RITUAL AND SONG IN THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH
A.D. 50-600
The epoch of the apostles and their immediate successors is that around
which the most vigorous controversies have been waged ever since modern
criticism recognized the supreme importance of that epoch in the history
of doctrine and ecclesiastical government. Hardly a form of belief or
polity but has sought to obtain its sanction from the teaching and usages
of those churches that received their systems most directly from the
personal disciples of the Founder. A curiosity less productive of
contention, but hardly less persistent, attaches to the forms and methods
of worship practised by the Christian congregations. The rise of
liturgies, rites, and ceremonies, the origin and use of hymns, the
foundation of the liturgical chant, the degree of participation enjoyed
by the laity in the offices of praise and prayer,--these and many other
closely related subjects of inquiry possess far more than an antiquarian
interest; they are bound up with the history of that remarkable
transition from the homogenous, more democratic system of the apostolic
age, to the hierarchical organization which became matured and
consolidated under the Western popes and Eastern patriarchs. Associated
with this administrative development and related in its causes, an
elaborate system of rites and ceremonies arose, partly an evolution from
within, partly an inheritance of ancient habits and predispositions,
which at last became formulated into unvarying types of devotional
expression. Music participated in this ritualistic movement; it rapidly
became liturgical and clerical, the laity ceased to share in the worship
of song and resigned this office to a chorus drawn from the minor clergy,
and a highly organized body of chants, applied to every moment of the
service, became almost the entire substance of worship music, and
remained so for a thousand years.
In the very nature of the case a new energy must enter the art of music
when enlisted in the ministry of the religion of Christ. A new motive, a
new spirit, unknown to Greek or Roman or even to Hebrew, had taken
possession of the religious consciousness. To the adoration of the same
Supreme Power, before whom the Jew bowed in awe-stricken reverence, was
added the recognition of a gift which the Jew still dimly hoped for; and
this gift brought with it an assurance, and hence a felicity, which were
never granted to the religionist of the old dispensation.
The Christian felt himself the chosen joint-heir of a risen and ascended
Lord, who by his death and resurrection had brought life and immortality
to light. The devotion to a personal, ever-living Saviour transcended and
often supplanted all other loyalty whatsoever,--to country, parents,
husband, wife, or child. This religion was, therefore, emphatically one
of joy,--a joy so absorbing, so completely satisfying, so founded on the
loftiest hopes that the human mind is able to entertain, that even the
ecstatic worship of Apollo or Dionysus seems melancholy and hopeless in
comparison. Yet it was not a joy that was prone to expend itself in noisy
demonstrations. It was mingled with such a profound sense of personal
unworthiness and the most solemn responsibilities, tempered with
sentiments of awe and wonder in the presence of unfathomable mysteries,
that the manifestations of it must be subdued to moderation, expressed in
forms that could appropriately typify spiritual and eternal
relationships. And so, as sculpture was the art which most adequately
embodied the humanistic conceptions of Greek theology, poetry and music
became the arts in which Christianity found a vehicle of expression most
suited to her genius. These two arts, therefore, when acted upon by ideas
so sublime and penetrating as those of the Gospel, must at last become
transformed, and exhibit signs of a renewed and aspiring activity. The
very essence of the divine revelation in Jesus Christ must strike a more
thrilling note than tone and emotional speech had ever sounded before.
The genius of Christianity, opening up new soul depths, and quickening,
as no other religion could, the higher possibilities of holiness in man,
was especially adapted to evoke larger manifestations of musical
invention. The religion of Jesus revealed God in the universality of his
fatherhood, and his omnipresence in nature and in the human conscience.
God must be worshipped in spirit and in truth, as one who draws men into
communion with him by his immediate action upon the heart. This religion
made an appeal that could only be met by the purification of the heart,
and by reconciliation and union with God through the merits of the
crucified Son. The believer felt the possibility of direct and loving
communion with the Infinite Power as the stirring of the very bases of
his being. This new consciousness must declare itself in forms of
expression hardly glimpsed by antiquity, and literature and art undergo
re-birth. Music particularly, the art which seems peculiarly capable of
reflecting the most urgent longings of the spirit, felt the animating
force of Christianity as the power which was to emancipate it from its
ancient thraldom and lead it forth into a boundless sphere of action.
Not at once, however, could musical art spring up full grown and
responsive to these novel demands. An art, to come to perfection,
requires more than a motive. The motive, the vision, the emotion yearning
to realize itself, may be there, but beyond this is the mastery of
material and form, and such mastery is of slow and tedious growth.
Especially is this true in respect to the art of music; musical forms,
having no models in nature like painting and sculpture, no associative
symbolism like poetry, no guidance from considerations of utility like
architecture, must be the result, so far as any human work can be such,
of actual free creation. And yet this creation is a progressive creation;
its forms evolve from forms preexisting as demands for expression arise
to which the old are inadequate. Models must be found, but in the nature
of the case the art can never go outside of itself for its suggestion.
