For our own purposes a fifth class can even yet be formed from the last named group—theundoubted originals, which will comprise only those attested by contemporary authority.
The list would stand then in the order of authenticity, about as follows:
These are theundoubtedhymns and the only hymns to be safely assigned to Ambrose.
These are theprobablehymns.
These have, for one reason or another, been assigned to Ambrose. It is to be remembered that theTristes erantis a part of theAurora lucis rutilat, and that in many cases the hymns are very much intermingled. A rigid designation is therefore impossible. The fourth class comprehends what may be calledAmbrosiani—the Sedulian and Gregorian and other hymns being simply excluded from the list.
While these are often known to be mere paraphrases of Ambrose’s own homilies, or imitations of his hymns, they are as frequently found to possess his spirit and almost the very forms of his verse. Thus Daniel says of theTer hora trinathat it is “notunworthy of Ambrose himself.” We also find many cases where the Roman Breviary has altered the first line as well as changed the arrangement of the stanzas.
The last class are those hymns, formerly called Ambrosian, but now known to be the work of other hands. They are given with their authors’ names appended.
Here, then, we have what may be called substantially the earliest hymn-book of the Latin Church. Of course there were other hymns which were very soon separated and properly assigned, but not until the fifteenth century was any intelligent analysis attempted, and it is even now—as can be easily seen—a matter not of dogmatic certainty, but of scholarly authority and inherent probability. It may not be improper to add, however, that in these hymns we find some of the purest and most pious of praises. Thehonorof the Virgin Mother and of the saints has not yet been attempted. The martyrs, Stephen and Agnes and Agatha, are alone mentioned, if we except an occasional and somewhat doubtful tribute to others. These are hymns of worship and of prayer—of adoration and of fellowship.
As a handful of grain from a great granary, here are four versions of hymns counted as among Ambrose’s best:
Maker of all, the Lord,And ruler in the height,Thy care doth robe the day in peace,Thou givest sleep by night.
Maker of all, the Lord,
And ruler in the height,
Thy care doth robe the day in peace,
Thou givest sleep by night.
Let rest refresh our limbsFor toil, though wearied now,And let our troubled minds be calm,And smooth the anxious brow.
Let rest refresh our limbs
For toil, though wearied now,
And let our troubled minds be calm,
And smooth the anxious brow.
We sing our thanks, for dayIs gone and night appears;Our vows and prayers in contrite hopeAre lifted to thine ears.
We sing our thanks, for day
Is gone and night appears;
Our vows and prayers in contrite hope
Are lifted to thine ears.
To thee the deepest soul,To thee the tuneful voice,To thee the chaste affections turn,In thee our minds rejoice.
To thee the deepest soul,
To thee the tuneful voice,
To thee the chaste affections turn,
In thee our minds rejoice.
That when black depths of gloomHave hid the day from sight,Our faith may tread no darkening path,And night by faith be bright.
That when black depths of gloom
Have hid the day from sight,
Our faith may tread no darkening path,
And night by faith be bright.
And let no slumber seizeThat mind which must not sleep,Whose faith must keep its virtue fresh,Whose dreams may not be deep.
And let no slumber seize
That mind which must not sleep,
Whose faith must keep its virtue fresh,
Whose dreams may not be deep.
When sensual things are doneOur loftiest thought is thine,Nor fear of unseen enemiesCan break such peace divine.
When sensual things are done
Our loftiest thought is thine,
Nor fear of unseen enemies
Can break such peace divine.
To Christ and to the Father now,And to the Spirit equally,We pray for every favoring gift,One God supreme, a Trinity.
To Christ and to the Father now,
And to the Spirit equally,
We pray for every favoring gift,
One God supreme, a Trinity.
O splendor of the Father’s face,Affording light from light,Thou Light of light, thou fount of grace,Thou day of day most bright.
O splendor of the Father’s face,
Affording light from light,
Thou Light of light, thou fount of grace,
Thou day of day most bright.
O shine upon us, perfect Sun,With lasting brightness shine;Let radiance from the Spirit run,Our senses to refine.
O shine upon us, perfect Sun,
With lasting brightness shine;
Let radiance from the Spirit run,
Our senses to refine.
To thee, our Father, do we pray,Whose glory endeth not,That thine almighty favor mayRemove each sinful spot.
To thee, our Father, do we pray,
Whose glory endeth not,
That thine almighty favor may
Remove each sinful spot.
He fills our deeds with heavenly strength,He blunts the look of hate,He ends our weary lot at length,Or gives us grace to wait.
He fills our deeds with heavenly strength,
He blunts the look of hate,
He ends our weary lot at length,
Or gives us grace to wait.
This is the very day of God,Serene with holy light,On which the pure atoning bloodHas cleansed the world aright.
This is the very day of God,
Serene with holy light,
On which the pure atoning blood
Has cleansed the world aright.
Restoring hope to lost mankind,Enlightening darkened eyes,Relieving fear in us who findThe thief in Paradise.
Restoring hope to lost mankind,
Enlightening darkened eyes,
Relieving fear in us who find
The thief in Paradise.
Who, changing swiftly cross for crown,By one brief glance of trust,Beheld God’s Kingdom shining down,And followed Christ the Just.
