and the
trouvères, of the Minnesingers, and the popular romances. In Latin
hymnology no century was more fertile in great things than this.
Of the anonymous hymns traced to this century there are several of great
beauty. The hymn on the Apostles, _Exultet coelum laudibus_, holds its
place in the Roman Breviary in a much diluted revision. It shows a close
study of Scripture and great command of terse expression. The Easter
hymn, _Finita jam sunt praelia_, generally is given with a double
Alleluia prefixed. Daniel refers it to this century; Neale to the next.
It is known to English readers by the versions of Rev. Francis Pott
(“The strife is o’er, the victory won!”) and of Dr. Neale (“Finished is
the battle now”), both of great merit. Exactly the same difference of
authorities we find as to the date of the _O filii et filiae_, another
Easter hymn of great beauty and still more honored by the preferences of
the translators, but ignored by the collectors, Professor March
excepted. The Passion hymn, _Patris Sapientia, veritas divina_, has been
bandied about among many supposed authors, two popes of the fourteenth
century included. It is in the “Goliardic” metre we find in Anselm of
Lucca, which was widely used in the satirical poetry of this century. It
therefore probably belongs here, and may be the work of the “Egidius
Episcopus” specified in one copy of the hymn. A third Easter hymn, the
_Surrexit Christe hodie_, may be as old as this century, as there is a
German hymn of this century which borrows from it, _Christus ist
erstanden_. In its Latin, indeed, lies the germ of many later Easter
hymns, including that of Charles Wesley, “Christ the Lord is risen
to-day.” It is itself the simplest and truest expansion of the Easter
morning greeting of the early Christian Church, when its members, as
they met each other on the street on that Sunday, substituted “Christ is
risen!” for the usual “Peace be with you!” That was the word of
confession by which the Church’s Easter joy in the triumph of good over
evil, light over darkness, the spiritual springtide over spiritual
winter, was proclaimed to a joyless and despairing world.
To this century also belongs the Advent sequence, _Veni, veni Emmanuel!_
So Dr. Neale thinks, but Professor Daniel hesitates. It undoubtedly is
based on the eight “Greater Antiphons,” which were sung at the Vesper
service on the eight days preceding Christmas (_O Sapientia_, etc.), of
which a metrical version by Lord Nelson and others is in the Hymnal of
the Episcopal Church. At least as old as this century is the very
beautiful sequence on the life of Christ, _In sapientia disponens
omnia_, which Mone found in a MS. of this century, and Trend (_Lyra
Mystica_) and Crippen have translated. The two halves of the sequence
differ in a marked way in their metrical structure.
Of the lesser hymn-writers of the century, Marbod is the most
productive. Like Fulbert and Odilo, he might as well be credited to the
last century as to this. He was the son of a fur dealer at Angers, named
Robert, became Bishop of Rennes, and died a monk at St. Aubin in 1123.
He had the fighting qualities of the Angevins, whose churches are full
of the tombs not of saints, but of armed warriors, Michelet says. He
took such an active and aggressive part in a dispute over the election
of a bishop of Angers that the other party made him their prisoner and
carried him out of the _mélée_. But it was his eminence as a Latin poet
for which his age most valued him. When he died the monks of St. Aubin
announced the fact in a circular letter, and Ulger, Bishop of Angers,
anticipated the extravagance of Dryden’s epigram on Milton in his
praises of his friend:
“Cessit ei Cicero, cessit Maro
Junctus Homero.”
Beaugendre in 1708 collected his poems and published them along with
those of his contemporary, Hildebert of Tours. They are mostly versified
legends of the saints, with a long poem, _De Gemmis_, interesting and
curious as showing the “mystical” associations of the mediaeval mind
with precious stones. From this Mone gives the interpretation of the
precious stones in the heavenly Jerusalem, beginning _Cives coelestis
patriae_. More hymn like in character is the _Deus-Homo rex coelorum_,
which Chancellor Benedict has translated from Trench’s anthology:
Deus-Homo, Rex coelorum,
Miserere Miserorum;
Ad peccandum proni sumus,
Et ad humum redit humus;
Tu ruinam nostri fulci
Pietate tua dulci.
Quid est homo, proles Adae
Germen necis, dignum clade.
Quid est homo nisi vermis,
Res infirma, res inermis.
Ne digneris huic irasci,
Qui non potest mundus nasci
Noli Deus, hunc damnare,
Qui non potest non peccare;
Judicare non est equum
Creaturam, non est tecum;
Non est miser homo tanti,
Ut respondeat Tonanti.
Sicut umbra, sicut fumus,
Sicut foenum facti sumus;
Miserere, Rex coelorum,
Miserere miserorum.
Thou God-man in heaven above us,
Look upon us, Lord, and love us.
We to sin are always tending,
Earth with earth is always blending.
Thou, O Lord, from ruin save us
Through the hope thy goodness gave us.
What is man from Adam springing?
Born of sin, destruction bringing.
What is man but worm degraded,
Weak and helpless when unaided?
Make not him thy wrath inherit,
Who cannot thy favor merit.
Born to be a sinful being;
Damn him not, thou God all-seeing.
To condemn thy helpless creature
Is not worthy of thy nature;
Wretched man is not sufficient,
Lord, to answer the omniscient.
Made like smoke and shadow fleeting,
Like the hay the tempest meeting,
Pity, Lord in heaven above us,
Wretched sinners! save and love us.