And although Christian music must be a development and not the sudden
product of an exceptional inspiration, yet we must not suppose that the
early Church was compelled to work out its melodies from those crude
elements in which anthropology discovers the first stage of musical
progress in primitive man. The Christian fathers, like the founders of
every historic system of religious music, drew their suggestion and
perhaps some of their actual material from both religious and secular
sources. The principle of ancient music, to which the early Christian
music conformed, was that of the subordination of music to poetry and the
dance-figure. Harmony was virtually unknown in antiquity, and without a
knowledge of part-writing no independent art of music is possible. The
song of antiquity was the most restricted of all melodic styles, _viz._,
the chant or recitative. The essential feature of both chant and
recitative is that the tones are made to conform to the metre and accent
of the text, the words of which are never repeated or prosodically
modified out of deference to melodic phrases and periods. In true song,
on the contrary, the words are subordinated to the exigencies of musical
laws of structure, and the musical phrase, not the word, is the ruling
power. The principle adopted by the Christian fathers was that of the
chant, and Christian music could not begin to move in the direction of
modern artistic attainment until, in the course of time, a new technical
principle, and a new conception of the relation between music and poetry,
could be introduced.
In theory, style, usage, and probably to some extent in actual melodies
also, the music of the primitive Church forms an unbroken line with the
music of pre-Christian antiquity. The relative proportion contributed by
Jewish and Greek musical practice cannot be known. There was at the
beginning no formal break with the ancient Jewish Church; the disciples
assembled regularly in the temple for devotional exercises; worship in
their private gatherings was modelled upon that of the synagogue which
Christ himself had implicitly sanctioned. The synagogical code was
modified by the Christians by the introduction of the eucharistic
service, the Lord's Prayer, the baptismal formula, and other institutions
occasioned by the new doctrines and the "spiritual gifts." At Christ's
last supper with his disciples, when the chief liturgical rite of the
Church was instituted, the company sang a hymn which was unquestionably
the "great Hallel" of the Jewish Passover celebration.[29] The Jewish
Christians clung with an inherited reverence to the venerable forms of
their fathers' worship; they observed the Sabbath, the three daily hours
of prayer, and much of the Mosaic ritual. In respect to musical usages,
the most distinct intimation in early records of the continuation of
ancient forms is found in the occasional reference to the habit of
antiphonal or responsive chanting of the psalms. Fixed forms of prayer
were also used in the apostolic Church, which were to a considerable
extent modelled upon the psalms and the benedictions of the synagogue
ritual. That the Hebrew melodies were borrowed at the same time cannot be
demonstrated, but it may be assumed as a necessary inference.
With the spread of the Gospel among the Gentiles, the increasing
hostility between Christians and Jews, the dismemberment of the Jewish
nationality, and the overthrow of Jewish institutions to which the Hebrew
Christians had maintained a certain degree of attachment, dependence upon
the Jewish ritual was loosened, and the worship of the Church came under
the influence of Hellenic systems and traditions. Greek philosophy and
Greek art, although both in decadence, were dominant in the intellectual
life of the East, and it was impossible that the doctrine, worship, and
government of the Church should not be gradually leavened by them. St.
Paul wrote in the Greek language; the earliest liturgies are in Greek.
The sentiment of prayer and praise was, of course, Hebraic; the psalms
formed the basis of all lyric expression, and the hymns and liturgies
were to a large extent colored by their phraseology and spirit. The
shapeliness and flexibility of Greek art, the inward fervor of Hebrew
aspiration, the love of ceremonial and symbolism, which was not confined
to any single nation but was a universal characteristic of the time, all
contributed to build up the composite and imposing structure of the later
worship of the Eastern and Western churches.
The singing of psalms formed a part of the Christian worship from the
beginning, and certain special psalms were early appointed for particular
days and occasions. At what time hymns of contemporary origin were added
we have no means of knowing. Evidently during the life of St. Paul, for
we find him encouraging the Ephesians and Colossians to the use of
"psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs."[30] To be sure he is not
specifically alluding to public worship in these exhortations (in the
first instance "speaking to yourselves" and "singing and making melody in
your hearts," in the second "teaching and admonishing one another"), but
it is hardly to be supposed that the spiritual exercise of which he
speaks would be excluded from the religious services which at that time
were of daily observance. The injunction to teach and admonish by means
of songs also agrees with other evidences that a prime motive for hymn
singing in many of the churches was instruction in the doctrines of the
faith. It would appear that among the early Christians, as with the
Greeks and other ancient nations, moral precepts and instruction in
religious mysteries were often thrown into poetic and musical form, as,
being by this means more impressive and more easily remembered.
It is to be noticed that St. Paul, in each of the passages cited above,
alludes to religious songs under three distinct terms, _viz._: , , and .
The usual supposition is that the terms are not synonymous, that they
refer to a threefold classification of the songs of the early Church
into: 1, the ancient Hebrew psalms properly so called; 2, hymns taken
from the Old Testament and not included in the psalter and since called
canticles, such as the thanksgiving of Hannah, the song of Moses, the
Psalm of the Three Children from the continuation of the Book of Daniel,
the vision of Habakkuk, etc.; and, 3, songs composed by the Christians
themselves. The last of these three classes points us to the birth time
of Christian hymnody. The lyric inspiration, which has never failed from
that day to this, began to move the instant the proselyting work of the
Church began. In the freedom and informality of the religious assembly as
it existed among the Hellenic Christians, it became the practice for the
believers to contribute impassioned outbursts, which might be called
songs in a rudimentary state. In moments of highly charged devotional
ecstasy this spontaneous utterance took the form of broken, incoherent,
unintelligible ejaculations, probably in cadenced, half-rhythmic tone,
expressive of rapture and mystical illumination. This was the
"glossolalia," or "gift of tongues" alluded to by St. Paul in the first
epistle to the Corinthians as a practice to be approved, under certain
limitations, as edifying to the believers.[31]
Dr. Schaff defines the gift of tongues as "an utterance proceeding from a
state of unconscious ecstasy in the speaker, and unintelligible to the
hearer unless interpreted. The speaking with tongues is an involuntary,
psalm-like prayer or song uttered from a spiritual trance, in a peculiar
language inspired by the Holy Spirit. The soul is almost entirely
passive, an instrument on which the Spirit plays his heavenly melodies."
