an Easter hymn, and
In the person of the Heavenly Adam,
a hymn on the theme of the temptation of Jesus.[81] Hilary, like his
Greek contemporaries, stands at the beginning of a new era, but it was
Ambrose, and not he, who inaugurated the tradition of the medieval Latin
hymn.
So far no mention has been made of the fact that the early period of
Christian history was characterized by persecution. As a rule sporadic
and intermittent, it was periodically severe. At all times Christians, if
not actually persecuted, were objects of suspicion to the Roman
government. We owe to the official zeal of Pliny the Younger, who was a
proconsul in Bithynia in 112, our first glimpse of Christian worship from
the point of view of the outsider. In a letter to the Emperor Trajan on
the subject of the Christians, he says that, as a part of their service
at sunrise, they chanted a hymn, antiphonally, to Christ as a God.[82]
Speculation as to the identity of this hymn has never ceased among
students. Leclercq summarizes the theories as follows: It is a morning
hymn later attributed to Hilary. It is the morning hymn of the Greek
liturgy. It is the morning hymn of the _Apostolic Constitutions_. It is
the Great Doxology.[83] Since they are all unsatisfactory as
identifications, we remain in ignorance on this point. A recent study of
Pliny's letter by Casper J. Kraemer, a classicist, proposes the
translation of the words _carmen dicere_, "to chant a psalm."[84] This
most interesting suggestion is in thorough harmony with our knowledge of
the continuity of the use of the psalms in public worship at this time.