There are two notable sequences attributed to the nun Hildegard of
Bingen (1104-78), a visionary and prophetess who commanded the respect
of Bernard and his pupil, Pope Eugenius, by her castigations of the
disorders of Christendom, as did Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of
Sienna in a later period. There is extant a letter of hers to Bernard,
written during his visit to Germany to preach the second crusade, in
which she explains in very imperfect Latin the nature of her gift. Her
life was begun by Gottfried and finished by Theodorich, monk of Trier. A
comparison of her works—the _Scivias_ and the _Liber Divinorum
Operum_—with the letter to Bernard on the one hand, and Theodorich’s
part of the biography on the other, makes it very evident that the monk
wrote her works as well as her life; and how much of her genuine
prophecies he worked into them we are unable to say. It therefore is not
decisive as to her authorship that the _O ignis Spiritûs Paracliti_ and
the _O virga ac diadema_ are found in the manuscripts of her works, and
that Theodorich vouches for the former. The author of these sequences
had no acquaintance with the metrical principles of the school of St.
Gall, and seems to have taken the Latin psalter as a model. Dr.
Littledale, in his version of the former, substitutes a stricter
metrical form.
Pierre de Corbeil was successively teacher of theology at Paris—where he
had Innocent III. among his pupils—Bishop of Cambray, and in 1200
Archbishop of Sens. Innocent employed him on important missions, and he
was a man of note in the Church and State of his age. A manuscript still
preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris contains a satire on
married men which is ascribed to him (_Satyra adversus eos qui Uxores
ducunt_). But it is a very different kind of poem which entitles him to
mention here, his hymn
TRINITAS, UNITAS, DEITAS.
Trinity, unity, Deity
Eternal;
Majesty, potency, purity
Supernal!
Stone and mountain, rock and fountain,
Breath and bridge most certain,
Travelled way;
Sun and light and brightness, snowy peak in whiteness,
Perfect day!
Thou art lover and giver,
Creator, receiver,
Redeemer,
And door unto life;
Thou art favor and fitness
And splendor and brightness
And fragrance,
Where deadness is rife.
Thou art highest and nighest;
Of monarchs the king, and of statutes the spring,
And the judge—
Whom angels adore:
These laud thee, applaud thee,
And chant in their song, as they praise loud and long,
Whom they love—
Thy saints evermore.
Thou art greatness and oneness—
The flower as it shineth, the rose as it twineth;
Then rule us and save us
And bring us before thee
In glory
And joy, we implore thee.
Thou art God in thy justice
And trueness and goodness;
Thou art wholly and solely
The Lord!—
To thee be the glory
Which saints, in the highest, accord.
Pietro Gonella, a Franciscan monk of Tortona in Piedmont, is the reputed
author of a long meditative poem on the miseries and follies of life and
the certainty of death and judgment, which Du Méril found in a
manuscript of this century. If he be not mistaken as to the date of the
manuscript, of course, Eug. de Levis (_Anecdota Sacra_, Turin, 1789) is
wrong in ascribing it to Pietro, as there were no Franciscans in the
twelfth century. The chronology is important because of the relation of
the poem to the _Dies Irae_. In point of metrical form they differ only
in this _Heu! Heu! mala mundi vita_ (better known as the _Cum revolvo
toto corde_, from the opening line of its second part), having four
lines to the verse instead of three. In point of sense the resemblances
are so striking as to suggest that Thomas of Celano has ploughed with
the heifer of his earlier countryman. In proof of this take these
stanzas:
Terret me dies terroris,
Irae dies et furoris,
Dies luctus et moeroris,
Dies ultrix peccatoris.
Veniet Judex de coelis,
Testis verax et fidelis,
Veniet et non silebit,
Judicabit nec timebit.
Expavesco quidem multum
Venturi Judicis vultum,
Cui latebit nil occultum,
Et manebit nil inultum.
Juste quidem judicabit,
Nec personam acceptabit,
Pretio non corrumpetur,
Sed nec precibus flectetur.
Et quis nostrûm non timebit,
Quando Judex apparebit,
Ante quem ignis ardebit,
Peccatores qui delebit.
Judicabit omnes gentes
Et salvabit innocentes,
Arguet omnes potentes
Et deliciis fluentes.
Especially notable are the stanzas:
Dies illa, dies vitae,
Dies lucis inauditae,
Et mors ipsa morietur,
Qua nox omnis destruetur.
Jam festinat rex coelestis,
Judex noster atque testis,
Festinanter apparebit,
Omnis caro quem videbit.
Ecce Rex desideratus
Et a justis expectatus
Jam festinat exoratus,
Ad salvandum praeperatus.
Apparebit nec tardabit,
Veniet et demonstrabit
Gloriam, quam praestolantur,
Qui pro fide tribulantur.
If nothing whatever had been known as to the date of the two poems, we
should have pronounced this an expansion of the _Dies irae, dies illa_
by a later poet, who had two objects in view: the first, to sharpen to
the conscience of his readers the warnings of the impending judgment;
the second, to complete the poem by bringing the joys of the judgment
more prominently into view. And with all respect for Edelestand du
Méril’s judgment, we would like to have more light on the date of his
manuscript.
A manuscript still preserved at Liege in Belgium contains the letters of
Guido of Basoches, which is either Bas-oha, a village near that city,
or, as Mone thinks, a place near Châteaudun in France. Among these
letters are given a number of hymns, which he sends to his
correspondents. They show some power of versification, but nothing more,
and are defaced by conceits and puns. Thus he puts the name of Stephen
through the six cases of the Latin grammar in as many verses of a hymn.
There are five writers of this century, each of whom is credited with a
single hymn. Rudolph of Radegg, a schoolmaster of Einsiedeln, wrote a
hymn in honor of St. Meinrad, which begins _Nunc devota silva tota_. To
Thomas Becket is ascribed the _Gaude Virgo, Mater Christi, Quia..._. It
is said to be his in a manuscript of the fifteenth century. To another
Englishman, Bertier, is ascribed the only Latin hymn in the collections
which relates directly to the Crusades, _Juxta Threnos Jeremiae_. It
first appears in the chronicle of Roger of Hoveden, with the statement
that Bertier wrote it in 1188. Last is Aelred (1104-66), who seems to
have been a lowland Scotchman by birth, and to have shared the education
of Henry, son of King David of Scotland. King David wished to make him a
bishop, but he preferred the life of a monk. He made his way to the
Cistercian monastery at Rievaulx in Yorkshire (not Revesby in
Lincolnshire, as some say), and there spent his days, becoming abbot in
1146. That he was a most lovable man we must infer from his sermons to
his monks. He is one of the few preachers in Dr. Neale’s _Mediaeval
Preachers and Preaching_ (London, 1856), of whom we wish for more. His
epitaph likens him, among others, to Bernard of Clairvaux, and the
comparison is apposite. He was an English Bernard, with less personal
force and grasp of intellect, but with the same gentleness and
friendliness. His one hymn is the _Pax concordat universa_, which is
found in his works, but not in any of the collections. The theme is
congenial.