"It is emotional rather than intellectual, the language of excited
imagination, not of cool reflection."[32] St. Paul was himself an adept
in this singular form of worship, as he himself declares in 1 Cor. xiv.
18; but with his habitual coolness of judgment he warns the excitable
Corinthian Christians that sober instruction is more profitable, that the
proper end of all utterance in common public worship is edification, and
enjoins as an effective restraint that "if any man speaketh in a tongue,
let one interpret; but if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence
in the Church; and let him speak to himself and to God."[33] With the
regulation of the worship in stated liturgic form this extemporaneous
ebullition of feeling was done away, but if it was analogous, as it
probably was, to the practice so common in Oriental vocal music, both
ancient and modern, of delivering long wordless tonal flourishes as an
expression of joy, then it has in a certain sense survived in the
"jubilations" of the Catholic liturgical chant, which in the early Middle
Age were more extended than now. Chappell finds traces of a practice
somewhat similar to the "jubilations" existing in ancient Egypt. "This
practice of carolling or singing without words, like birds, to the gods,
was copied by the Greeks, who seem to have carolled on four vowels. The
vowels had probably, in both cases, some recognized meaning attached to
them, as substitutes for certain words of praise--as was the case when
the custom was transferred to the Western Church."[34] This may or may
not throw light upon the obscure nature of the glossolalia, but it is not
to be supposed that the Corinthian Christians invented this custom, since
we find traces of it in the worship of the ancient pagan nations; and so
far as it was the unrestrained outburst of emotion, it must have been to
some extent musical, and only needed regulation and the application of a
definite key-system to become, like the mediaeval Sequence under somewhat
similar conditions, an established order of sacred song.
Out of a musical impulse, of which the glossolalia was one of many
tokens, united with the spirit of prophecy or instruction, grew the hymns
of the infant Church, dim outlines of which begin to appear in the
twilight of this obscure period. The worshipers of Christ could not
remain content with the Hebrew psalms, for, in spite of their inspiriting
and edifying character, they were not concerned with the facts on which
the new faith was based, except as they might be interpreted as
prefiguring the later dispensation. Hymns were required in which Christ
was directly celebrated, and the apprehension of his infinite gifts
embodied in language which would both fortify the believers and act as a
converting agency. It would be contrary to all analogy and to the
universal facts of human nature if such were not the case, and we may
suppose that a Christian folk-song, such as the post-apostolic age
reveals to us, began to appear in the first century. Some scholars
believe that certain of these primitive hymns, or fragments of them, are
embalmed in the Epistles of St. Paul and the Book of the Revelation.[35]
The magnificent description of the worship of God and the Lamb in the
Apocalypse has been supposed by some to have been suggested by the manner
of worship, already become liturgical, in the Eastern churches. Certainly
there is a manifest resemblance between the picture of one sitting upon
the throne with the twenty-four elders and a multitude of angels
surrounding him, as set forth in the Apocalypse, and the account given in
the second book of the Constitutions of the Apostles of the throne of the
bishop in the middle of the church edifice, with the presbyters and
deacons on each side and the laity beyond. In this second book of the
Constitutions, belonging, of course, to a later date than the apostolic
period, there is no mention of hymn singing. The share of the people is
confined to responses at the end of the verses of the psalms, which are
sung by some one appointed to this office.[36] The sacerdotal and
liturgical movement had already excluded from the chief acts of worship
the independent song of the people. Those who assume that the office of
song in the early Church was freely committed to the general body of
believers have some ground for their assumption; but if we are able to
distinguish between the private and public worship, and could know how
early it was that set forms and liturgies were adopted, it would appear
that at the longest the time was very brief when the laity were allowed a
share in any but the subordinate offices. The earliest testimony that can
be called definite is contained in the celebrated letter of the younger
Pliny from Bithynia to the Emperor Trajan, in the year 112, in which the
Christians are described as coming together before daylight and singing
hymns alternately (invicem) to Christ. This may with some reason be held
to refer to responsive or antiphonal singing, similar to that described
by Philo in his account of the worship of the Jewish sect of the
Therapeutae in the first century. The tradition was long preserved in the
Church that Ignatius, bishop of Antioch in the second century, introduced
antiphonal chanting into the churches of that city, having been moved
thereto by a vision of angels singing in that manner. But we have only to
go back to the worship of the ancient Hebrews for the suggestion of this
practice. This alternate singing appears to have been most prevalent in
the Syrian churches, and was carried thence to Milan and Rome, and
through the usage in these cities was established in the permanent habit
of the Western Church.
Although the singing of psalms and hymns by the body of worshipers was,
therefore, undoubtedly the custom of the churches while still in their
primitive condition as informal assemblies of believers for mutual
counsel and edification, the steady progress of ritualism and the growth
of sacerdotal ideas inevitably deprived the people of all initiative in
the worship, and concentrated the offices of public devotion, including
that of song, exclusively in the hands of the clergy. By the middle of
the fourth century, if not earlier, the change was complete. The simple
organization of the apostolic age had developed by logical gradations
into a compact hierarchy of patriarchs, bishops, priests, and deacons.