Who, changing swiftly cross for crown,
By one brief glance of trust,
Beheld God’s Kingdom shining down,
And followed Christ the Just.
The very angels stand amazed,Beholding such a sight,And such a trusting sinner raisedTo blessed life and light.
The very angels stand amazed,
Beholding such a sight,
And such a trusting sinner raised
To blessed life and light.
O mystery beyond our thought,To take earth’s stain away,And lift the burden sin hath brought,And cleanse this coarser clay.
O mystery beyond our thought,
To take earth’s stain away,
And lift the burden sin hath brought,
And cleanse this coarser clay.
What deed can more sublime appear?For sorrow seeks for grace,And love releases mortal fear,And death renews the race.
What deed can more sublime appear?
For sorrow seeks for grace,
And love releases mortal fear,
And death renews the race.
Death seizes on the bitter barb,And binds herself thereto,And life is clad in deathly garb,And life shall rise anew.
Death seizes on the bitter barb,
And binds herself thereto,
And life is clad in deathly garb,
And life shall rise anew.
When death through earth has made her path,Then all the dead shall rise,And death, consumed by heavenly wrath,In groans, and lonely, dies.
When death through earth has made her path,
Then all the dead shall rise,
And death, consumed by heavenly wrath,
In groans, and lonely, dies.
O blessed light, the Trinity,In Unity of primal love—Now that the burning sun has gone,Our hearts illumine from above.
O blessed light, the Trinity,
In Unity of primal love—
Now that the burning sun has gone,
Our hearts illumine from above.
Thee, in the morn with songs of praise,Thee, at the evening time, we seek;Thee, through all ages we adore,And, suppliant of thy love, we speak.
Thee, in the morn with songs of praise,
Thee, at the evening time, we seek;
Thee, through all ages we adore,
And, suppliant of thy love, we speak.
To God the Father be the praise,And to his sole-begotten Son,And to the Blessed Comforter,Both now and while all time shall run.
To God the Father be the praise,
And to his sole-begotten Son,
And to the Blessed Comforter,
Both now and while all time shall run.
The closing scenes in the life of the great bishop were such as became his past. His funeral address over his brother Satyrus is like that of Bernard over his brother Gerard, or like that of Melanchthon above the dead Luther. His eulogy of Theodosius, whom he survived but two years, is conceived in a strain of lofty poetry, several paragraphs opening with the repeated phraseDilexi virum illum.I loved that man!
Ambrose died on the night after Good Friday,A.D.397. Paulinus, his biographer, was taking notes of the commentary pronounced by his dying master on the 43d psalm. It was a scene like that at the deathbed of the Venerable Bede. The failing bishop said that he heard angelic voices and saw the smiling face of Christ; and the reverent scribe avows that the face which looked on his own was bright, and that around that aged head shone until the very last an aureole of glory.
Let us allow much charity to the miracles and to the superstition of that time, but let us also remember the gravity and sweetness of the poet-bishop. For it is no wonder that when he lay in state in the great cathedral with quiet, upturned face, little children were moved by his gentle dignity of countenance and men and women, affected by this holy presence, put away their sins, and were baptized as followers of the dead man’s faith.
Aurelius Prudentius Clemens has received rather more than his due share of renown. His works have been edited by the most careful scholars. There is a beautiful little “Elzevir” upon which Heinsius expended his labor and which was printed at Amsterdam in 1667. There is an “Aldine,” 4to, Venice, 1501. But the most elegant is that of Parma (1788, 2 vols., 4to), edited by Teoli; and the best is regarded as that of Faustinus Arevalus, the Spaniard, Rome 1788-89, also in 2 vols. 4to. If to these we add the mostaccessiblecollection of his writings, we shall find it in the fifty-ninth and sixtieth volumes of Migne’sPatrologia. The text of these various editions is derived from what is called the Codex Puteanus, now in the Paris Library—a manuscript dating into the fifth or sixth century. In all, there have been nearly a dozen of them, of which that of R. Langius (1490, 4to) is the trueprinceps—the very earliest. And in the matter of editorship, it is worthy of note that Erasmus did not disdain to expend his fine classical skill upon the hymns for Christmas and the Epiphany.
If we ask Bentley his opinion of Prudentius he tells us that he is “the Horace and Virgil of the Christians.” Milman declares that he was “the great popular author of the Middle Ages,” and that “no work but the Bible appears with so many glosses [commentaries] in High German.” “T. D.,” away back in 1821, when dear old Kit North was editingBlackwood, furnished that periodical with some poetical translations and remarked that Prudentius was “the Latin Dr. Watts.” In La Rousse he obtains the credit of being “the first Christian poet.” Among the earlier contemporaneous, or slightly subsequent references his name is preceded by the magic letters, “V. C.,” standing not, as some have thought, forVir Consularis, a man who had enjoyed the consulship, but forVir Clarissimus, a person of high distinction. It is reserved for the “worthy and impartial” Du Pin to formulate a judgmentmore in accord with the true facts of the case. “Prudentius,” saith Du Pin, “is no very good poet, he often useth expressions not reconcilable to the purity of Augustus’s Age.”
The value of his poetry turns largely upon its theological and historical merits—both of which are considerable. It is not structurally perfect by any means, and yet it has furnished several very lovely hymns to the Church—graceful and delicate, rather than strong or inspiring.