The thirteenth century, the century of Francis and Dominic, of Aquinas
and Bonaventura, of Thomas of Celano and Jacoponus, is the age of the
giants.
Its anonymous hymns worthy of special mention are few in number. One of
the most beautiful is the Easter hymn, _Cedit frigus hiemale_, in which
the coincidence of Easter with spring furnishes the starting-point. It
is probably French. The _Ave quem desidero_ is a rosary hymn, which
rehearses our Lord’s life, with a verse for each of the beads, which
surely is better than the usual _Ave Marias_. The use of rosaries is
very ancient—pre-Christian even—but it was with the rise of the
Dominican Order in this century that it became a sanctioned practice.
The _Jesu Salvator seculi_ and the _O Trinitas laudabilis_ have been
traced no further back than to this age; but they preserve the tone and
style of the school of Ambrose. So the _Mysteriorum signifer_, in honor
of the Archangel Michael, recalls an earlier age, while the _Jesu dulce
medicamen_ suggests the school of Bernard. This beautiful hymn has both
thoughtfulness and unction to commend it. It represents the sounder
tradition of Christian teaching in the mediaeval Church, and has been
neglected unduly by Protestant translators. Mr. Crippen is the only one
who has rendered it, and also the _Juste judex Jesu Christe_, a hymn of
the same age and much the same character. Notable Marian hymns are the
_Gaude virgo, stella Maris_, _Salve porta chrystallina_, and the _Verbum
bonum et suave_; with which may be named that to St. John, _Verbum Dei
Deo natum_, often ascribed to Adam of St. Victor, and certainly of his
school. Also of that school is the vigorous hymn in commemoration of St.
Paul, _Paulus Sion architecta_. We add the terse and forceful hymn in
commemoration of Augustine of Hippo, _Salve pater Augustine_, and the
still finer in commemoration of the martyrs of the Church, _O beata
beatorum martyrum certamina_, which has found translators in both Dr.
Neale and Mr. Chambers. It is defective, as making them and not Christ
the central theme.
St. Edmund, the archbishop who gave up the see of Canterbury because his
heart was broken between the demands of the Pope and the exactions of
the king, and died (1240) an exile in a French monastery, is credited
with two Marian hymns, one of which is a “psalter,” or hymn of one
hundred and fifty stanzas. They are not of great importance. Another is
ascribed to Robert Grosstete, Bishop of Lincoln (died 1253), one of the
great Churchmen who spoke the truth to the see of Rome. He was the
friend of Simon de Montfort and of the Friars, and the foremost
Churchman of England in his time, as zealous for the reformation of the
clergy of his diocese and the maintenance of the Church’s rights against
the King as for its relative independence of the Roman curia. The _Ave
Dei genetrix_ ascribed to him exists only in a revised and not improved
shape. Its twelve verses each begin with a word from the angelic
salutation. The author seems to have borrowed from a hymn of Peter
Damiani.
To Hugo, a Dominican monk, who was Bishop of Strasburg toward the close
of the century, and had taught theology with success, is ascribed the
_Ave mundi domina_, in which Mary is greeted as a fiddle—_Ave dulcis
figella_!
The fourteenth century, like the seventh, furnishes us with the name of
not a single hymn-writer of real eminence, and of very few who are not
eminent. Yet this century and the next exceed all others in the number
of the hymns, which either certainly were written in this age, or can be
traced no farther back. But the quality falls short as the quantity
increases. Mary and the saints are the favorite themes; and those two
great repositories of perverted praise, the second and third volumes of
Mone’s collection, bear emphatic witness to the extent to which the
hierarchy of saints and angels had come to eclipse the splendors of the
White Throne and even of the Cross. There is not a single hymn of the
highest rank which we can ascribe to these centuries of decay, when the
Middle Ages were passing to their death, to make way for the New
Learning and the Reformation. But the great revival, which first swept
over Italy and then reached Germany about 1470, which showed its power
in the revival of “strict observance” in the mendicant orders, in the
multiplication of new devotions and pilgrimages, and the accumulation of
relics—that revival which laid such a powerful grasp on young Martin
Luther and made a monk of him—bore abundant fruit in hymns both in Latin
and the vernacular languages. It is a sign of the new age that the
language consecrated by Church use no longer has a monopoly of
hymn-writing, but men begin to praise as well as to hear in their own
tongues the wonderful works of God.
The reverence for the Virgin reaches its height in the _Te Matrem
laudamus_ and the _Veni, praecelsa domina_, parodies of the _Te Deum_
and the _Veni, sancte Spiritus_, which have nothing but ingenuity and
offensiveness to commend them to Protestant readers. Of genuine poetical
merit are the _Regina coeli laetare_ and _Stella maris, O Maria_. Of the
deluge of hymns in commemoration of the saints, we notice only the
_Nardus spirat in odorem_, which indicates the growing worship of our
Lord’s grandmother, by which Luther was captivated; the _Collaudemus
Magdalena_ of the Sarum Breviary, which Daniel calls “a very sweet hymn”
(_suavissimus hymnus_). From it is extracted the _Unde planctus et
lamentum_, of which Mr. Duffield has made the following translation.
Both Mr. Chambers and Mr. Morgan have translated the whole hymn.