The clergy were no longer the servants or representatives of the people,
but held a mediatorial position as the channels through which divine
grace was transmitted to the faithful. The great Eastern liturgies, such
as those which bear the names of St. James and St. Mark, if not yet fully
formulated and committed to writing, were in all essentials complete and
adopted as the substance of the public worship. The principal service was
divided into two parts, from the second of which, the eucharistic service
proper, the catechumens and penitents were excluded. The prayers,
readings, and chanted sentences, of which the liturgy mainly consisted,
were delivered by priests, deacons, and an officially constituted choir
of singers, the congregation uniting only in a few responses and
ejaculations. In the liturgy of St. Mark, which was the Alexandrian, used
in Egypt and neighboring countries, we find allotted to the people a
number of responses: "Amen," "Kyrie eleison," "And to thy spirit" (in
response to the priest's "Peace be to all"); "We lift them up to the
Lord" (in response to the priest's "Let us lift up our hearts"); and "In
the name of the Lord; Holy God, holy mighty, holy immortal," after the
Trisagion; "And from the Holy Spirit was he made flesh," after the prayer
of oblation; "Holy, holy, holy Lord," before the consecration; "Our
Father, who art in heaven," etc.; before the communion, "One Father holy,
one Son holy, one Spirit holy, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, Amen;" at
the dismissal, "Amen, blessed be the name of the Lord."
In the liturgy of St. James, the liturgy of the Jerusalem Church, a very
similar share, in many instances with identical words, is assigned to the
people; but a far more frequent mention is made of the choir of singers
who render the Trisagion hymn, which, in St. Mark's liturgy, is given by
the people: besides the "Allelulia," the hymn to the Virgin Mother, "O
taste and see that the Lord is good," and "The Holy Ghost shall come upon
thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee."
A large portion of the service, as indicated by these liturgies, was
occupied by prayers, during which the people kept silence. In the matter
of responses the congregation had more direct share than in the Catholic
Church to-day, for now the chancel choir acts as their representatives,
while the Kyrie eleison has become one of the choral portions of the
Mass, and the Thrice Holy has been merged in the choral Sanctus. But in
the liturgical worship, whatever may have been the case in non-liturgical
observances, the share of the people was confined to these few brief
ejaculations and prescribed sentences, and nothing corresponding to the
congregational song of the Protestant Church can be found. Still earlier
than this final issue of the ritualistic movement the singing of the
people was limited to psalms and canticles, a restriction justified and
perhaps occasioned by the ease with which doctrinal vagaries and mystical
extravagances could be instilled into the minds of the converts by means
of this very subtle and persuasive agent. The conflict of the orthodox
churches with the Gnostics and Arians showed clearly the danger of
unlimited license in the production and singing of hymns, for these
formidable heretics drew large numbers away from the faith of the
apostles by means of the choral songs which they employed everywhere for
proselyting purposes. The Council of Laodicea (held between 343 and 381)
decreed in its 13th Canon: "Besides the appointed singers, who mount the
ambo and sing from the book, others shall not sing in the church."[37]
The exact meaning of this prohibition has not been determined, for the
participation of the people in the church song did not entirely cease at
this time. How generally representative this council was, or how
extensive its authority, is not known; but the importance of this decree
has been exaggerated by historians of music, for, at most, it serves only
as a register of a fact which was an inevitable consequence of the
universal hierarchical and ritualistic tendencies of the time.
The history of the music of the Christian Church properly begins with the
establishment of the priestly liturgic chant, which had apparently
supplanted the popular song in the public worship as early as the fourth
century. Of the character of the chant melodies at this period in the
Eastern Church, or of their sources, we have no positive information.
Much vain conjecture has been expended on this question. Some are
persuaded that the strong infusion of Hebraic feeling and phraseology
into the earliest hymns, and the adoption of the Hebrew psalter into the
service, necessarily implies the inheritance of the ancient temple and
synagogue melodies also. Others assume that the allusion of St. Augustine
to the usage at Alexandria under St. Athanasius, which was "more like
speaking than singing,"[38] was an example of the practice of the
Oriental and Roman churches generally, and that the later chant developed
out of this vague song-speech. Others, like Kiesewetter, exaggerating the
antipathy of the Christians to everything identified with Judaism and
paganism, conceive the primitive Christian melodies as entirely an
original invention, a true Christian folk-song.[39] None of these
suppositions, however, could have more than a local and temporary
application; the Jewish Christian congregations in Jerusalem and
neighboring cities doubtless transferred a few of their ancestral
melodies to the new worship; a prejudice against highly developed tune as
suggesting the sensuous cults of paganism may have existed among the more
austere; here and there new melodies may have sprung up to clothe the
extemporized lyrics that became perpetuated in the Church. But the weight
of evidence and analogy inclines to the belief that the liturgic song of
the Church, both of the East and West, was drawn partly in form and
almost wholly in spirit and complexion from the Greek and Greco-Roman
musical practice.