In giving him his name it is safe to take that which is usually adopted:Aurelius Prudentius, surnamedClemensor the Merciful. To this has occasionally been prefixedQuintusorMarcus, but neither has sufficient authority in its favor. He was a Spaniard, and the main facts concerning his life are learned from his own metrical preface to his poems. Probably few questions have been more closely discussed by the learned than this of his birthplace. The internal evidence is heaped up on either side until it is seen that Calahorra [Calagurris] is probably where he was born, while Saragossa [Caesarea-Augusta] was “his city” and the place with which he was most identified.
He was doubtless of good family. Those industrious and microscopic editors who have devoted themselves to his fame have laid great stress upon the namesAureliusandClemens. TheAurelii, they say, were distinguished and well-born people. TheClementeswere also of notable memory. And there were twoPrudentiibeside himself who obtained rather more than ordinary distinction. Indeed, there were some fivePrudentii, early and late, and one of them,Prudentius Amoenus, tried, indifferently badly, to climb to fame by an abridgment of his predecessor’s history of the Old and New Testaments. In this he was so successful that the original is now lost, the condensation alone remains, and our Prudentius is often known asPrudentius Major, to differentiate him from this troublesomeMinor, who was a preceptor of Walafrid Strabo. In regard to two other hymns—theCorde natusand theVidit anguis—an element of doubt has been introduced by this same person. Faustinus Arevalus was nothing if not a hymn-tinker (seeChristian Remembrancer, vol. xlvi., p. 125ff.), and it is possible that these by such careless editorship have been incorporated into the text of the true Prudentius from the pages of his namesake and imitator. The hymnVirgo Dei genitrix(of the fifteenth century) is ascribed to another of the five Prudentii.
This sort of blunder is by no means unusual. We have an instance in point with reference to the very Consul Salia in whose consulship our poet tells us that he was born. A similarity betweenCoss. SaliaandMassaliamisled the learned. They saw in this a proof that Massilia (Marseilles) was his birthplace, and Prudentius was at once claimed for France. But we have now unravelled and disentangled the greater part of this obscure coil. Flavius Philippus and FlaviusSaliaare known to have served conjointly in the year 348, and hence the industry of Aldus Manutius and Labbeus (Labbèe) has been thrown away and their false conjecture has been abandoned.
Prudentius himself tells us nothing about his family, beyond what we derive by inference. The deeper that we plunge into this labyrinth of guesses the further we are from being settled in opinion. The exhaustive—and, let us add, the exhausting—editor of the latest edition finally calls a halt in the middle of his complicated Latin sentences and avows himself utterly at a loss about the truth. There is then some comfort left to us in cutting and untying these knots; for whatever view we may advance has found distinguished and earnest championship already! On the whole, Teoli appears a reliable leader, and him we have mostly followed, as later authors, such as Professors Fiske and Teuffel, seem to have done before us.
Let us say, then, that he was born in 348, Philippus and Salia being consuls, at Calahorra, which lies up the Ebro and to the northwest of Saragossa. To-day Calahorra is a small place of a few thousand inhabitants, but it furnishes two other notable facts to history in addition to its claim to be the birthplace of Prudentius. It was this little fighting town which resisted Afranius, whom Pompey sent to take it in 78B.C., and it was then that the citizens ate their wives and children sooner than surrender. Besides this somewhat doubtful glory it produced Quinctilian; while Tudela, which is between it and Saragossa, gave a name to the learned Jew, Benjamin of Tudela, whose ideas about the Tower of Babel have become as classic as Prudentius’s hymns or as the Maid of Saragossa herself. It may be added that paganism was very early abandoned in all this region.
The parents of Prudentius gave him a good education. He possessed, says Teoli,ingenium acre, disertum, ferax—talent that was keen, eloquent, and fruitful. But at the rhetoricians’ schools, which he attended about the age of seventeen, he found little that was commendable in manners or morals. It would appear that he gave the rein to his vices and that his life was not very rapidly turned into the ways of Christianity.
He was at first called to the bar and made judge in two towns of considerable size, which may perhaps have been Toledo and Cordova. About the year 400 he is supposed to have gone to Rome and to have been favorably received by Honorius the Emperor, who then promoted him to some sort of honorable office in his native country. At fifty-seven years of age, as he himself tells us, he began to cultivate literature. He had retired from active life, much as Chaucer did in later days. From this period onward he lived in quiet; he “fled fro’ the presse and dwelt in soothfastnesse,” like the father of English verse. He gave himself to sacred things—to hymns in honor of God and of the saints, and to poems against paganism and in favor of Christian duty.
His poems have Greek titles. First comes thePsychomachia(the Battles of the Soul)—in hexameter—treating of the conflict in a Christian soul between virtue and vice. The contrasts are arranged somewhat like those of Plutarch between the Greek and Roman leaders, only, of course, the antithesis is decidedly against the vices. Here stand Faith opposed to Idolatry, and Chastity facing Impurity, and Patience resisting Anger, and Humility contrasted with Pride, and Sobriety pre-eminent over Excess, and Liberality vanquishing Covetousness, and Concord healing the wounds caused by Dissension. There are nine hundred and fifteen lines in the poem.