UNDE PLANCTUS ET LAMENTUM.
Whence this sighing and lamenting?
Why not lift thy heart above?
Why art thou to signs consenting,
Knowing not whom thou dost love?
Seek for Jesus! Thy repenting
Shall obtain what none might prove.
Whence this groaning and this weeping?
For the purest joy is thine;
In thy breast thy secret keeping
Of a balm, lest thou repine;
Hidden there whilst thou art reaping
Barren care for peace divine.
In the _Spe mercede et corona_ we have the Churchly view of Thomas
Becket’s career and its bloody end; and the _O Rex, orbis triumphator_
and _Urbs Aquensis, urbs regalis_ represent the German effort to raise
Charles the Great to a place among the saints of the calendar.
Hymns which deal with much greater themes are the metrical antiphon,
_Veni, sancte Spiritus, Reple_, whose early translations hold a high
place in German hymnology; the _Recolamus sacram coenam_, which Mone
well characterizes as a side-piece to the great communion hymn of Thomas
Aquinas, _Lauda, Sion, Salvatorem_. Like that, it aims at stating the
doctrine of Transubstantiation in its most paradoxical form (_stat esus
integer_). The century furnishes several pretty Christmas hymns—_En
Trinitatis speculum_, _Dies est laetitiae_, _Nunc angelorum gloria_,
_Omnis mundus jucundetur_, and _Resonet in laudibus_—all of German
origin seemingly and early known to the German people by translations.
This is the festival which the childlike and child-loving Teutons always
have made the most of; and these hymns, with others of the next century,
are among the earliest monuments of the fact. To this, or possibly the
next century, belongs the mystical prayer-hymn, _Anima Christi,
sanctifica me_, which came to be ascribed to Ignatius Loyola, because it
was a favorite with him.
The most notable hymn-writer of the century is Conrad, prior of Gaming,
a town in Lower Austria, where he lived during the reign of Charles IV.
(1350-78). We have his manuscript collection in a copy made in the next
century and preserved at München. It contains thirty-seven hymns which
probably are his, and many of them certainly so. Some certainly are
recasts of earlier hymns. Thus he has tinkered Hildebert’s great hymn,
without at all improving it. Most of his hymns relate to Mary, the
apostles, and the other saints of the Church. His hymns show a certain
facility in the use of Latin verse, but no force of original
inspiration. They are correct metrically and, from the standpoint of his
Church, theologically. The _O colenda Deitas_ is the most notable.
From the same quarter of Germany and the banks of the same Ems River,
Engelbert, Benedictine abbot of Admont in Styria (died 1331), offers us
a Marian psalter, which has been ascribed to Thomas Aquinas, but of
which two verses content even Mone. Aegidius, Archbishop of Burgos in
Spain, from 1295 to 1315, has written a hymn to the alleged portrait of
Christ impressed on the handkerchief of Veronica. It is in the
rollicking Goliardic metre, but the subject is handled with skill and
success. It has been conjectured that he is the author of the _Patris
sapientia_ in the same metre, which some put back to the twelfth century
and others ascribe to Pope Benedict XII., who died in 1342. This is one
of the many hymns to whose recitation an indulgence was attached.
That the fifteenth century saw the invention of printing is a cardinal
fact for the hymnologist. It was especially in the service of the Church
that the new art found employment, and more missals, breviaries, and
other Church books were printed between its discovery, in 1452, and the
beginning of the Reformation, than of any other class of books. From
this time, therefore, we have to deal with both written and printed
sources, and printing was the means of saving a multitude of good hymns
and sequences which else might have been lost utterly. The century also
witnesses that great revival of learning to whose advancement printing
contributed greatly, and which in its turn prepared men for the
Reformation. We have seen in the chapter on the two breviaries how it
affected the editing of old hymns and the writing of new. But this does
not begin until the sixteenth century.
As in the case of the preceding century, we are embarrassed by the
abundance of bad, mediocre, and middling good hymns, by the fewness of
those which are really good, and the absence of such as would be
entitled to take the highest rank. The best of the anonymous which we
can trace farther back than to the printed breviaries are the
continuation of the series of German Christmas hymns, whose beginning we
noticed in the fourteenth century. Such are the _In natali Domini_, the
_Nobis est natus hodie_, the _Quem pastores laudavêre_, the _Puer nobis
nascitur_, the _Eia mea anima_, the _Verbum caro factum est_, and the
_Puer natus in Bethlehem_. Of the last, Dr. A. R. Thompson’s translation
is as follows:
PUER NATUS IN BETHLEHEM.
The child in Bethlehem is born,
Hail, O Jerusalem, the morn!
Here lies he in the cattle-stall
Whose kingdom boundless is withal.
The ox and ass do recognize
This Child, their Master from the skies.
Kings from the East are journeying,
Gold, frankincense, and myrrh they bring.
Who, entering in turn the place,
The new King greet with lowly grace.
Seed of the woman lies he there,
And no man’s son, this Child so fair.
Unwounded by the serpent’s sting,
Of our own blood comes in the King.
Like us in mortal flesh is he,
Unlike us in his purity.
That so he might restore us men
Like to himself and God again.
Wherefore, on this his natal day,
Glad, to our Lord, we homage pay.
We praise the Holy Trinity,
And render thanks, O God, to thee!
What Ruskin remarks of the disposition of the art of the time to dwell
on the darker side of things—to insist on the seeming preponderance of
darkness over light, death over life—is seen also in its hymns. The
Advent hymn, _Veni, veni, rex gloriae_, is as gloomy a lucubration as
ever was associated with a Church festival. The _Homo tristis esto_,
which is a study of the Lord’s passion apart from His resurrection, is
hardly more gloomy. But other poets have more joyful strains. In the
_Haec est dies triumphalis_ we have an Easter hymn, and an Ascension
hymn in the _Coelos ascendit hodie_, which are fittingly joyful; and in
the _Spiritus sancte gratia_ an invocation of the Comforter more prosaic
than its great predecessors, but with its own place in the presentation
of that great theme. A rather fine Trinity hymn is the _O Pater, sancte,
mitis atque pie_, written in a sort of sapphic verse with iambic feet
before the caesura, and trochaic following it, the feet in each case
being determined by accent, not quantity. Mr. Chambers and Mr. Hewett
both have translated it.