But scanty knowledge of Christian archaeology and liturgies is necessary
to show that much of form, ceremony, and decoration in the worship of the
Church was the adaptation of features anciently existing in the faiths
and customs which the new religion supplanted. The practical genius which
adopted Greek metres for Christian hymns, and modified the styles of
basilikas, scholae, and domestic architecture in effecting a suitable
form of church building, would not cavil at the melodies and vocal
methods which seemed so well suited to be a musical garb for the
liturgies. Greek music was, indeed, in some of its phases, in decadence
at this period. It had gained nothing in purity by passing into the hands
of Roman voluptuaries. The age of the virtuosos, aiming at brilliancy and
sensationalism, had succeeded to the classic traditions of austerity and
reserve. This change was felt, however, in instrumental music chiefly,
and this the Christian churches disdained to touch. It was the residue of
what was pure and reverend, drawn from the tradition of Apollo's temple
and the Athenian tragic theatre; it was the form of vocalism which
austere philosophers like Plutarch praised that was drafted into the
service of the Gospel. Perhaps even this was reduced to simple terms in
the Christian practice; certainly the oldest chants that can be traced
are the plainest, and the earliest scale system of the Italian Church
would appear to allow but a very narrow compass to melody. We can form
our most accurate notion of the nature of the early Christian music,
therefore, by studying the records of Greek practice and Greek views of
music's nature and function in the time of the flowering of Greek poetry,
for certainly the Christian fathers did not attempt to go beyond that;
and perhaps, in their zeal to avoid all that was meretricious in tonal
art, they adopted as their standard those phases which could most easily
be made to coalesce with the inward and humble type of piety inculcated
by the faith of the Gospel. This hypothesis does, not imply a
note-for-note borrowing of Greek and Roman melodies, but only their
adaptation. As Luther and the other founders of the music of the German
Protestant Church took melodies from the Catholic chant and the German
and Bohemian religious and secular folk-song, and recast them to fit the
metres of their hymns, so the early Christian choristers would naturally
be moved to do with the melodies which they desired to transplant. Much
modification was necessary, for while the Greek and Roman songs were
metrical, the Christian psalms, antiphons, prayers, responses, etc., were
unmetrical; and while the pagan melodies were always sung to an
instrumental accompaniment, the church chant was exclusively vocal.
Through the influence of this double change of technical and Aesthetic
basis, the liturgic song was at once more free, aspiring, and varied than
its prototype, taking on that rhythmic flexibility and delicate shading
in which also the unique charm of the Catholic chant of the present day
so largely consists.
In view of the controversies over the use of instrumental music in
worship, which have been so violent in the British and American
Protestant churches, it is an interesting question whether instruments
were employed by the primitive Christians. We know that instruments
performed an important function in the Hebrew temple service and in the
ceremonies of the Greeks. At this point, however, a break was made with
all previous practice, and although the lyre and flute were sometimes
employed by the Greek converts, as a general rule the use of instruments
in worship was condemned. Many of the fathers, speaking of religious
song, make no mention of instruments; others, like Clement of Alexandria
and St. Chrysostom, refer to them only to denounce them. Clement says:
"Only one instrument do we use, _viz._, the word of peace wherewith we
honor God, no longer the old psaltery, trumpet, drum, and flute."
Chrysostom exclaims: "David formerly sang in psalms, also we sing to-day
with him; he had a lyre with lifeless strings, the Church has a lyre with
living strings. Our tongues are the strings of the lyre, with a different
tone, indeed, but with a more accordant piety." St. Ambrose expresses his
scorn for those who would play the lyre and psaltery instead of singing
hymns and psalms; and St. Augustine adjures believers not to turn their
hearts to theatrical instruments. The religious guides of the early
Christians felt that there would be an incongruity, and even profanity,
in the use of the sensuous nerve-exciting effects of instrumental sound
in their mystical, spiritual worship. Their high religious and moral
enthusiasm needed no aid from external stimulus; the pure vocal utterance
was the more proper expression of their faith. This prejudice against
instrumental music, which was drawn from the very nature of its aesthetic
impression, was fortified by the associations of instruments with
superstitious pagan rites, and especially with the corrupting scenes
habitually represented in the degenerate theatre and circus. "A Christian
maiden," says St. Jerome, "ought not even to know what a lyre or a flute
is, or what it is used for." No further justification for such
prohibitions is needed than the shameless performances common upon the
stage in the time of the Roman empire, as portrayed in the pages of
Apuleius and other delineators of the manners of the time. Those who
assumed the guardianship of the morals of the little Christian
communities were compelled to employ the strictest measures to prevent
their charges from breathing the moral pestilence which circulated
without check in the places of public amusement; most of all must they
insist that every reminder of these corruptions, be it an otherwise
innocent harp or flute, should be excluded from the common acts of
religion.
The transfer of the office of song from the general congregation to an
official choir involved no cessation of the production of hymns for
popular use, for the distinction must always be kept in mind between
liturgical and non-liturgical song, and it was only in the former that
the people were commanded to abstain from participation in all but the
prescribed responses. On the other hand, as ceremonies multiplied and
festivals increased in number, hymnody was stimulated, and lyric songs
for private and social edification, for the hours of prayer, and for use
in processions, pilgrimages, dedications, and other occasional
celebrations, were rapidly produced. As has been shown, the Christians
had their hymns from the very beginning, but with the exception of one or
two short lyrics, a few fragments, and the great liturgical hymns which
were also adopted by the Western Church, they have been lost. Clement of
Alexandria, third century, is often spoken of as the first known
Christian hymn writer; but the single poem, the song of praise to the
Logos, which has gained him this title, is not, strictly speaking, a hymn
at all. From the fourth century onward the tide of Oriental hymnody
steadily rose, reaching its culmination in the eighth and ninth
centuries. The Eastern hymns are divided into two schools--the Syrian and
the Greek. Of the group of Syrian poets the most celebrated are Synesius,
born about 375, and Ephraem, who died at Edessa in 378. Ephraem was the
greatest teacher of his time in the Syrian Church, and her most prolific
and able hymnist. He is best remembered as the opponent of the followers
of Bardasanes and Harmonius, who had beguiled many into their Gnostic
errors by the charm of their hymns and melodies. Ephraem met these
schismatics on their own ground, and composed a large number of songs in
the spirit of orthodoxy, which he gave to choirs of his followers to be
sung on Sundays and festal days. The hymns of Ephraem were greatly
beloved by the Syrian Church, and are still valued by the Maronite
Christians. The Syrian school of hymnody died out in the fifth century,
and poetic inspiration in the Eastern Church found its channel in the
Greek tongue.