ThePeristephanon(Concerning Crowns) has twelve hymns in honor of various martyrs. Mr. Simcox notes that these are almost idyllic in form, and that there is much made of the white dove which flies from the burning pile about St. Eulalia and of the violets which the girls should bring to the tombs of the virgin martyrs. It may be interesting to name the martyrs thus celebrated. There were two from Calahorra; then Laurentius and Eulalia; eighteen who suffered at Saragossa; Vincentius, and finally Fructuosus and Quirinus, bishops both.
Then comes a poem on the Baptistery at Calahorra (translated inBlackwood, vol. ix., p. 192), with a description of the deaths of Cassian, Romanus, Hippolytus, Peter and Paul the apostles, Cyprian and Agnes. These poems, it should be said, are various in metre and some are quite long.
TheCathemerinon(a Book of Hours) is the real mine whence the most of the hymns which were composed by Prudentius are taken. In this we have hymns for cock-crowing and morning; before and after food; at the lighting of the lamp; and before retiring to rest. With these are joined others for the use of those who are fasting, and at the conclusion of the fast; for all hours and at the burial of the dead; the work ending with hymns for Christmas and Epiphany.
TheApotheosisconsists of poems relating to the errors of all the heretics that can be named—Patripassians, Arians, Sabellians, Manichaeans, Docetae, etc. The value of this to ecclesiastical history is easily perceived. It has more than a thousand hexameters and it treats additionally of the nature of the soul and of sin and of the resurrection.
TheHamartigenia(the Origin of Evil) takes up original sin as against Marcion; and theDittochaeon(which possibly means Double Food) is the abridgment of Old and New Testaments. This last is a sort of religious picture gallery ranging from Adam to the Apocalypse in hexametrical epigrams. There is reason to doubt whether it be what Prudentius originally composed. If he followed his usual vein of abundant verse, there is no question but that these half a hundred epigrams would be more popular than his very extensive poetical treatment of such subjects.
It is left us to mention the two books against Symmachus, the Roman senator, whom Ambrose so earnestly and successfully opposed. Symmachus had purposed to restore the idols, revive the revenues of the pagan temples, and generally to cast out Christianity from Rome. The poetry of Prudentius is again valuable here, for it plunges into the origin and baseness of idolatry, describing the conversion of Rome, and presenting a picture of the times which is invaluable to the historian. It is from the pages of Prudentius that we learn the cruelty of the purest of the Roman women, when
“The modest vestal, with her down-turned thumbUrges the gladiator to his strokeLest life may lurk in any vital place!”
“The modest vestal, with her down-turned thumb
Urges the gladiator to his stroke
Lest life may lurk in any vital place!”
One line in our author’s hymn in honor of St. Lawrence preserves an historical fact which was not appreciated in its full significance until our own times. He says,Aedemque Laurenti tuam Vestalis intrat Claudia—“Claudia, the Vestal Virgin, enters Thy House.” In 1883 there was discovered in theAtriumof the Vestals a pedestal of a statue dedicated to one of the heads of the order, from which her name had been effaced purposely. Nothing of it was left except the initial C., while there still remained the praise of “her chastity and her profound knowledge in religious matters” (Ob meritvm Castitatis Pvdicitiae adq. in Sacris Religionibusqve Doctrinae Mirabilis). The statue was erected in the year 364, and the order was abolished by the younger Theodosius in 394, so that her conversion must have taken place between those two dates. The conversion of a person filling a place of such high honor in pagan eyes, of aVestalis maxima, must have been a severe blow to the pagan party, which in Rome was making a fierce but hopeless fight for the old worship. Yet we find no other reference to it in literature, unless the letter of Symmachus to a Vestal, of whom he had heard that she meant to withdraw from her order, was addressed to Claudia. See Professor Lanciani’sAncient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries, pp. 170-72 (Boston, 1888).
It is uncertain in what year or in what part of Spain Prudentius died. Conjecture varies between 410 and 424A.D.This infinitude of filmy particulars causes one to feel as if he were walking through spider-webs of a morning in the country. This hard, practical nineteenth century only experiences a sense of annoyance as it encounters the elaborate nothings of that strangely laborious, all-gathering scholarship which prevailed in the sixteenth and seventeenth. To create any intensity of interest to-day requires an imagination which would sacrifice truth to attractiveness.
But certainly, from what we can see of the man in his works, we can have no hesitation in pronouncing a verdict highly favorable both to his poetry and his piety. As governor of important towns he merited—or he would scarcely have received—his title of “the Merciful.” As a close observer of his time and a studentof its thought, he has preserved for us what we cannot spare. It is he who in theJam moesta quiesce querelastruck the first notes which were to vibrate in theDies irae. It is he again who in theAles die nuntiusanticipated Henry Vaughan and his
“Father of lights, what sunny seed,What glance of day hast thou confinedInto this bird!”
“Father of lights, what sunny seed,
What glance of day hast thou confined
Into this bird!”
The hymn is as follows:
“The bird, the messenger of day,Cries the approaching light;And thus doth Christ, who calleth usOur minds to life excite.
“The bird, the messenger of day,
Cries the approaching light;
And thus doth Christ, who calleth us
Our minds to life excite.
“Bear off, he cries, these beds of easeWhere lie the sick and dumb;And let the chaste and pure and trueWatch, for I quickly come.
