To determine the actual usage of the hymn or sequence rather than its
mere existence as a specimen of religious verse, the liturgical
collection is indispensable. The old hymnaries and psalters and other
books used in the offices were examined by liturgists of the period who
compiled the breviaries of the later Middle Ages. Working under
episcopal or monastic authority they subjected the hymnic material at
their disposal to a selective process which necessarily discarded many
hymns in favor of those rendered sacred by their inclusion in the old
cycles, or of hymns of recognized merit. The Mozarabic Breviary had been
compiled and its hymns determined by this process in an earlier century.
After the re-conquest of the Spanish peninsula and the introduction of
the Roman Rite in 1089, a version of the Roman Breviary was introduced.
Episcopal centers in England, such as Hereford, York and primarily
Salisbury, compiled their service books and developed them continuously
to the close of the Middle Ages. The process was repeated throughout
Christian Europe.
From the troparies and local collections of sequences the selections for
the gradual and missal were made, just as the hymns had been for the
breviary. These liturgical sources offer to the modern student the range
of medieval hymnody at its best. The episcopal rites are, perhaps, more
official and authoritative in their selection of hymns and sequences but
the monastic rites often reveal the legends of local saints or the more
intimate flavor of traditional piety. It should be understood that in
countries where the Roman Rite prevailed there was no departure from its
authority in the matter of hymnody. At the same time the greatest
latitude was observable. A fine illustration is provided by the books of
the Rite of Salisbury, England, or the Sarum Rite, which were compiled
and developed by great liturgists from the time of Bishop Osmund in the
eleventh century to the close of the Middle Ages. The Sarum Breviary
contains 119 hymns, 25 of which were written after 1100 and the Missal
contains 101 sequences, 54 of which were written about 1100.[12] The
figures are revealing in the case of hymns, of the influence of the
older cycles and in the case of sequences, of the multiplication of
feasts in the later centuries of the Middle Ages.
The Processional book as a bearer of hymns will be treated in the
following chapter. It remains here, to mention the Books of Hours or
medieval Primers which also contained their quota of hymns. The _Horae_
may be defined as a series of devotions, at first additional to the
Seven Hours of the daily office but in the twelfth century elaborated in
a separate book. Specifically the additions consisted of the penitential
psalms, the Office of the Dead, the Cursus of All Saints, that of the
Holy Cross, and that of the Blessed Virgin. Even before its separation
from the Canonical Hours, the Cursus of the Blessed Virgin had assumed
an importance which gave to the new collection its characteristic title
of _Horae_ or _Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary_. In the fourteenth
century the single volume came to be known in England as _Primarius
Liber_ or _Primarium_ from which the more familiar name Prymer or Primer
is derived.[13] Its popularity may be judged by the fact that 265
printed editions were later known in England and 1582 on the
continent.[14] Hymns are interspersed throughout the _Horae_. In the
York Hours there are eighteen hymns and sequences of varied periods of
which thirteen are centered in devotion to the Virgin.[15] In other
words, the hymns which were chosen for these books of popular devotion
are representative of later medieval favorites in hymnody, indicating to
what extent the older hymns were known and loved and to what extent
later poems had been accepted by lay folk as well as clergy. The _Horae_
are primarily valuable as a source for the later Marian hymns upon the
themes of the Joys and of the Sorrows of the Virgin. The appearance of
the beloved _Stabat mater dolorosa_, without doubt the finest expression
of the poetry of sorrow, bears witness to the discriminative process by
which the _Horae_ were compiled. It seems remarkable that the liturgists
of the later period, in which the Latin hymn was beginning to show signs
of deterioration, were able to skirt as successfully as they did, the
limits of trashy sentimentality and worse poetry which were passing
current under the name of hymnody.
To those who are interested in the relations between literature and the
fine arts an examination of the Virgin hymns, as of the _Dies irae_,
will yield similar interrelations. The hymns which were written from the
twelfth century onwards upon the Virgin theme may be closely correlated
with the sculptured forms which portray the Mother apart from the Son in
her Sorrows and more particularly in her Joys, laden with her
distinctive honors and regnant as the Queen of Heaven.