Before the age of the Greek Christian poets whose names have passed into
history, the great anonymous unmetrical hymns appeared which still hold
an eminent place in the liturgies of the Catholic and Protestant Churches
as well as of the Eastern Church. The best known of these are the two
Glorias--the Gloria Patri and the Gloria in excelsis; the Ter Sanctus or
Cherubic hymn, heard by Isaiah in vision; and the Te Deum. The Magnificat
or thanksgiving of Mary, and the Benedicite or Song of the Three
Children, were early adopted by the Eastern Church. The Kyrie eleison
appears as a response by the people in the liturgies of St. Mark and St.
James. It was adopted into the Roman liturgy at a very early date; the
addition of the Christe eleison is said to have been made by Gregory the
Great. The Gloria in excelsis, the "greater doxology," with the possible
exception of the Te Deum the noblest of the early Christian hymns, is the
angelic song given in Luke ii. 14, with additions which were made not
later than the fourth century. "Begun in heaven, finished on earth." It
was first used in the Eastern Church as a morning hymn. The Te Deum
laudamus has often been given a Western origin, St. Ambrose and St.
Augustine, according to a popular legend, having been inspired to
improvise it in alternate verses at the baptism of St. Augustine by the
bishop of Milan. Another tradition ascribes the authorship to St. Hilary
in the fourth century. Its original form is unknown, but it is generally
believed to have been formed by accretions upon a Greek original. Certain
phrases contained in it are also in the earlier liturgies. The present
form of the hymn is probably as old as the fifth century.[40]
Of the very few brief anonymous songs and fragments which have come down
to us from this dim period the most perfect is a Greek hymn, which was
sometimes sung in private worship at the lighting of the lamps. It has
been made known to many English readers through Longfellow's beautiful
translation in "The Golden Legend:"
"O gladsome light
Of the Father immortal,
And of the celestial
Sacred and blessed
Jesus, our Saviour!
Now to the sunset
Again hast thou brought us;
And seeing the evening
Twilight, we bless thee,
Praise thee, adore thee
Father omnipotent!
Son, the Life-giver!
Spirit, the Comforter!
Worthy at all times
Of worship and wonder!
Overlapping the epoch of the great anonymous hymns and continuing beyond
it is the era of the Greek hymnists whose names and works are known, and
who contributed a vast store of lyrics to the offices of the Eastern
Church. Eighteen quarto volumes, says Dr. J. M. Neale, are occupied by
this huge store of religious poetry. Dr. Neale, to whom the
English-speaking world is chiefly indebted for what slight knowledge it
has of these hymns, divides them into three epochs:
1. "That of formation, when this poetry was gradually throwing off the
bondage of classical metres, and inventing and perfecting its various
styles; this period ends about A. D. 726."
2. "That of perfection, which nearly coincides with the period of the
iconoclastic controversy, 726-820."
3. "That of decadence, when the effeteness of an effeminate court and the
dissolution of a decaying empire reduced ecclesiastical poetry, by slow
degrees, to a stilted bombast, giving great words to little meaning,
heaping up epithet upon epithet, tricking out commonplaces in diction
more and more gorgeous, till sense and simplicity are alike sought in
vain; 820-1400."[41]
The centres of Greek hymnody in its most brilliant period were Sicily,
Constantinople, and Jerusalem and its neighborhood, particularly St.
Sabba's monastery, where lived St. Cosmas and St. John Damascene, the two
greatest of the Greek Christian poets. The hymnists of this epoch
preserved much of the narrative style and objectivity of the earlier
writers, especially in the hymns written to celebrate the Nativity, the
Epiphany, and other events in the life of Christ. In others a more
reflective and introspective quality is found. The fierce struggles,
hatreds, and persecutions of the iconoclastic controversy also left their
plain mark upon many of them in a frequent tendency to magnify
temptations and perils, in a profound sense of sin, a consciousness of
the necessity of penitential discipline for the attainment of salvation,
and a certain fearful looking-for of judgment. This attitude, so
different from the peace and confidence of the earlier time, attains its
most striking manifestation in the sombre and powerful funeral dirge
ascribed to St. John Damascene ("Take the last kiss") and the Judgment
hymn of St. Theodore of the Studium. In the latter the poet strikes with
trembling hand the tone which four hundred years later was sounded with
such imposing majesty in the Dies Irae of St. Thomas of Celano.
The Catholic hymnody, so far at least as concerns the usage of the
ritual, belongs properly to a later period. The hymns of St. Hilary, St.
Damasus, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, Prudentius, Fortunatus, and St.
Gregory, which afterward so beautified the Divine Office, were originally
designed for private devotion and for accessory ceremonies, since it was
not until the tenth or eleventh century that hymns were introduced into
the office at Rome, following a tendency that was first authoritatively
recognized by the Council of Toledo in the seventh century.