“Bear off, he cries, these beds of ease
Where lie the sick and dumb;
And let the chaste and pure and true
Watch, for I quickly come.
“We haste to Jesus at his word,Earnest to pray and weep,Such fervent supplication stillForbids pure hearts to sleep.
“We haste to Jesus at his word,
Earnest to pray and weep,
Such fervent supplication still
Forbids pure hearts to sleep.
“Disturb our dream, thou holy Christ,Break off the night’s dark chain;Forgive us all our sin of old,And grant us light again.”
“Disturb our dream, thou holy Christ,
Break off the night’s dark chain;
Forgive us all our sin of old,
And grant us light again.”
And so it is still he who casts the ray of his fancy upon Bethlehem and upon the Transfigured Christ. Here is theQuicumque Christum quaeritisin proof of his real genius:
“O ye who seek your Lord to-day,Lift up your eyes on high,And view him there, as now ye may,Whose brightness cannot die.
“O ye who seek your Lord to-day,
Lift up your eyes on high,
And view him there, as now ye may,
Whose brightness cannot die.
“How gloriously it shineth onAs though it knew no dearth:Sublime and lofty, never done,Older than heaven and earth.
“How gloriously it shineth on
As though it knew no dearth:
Sublime and lofty, never done,
Older than heaven and earth.
“Thou art the very King of men,Thy people Israel’s King,Promised unto our fathers whenFrom Abraham all should spring.
“Thou art the very King of men,
Thy people Israel’s King,
Promised unto our fathers when
From Abraham all should spring.
“To thee the prophets testified,In thee their hearts rejoice—Our Father bids us seek thy sideTo hear and heed thy voice.”
“To thee the prophets testified,
In thee their hearts rejoice—
Our Father bids us seek thy side
To hear and heed thy voice.”
I have changed the two last stanzas into the second person instead of the third. Otherwise the rendering is a faithful and literal version of the hymn. This, then, is a good proof of the genuine ring of true metal to be found in Prudentius.
The variety and flexibility of his measures, in spite of archaic or post-classical words and phrases, deserves our highest praise. He is a writer of the “Brazen Age,” but he has not sunk far from the “Silver,” nor exactly into the falchion sweep of the more brutal “Iron” time.
Here is another of his hymns, theNox et tenebrae et nubila, which has obtained a place in the Roman Breviary:
“Night, clouds and darkness, get you gone!Depart, confusions of the earth!Light comes; the sky so dark and wanBrightens—it is the Saviour’s birth!
“Night, clouds and darkness, get you gone!
Depart, confusions of the earth!
Light comes; the sky so dark and wan
Brightens—it is the Saviour’s birth!
“The gloom of earth is cleft in twainStruck by that sudden, solar ray;Color and life return againBefore the shining face of day.
“The gloom of earth is cleft in twain
Struck by that sudden, solar ray;
Color and life return again
Before the shining face of day.
“Thee, Christ, alone we seek to know,Thee, pure in mind, and plain in speech;We seek thee in our worship, soThat thou canst through our senses teach.
“Thee, Christ, alone we seek to know,
Thee, pure in mind, and plain in speech;
We seek thee in our worship, so
That thou canst through our senses teach.
“How many are the dreams of dreadWhich by thy light are swept apart!Thou, Saviour of the sainted dead,Shine with calm lustre in the heart!”
“How many are the dreams of dread
Which by thy light are swept apart!
Thou, Saviour of the sainted dead,
Shine with calm lustre in the heart!”
The same leading idea of the analogy of the natural light with the spiritual runs through the following:
“Lo the golden light appears,Lo the darkness pales awayWhich has plunged us long in fears,Wandering in a devious way.
“Lo the golden light appears,
Lo the darkness pales away
Which has plunged us long in fears,
Wandering in a devious way.
“Now the light brings peace at last,Holds us purely as its own;All our doubts aside are cast,And we speak with holy tone.
“Now the light brings peace at last,
Holds us purely as its own;
All our doubts aside are cast,
And we speak with holy tone.
“So may all the day run onFree from sin of hand or tongue,And our very glances shunEvery form and shape of wrong.
“So may all the day run on
Free from sin of hand or tongue,
And our very glances shun
Every form and shape of wrong.
“High above us One is setAll our days to know and mark,And our acts he watches yetFrom the dawning to the dark.”
“High above us One is set
All our days to know and mark,
And our acts he watches yet
From the dawning to the dark.”
Prudentius undoubtedly exhibits the early traces of observances which are peculiar to the Roman Catholic Church. In one of his hymns (theCultor Dei memento) he advises that the sign of the cross be made upon the forehead and above the heart:
“Frontem locumque cordisCrucis figura signet.”
“Frontem locumque cordis
Crucis figura signet.”
But we have not the space, nor is this the proper occasion, to follow him through those matters which belong to the church historian more than to the hymnologist. We must leave him to end his days in undisturbed quiet, a good deal after the manner of Chaucer, as indeed we have already hinted. He is said to have died in the neighborhood of the year 405 in Spain. Our information is largely conjectural and affords us no certainty about his closing years.