Of the innumerable hymns and sequences to the saints, we notice that our
Lord’s grandmother comes in for an increasing share. Mone in his third
volume gives twenty-five, of which sixteen belong to this century and
eight to the fourteenth. It is significant that one of them, _O stella
maris fulgida_, is a hymn to Mary, which was altered to the new devotion
to her mother. She is hailed in others as the “refuge of sinners”
(_peccantibus refugium_), and declared immaculate (_Anna labe carens_),
and exalted in a way which suggests that the other members of the
genealogical line which connects our Lord with Adam have been neglected
most unfairly. Why stop with His grandmother and exclude His
grandfather? It was in the next century that the cult of Joseph came to
the front. Of the Marian hymns of this time the _Virginis in gremio_ is
about the best, and the _Ave hierarchia_ comes next. The _Ave Martha
gloriosa_, in commemoration of Martha of Bethany, is a fine hymn in
itself, and interesting as one of a group of hymns composed in Southern
France in honor of this particular saint. A Church myth brings her to
Provence to kill the monster (_τερας_) from which Tarascon takes its
name, and the Church at Arles still bears a sculptured representation of
the victory. Her real function in Provence was to take the place of the
Martis or Brito-Martis, who was the chief loyal deity, and from whom
Marseilles probably took its name. She was either of Cretan or
Phoenician origin, and corresponded to the Greek Artemis, her name
meaning Blessed Maiden. So her myth was transferred to the over-busy
woman of Judea
_Per te serpens est subversus,_
which saved a great deal of trouble.
A hymn to the crown of thorns, _Sacrae Christi celebremus_, is quite in
the manner of Adam of St. Victor; the same marvellous ingenuity of
allusion to remote Scripture facts, and the same technical mastery of
flowing verse. The _Novum sidus exoritur_ is the oldest Transfiguration
hymn—that being now a Church festival—and by no means the worst.
The sequence on the Three Holy Kings (or Magi), who brought offerings to
the infant Saviour, which begins _Majestati sacrosanctae_, is referred
by some critics to the next century. But as it occurs in the list of
sequences which Joachim Brander, a monk of St. Gall, drew up in 1507 for
Abbot Franz von Gaisberg of that monastery, it probably belongs to the
fifteenth century. Brander enumerates three hundred and seventy-eight
sequences, specifying their subjects and authors, the latter not always
successfully, and closes with that which Franz von Gaisberg composed in
honor of Notker Balbulus. His list will be found in Daniel’s fifth
volume. Of this, in commemoration of the three kings, whose relics are
supposed to rest in the cathedral at Koeln (Cologne), he says that it is
beautiful and one of the best. Mr. Duffield has left a translation of
part:
“A threefold gift three kings have brought
To Christ, God-man, who once was wrought
In flesh and spirit equally;
A God triune by gifts adored—
Three gifts which mark one perfect Lord,
Whose essence is triunity.
“They bring him myrrh, frankincense, gold;
Outweighing wealth of kings untold—
A type in which the truth is known.
The gifts are three, the emblems three:
Gold for the king, incense to deity,
And myrrh, by which his death is shown.”
Of hymn-writers, the most prolific is Jean Momboir, generally known by
his Latin name Johannes Mauburnus. He was born in 1460 and died in 1503,
and was a Canon Regular in the congregation founded by the Brethren of
the Common Life in the Low Countries. He lived for a time at Mount St.
Agnes, which makes his emphatic testimony as to the authorship of the
_De Imitatione_ of especial importance. His huge ascetic work, the
_Spiritual Rosegarden_ (_Rosetum spirituale_) made him famous, and he
was invited to France to reform the Canons Regular, according to the
strict observance used in the Low Countries. He was thus, like John
Staupitz, a representative of the current revival of that age, which
tended to greater austerity, not to faith and joy. He spent the last six
years of his life in this labor, dying at Paris in 1503. He was the
friend and correspondent of Erasmus. His hymns generally begin with an
O, and seem to be written on a system like that of the scholastic
treatises. Indeed, his _Rosegarden_, both by its bulk and its method,
suggests a _Summa_ of Christian devotion. From his poem, _Eia mea
anima_, given, there has been extracted the pretty Christmas hymn, _Heu
quid jaces stabulo_, which has been translated several times into
English and German.
Next to him comes Casimir, Crown Prince of Poland, whose _Omni die dic
Mariae_ is a Marian hymn in one hundred and twenty six verses. Father
Ragey, however, asserts in _Les Annales de Philosophie Chretienne_ for
May and June, 1883, that Casimir is not the author but the admirer of
these verses, that they are an extract from a poem in eleven hundred
verses, and that Anselm of Canterbury is the probable author. On this he
bases an argument for the reconciliation of England to the Church, which
is devoted to the cult of our Lord’s mother. The poem, whosoever wrote
it, is a fine one—too good, Protestants will think, for the theme, and
too good to take its place among the other verses ascribed to Anselm of
Canterbury. Here also there is room to ask a close examination of the
manuscripts to which Father Ragey appeals, with reference to their
dates. The controversy over the antiquity of the _Quicunque vult salvus
esse_ and the authorship of the _Imitation_ suggest caution in taking
the _ipse dixit_ of diplomatists.
To an unknown Babo, and to Jacob, schoolmaster of Muldorf, are
attributed Marian hymns of no great value. More important is Dionysius
Ryckel (1394-1471), a Belgian Carthusian, the character of whose
multitudinous writings is indicated by his title, _Doctor Ecstaticus_.
He wrote a _Comment on Certain Ancient Hymns of the Church_ (_Enarratio
in Hymnos aliquot veteres ecclesiasticos_), which puts him next to
Radulph de Rivo (_ob._ 1403) among the earliest of the hymnologists. To
Dionysius is ascribed also the long poem on the Judgment, from which
Mone has given an extract—_Homo, Dei creatura_, etc.—by way of
comparison with the _Dies Irae_ and the _Cum revolvo toto corde_. It
evidently has been influenced by the former, but is devoted to a picture
of eternal torment.
To John Huss we owe the beautiful Communion hymn, _Jesus Christus,
noster salus_, which shows that his alleged heresies did not touch the
Church doctrine on this point.
To Peter of Dresden, schoolmaster of Zwickau in 1420, and afterward
described as a Hussite or a Waldensian, is ascribed the
“In dulci jubilo
Nu singet und seit fro,”
which is the type of the mixed hymns of this age. It was his purpose to
secure the introduction of hymns in the vernacular into the Church
services, as his friend Jakob of Misa sought to do in Bohemia. In mixed
hymns of this kind he seems to have tried to find the sharp end of the
wedge. Some ascribe to him the _Puer natus in Bethlehem_, which also
exists in the mixed form. Both hymns long stood in the Lutheran
hymn-books in the mixed form,—for instance, in the _Marburg Hymn-Book_,
which was used by the Lutherans of Colonial Pennsylvania.
The invention of printing from movable types, about 1452, by Johann
Gutenberg of Mainz marks an era in Latin hymnology, because of the
prompt use of the new method to multiply the Church books in use in the
various dioceses. In every part of Western Europe, from Aberdeen, Lund,
and Trondhjem, on the north, to the shores of the Mediterranean, the
missals, breviaries, and hymnaries were given to the early printers,
with the result of bringing to light many fine hymns and sequences whose
use had been merely local. The Sarum Breviary and Missal and those of
Rome and Paris were printed more frequently than any other. To the Sarum
Breviary we owe the fine Transfiguration hymns—_Coelestis formam
gloriae_ and _O nata lux de lumine_ and _O sator rerum reparator aevi_,
which Anglican translators have made into English hymns; to the Missal
the fine sequence on the crown of thorns, _Si vis vere gloriari_, of
which Dr. Whewell published a translation in _Frazer’s Magazine_ for
May, 1849. To the York Processional (1530) we owe the four “proses”
which begin _Salve festa dies, toto venerabilis aevo_, which suggest to
Daniel that “in England also there was no lack of those who celebrated
the divine majesty in very sweet hymns.”
To the Breviary and Missal of Trondhjem (Drontheim, anciently Nidaros)
we owe some of the finest hymns and sequences recovered at this time. Of
these the _Jubilemus cordis voce_ is the most characteristic and perhaps
the most beautiful—full of local color and characteristic love of
nature. Mr. Morgan has translated it; but the dedication hymn, _Sacrae
Sion adsunt encaenia_, has found more favor with Anglican translators,
and commends itself by scriptural simplicity. Of course this breviary
has fine hymns to St. Olaf, the king who did so much to make Norway a
Christian country, although hardly so much as his neglected predecessor,
Olaf Tryggveson. Similarly the Swedish missals honor King Eric and St.
Birgitta.
The German Church books yield less that is novel probably because the
earlier German sources have been so much more thoroughly explored. The
breviaries of Lubec, of Mainz, of Koeln, and of Meissen furnish most,
but chiefly in praises of the Mother of our Lord and the saints. The
_Gloriosi Salvatoris nominis praeconia_ of Meissen is an exception, and
has found many admirers and several translators. From Mainz comes the
fine hymn in honor of the apostles, _Qui sunt isti, qui volant_, and
that for the martyrs, _O beata beatorum_, and the Passion hymn, _Laus
sit Regi gloriae, Cujus rore gratiae_.
It is different with the French Church books and those of Walloon
Belgium. From the Breton see of Rennes, and those of Angers, Le Mans,
and Poitiers in the adjacent provinces of Northwestern France come some
of the best hymns of this class. From Rennes comes the pretty and
fanciful sequence on the Saviour’s crown of thorns, _Florem spina
coronavit_; from Angers the Christmas hymn, _Sonent Regi nato nova
cantica_, which shows how far the French lag behind the Germans of the
same age in handling this theme; also the Advent sequence, _Jubilemus
omnes una_, which suggests Francis’s “Song of the Creatures,” but lacks
its tenderness. From Le Mans the _Die parente temporum_, which Sir Henry
Baker has made English in “On this day, the first of days.” From
Poitiers the fine Advent sequence, _Prope est claritudinis magnae dies_,
translated by Mr. Hewett. From Noyon, in Northeastern France, the two
Christmas hymns, _Lux est orta gentibus_ and _Laetare, puerpera_, whose
beauty is defaced by making the Mother and not the divine Child the
central figure.
From the Missal of Belgian Tournay we have the Easter sequence, _Surgit
Christus cum tropaeo_, and the transfiguration sequence, _De Parente
summo natum_, which have found and deserved translators. From that of
Liege several sequences, of which the best is that for All Saints Day,
_Resultet tellus et alta coelorum machina_. In the South it is the
breviaries of Braga, in Portugal, and Piacenza, in Italy, which have
furnished most new hymns.
From the breviaries of the great monastic orders come many hymns, those
of the Franciscans furnishing the greater number. That of the
Cistercians furnishes the _Domine Jesu, noverim me, noverim Te_, one of
the many hymns suggested by passages in the writings of Augustine of
Hippo.
This notice of the early printed Church books, which Daniel, Neale,
Morell, and Kehrein have brought under requisition, carries us over into
the century of the Reformation, which also is that in which the
Renaissance began to affect the matter and manner of hymn-writing.
Already in the fifteenth century we have hymns of the humanist type by
Aeneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II.); by Adam Wernher of Themar, a friend of
Johann Trithemius, a jurist by profession, and the instructor of Philip
of Hesse in the humanities; and by Sebastian Brandt, the celebrated
author of the “Ship of Fools.” All these give careful attention to
classic Roman models in the matter of both prosody and vocabulary. If we
were to put Brandt’s _Sidus ex claro veniens Olympo_ alongside the _Puer
natus in Bethlehem_, we should see how little of the life and force of
simplicity and reality there was in the new poetry.
The sixteenth century begins with the hymns of the humanist Alexander
Hegius, a pupil of the school at Deventer and a _protégé_ of the
Brethren of the Common Life, who may have known Thomas à Kempis, as he
was born in 1433, or at latest in 1445. He died in 1498, but his hymns
appeared in 1501 and 1503. He was the friend of Rudolph Agricola and of
Erasmus, and introduced the new learning, especially Greek, into
Holland. His hymns are pagan in their vocabulary, although in accord
with the orthodoxy of the time. Two lines of his,
“Qui te ‘Matrem’ vocat, orbis
Regem vocat ille parentem,”
might have suggested two of Keble’s, which have given no small offence,
“Henceforth, whom thousand worlds adore,
He calls thee ‘Mother’ evermore.”
To Zacharias Ferrari ample reference has been made in the chapter on the
Breviaries. Specimens of his work may be found in Wackernagel’s first
volume, as also of the hymns of Erasmus (1467-1536), of Jakob Montanus
(1485-1588), of Helius Eobanus Hessus (1488-1540), and Marc-Antonius
Muretus. To these Roman Catholic humanists—Eobanus Hessus afterward
became a Lutheran—might have been added J. Ludovicus Vives (1492-1540),
Marc-Antonio Flaminio (1498-1550), and Matthias Collinus (_ob._ 1566).
Wackernagel does add Joste Clichtove (_ob._ 1543), and Jakob Meyer
(1491-1552), who did not attempt original hymns, but recast in classic
forms those already in use. Clichtove was a Fleming, and one of the
earliest collectors.
The series of Protestant hymn-writers joins hard on to that of the Roman
Catholic humanists. In the main they belong to the same school. Their
hymns are not, like the Protestant German hymns, the spontaneous and
inevitable outpouring of simple and natural emotion—a quality which puts
Luther and Johann Herrmann beside Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas of
Celano. They are the scholastic exercises of men singing the praise of
God in a tongue foreign to their thought. Even the best of them, George
Fabricius of Chemnitz, whose edition of the early Christian poets has
laid us under permanent obligations, although the most careful to avoid
paganisms in his hymns, and the most influenced by the earlier Latin
hymns, never impresses us with the freedom and spontaneity of his verse.
The series runs: Urbanus Rhegius (_ob._ 1541), Philip Melanchthon
(1497-1572), Wolfgang Musculus (1497-1563), Joachim Camerarius
(1500-74), Paul Eber (1511-69), Bishop John Parkhurst of Norwich
(1511-74), Johann Stigel (1515-71), George Fabricius (1516-71), George
Klee, or Thymus (_fl._ 1548-50), Nicholas Selneccer (1530-92), Ludwig
Helmbold (1532-98), Wolfgang Ammonius (1579), and Theodore Zwinger
(1533-88). Recasts of old hymns both as to literary form and theological
content we have from Hermann Bonn (1504-48), Urbanus Rhegius, George
Klee, and Andreas Ellinger (1526-82). The last-named was a German
physician who graduated at Wittemberg in 1549. His _Hymnorum
Ecclesiasticorum Libri Tres_ (1578) is described by Daniel as the most
copious collection he has seen, but worthless as an authority in its
first and second books, as the hymns in these are altered for metrical
reasons. Hermann Bonn was a Westphalian, who became the first Lutheran
Superintendent in Lubeck, and introduced the Reformation into Osnabruck.
He published the first hymn-book in Platt-Deutsch in 1547.
To a later generation belongs Wilhelm Alard (1572-1645), the son of a
Flemish Lutheran, who fled to Germany from the Inquisition. Wilhelm
studied at Wittemberg, and became pastor at Crempe in Holstein, and
published two or perhaps three small volumes of original Latin hymns.
Dr. Trench has extracted from one of these two hymns. Of that to his
Guardian Angel, Chancellor Benedict, Dr. Washburn, and Mr. Duffield have
made translations. This is Mr. Duffield’s:
CUM ME TENENT FALLACIA.
When specious joys of earth are mine,
When bright this passing world doth shine,
Then in his watchful heavenly place
My angel weeps and veils his face.
But when with tears my eyes o’errun
Deploring sin that I have done,
Then doth God’s angel, set to keep
My soul, rejoicing, cease to weep.
Far hence be gone, ye fading joys,
Which spring from earth’s too brittle toys!
Come hither, tears! for I would show
That penitence by which ye flow.
I would not be in evil glad,
Lest he, my angel, should be sad;
Rise then, my true, repentant voice,
That angels even may rejoice.
Another on the Eucharist Mr. Duffield alone has translated:
SIT IGNIS ATQUE LUX MIHI.
When I behold thy sacred blood,
Thy body broken for my good;
O blessed Jesus, may they be
As flame and as a light to me.
So may this flame consume away
The sins which in my bosom stay,
Destroying fully from my sight
All vanity of wrong delight.
So may this light which shines from thee
Break through my darkness utterly,
That I may seek with fervent prayer,
Thine own dear guidance everywhere.
A very different group are the hymn-writers of the Jesuit Order, to whom
we owe many hymns which have been ascribed to mediaeval authors,
although they have marked characteristics which betray their authorship.
Thus the _Eia Phoebe, nunc serena_ has been ascribed to Innocent III.,
the _O esca viatorum_ to Thomas Aquinas, the _O gens beata coelitum_ to
Augustine, the _Pone luctum, Magdalena_ to Adam of St. Victor; while the
later Middle Ages have been credited with the _Angelice patrone_, the
_Ecquis binas columbinas_, the _Jesu meae deliciae_, and the _Plaudite
coeli_. The London _Spectator_ ascribes a very early origin to the
_Dormi, fili, dormi_. All these are Jesuit hymns, collected by Walraff
(1806) out of the _Psalteriolum Cantionum Catholicarum a Patribus
Societatis Jesu_. The title of that collection (_Psalteriolum_) is
suggestive of the contents. As the critics of the Society long ago
remarked, there is a mark of pettiness on the literature, the art, the
architecture, and the theology of the Jesuits. In both prose and poetry
they tend to run into diminutives. No hymn of theirs has handled any of
the greatest themes of Christian praise in a worthy spirit. The charge
made against them by the Dominicans that in their labors to convert the
Chinese and other pagans they concealed the cross and passion of our
Lord, and presented Him as an infant in His mother’s arms, whether
literally true or not, is not out of harmony with their general tone.
Christ in the cradle or on the lap of His mother is the fit theme of
their praises. In their hands religion loses its severity and God His
awfulness. To win the world they stooped to the world’s level, and
weakened the moral force of the divine law by cunning explanations,
until, through Arnauld and his fellow-Jansenists, “Christianity appeared
again austere and grave; and the world saw again with awe the pale face
of its crucified Saviour.”
Some of the Jesuit hymns are very good of their kind. The _Dormi, fili,
dormi_ anticipates the theme of Mrs. Browning’s “The Virgin Mary to the
Child Jesus,” and of Dr. George Macdonald’s “Babe Jesus Lay on Mary’s
Lap.” It is beautiful in its way, but betrays its Jesuit origin by its
diminutives. The _Ecquis binas columbinas_ is a very graceful poem, and
the best passion hymn of the school, but is below the subject. The
_Tandem audite me_ is a hymn based on the false interpretation of
Solomon’s Song, but is very pretty. The _Pone luctum, Magdalena_ is
perhaps the greatest of all Jesuit hymns, and has found nine Protestant
translators to do it into English. It is rather a fine poem than a fine
hymn. The _Parendum est, cedendum est_ is a death-bed hymn whose length
and ornateness rob it of a sense of reality. Of the _Altitudo, quid hic
jaces_ and the _Plaudite Coeli_ Mr. Duffield has left versions which
will enable our readers to judge of their worth for themselves:
ALTITUDO, QUID HIC JACES?
Majesty, why liest thou
In so low a manger?
Thou that kindlest heavenly fires
Here a chilly stranger!
O what wonders thou art doing,
Jesus, unto men;
By thy love to us renewing
Paradise again!
Strength is made of no account;
Space is here contracted;
He that frees in bonds is bound;
Time’s new birth enacted.
Yes, thy little lips may touch
Mary’s spotless bosom;
Yes, thy bright eyes weep for men
While heaven’s joy shall blossom.
PLAUDITE COELI!
Lo! heaven rejoices,
The air is all bright,
And the earth gives her voices
From depth and from height.
For the darkness is broken,
Black storm has passed by,
And in peace for a token
The palm waves on high.
Spring breezes are blowing,
Spring flowers are at hand,
Spring grasses are growing
Abroad in the land.
And violets brighten
The roses in bloom,
And marigolds heighten
The lilies’ perfume.
Rise then, O my praises,
Fresh life in your veins,
As the viol upraises
The gladdest of strains.
For once more he sees us
Alive, as he said;
Our holy Lord Jesus
Escaped from the dead.
Then thunder ye mountains,
Ye valleys resound,
Leap forth, O ye fountains,
Ye hills echo round.
For he alone frees us,
He does as he said,
Our holy Lord Jesus
Alive from the dead.
The later additions to the stock of Latin hymns are important only to
the student of Roman Catholic liturgies, as connected with the new
devotions sanctioned from time to time by the Congregation of Sacred
Rites. Thus the devotion to the Sacred Heart led to the writing of the
hymn _Quicunque certum quaeritis_, which the Roman Breviary has copied
from the Franciscan, and whose translation by Mr. Caswall has found its
way even into Protestant hymn-books. And the crowning sanction of the
extravagant reverence for our Lord’s mother, the declaration that she
was conceived without sin, and the institution of the feast of the
Immaculate Conception, caused Archbishop John von Geissel of Koeln to
write, in 1855, a new sequence for the Missal service, _Virgo virginum
praeclara_.
Last in the series of the Latin hymn-writers stands the present pope,
Leo XIII., who is the third pope in the long series to whom any hymn can
be ascribed with any degree of certainty, the other two being Damasus
and Urban VIII. In his Latin poems, published in 1881, there are three
hymns in honor of two bishops of Perugia who suffered martyrdom in the
early age of the Church. They are not remarkable for poetical
inspiration, although they show that his Jesuit masters imbued him with
the rules of classic verse and expression. All his poems have been
reprinted in this country (Baltimore, 1886), with an English version by
the Jesuits of Woodstock College.
In any other field of Christian hymnology we should close our account of
the past by the expression of confidence in the fertility of the future.
But as regards Latin hymnology, we feel that the period of greatest
value has passed by, and the record is sealed. While it is true that
“Generations yet unborn
Shall bless and magnify the Lord,”
as Rouse sings, we feel that it will not be in the medium of a dead
language, but in the tongues “understanded of the people.” The attempt
to maintain Latin as the language—as the exclusive speech of Christian
worship in Western Europe, is one of those parts of the Roman Catholic
system which are already condemned by results. The comparative
barrenness of Latin hymnology for the past hundred years is evidence
enough that this is not the channel in which Christian inspiration now
flows; and the attention paid even by Roman Catholic poets to
hymn-writing in the national languages is fresh evidence of the
readiness of that communion to adapt itself to new conditions as soon as
this is seen to be inevitable.