The history of Christian poetry and music in the East ends with the
separation of the Eastern and Western Churches. From that time onward a
chilling blight rested upon the soil which the apostles had cultivated
with such zeal and for a time with such grand result. The fatal
controversy over icons, the check inflicted by the conquests of the
Mohammedan power, the crushing weight of Byzantine luxury and tyranny,
and that insidious apathy which seems to dwell in the very atmosphere of
the Orient, sooner or later entering into every high endeavor, relaxing
and corrupting--all this sapped the spiritual life of the Eastern Church.
The pristine enthusiasm was succeeded by fanaticism, and out of
fanaticism, in its turn, issued formalism, bigotry, stagnation. It was
only among the nations that were to rear a new civilization in Western
Europe on the foundations laid by the Roman empire that political and
social conditions could be created which would give free scope for the
expansion of the divine life of Christianity. It was only in the West,
also, that the motives that were adequate to inspire a Christian art,
after a long struggle against Byzantine formalism and convention, could
issue in a prophetic artistic progress. The attempted reconciliation of
Christian ideas and traditional pagan method formed the basis of
Christian art, but the new insight into spiritual things, and the
profounder emotions that resulted, demanded new ideals and principles as
well as new subjects. The nature and destiny of the soul, the beauty and
significance that lie in secret self-scrutiny and aspiration kindled by a
new hope, this, rather than the loveliness of outward shape, became the
object of contemplation and the endless theme of art. Architecture and
sculpture became symbolic, painting the presentation of ideas designed to
stimulate new life in the soul, poetry and music the direct witness and
the immediate manifestation of the soul itself.
With the edicts of Constantine early in the fourth century, which
practically made Christianity the dominant religious system of the
empire, the swift dilation of the pent-up energy of the Church
inaugurated an era in which ritualistic splendor kept pace with the rapid
acquisition of temporal power. The hierarchical developments had already
traversed a course parallel to those of the East, and now that the Church
was free to work out that genius for organization of which it had already
become definitely conscious, it went one step farther than the Oriental
system in the establishment of the papacy as the single head from which
the subordinate members derived legality. This was not a time when a
democratic form of church government could endure. There was no place for
such in the ideas of that age. In the furious tempests that overwhelmed
the Roman empire, in the readjustment of political and social conditions
all over Europe, with the convulsions and frequent triumphs of savagery
that inevitably attended them, it was necessary that the Church, as the
sole champion and preserver of civilization and righteousness, should
concentrate all her forces, and become in doctrine, worship, and
government a single, compact, unified, spiritual state. The dogmas of the
Church must be formulated, preserved, and guarded by an official class,
and the ignorant and fickle mass of the common people must be taught to
yield a reverent, unquestioning obedience to the rule of their spiritual
lords. The exposition of theology, the doctrine of the ever-renewed
sacrifice of Christ upon the altar, the theory of the sacraments
generally, all involved the conception of a mediatorial priesthood
deriving its authority by direct transmission from the apostles. Out of
such conditions and tendencies proceeded also the elaborate and
awe-inspiring rites, the fixed liturgies embalming the central dogmas of
the faith, and the whole machinery of a worship which was itself viewed
as of an objective efficacy, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and designed
both for the edification of the believer and as an offering of the Church
to its Redeemer. In the development of the outward observances of
worship, with their elaborate symbolic ceremonialism, the student is
often struck with surprise to see how lavishly the Church drew its forms
and decorations from paganism and Judaism. But there is nothing in this
that need excite wonder, nothing that was not inevitable under the
conditions of the times. Says Lanciani: "In accepting rites and customs
which were not offensive to her principles and morality, the Church
showed equal tact and foresight, and contributed to the peaceful
accomplishment of the transformation."[42] The pagan or Jewish convert
was not obliged to part with all his ancestral notions of the nature of
worship. He found his love of pomp and splendor gratified by the
ceremonies of a religion which knew how to make many of the fair features
of earthly life accessory to the inculcation of spiritual truth. And so
it was that symbolism and the appeal to the senses aided in commending
Christianity to a world which was not yet prepared for a faith which
should require only a silent, unobtrusive experience. Instruction must
come to the populace in forms which would satisfy their inherited
predispositions. The Church, therefore, establishing itself amidst
heathenism, adopted a large number of rites and customs from classical
antiquity; and in the externals of its worship, as well as of its
government, assumed forms which were contributions from without, as well
as evolutions from within. These acquisitions, however, did not by any
means remain a meaningless or incongruous residuum of dead superstitions.
An instructive symbolism was imparted to them; they were moulded with
marvellous art into the whole vesture with which the Church clothed
herself for her temporal and spiritual office, and were made to become
conscious witnesses to the truth and beauty of the new faith.
The commemoration of martyrs and confessors passed into invocations for
their aid as intercessors with Christ. They became the patron saints of
individuals and orders, and honors were paid to them at particular places
and on particular days, involving a multitude of special ritual
observances. Festivals were multiplied and took the place in popular
regard of the old Roman Lupercalia and Saturnalia and the mystic rites of
heathenism. As among the cultivated nations of antiquity, so in Christian
Rome the festival, calling into requisition every available means of
decoration, became the basis of a rapid development of art. Under all
these conditions the music of the Church in Italy became a liturgic
music, and, as in the East, the laity resigned the main offices of song
to a choir consisting of subordinate clergy and appointed by clerical
authority. The method of singing was undoubtedly not indigenous, but
derived, as already suggested, directly or indirectly from Eastern
practice. Milman asserts that the liturgy of the Roman Church for the
first three centuries was Greek. However this may have been, we know that
both Syriac and Greek influences were strong at that time in the Italian
Church. A number of the popes in the seventh century were Greeks. Until
the cleavage of the Church into its final Eastern and Western divisions
the interaction was strong between the two sections, and much in the way
of custom and art was common to both. The conquests of the Moslem power
in the seventh century drove many Syrian monks into Italy, and their
liturgic practice, half Greek, half Semitic, could not fail to make
itself felt among their adopted brethren.