That a poet who still dwelt amid the sculptured coldness of the pagan past should have written such hymns, is a proof of what Christianity was then achieving. She had banished from the chilly apartments of literature the ancientfocuswith its feeble charcoal and its mephitic smoke. Instead of this she had created the cheerfulhearth, on which a pure fire of devotion was kindled and whose ascending flame swept off the immoral vapors of the time. Prudentius, in a word, made scholarship and religion companionsinstead of enemies; and brightened classic prosody by the presence of a living faith.
To Prudentius also more hymns have been ascribed than he ever wrote, but after these have been weeded out, there are left:
Rambach says, in his Anthology, that none of the hymns of Ennodius have been adopted by the Church. “Nor have I,” adds Daniel, “found in any breviary a verse of Ennodius. Yet,” he continues, “since there are many of them in the collection of Thomasius, which have been taken from the Mozarabic Breviary, it seems to me certain that in some countries they were formerly employed by the Church.” Some corruption has also taken place in the text. And, in short, these hymns have never appeared either devout or original enough to secure the suffrages of the faithful.
The reason for their emptiness is not far to seek. Their author was a man of great celebrity but of little piety. His reputation, too, is that of an ardent ecclesiast, who managed to climb the heights of saintship by working in the interest of the Roman pontiff. He labored to maintain the supremacy of the Pope—upon whom, it is said, on good authority, that he was the first to bestow the world-wide appellation of Papa (Pope)—and to effect the union under this one religious head of both Greek and Roman churches. To this single cause, with its double aspect, Ennodius gave his talents and his zeal. He was so far successful that he gained honor and position for himself, however he was prospered in his other plans.
He was a person of sufficient prominence for Italy and Gaul to contest the honor of his birth. It would appear, however, that Gaul has the best title to whatever credit his nationality may give. The works on hymnology do not mention him, and the only notices of his life and writings are to be found in out-of-the-way corners of books on Latin literature and in the controversial pages of Church historians. Those who attack and those who defend the papal claims, are in the habit of mentioning the two embassies of Ennodius as notable points in their argument; but the man islost from sight in the paramount importance of his mission. It cannot be so with us, to whom his personal character is the topic of interest, and who care only for his circumstances as these develop him to us upon his hymnologic side.
Ennodius has himself informed us that he regarded Arles as his native place. We also know that he was born in 473, because he died in 521 at the age of forty-eight. His family was highly respectable, if, indeed, it was not actually illustrious. Our poet always shows a familiarity with the affairs of good society; and in those times good society had only one meaning. It was a society which educated its scions in the polite learning of Greece and Rome, and which made much of the ability to speak and write the Latin tongue. It is scarcely to be questioned that this was the theory on which the early education of Ennodius proceeded. He was sent to Milan in order to become versed in what was called humane learning. If he is himself to be believed he acquired both bad and good in this school. He laments with a mock humility (for so it would appear by his later literary derelictions) that he had obtained a great deal of wicked and ungodly information; and really no one can read some of his nasty epigrams and doubt his assertion. For, whether it was permissible to a saint or not, it is a fact, that the editors of his works have not scrupled to print some exceedingly profane and improper pieces which are undoubtedly the product of his pen.
His aunt, who was bearing the cost of this admirable instruction, died in 489—that is, when he was sixteen—and he was left without means to proceed with his studies. He avows that he had come to detest the very name of liberal education, and this, under the circumstances, cannot well be regarded as anything very surprising. We soon after find him married to a lady who is described as of a “most noble” and therefore highly appropriate family. She was, moreover, “very rich”—another satisfactory point. With this wealthy and fashionable wife, Ennodius rapidly obtained a view of earth, and what earth can give, which was so far limited in that the money did not equal the desires of the married pair. It ran low and the bitterness of financial perplexities mingled with the cup of their happiness. Judging the husband by his epigrams he was pretty fairly exhausted by the speed of their career, and was quite ready to shake off the encumbrance of a family and devotehimself to the lofty purpose of being supported by somebody else. An unprejudiced mind fails to see in this any particular “admonition” or “example” to his age. It is merely the selfish escape of a worldly but embarrassed man. Divorces were not available then with the ease with which a less scrupulous and more intellectual generation can now procure them. The proper, and, indeed, the meritorious way, was to slip into a cloister and become one of that vast army which was soon to be the tower of strength of the Pope. He himself ascribes this step to a serious illness in which he had been healed through the miraculous interposition of St. Victor, after the doctors had given up his case.
Ennodius now attached himself to the person and fortunes of Epiphanius, the Bishop of Pavia. He was placed under the tutelage of one Servilio, who taught him theology according to the methods and opinions then in vogue. His wife meanwhile had made the best of it after the same fashion, and had gone into a convent, where all trace of her vanishes in that monotone of gray walls, chanted services, and ceaseless devotion. At least no individuality resembling her ever henceforth emerges from that uniform procession which passes by us, in this and later centuries, as the long line of hooded figures moves athwart Dante and Virgil in the “Purgatorio.”
But the career of Ennodius now begins. He is the bishop’s chosen companion, the associate of his expedition to Briançon in Burgundy in behalf of certain prisoners; for in those days the spiritual hand was often laid with a mighty grip on the secular arm. The poet was by this time a deacon, having been ordained thereto by his kind friend the bishop. And the duties of this private secretaryship were so pleasant that it is evident no one would willingly surrender them for a cold cell and matins early in the morning. The glimpses which we get of Ennodius do not encourage us to esteem him an ascetic, or to think him lacking in zeal for personal comfort. He was the literary adjunct of a remarkably amiable prelate, with whom he was on terms of intimacy which made his own life no care at all, and his meat and drink no problem whatever! From 494, then, he continued still to occupy this post of trust and ease. We are told that the bishop persuaded him to it, but there can be no reasonable objection to our believing that the bishop had no unwilling listener.
