96. Latin Hymns and Hymnists. (Chapter 10. Medieval Worship and Ceremonies.) (History of the Christian Church) (Schaff, Philip)

The Latin church poetry of the middle ages is much better known than the Greek, and remains to this day a rich source of devotion in the Roman church and as far as poetic genius and religious fervor are appreciated. The best Latin hymns have passed into the Breviary and Missal (some with misimprovements), and have been often reproduced in modern languages. The number of truly classical hymns, however, which were inspired by pure love to Christ and can be used with profit by Christians of every name, is comparatively small. The poetry of the Latin church is as full of Mariolatry and hagiolatry as the poetry of the Greek church. It is astonishing what an amount of chivalrous and enthusiastic devotion the blessed Mother of our Lord absorbed in the middle ages. In Mone's collection the hymns to the Virgin fill a whole volume of 457 pages, the hymns to saints another volume of 579 pages, while the first volume of only 461 pages is divided between hymns to God and to the angels. The poets intended to glorify Christ through his mother, but the mother overshadows the child, as in the pictures of the Madonna. She was made the mediatrix of all divine grace, and was almost substituted for Christ, who was thought to occupy a throne of majesty too high for sinful man to reach without the aid of his mother and her tender human sympathies. She is addressed with every epithet of praise, as Mater Dei, Dei Genitrix, Mater summi Domini, Mater misericordiae, Mater bonitatis, Mater dolorosa, Mater jucundosa, Mater speciosa, Maris Stella, Mundi domina, Mundi spes, Porta paradisi, Regina coeli, Radix gratiae, Virgo virginum, Virgo regia Dei. Even the Te Deum was adapted to her by the distinguished St. Bonaventura so as to read Te Matrem laudamus, Te Virginem confitemur.

The Latin, as the Greek, hymnists were nearly all monks; but an emperor (Charlemagne?) and a king (Robert of France) claim a place of honor among them.

The sacred poetry of the Latin church may be divided into three periods: 1, The patristic period from Hilary (d. 368) and Ambrose (d. 397) to Venantius Fortunatus (d. about 609) and Gregory I. (d. 604); 2, the early mediaeval period to Peter Damiani (d. 1072); 3, the classical period to the thirteenth century. The first period we have considered in a previous volume. Its most precious legacy to the church universal is the Te Deum laudamus. It is popularly ascribed to Ambrose of Milan (or Ambrose and Augustine jointly), but in its present completed form does not appear before the first half of the sixth century, although portions of it may be traced to earlier Greek origin; it is, like the Apostles' Creed, and the Greek Gloria in Excelsis, a gradual growth of the church rather than the production of any individual. The third period embraces the greatest Latin hymnists, as Bernard of Morlaix (monk of Cluny about 1150), Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153), Adam of St. Victor (d. 1192), Bonaventura (d. 1274), Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), Thomas a Celano (about 1250), Jacopone (d. 1306), and produced the last and the best Catholic hymns which can never die, as Hora Novisasima; Jesu dulcis memoria; Salve caput cruentatum; Stabat Mater; and Dies Irae. In this volume we are concerned with the second period.

Venantius Fortunatus, of Poitiers, and his cotemporary, Pope Gregory I., form the transition from the patristic poetry of Sedulius and Prudentius to the classic poetry of the middle ages.

Fortunatus (about 600) was the fashionable poet of his day. A native Italian, he emigrated to Gaul, travelled extensively, became intimate with St. Gregory of Tours, and the widowed queen Radegund when she lived in ascetic retirement, and died as bishop of Poitiers. He was the first master of the trochaic tetrameter, and author of three hundred poems, chief among which are the two famous passion hymns:

Vexilla regis prodeunt,"

The Royal Banners forward go; and Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis,"

Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle.

Both have a place in the Roman Breviary.

Gregory I. (d. 604), though far inferior to Fortunatus in poetic genius, occupies a prominent rank both in church poetry and church music. He followed Ambrose in the metrical form, the prayer-like tone, and the churchly spirit, and wrote for practical use. He composed about a dozen hymns, several of which have found a place in the Roman Breviary. The best is his Sunday hymn:

Primo dierum omnium, On this first day when heaven on earth, or, as it has been changed in the Breviary:

The Venerable Bede (d. 735) wrote a beautiful ascension hymn

and a hymn for the Holy innocents,

Rabanus Maurus, a native of Mainz (Mayence) on the Rhine, a pupil of Alcuin, monk and abbot in the convent of Fulda, archbishop of Mainz from 847 to 856, was the chief Poet of the Carolingian age, and the first German who wrote Latin hymns. Some of them have passed into the Breviary.

He is probably the author of the pentecostal Veni, Creator Spiritus. It outweighs all his other poems. It is one of the classical Latin hymns, and still used in the Catholic church on the most solemn occasions, as the opening of Synods, the creating of popes and the crowning of kings. It was invested with a superstitious charm. It is the only Breviary hymn which passed into the Anglican liturgy as part of the office for ordaining priests and consecrating bishops. The authorship has been variously ascribed to Charlemagne, to Gregory the Great, also to Alcuin, and even to Ambrose, without any good reason. It appears first in 898, is found in the MS. containing the Poems of Rabanus Maurus, and in all the old German Breviaries; it was early and repeatedly translated into German and agrees very well in thought and expression with his treatise on the Holy Spirit.

We give the original with two translations.

Creator, Spirit, Lord of Grace,

O make our hearts Your dwelling-place,

And with Your might celestial aid

The souls of those whom You have made.

Come from the throne of God above,

O Paraclete, O Holy Dove,

Come, Oil of gladness, cleansing Fire,

And Living Spring of pure desire.

O Finger of the Hand Divine,

The sevenfold gifts of Grace are Your,

And touched by You the lips proclaim

All praise to God's most holy Name.

Then to our souls Your light impart,

And give Your Love to every heart

Turn all our weakness into might,

O You, the Source of Life and Light.

Protect us from the assailing foe,

And Peace, the fruit of Love, bestow;

Upheld by You, our Strength and Guide,

No evil can our steps betide.

Spirit of Faith, on us bestow

The Father and the Son to know;

And, of the Twain, the Spirit, You;

Eternal One, Eternal Three.

To God the Father let us sing;

To God the Son, our risen King;

And equally with These adore

The Spirit, God for evermore.

O Holy Ghost, Creator come!

Your people's minds pervade;

And fill, with Your supernatural grace,

The souls which You have made.

Kindle our senses to a flame,

And fill our hearts with love,

And, through our bdies' weakness, still

Pour valor from above!

You who are called the Paraclete,

The gift of God most high-

You living fount, and fire and love,

Our spirit's pure ally;

Drive further off our enemy,

And immediately give us peace;

That with Thyself as such a guide,

We may from evil cease.

You sevenfold giver of all good;

Finger of God's right hand;

You promise of the Father, rich

In words for every land;

Through You may we the Father know,

And thus confess the Son;

For You, from both the Holy Ghost,

We praise while time shall run.

In this connection we mention the Veni, Sancte Spiritus, the other great pentecostal hymn of the middle ages. It is generally ascribed to King Robert of France (970-1031), the son and success or of Hugh Capet. He was distinguished for piety and charity, like his more famous successor, St. Louis IX., and better fitted for the cloister than the throne. He was disciplined by the pope (998) for marrying a distant cousin, and obeyed by effecting a divorce. He loved music and poetry, founded convents and churches, and supported three hundred paupers. His hymn reveals in terse and musical language an experimental knowledge of the gifts and operations of the Holy Spirit upon the heart. It is superior to the companion hymn, Veni, Creator Spiritus. Trench calls it the loveliest of all the Latin hymns, but we would give this praise rather to St. Bernard's Jesu dulcis memoria ( Jesus, the very thought of You ). The hymn contains ten half-stanzas of three lines each with a refrain in ium. Each line has seven syllables, and ends with a double or triple rhyme; the third line rhymes with the third line of the following half-stanza. Neale has reproduced the double ending of each third line (as brilliancy radiancy ).

The following is a felicitous version by an American divine.

Come, O Spirit! Fount of grace!

From your heavenly dwelling-place

One bright morning beam impart:

Come, O Father of the poor;

Come, O Source of bounties sure;

Come, O Sunshine of the heart!

O! thrice blessed light divine!

Come, the spirit's inmost shrine

With Your holy presence fill;

Of Your brooding love bereft,

Naught to hopeless man is left;

Naught is his but evil still.

Comforter of man the best!

Making the sad soul your guest;

Sweet refreshing in our fears,

In our labor a retreat,

Cooling shadow in the heat,

Solace in our falling tears.

Wash away each earthly stain,

Flow o'er this parched waste again,

Real the wounds of conscience sore,

Bind the stubborn will within,

Thaw the icy chains of sin,

Guide us, that we stray no more.

Give to Your believers, give,

In Your holy hope who live,

All Your sevenfold dower of love;

Give the sure reward of faith,

Give the love that conquers death,

Give unfailing joy above.

Notker, surnamed the Older, or Balbulus ( the little Stammerer, from a slight lisp in his speech), was born about 850 of a noble family in Switzerland, educated in the convent of St. Gall, founded by Irish missionaries, and lived there as an humble monk. He died about 912, and was canonized in 1512.

He is famous as the reputed author of the Sequences (Sequentiae), a class of hymns in rythmical prose, hence also called Proses (Prosae). They arose from the custom of prolonging the last syllable in singing the Allelu-ia of the Gradual, between the Epistle and the Gospel, while the deacon was ascending from the altar to the rood-loft (organ-loft), that he might thence sing the Gospel. This prolongation was called jubilatio or jubilus, or laudes, on account of its jubilant tone, and sometimes sequentia (Greek ajkolouqiva), because it followed the reading of the Epistle or the Alleluia. Mystical interpreters made this unmeaning prolongation of a mere sound the echo of the jubilant music of heaven. A further development was to set words to these notes in rythmical prose for chanting. The name sequence was then applied to the text and in a wider sense also to regular metrical and rhymed hymns. The book in which Sequences were collected was called Sequentiale.

Notker marks the transition from the unmeaning musical sequence to the literary or poetic sequence. Over thirty poems bear his name. His first, attempt begins with the line

Laudes Deo concinat orbis ubique totus.

More widely circulated is his Sequence of the Holy Spirit:

Sancti Spiritus adsit nobis gratia.

The grace of the Holy Spirit be present with us.

The best of all his compositions, which is said to have been inspired by the sight of the builders of a bridge over an abyss in the Martinstobe, is a meditation on death (Antiphona de morte):

This solemn prayer is incorporated in many burial services. In the Book of Common Prayer it is thus enlarged:

Peter Damiani (d. 1072), a friend of Hildebrand and promoter of his hierarchical refrms, wrote a solemn hymn on the day of death:

"Gravi me terrore pulsas vitae dies ultima,"

"With what heavy fear you smite.

He is perhaps also the author of the better known descriptive poem on the Glory and Delights of Paradise, which is usually assigned to St. Augustine:

"Ad perennis vitae fontem mens sitivit arida,

Claustra carnis praesto frangi clausa quaerit anima:

Gliscit, ambit, eluctatur exsul frui patria.

The subordinate hymn-writers of our period are the following:

Isidor of Seville (Isidoris Hispalensis, 560-636). A hymn on St. Agatha: Festum insigne prodiit.

Cyxilla of Spain. Hymnus de S. Thurso et sociis: Exulta nimium turba fidelium.

Eugenius of Toledo. Oratio S. Eugenii Toletani Episcopi: Rex Deus.

Paulus Diaconus (720-800), of Monte Casino, chaplain of Charlemagne, historian of the Lombards, and author of a famous collection of homilies. On John the Baptist ( Ut queant laxis), and on the Miracles of St. Benedict (Fratres alacri pectore).

Odo of Cluny (d. 941). A hymn on St. Mary Magdalene day, Lauda, Mater Ecclesiae, translated by Neale: Exalt, O mother Church, to-day, The clemency of Christ, your Lord. It found its way into the York Breviary.

Godescalcus (Gottschalk, d. about 950, not to be confounded with his predestinarian namesake, who lived in the ninth century), is next to Notker, the best writer of sequences or proses, as Laus Tibi, Christe ( Praise be to You, O Christ ), and Coeli enarrant ( The heavens declare the glory ), both translated by Neale.

Fulbert Of Chartres (died about 1029) wrote a paschal hymn adopted in several Breviaries: Chorus novae Jerusalem ( Ye choirs of New Jerusalem ), translated by Neale.

A few of the choicest hymns of our period, from the sixth to the twelfth century are anonymous. To these belong:

Hymnum dicat turba fratrum. A morning hymn mentioned by Bede as a fine specimen of the trochaic tetrameter.

Sancti venite. A communion hymn.

Urbs beata Jerusalem. It is from the eighth century, and one of those touching New Jerusalem hymns which take their inspiration from the last chapter of St. John's Apocalypse, and express the Christian's home-sickness after heaven. The following is the first stanza (with Neale's translation):

"Urbs beata Jerusalem,

Dicta pacis visio,

Quae construitur in coelo

Vivis ex lapidibus,

Et angelis coronata

Ut sponsata comite.

Blessed City, Heavenly Salem,

Vision dear of Peace and Love,

Who, of living stones upbuilded,

Art the joy of Heav'n above,

And, with angel cohorts circled,

As a bride to earth do move!

Apparebit repentina. An alphabetic and acrostic poem on the Day of Judgment, based on Matt. 25:31-36; from the seventh century; first mentioned by Bede, then long lost sight of; the forerunner of the Dies Irae, more narrative than lyrical, less sublime and terrific, but equally solemn. The following are the first lines in Neale's admirable translation:

"That great Day of wrath and terror,

That last Day of woe and doom,

Like a thief that comes at midnight,

On the sons of men shall come;

When the pride and pomp of ages

All shall utterly have passed,

And they stand in anguish, owning

That the end is here at last;

And the trumpet's pealing clangor,

Through the earth's four quarters spread,

Waxing loud and ever louder,

Shall convoke the quick and dead:

And the King of heavenly glory

Shall assume His throne on high,

And the cohorts of His angels

Shall be near Him in the sky:

And the sun shall turn to sackcloth,

And the moon be red as blood,

And the stars shall fall from heaven,

Whelm'd beneath destruction's flood.

Flame and fire, and desolation

At the Judge's feet shall go:

Earth and sea, and all abysses

Shall His mighty sentence know.

Ave, Maris Stella. This is the favorite mediaeval Mary hymn, and perhaps the very best of the large number devoted to the worship of the Queen of heaven, which entered so deeply into the piety and devotion of the Catholic church both in the East and the West. It is therefore given here in full with the version of Edward Caswall.

Hail, you Star-of-Ocean,

Portal of the sky,

Ever-Virgin Mother

Of the Lord Most High!

Oh, by Gabriel's Ave

Uttered long ago

Eva's name reversing,

'Stablish peace below!

Break the captive's fetters,

Light on blindness pour,

All our ills expelling,

Every bliss implore.

Show yourself a mother,

Offer Him our sighs,

Who, for us Incarnate,

Did not you despise.

Virgin of all virgins!

To your shelter take us

Gentlest of the gentle!

Chaste and gentle make us.

Still as on we journey,

Help our weak endeavor,

Till with you and Jesus,

We rejoice for ever.

Through the highest heaven

To the Almighty Three,

Father, Son, and Spirit,

One same glory be.

The Latin hymnody was only, for priests and monks, and those few who understood the Latin language. The people listened to it as they do to the mass, and responded with the Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, which passed from the Greek church into the Western litanies. As the modern languages of Europe developed themselves out of the Latin, and out of the Teutonic, a popular poetry arose during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and afterwards received a powerful impulse from the Reformation. Since that time the Protestant churches, especially in Germany and England, have produced the richest hymnody, which speaks to the heart of the people in their own familiar tongue, and is, next to the Psalter, the chief feeder of public and private devotion. In this body of evangelical hymns the choicest Greek and Latin hymns in various translations, reproductions, and transformations occupy an honored place and serve as connecting links between past and modern times in the worship of the same God and Saviour.