A notable instance of the transference of Oriental custom into the
Italian Church is to be found in the establishment of antiphonal chanting
in the Church of Milan, at the instance of St. Ambrose, bishop of that
city. St. Augustine, the pupil and friend of St. Ambrose, has given an
account of this event, of which he had personal knowledge. "It was about
a year, or not much more," he relates, "since Justina, the mother of the
boy-emperor Justinian, persecuted thy servant Ambrose in the interest of
her heresy, to which she had been seduced by the Arians." [This
persecution was to induce St. Ambrose to surrender some of the churches
of the city to the Arians.] "The pious people kept guard in the church,
prepared to die with their bishop, thy servant. At this time it was
instituted that, after the manner of the Eastern Church, hymns and psalms
should be sung, lest the people should pine away in the tediousness of
sorrow, which custom, retained from then till now, is imitated by
many--yea, by almost all of thy congregations throughout the rest of the
world."[43]
The conflict of St. Ambrose with the Arians occurred in 386. Before the
introduction of the antiphonal chant the psalms were probably rendered in
a semi-musical recitation, similar to the usage mentioned by St.
Augustine as prevailing at Alexandria under St. Athanasius, "more
speaking than singing." That a more elaborate and emotional style was in
use at Milan in St. Augustine's time is proved by the very interesting
passage in the tenth book of the _Confessions_, in which he analyzes the
effect upon himself of the music of the Church, fearing lest its charm
had beguiled him from pious absorption in the sacred words into a purely
aesthetic gratification. He did not fail, however, to render the just
meed of honor to the music that so touched him: "How I wept at thy hymns
and canticles, pierced to the quick by the voices of thy melodious
Church! Those voices flowed into my ears, and the truth distilled into my
heart, and thence there streamed forth a devout emotion, and my tears ran
down, and happy was I therein."[44]
Antiphonal psalmody, after the pattern of that employed at Milan, was
introduced into the divine office at Rome by Pope Celestine, who reigned
422-432. It is at about this time that we find indications of the more
systematic development of the liturgic priestly chant. The history of the
papal choir goes back as far as the fifth century. Leo I., who died in
461, gave a durable organization to the divine office by establishing a
community of monks to be especially devoted to the service of the
canonical hours. In the year 680 the monks of Monte Cassino, founded by
St. Benedict, suddenly appeared in Rome and announced the destruction of
their monastery by the Lombards. Pope Pelagius received them hospitably,
and gave them a dwelling near the Lateran basilica. This cloister became
a means of providing the papal chapel with singers. In connection with
the college of men singers, who held the clerical title of sub-deacon,
stood an establishment for boys, who were to be trained for service in
the pope's choir, and who were also given instruction in other branches.
This school received pupils from the wealthiest and most distinguished
families, and a number of the early popes, including Gregory II. and Paul
I., received instruction within its walls.
By the middle or latter part of the sixth century, the mediaeval epoch of
church music had become fairly inaugurated. A large body of liturgic
chants had been classified and systematized, and the teaching of their
form and the tradition of their rendering given into the hands of members
of the clergy especially detailed for their culture. The liturgy,
essentially completed during or shortly before the reign of Gregory the
Great (590-604), was given a musical setting throughout, and this
liturgic chant was made the law of the Church equally with the liturgy
itself, and the first steps were taken to impose one uniform ritual and
one uniform chant upon all the congregations of the West.
It was, therefore, in the first six centuries, when the Church was
organizing and drilling her forces for her victorious conflicts, that the
final direction of her music, as of all her art, was consciously taken.
In rejecting the support of instruments and developing for the first time
an exclusively vocal art, and in breaking loose from the restrictions of
antique metre which in Greek and Greco-Roman music had forced melody to
keep step with strict prosodic measure, Christian music parted company
with pagan art, threw the burden of expression not, like Greek music,
upon rhythm, but upon melody, and found in this absolute vocal melody a
new art principle of which all the worship music of modern Christendom is
the natural fruit. More vital still than these special forms and
principles, comprehending and necessitating them, was the true ideal of
music, proclaimed once for all by the fathers of the liturgy. This ideal
is found in the distinction of the church style from the secular style,
the expression of the universal mood of prayer, rather than the
expression of individual, fluctuating, passionate emotion with which
secular music deals--that rapt, pervasive, exalted tone which makes no
attempt at detailed painting of events or superficial mental states, but
seems rather to symbolize the fundamental sentiments of humility, awe,
hope, and love which mingle all particular experiences in the common
offering that surges upward from the heart of the Church to its Lord and
Master. In this avoidance of an impassioned emphasis of details in favor
of an expression drawn from the large spirit of worship, church music
evades the peril of introducing an alien dramatic element into the holy
ceremony, and asserts its nobler power of creating an atmosphere from
which all worldly custom and association disappear. This grand conception
was early injected into the mind of the Church, and has been the parent
of all that has been most noble and edifying in the creations of
ecclesiastical music.