The literary capacity of Ennodius next attracts attention. His patron (who must not be confused with the great Bishop of Salamis, the author of the famousHeresies, who belongs to the previous century) died before 510. Maximus III. had succeeded Epiphanius, and after his death our Ennodius, in 510 or 511, was selected for the vacant diocese. The name of this episcopate was Ticinum, or, as we now style it, Pavia. It is plain that the bestowal of this dignity was hastened by the fact that our scholar while still a deacon had defended Pope Symmachus before the Roman synod called “Palmare,” and so effectually that the discourse was entered on the acts of the council, where it still appears. The Pope had been charged with crimes, and a synod convoked by the heretical Theodoric was to decide the case. The date was October, 501. The place was a portico of the church of St. Peter at Rome to which this name of Palmare was usually given. And the speech is historic inasmuch as it is the earliest recorded instance of that assertion of supremacy on the part of the Roman pontiff which frees him from any responsibility to earthly rulers. Ennodius thus became the advocate of this dogma, and upon the broad wings of papal favor he soared to the high station which his patron Epiphanius had quitted.
This burst of declamatory eloquence did not come without preparatory training. Ennodius had been exercised in the art of declamation in his youthful days and, as a deacon, he was able to utilize his knowledge. In 510 or 511, not long after his elevation to the mitre, he wrote the life of his friend and predecessor. And this he followed with divers performances of a literary character which were generously applauded. He became a sort of hero in the world of letters, and whatever he was pleased to compose was heartily commended.
In 515 it was natural that such an advocate of the absolute domination of the Roman pontiff should be selected to help in the effort to reunite the Eastern Church to the Western. The ambassadors were himself, the Bishop of Pavia; Fortunatus, Bishop of Catania; Venantius, a presbyter; Vitalis, a deacon, and Hilarius, a notary and scribe. These names themselves reveal a not infrequent source of confusion to students of that distressingly barren period, when it was regarded as a very pleasant compliment to call the son of a nobody by the distinguished appellation ofsome great person in the Church. In this manner Hilary and Fortunatus suffered then, and modern scholars have been often vexed and perplexed since, especially when dates come near together. It hardly needs to be added that these wearers of illustrious names have only that meed of renown, such as it is.
The purpose of the embassy was to obtain from the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius, at that time a man of great age, the recognition of Hormisdas, the ruling Pope, as the supreme religious head of both empires. It was a delicate negotiation, and it demanded a perfectly incorruptible adherence to the interests of Rome. In this respect Ennodius stood pre-eminent as what Mosheim styles an “infatuated adulator of the Roman pontiff,” and as a master of the style then required in a diplomat. He had (in 503) eulogized Pope Symmachus, calling him “one who judged in the place of God” (vice Dei judicare) and again (in 507) he had published a panegyric on Theodoric, the Gothic King of Italy, which had all the absurd flattery of that species of composition. To crown these he was the obedient occupant of the see of Pavia. He was therefore just the man to do the work of the relentless and uncompromising Pope.
Caelius Hormisdas was a man who never yielded, never forgot, and never relaxed a purpose. Such men, backed by a sufficient power, wring from a reluctant world about all that they have determined to secure. But to the obstinate will of the Pope was opposed the no less obstinate will of the old Emperor—now fully eighty-five years of age—and quite as grim in his methods as any Hormisdas. It was to be a battle of giants and the intermediates might look for little favor. The opportunity for the negotiation itself happened to occur in an unusual way. Vitalianus, commander of the Imperial Byzantine cavalry, had taken arms against the Emperor; had defeated and put to death Cyril, the opposing general, and had then marched to the very gates of Constantinople. The victor was proposing to color his rebellion by a pleasant pretext of helping the orthodox; and the old Emperor, therefore, turned the edge of his own humiliation by agreeing to a correspondence with the Pope.
Anastasius began to carry out his share of this unpleasant business by appointing a council to meet at Heraclea, in Thrace, on July 15th, 515, and asking for commissioners to be sent fromRome. The venerable fox knew perfectly well that he had not allowed time enough for the proper instruction of these delegates, nor for them to make the long journey. But Pope Hormisdas appointed them, and they proceeded to the imperial court, utterly indifferent as to the time of the council, and without any apologies for their delay which history deigns to record. They went, indeed, in a very haughty spirit, and did not even commence their expedition before August 12th.
When they reached the Emperor they asked, or rather demanded, that he should assent to the letter of Pope Leo, who was the first to claim this submission from the East. They insisted, furthermore, that this heterodox monarch should accept the definitions of the famous Council of Chalcedon,A.D.451, which relate to the nature and personality of Christ. The schism between East and West had now lasted for thirty-one years, and a certain Acacius, Bishop of Constantinople, who had been a most persistent opponent of the demands of Leo the Great, was still a thorn in the Roman pontiff’s side.
But Anastasius received the ambassadors with just as proud a spirit as they had shown to him. He would neither yield to Leo nor to Chalcedon, nor would he anathematize Acacius. Ennodius and his companions returned to Rome without accomplishing their mission, and the Emperor sent letters after them by Theopompus and Severianus, principal men of his court. When these reached Rome they were badly received by Hormisdas, and found that nothing would answer except the excommunication of Acacius. With thisultimatumthey got back, somewhat crestfallen; and poor Acacius (who was not half so bad as his papal foe) was once more threatened with banishment to eternal fires.
Anastasius, however, was not at all inclined to hand over his bishop to the mercies of Hormisdas. He stoutly refused and continued to refuse throughout the ensuing correspondence. About two hundred monks and archimandrites (heads of monasteries) sent from Syria a letter to the Pope which was directed against the patriarch of Antioch, Severus by name, and which gave in their own allegiance to the Western Church. Nevertheless, the Emperor still maintained the cause of Acacius, although he must have seen that the Pope was as determined as ever to carry his point and that there was now a great deal which was working in favor of thepapal plans. When the Syrians addressed their letter to the “Most holy and blessed Hormisdas, Patriarch of the whole earth, holding the see of Peter the prince of the apostles,” it spoke volumes for what the Pope had been able to effect by his agents and representations in the East. But the Emperor would not yield the point and act upon the conciliatory policy of the heretical Theodoric of Italy, which was that they might settle religious matters in their own fashion, provided they honored absolutely his temporal sway.
A second embassy was set on foot consisting of Ennodius and Peregrinus, Bishop of Misenum. By these ambassadors letters were sent renewing the old conditions and avowing that nothing would be satisfactory short of the complete banishment of that pestilent wretch Acacius. This was too much for the Emperor to bear. He angrily dismissed the legates, shipping them off in an old and leaky vessel, and giving a special order to Demetrius and Heliodorus to see that they did not set foot in his dominions after they had once sailed for home. Behind the flying ambassadors followed a document which expressed the royal mind with force and vigor. After comparing the conduct of the Pope very unfavorably with that of Jesus Christ, the Emperor proceeds to say: “We shall give you no further trouble, it being in vain for us to pray or entreat you, since you are obstinately determined not to hearken to our prayers and entreaties. We can bear to be despised and affronted, but we will not be commanded.”
This was dated July 11th, 517, and reveals an unexpected dignity in the old Emperor, and it makes us glad to record that, while he lived, the Bishop of Constantinople was at least preserved in a salvable state.
But when Anastasius died, then Hormisdas began again upon Justin, his successor, and never stopped until Acacius was struck from the roll of bishops and until the East acknowledged the spiritual supremacy of the West. That the victory was of no long continuance or of any enormous value, does not prevent us from noticing that it gave to Magnus Felix Ennodius his permanent place in the Roman calendar, and did everything for his literary and ecclesiastical comfort. He was well rewarded for his devotion to the cause.
Anastasius reigned 491-518, and Hormisdas, who had oncebeen married and had a son, who also became Pope, ruled in his sphere from 514 to 523. Thus he had nearly five years wherein to rejoice over his obstinate dead enemy. And Ennodius possessed his soul in peace and turned his attention once more to polite literature.
Of the writings which he has left to us, the principal are the life of Epiphanius; another of Antonius of Pannonia, a hermit at Lake Como and then a monk at Lerins; together with aEucharisticum de Vita suaand the apology and panegyric mentioned above. Add to these nine books of letters, “weighed down with emptiness,” and various itineraries, declamations, and poetical pieces, and you have all he did. The letters are most unsatisfactory when we remember that he was the friend, and perhaps the relative, of men like Boethius, Faustus, Avienus, Caesar of Arles, Aurelian, and of bishops and other prelates without number, and lived in Italy under the great Theodoric. He is utterly lacking in contemporary portraits, and his accounts of his three journeys give us nothing valuable. All is stilted, unnatural, and dull. He was not much of a traveller at best. A trip into Burgundy, another across the Po to see his sister, and one from Rome by sea, make up the list of which he kept any trace in his writings. He is in no haste to detail the sayings and doings at Constantinople! But it should be said that these performances with the pen were previous to his elevation to the mitre. Afterward he doubtless composed only hymns and epigrams—the hymns being decent and the epigrams very much the reverse. The German scholar Teuffel looks upon his productions as an “important source of history” for some enigmatic reason of his own, but Simcox very justly scouts them; and the Romanist Berington asserts that he rises “with weariness” from their perusal. I must personally declare that they exhibit neither skill, taste, nor information. They are jejune and empty to a marvellous degree; and for complication of sentences and unclassical phraseology, they are equal to the stupidest books of a later day. And nothing worse than this can be said by any critic.
TheEucharisticumis an insincere sort of thanksgiving for his restoration to health, and very far behind the style of Augustine which it copies. It gives us a few particulars of his personal history, but it is prosaic and Pharisaic, and full of a mock humbleglorification of the blessed Victor the Martyr, by whose intercession he is now convalescent.
The hymns are a trifle more hopeful, and really merit our notice. They are by no means the “dozen tame hymns” of which Simcox speaks so contemptuously. There are sixteen of them and three are quite good. Here, for instance, is theChriste lumen perpetuum: