UNDE PLANCTUS ET LAMENTUM.

Ecce Rex desideratusEt a justis expectatusJam festinat exoratus,Ad salvandum praeperatus.Apparebit nec tardabit,Veniet et demonstrabitGloriam, quam praestolantur,Qui pro fide tribulantur.If nothing whatever had been known as to the date of the two poems, we should have pronounced this an expansion of theDies irae, dies illaby a later poet, who had two objects in view: the first, to sharpen to the conscience of his readers the warnings of the impending judgment; the second, to complete the poem by bringing the joys of the judgment more prominently into view. And with all respect for Edelestand du Méril’s judgment, we would like to have more light on the date of his manuscript.A manuscript still preserved at Liege in Belgium contains the letters of Guido of Basoches, which is either Bas-oha, a village near that city, or, as Mone thinks, a place near Châteaudun in France. Among these letters are given a number of hymns, which he sends to his correspondents. They show some power of versification, but nothing more, and are defaced by conceits and puns. Thus he puts the name of Stephen through the six cases of the Latin grammar in as many verses of a hymn.There are five writers of this century, each of whom is credited with a single hymn. Rudolph of Radegg, a schoolmaster of Einsiedeln, wrote a hymn in honor of St. Meinrad, which beginsNunc devota silva tota. To Thomas Becket is ascribed theGaude Virgo, Mater Christi, Quia.... It is said to be his in a manuscript of the fifteenth century. To another Englishman, Bertier, is ascribed the only Latin hymn in the collections which relates directly to the Crusades,Juxta Threnos Jeremiae. It first appears in the chronicle of Roger of Hoveden, with the statement that Bertier wrote it in 1188. Last is Aelred (1104-66), who seems to have been a lowland Scotchman by birth, and to have shared the education of Henry, son of King David of Scotland. King David wished to make him a bishop, but he preferred the life of amonk. He made his way to the Cistercian monastery at Rievaulx in Yorkshire (not Revesby in Lincolnshire, as some say), and there spent his days, becoming abbot in 1146. That he was a most lovable man we must infer from his sermons to his monks. He is one of the few preachers in Dr. Neale’sMediaeval Preachers and Preaching(London, 1856), of whom we wish for more. His epitaph likens him, among others, to Bernard of Clairvaux, and the comparison is apposite. He was an English Bernard, with less personal force and grasp of intellect, but with the same gentleness and friendliness. His one hymn is thePax concordat universa, which is found in his works, but not in any of the collections. The theme is congenial.The thirteenth century, the century of Francis and Dominic, of Aquinas and Bonaventura, of Thomas of Celano and Jacoponus, is the age of the giants.Its anonymous hymns worthy of special mention are few in number. One of the most beautiful is the Easter hymn,Cedit frigus hiemale, in which the coincidence of Easter with spring furnishes the starting-point. It is probably French. TheAve quem desiderois a rosary hymn, which rehearses our Lord’s life, with a verse for each of the beads, which surely is better than the usualAve Marias. The use of rosaries is very ancient—pre-Christian even—but it was with the rise of the Dominican Order in this century that it became a sanctioned practice. TheJesu Salvator seculiand theO Trinitas laudabilishave been traced no further back than to this age; but they preserve the tone and style of the school of Ambrose. So theMysteriorum signifer, in honor of the Archangel Michael, recalls an earlier age, while theJesu dulce medicamensuggests the school of Bernard. This beautiful hymn has both thoughtfulness and unction to commend it. It represents the sounder tradition of Christian teaching in the mediaeval Church, and has been neglected unduly by Protestant translators. Mr. Crippen is the only one who has rendered it, and also theJuste judex Jesu Christe, a hymn of the same age and much the same character. Notable Marian hymns are theGaude virgo, stella Maris,Salve porta chrystallina, and theVerbum bonum et suave; with which may be named that to St. John,Verbum Dei Deo natum, often ascribed to Adam of St. Victor, and certainly of his school. Also of that school is the vigorous hymn in commemorationof St. Paul,Paulus Sion architecta. We add the terse and forceful hymn in commemoration of Augustine of Hippo,Salve pater Augustine, and the still finer in commemoration of the martyrs of the Church,O beata beatorum martyrum certamina, which has found translators in both Dr. Neale and Mr. Chambers. It is defective, as making them and not Christ the central theme.St. Edmund, the archbishop who gave up the see of Canterbury because his heart was broken between the demands of the Pope and the exactions of the king, and died (1240) an exile in a French monastery, is credited with two Marian hymns, one of which is a “psalter,” or hymn of one hundred and fifty stanzas. They are not of great importance. Another is ascribed to Robert Grosstete, Bishop of Lincoln (died 1253), one of the great Churchmen who spoke the truth to the see of Rome. He was the friend of Simon de Montfort and of the Friars, and the foremost Churchman of England in his time, as zealous for the reformation of the clergy of his diocese and the maintenance of the Church’s rights against the King as for its relative independence of the Roman curia. TheAve Dei genetrixascribed to him exists only in a revised and not improved shape. Its twelve verses each begin with a word from the angelic salutation. The author seems to have borrowed from a hymn of Peter Damiani.To Hugo, a Dominican monk, who was Bishop of Strasburg toward the close of the century, and had taught theology with success, is ascribed theAve mundi domina, in which Mary is greeted as a fiddle—Ave dulcis figella!The fourteenth century, like the seventh, furnishes us with the name of not a single hymn-writer of real eminence, and of very few who are not eminent. Yet this century and the next exceed all others in the number of the hymns, which either certainly were written in this age, or can be traced no farther back. But the quality falls short as the quantity increases. Mary and the saints are the favorite themes; and those two great repositories of perverted praise, the second and third volumes of Mone’s collection, bear emphatic witness to the extent to which the hierarchy of saints and angels had come to eclipse the splendors of the White Throne and even of the Cross. There is not a single hymn of the highest rank which we can ascribe to these centuries of decay, when theMiddle Ages were passing to their death, to make way for the New Learning and the Reformation. But the great revival, which first swept over Italy and then reached Germany about 1470, which showed its power in the revival of “strict observance” in the mendicant orders, in the multiplication of new devotions and pilgrimages, and the accumulation of relics—that revival which laid such a powerful grasp on young Martin Luther and made a monk of him—bore abundant fruit in hymns both in Latin and the vernacular languages. It is a sign of the new age that the language consecrated by Church use no longer has a monopoly of hymn-writing, but men begin to praise as well as to hear in their own tongues the wonderful works of God.The reverence for the Virgin reaches its height in theTe Matrem laudamusand theVeni, praecelsa domina, parodies of theTe Deumand theVeni, sancte Spiritus, which have nothing but ingenuity and offensiveness to commend them to Protestant readers. Of genuine poetical merit are theRegina coeli laetareandStella maris, O Maria. Of the deluge of hymns in commemoration of the saints, we notice only theNardus spirat in odorem, which indicates the growing worship of our Lord’s grandmother, by which Luther was captivated; theCollaudemus Magdalenaof the Sarum Breviary, which Daniel calls “a very sweet hymn” (suavissimus hymnus). From it is extracted theUnde planctus et lamentum, of which Mr. Duffield has made the following translation. Both Mr. Chambers and Mr. Morgan have translated the whole hymn.UNDE PLANCTUS ET LAMENTUM.Whence this sighing and lamenting?Why not lift thy heart above?Why art thou to signs consenting,Knowing not whom thou dost love?Seek for Jesus! Thy repentingShall obtain what none might prove.Whence this groaning and this weeping?For the purest joy is thine;In thy breast thy secret keepingOf a balm, lest thou repine;Hidden there whilst thou art reapingBarren care for peace divine.In theSpe mercede et coronawe have the Churchly view of Thomas Becket’s career and its bloody end; and theO Rex, orbis triumphatorandUrbs Aquensis, urbs regalisrepresent the German effort to raise Charles the Great to a place among the saints of the calendar.Hymns which deal with much greater themes are the metrical antiphon,Veni, sancte Spiritus, Reple, whose early translations hold a high place in German hymnology; theRecolamus sacram coenam, which Mone well characterizes as a side-piece to the great communion hymn of Thomas Aquinas,Lauda, Sion, Salvatorem. Like that, it aims at stating the doctrine of Transubstantiation in its most paradoxical form (stat esus integer). The century furnishes several pretty Christmas hymns—En Trinitatis speculum,Dies est laetitiae,Nunc angelorum gloria,Omnis mundus jucundetur, andResonet in laudibus—all of German origin seemingly and early known to the German people by translations. This is the festival which the childlike and child-loving Teutons always have made the most of; and these hymns, with others of the next century, are among the earliest monuments of the fact. To this, or possibly the next century, belongs the mystical prayer-hymn,Anima Christi, sanctifica me, which came to be ascribed to Ignatius Loyola, because it was a favorite with him.The most notable hymn-writer of the century is Conrad, prior of Gaming, a town in Lower Austria, where he lived during the reign of Charles IV. (1350-78). We have his manuscript collection in a copy made in the next century and preserved at München. It contains thirty-seven hymns which probably are his, and many of them certainly so. Some certainly are recasts of earlier hymns. Thus he has tinkered Hildebert’s great hymn, without at all improving it. Most of his hymns relate to Mary, the apostles, and the other saints of the Church. His hymns show a certain facility in the use of Latin verse, but no force of original inspiration. They are correct metrically and, from the standpoint of his Church, theologically. TheO colenda Deitasis the most notable.From the same quarter of Germany and the banks of the same Ems River, Engelbert, Benedictine abbot of Admont in Styria (died 1331), offers us a Marian psalter, which has been ascribed to Thomas Aquinas, but of which two verses content even Mone. Aegidius, Archbishop of Burgos in Spain, from 1295 to 1315, haswritten a hymn to the alleged portrait of Christ impressed on the handkerchief of Veronica. It is in the rollicking Goliardic metre, but the subject is handled with skill and success. It has been conjectured that he is the author of thePatris sapientiain the same metre, which some put back to the twelfth century and others ascribe to Pope Benedict XII., who died in 1342. This is one of the many hymns to whose recitation an indulgence was attached.That the fifteenth century saw the invention of printing is a cardinal fact for the hymnologist. It was especially in the service of the Church that the new art found employment, and more missals, breviaries, and other Church books were printed between its discovery, in 1452, and the beginning of the Reformation, than of any other class of books. From this time, therefore, we have to deal with both written and printed sources, and printing was the means of saving a multitude of good hymns and sequences which else might have been lost utterly. The century also witnesses that great revival of learning to whose advancement printing contributed greatly, and which in its turn prepared men for the Reformation. We have seen in the chapter on the two breviaries how it affected the editing of old hymns and the writing of new. But this does not begin until the sixteenth century.As in the case of the preceding century, we are embarrassed by the abundance of bad, mediocre, and middling good hymns, by the fewness of those which are really good, and the absence of such as would be entitled to take the highest rank. The best of the anonymous which we can trace farther back than to the printed breviaries are the continuation of the series of German Christmas hymns, whose beginning we noticed in the fourteenth century. Such are theIn natali Domini, theNobis est natus hodie, theQuem pastores laudavêre, thePuer nobis nascitur, theEia mea anima, theVerbum caro factum est, and thePuer natus in Bethlehem. Of the last, Dr. A. R. Thompson’s translation is as follows:PUER NATUS IN BETHLEHEM.The child in Bethlehem is born,Hail, O Jerusalem, the morn!Here lies he in the cattle-stallWhose kingdom boundless is withal.The ox and ass do recognizeThis Child, their Master from the skies.Kings from the East are journeying,Gold, frankincense, and myrrh they bring.Who, entering in turn the place,The new King greet with lowly grace.Seed of the woman lies he there,And no man’s son, this Child so fair.Unwounded by the serpent’s sting,Of our own blood comes in the King.Like us in mortal flesh is he,Unlike us in his purity.That so he might restore us menLike to himself and God again.Wherefore, on this his natal day,Glad, to our Lord, we homage pay.We praise the Holy Trinity,And render thanks, O God, to thee!What Ruskin remarks of the disposition of the art of the time to dwell on the darker side of things—to insist on the seeming preponderance of darkness over light, death over life—is seen also in its hymns. The Advent hymn,Veni, veni, rex gloriae, is as gloomy a lucubration as ever was associated with a Church festival. TheHomo tristis esto, which is a study of the Lord’s passion apart from His resurrection, is hardly more gloomy. But other poets have more joyful strains. In theHaec est dies triumphaliswe have an Easter hymn, and an Ascension hymn in theCoelos ascendit hodie, which are fittingly joyful; and in theSpiritus sancte gratiaan invocation of the Comforter more prosaic than its great predecessors, but with its own place in the presentation of that great theme. A rather fine Trinity hymn is theO Pater, sancte, mitis atque pie, written in a sort of sapphic verse with iambic feet before the caesura, and trochaic following it, the feet in each case being determined by accent, not quantity. Mr. Chambers and Mr. Hewett both have translated it.Of the innumerable hymns and sequences to the saints, we notice that our Lord’s grandmother comes in for an increasingshare. Mone in his third volume gives twenty-five, of which sixteen belong to this century and eight to the fourteenth. It is significant that one of them,O stella maris fulgida, is a hymn to Mary, which was altered to the new devotion to her mother. She is hailed in others as the “refuge of sinners” (peccantibus refugium), and declared immaculate (Anna labe carens), and exalted in a way which suggests that the other members of the genealogical line which connects our Lord with Adam have been neglected most unfairly. Why stop with His grandmother and exclude His grandfather? It was in the next century that the cult of Joseph came to the front. Of the Marian hymns of this time theVirginis in gremiois about the best, and theAve hierarchiacomes next. TheAve Martha gloriosa, in commemoration of Martha of Bethany, is a fine hymn in itself, and interesting as one of a group of hymns composed in Southern France in honor of this particular saint. A Church myth brings her to Provence to kill the monster (τερας) from which Tarascon takes its name, and the Church at Arles still bears a sculptured representation of the victory. Her real function in Provence was to take the place of the Martis or Brito-Martis, who was the chief loyal deity, and from whom Marseilles probably took its name. She was either of Cretan or Phoenician origin, and corresponded to the Greek Artemis, her name meaning Blessed Maiden. So her myth was transferred to the over-busy woman of JudeaPer te serpens est subversus,which saved a great deal of trouble.A hymn to the crown of thorns,Sacrae Christi celebremus, is quite in the manner of Adam of St. Victor; the same marvellous ingenuity of allusion to remote Scripture facts, and the same technical mastery of flowing verse. TheNovum sidus exorituris the oldest Transfiguration hymn—that being now a Church festival—and by no means the worst.The sequence on the Three Holy Kings (or Magi), who brought offerings to the infant Saviour, which beginsMajestati sacrosanctae, is referred by some critics to the next century. But as it occurs in the list of sequences which Joachim Brander, a monk of St. Gall, drew up in 1507 for Abbot Franz von Gaisberg of that monastery, it probably belongs to the fifteenth century. Branderenumerates three hundred and seventy-eight sequences, specifying their subjects and authors, the latter not always successfully, and closes with that which Franz von Gaisberg composed in honor of Notker Balbulus. His list will be found in Daniel’s fifth volume. Of this, in commemoration of the three kings, whose relics are supposed to rest in the cathedral at Koeln (Cologne), he says that it is beautiful and one of the best. Mr. Duffield has left a translation of part:“A threefold gift three kings have broughtTo Christ, God-man, who once was wroughtIn flesh and spirit equally;A God triune by gifts adored—Three gifts which mark one perfect Lord,Whose essence is triunity.“They bring him myrrh, frankincense, gold;Outweighing wealth of kings untold—A type in which the truth is known.The gifts are three, the emblems three:Gold for the king, incense to deity,And myrrh, by which his death is shown.”Of hymn-writers, the most prolific is Jean Momboir, generally known by his Latin name Johannes Mauburnus. He was born in 1460 and died in 1503, and was a Canon Regular in the congregation founded by the Brethren of the Common Life in the Low Countries. He lived for a time at Mount St. Agnes, which makes his emphatic testimony as to the authorship of theDe Imitationeof especial importance. His huge ascetic work, theSpiritual Rosegarden(Rosetum spirituale) made him famous, and he was invited to France to reform the Canons Regular, according to the strict observance used in the Low Countries. He was thus, like John Staupitz, a representative of the current revival of that age, which tended to greater austerity, not to faith and joy. He spent the last six years of his life in this labor, dying at Paris in 1503. He was the friend and correspondent of Erasmus. His hymns generally begin with an O, and seem to be written on a system like that of the scholastic treatises. Indeed, hisRosegarden, both by its bulk and its method, suggests aSummaof Christian devotion. From his poem,Eia mea anima, given, there has been extracted the pretty Christmas hymn,Heu quid jaces stabulo, which has been translated several times into English and German.Next to him comes Casimir, Crown Prince of Poland, whoseOmni die dic Mariaeis a Marian hymn in one hundred and twenty six verses. Father Ragey, however, asserts inLes Annales de Philosophie Chretiennefor May and June, 1883, that Casimir is not the author but the admirer of these verses, that they are an extract from a poem in eleven hundred verses, and that Anselm of Canterbury is the probable author. On this he bases an argument for the reconciliation of England to the Church, which is devoted to the cult of our Lord’s mother. The poem, whosoever wrote it, is a fine one—too good, Protestants will think, for the theme, and too good to take its place among the other verses ascribed to Anselm of Canterbury. Here also there is room to ask a close examination of the manuscripts to which Father Ragey appeals, with reference to their dates. The controversy over the antiquity of theQuicunque vult salvus esseand the authorship of theImitationsuggest caution in taking theipse dixitof diplomatists.To an unknown Babo, and to Jacob, schoolmaster of Muldorf, are attributed Marian hymns of no great value. More important is Dionysius Ryckel (1394-1471), a Belgian Carthusian, the character of whose multitudinous writings is indicated by his title,Doctor Ecstaticus. He wrote aComment on Certain Ancient Hymns of the Church(Enarratio in Hymnos aliquot veteres ecclesiasticos), which puts him next to Radulph de Rivo (ob.1403) among the earliest of the hymnologists. To Dionysius is ascribed also the long poem on the Judgment, from which Mone has given an extract—Homo, Dei creatura, etc.—by way of comparison with theDies Iraeand theCum revolvo toto corde. It evidently has been influenced by the former, but is devoted to a picture of eternal torment.To John Huss we owe the beautiful Communion hymn,Jesus Christus, noster salus, which shows that his alleged heresies did not touch the Church doctrine on this point.To Peter of Dresden, schoolmaster of Zwickau in 1420, and afterward described as a Hussite or a Waldensian, is ascribed the“In dulci jubiloNu singet und seit fro,”which is the type of the mixed hymns of this age. It was his purpose to secure the introduction of hymns in the vernacular intothe Church services, as his friend Jakob of Misa sought to do in Bohemia. In mixed hymns of this kind he seems to have tried to find the sharp end of the wedge. Some ascribe to him thePuer natus in Bethlehem, which also exists in the mixed form. Both hymns long stood in the Lutheran hymn-books in the mixed form,—for instance, in theMarburg Hymn-Book, which was used by the Lutherans of Colonial Pennsylvania.The invention of printing from movable types, about 1452, by Johann Gutenberg of Mainz marks an era in Latin hymnology, because of the prompt use of the new method to multiply the Church books in use in the various dioceses. In every part of Western Europe, from Aberdeen, Lund, and Trondhjem, on the north, to the shores of the Mediterranean, the missals, breviaries, and hymnaries were given to the early printers, with the result of bringing to light many fine hymns and sequences whose use had been merely local. The Sarum Breviary and Missal and those of Rome and Paris were printed more frequently than any other. To the Sarum Breviary we owe the fine Transfiguration hymns—Coelestis formam gloriaeandO nata lux de lumineandO sator rerum reparator aevi, which Anglican translators have made into English hymns; to the Missal the fine sequence on the crown of thorns,Si vis vere gloriari, of which Dr. Whewell published a translation inFrazer’s Magazinefor May, 1849. To the York Processional (1530) we owe the four “proses” which beginSalve festa dies, toto venerabilis aevo, which suggest to Daniel that “in England also there was no lack of those who celebrated the divine majesty in very sweet hymns.”To the Breviary and Missal of Trondhjem (Drontheim, anciently Nidaros) we owe some of the finest hymns and sequences recovered at this time. Of these theJubilemus cordis voceis the most characteristic and perhaps the most beautiful—full of local color and characteristic love of nature. Mr. Morgan has translated it; but the dedication hymn,Sacrae Sion adsunt encaenia, has found more favor with Anglican translators, and commends itself by scriptural simplicity. Of course this breviary has fine hymns to St. Olaf, the king who did so much to make Norway a Christian country, although hardly so much as his neglected predecessor, Olaf Tryggveson. Similarly the Swedish missals honor King Eric and St. Birgitta.The German Church books yield less that is novel probably because the earlier German sources have been so much more thoroughly explored. The breviaries of Lubec, of Mainz, of Koeln, and of Meissen furnish most, but chiefly in praises of the Mother of our Lord and the saints. TheGloriosi Salvatoris nominis praeconiaof Meissen is an exception, and has found many admirers and several translators. From Mainz comes the fine hymn in honor of the apostles,Qui sunt isti, qui volant, and that for the martyrs,O beata beatorum, and the Passion hymn,Laus sit Regi gloriae, Cujus rore gratiae.It is different with the French Church books and those of Walloon Belgium. From the Breton see of Rennes, and those of Angers, Le Mans, and Poitiers in the adjacent provinces of Northwestern France come some of the best hymns of this class. From Rennes comes the pretty and fanciful sequence on the Saviour’s crown of thorns,Florem spina coronavit; from Angers the Christmas hymn,Sonent Regi nato nova cantica, which shows how far the French lag behind the Germans of the same age in handling this theme; also the Advent sequence,Jubilemus omnes una, which suggests Francis’s “Song of the Creatures,” but lacks its tenderness. From Le Mans theDie parente temporum, which Sir Henry Baker has made English in “On this day, the first of days.” From Poitiers the fine Advent sequence,Prope est claritudinis magnae dies, translated by Mr. Hewett. From Noyon, in Northeastern France, the two Christmas hymns,Lux est orta gentibusandLaetare, puerpera, whose beauty is defaced by making the Mother and not the divine Child the central figure.From the Missal of Belgian Tournay we have the Easter sequence,Surgit Christus cum tropaeo, and the transfiguration sequence,De Parente summo natum, which have found and deserved translators. From that of Liege several sequences, of which the best is that for All Saints Day,Resultet tellus et alta coelorum machina. In the South it is the breviaries of Braga, in Portugal, and Piacenza, in Italy, which have furnished most new hymns.From the breviaries of the great monastic orders come many hymns, those of the Franciscans furnishing the greater number. That of the Cistercians furnishes theDomine Jesu, noverim me, noverim Te, one of the many hymns suggested by passages in the writings of Augustine of Hippo.This notice of the early printed Church books, which Daniel, Neale, Morell, and Kehrein have brought under requisition, carries us over into the century of the Reformation, which also is that in which the Renaissance began to affect the matter and manner of hymn-writing. Already in the fifteenth century we have hymns of the humanist type by Aeneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II.); by Adam Wernher of Themar, a friend of Johann Trithemius, a jurist by profession, and the instructor of Philip of Hesse in the humanities; and by Sebastian Brandt, the celebrated author of the “Ship of Fools.” All these give careful attention to classic Roman models in the matter of both prosody and vocabulary. If we were to put Brandt’sSidus ex claro veniens Olympoalongside thePuer natus in Bethlehem, we should see how little of the life and force of simplicity and reality there was in the new poetry.The sixteenth century begins with the hymns of the humanist Alexander Hegius, a pupil of the school at Deventer and aprotégéof the Brethren of the Common Life, who may have known Thomas à Kempis, as he was born in 1433, or at latest in 1445. He died in 1498, but his hymns appeared in 1501 and 1503. He was the friend of Rudolph Agricola and of Erasmus, and introduced the new learning, especially Greek, into Holland. His hymns are pagan in their vocabulary, although in accord with the orthodoxy of the time. Two lines of his,“Qui te ‘Matrem’ vocat, orbisRegem vocat ille parentem,”might have suggested two of Keble’s, which have given no small offence,“Henceforth, whom thousand worlds adore,He calls thee ‘Mother’ evermore.”To Zacharias Ferrari ample reference has been made in the chapter on the Breviaries. Specimens of his work may be found in Wackernagel’s first volume, as also of the hymns of Erasmus (1467-1536), of Jakob Montanus (1485-1588), of Helius Eobanus Hessus (1488-1540), and Marc-Antonius Muretus. To these Roman Catholic humanists—Eobanus Hessus afterward became a Lutheran—might have been added J. Ludovicus Vives (1492-1540), Marc-Antonio Flaminio (1498-1550), and Matthias Collinus (ob.1566). Wackernagel does add Joste Clichtove (ob.1543), and Jakob Meyer (1491-1552), who did not attempt original hymns, but recast in classic forms those already in use. Clichtove was a Fleming, and one of the earliest collectors.The series of Protestant hymn-writers joins hard on to that of the Roman Catholic humanists. In the main they belong to the same school. Their hymns are not, like the Protestant German hymns, the spontaneous and inevitable outpouring of simple and natural emotion—a quality which puts Luther and Johann Herrmann beside Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas of Celano. They are the scholastic exercises of men singing the praise of God in a tongue foreign to their thought. Even the best of them, George Fabricius of Chemnitz, whose edition of the early Christian poets has laid us under permanent obligations, although the most careful to avoid paganisms in his hymns, and the most influenced by the earlier Latin hymns, never impresses us with the freedom and spontaneity of his verse. The series runs: Urbanus Rhegius (ob.1541), Philip Melanchthon (1497-1572), Wolfgang Musculus (1497-1563), Joachim Camerarius (1500-74), Paul Eber (1511-69), Bishop John Parkhurst of Norwich (1511-74), Johann Stigel (1515-71), George Fabricius (1516-71), George Klee, or Thymus (fl.1548-50), Nicholas Selneccer (1530-92), Ludwig Helmbold (1532-98), Wolfgang Ammonius (1579), and Theodore Zwinger (1533-88). Recasts of old hymns both as to literary form and theological content we have from Hermann Bonn (1504-48), Urbanus Rhegius, George Klee, and Andreas Ellinger (1526-82). The last-named was a German physician who graduated at Wittemberg in 1549. HisHymnorum Ecclesiasticorum Libri Tres(1578) is described by Daniel as the most copious collection he has seen, but worthless as an authority in its first and second books, as the hymns in these are altered for metrical reasons. Hermann Bonn was a Westphalian, who became the first Lutheran Superintendent in Lubeck, and introduced the Reformation into Osnabruck. He published the first hymn-book in Platt-Deutsch in 1547.To a later generation belongs Wilhelm Alard (1572-1645), the son of a Flemish Lutheran, who fled to Germany from the Inquisition. Wilhelm studied at Wittemberg, and became pastor at Crempe in Holstein, and published two or perhaps three small volumes of original Latin hymns. Dr. Trench has extracted from one of these two hymns. Of that to his Guardian Angel, ChancellorBenedict, Dr. Washburn, and Mr. Duffield have made translations. This is Mr. Duffield’s:CUM ME TENENT FALLACIA.When specious joys of earth are mine,When bright this passing world doth shine,Then in his watchful heavenly placeMy angel weeps and veils his face.But when with tears my eyes o’errunDeploring sin that I have done,Then doth God’s angel, set to keepMy soul, rejoicing, cease to weep.Far hence be gone, ye fading joys,Which spring from earth’s too brittle toys!Come hither, tears! for I would showThat penitence by which ye flow.I would not be in evil glad,Lest he, my angel, should be sad;Rise then, my true, repentant voice,That angels even may rejoice.Another on the Eucharist Mr. Duffield alone has translated:SIT IGNIS ATQUE LUX MIHI.When I behold thy sacred blood,Thy body broken for my good;O blessed Jesus, may they beAs flame and as a light to me.So may this flame consume awayThe sins which in my bosom stay,Destroying fully from my sightAll vanity of wrong delight.So may this light which shines from theeBreak through my darkness utterly,That I may seek with fervent prayer,Thine own dear guidance everywhere.A very different group are the hymn-writers of the Jesuit Order, to whom we owe many hymns which have been ascribed to mediaeval authors, although they have marked characteristics which betray their authorship. Thus theEia Phoebe, nunc serenahasbeen ascribed to Innocent III., theO esca viatorumto Thomas Aquinas, theO gens beata coelitumto Augustine, thePone luctum, Magdalenato Adam of St. Victor; while the later Middle Ages have been credited with theAngelice patrone, theEcquis binas columbinas, theJesu meae deliciae, and thePlaudite coeli. The LondonSpectatorascribes a very early origin to theDormi, fili, dormi. All these are Jesuit hymns, collected by Walraff (1806) out of thePsalteriolum Cantionum Catholicarum a Patribus Societatis Jesu. The title of that collection (Psalteriolum) is suggestive of the contents. As the critics of the Society long ago remarked, there is a mark of pettiness on the literature, the art, the architecture, and the theology of the Jesuits. In both prose and poetry they tend to run into diminutives. No hymn of theirs has handled any of the greatest themes of Christian praise in a worthy spirit. The charge made against them by the Dominicans that in their labors to convert the Chinese and other pagans they concealed the cross and passion of our Lord, and presented Him as an infant in His mother’s arms, whether literally true or not, is not out of harmony with their general tone. Christ in the cradle or on the lap of His mother is the fit theme of their praises. In their hands religion loses its severity and God His awfulness. To win the world they stooped to the world’s level, and weakened the moral force of the divine law by cunning explanations, until, through Arnauld and his fellow-Jansenists, “Christianity appeared again austere and grave; and the world saw again with awe the pale face of its crucified Saviour.”Some of the Jesuit hymns are very good of their kind. TheDormi, fili, dormianticipates the theme of Mrs. Browning’s “The Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus,” and of Dr. George Macdonald’s “Babe Jesus Lay on Mary’s Lap.” It is beautiful in its way, but betrays its Jesuit origin by its diminutives. TheEcquis binas columbinasis a very graceful poem, and the best passion hymn of the school, but is below the subject. TheTandem audite meis a hymn based on the false interpretation of Solomon’s Song, but is very pretty. ThePone luctum, Magdalenais perhaps the greatest of all Jesuit hymns, and has found nine Protestant translators to do it into English. It is rather a fine poem than a fine hymn. TheParendum est, cedendum estis a death-bed hymn whose length and ornateness rob it of a sense of reality. Of theAltitudo, quidhic jacesand thePlaudite CoeliMr. Duffield has left versions which will enable our readers to judge of their worth for themselves:ALTITUDO, QUID HIC JACES?Majesty, why liest thouIn so low a manger?Thou that kindlest heavenly firesHere a chilly stranger!O what wonders thou art doing,Jesus, unto men;By thy love to us renewingParadise again!Strength is made of no account;Space is here contracted;He that frees in bonds is bound;Time’s new birth enacted.Yes, thy little lips may touchMary’s spotless bosom;Yes, thy bright eyes weep for menWhile heaven’s joy shall blossom.PLAUDITE COELI!Lo! heaven rejoices,The air is all bright,And the earth gives her voicesFrom depth and from height.For the darkness is broken,Black storm has passed by,And in peace for a tokenThe palm waves on high.Spring breezes are blowing,Spring flowers are at hand,Spring grasses are growingAbroad in the land.And violets brightenThe roses in bloom,And marigolds heightenThe lilies’ perfume.Rise then, O my praises,Fresh life in your veins,As the viol upraisesThe gladdest of strains.For once more he sees usAlive, as he said;Our holy Lord JesusEscaped from the dead.Then thunder ye mountains,Ye valleys resound,Leap forth, O ye fountains,Ye hills echo round.For he alone frees us,He does as he said,Our holy Lord JesusAlive from the dead.The later additions to the stock of Latin hymns are important only to the student of Roman Catholic liturgies, as connected with the new devotions sanctioned from time to time by the Congregation of Sacred Rites. Thus the devotion to the Sacred Heart led to the writing of the hymnQuicunque certum quaeritis, which the Roman Breviary has copied from the Franciscan, and whose translation by Mr. Caswall has found its way even into Protestant hymn-books. And the crowning sanction of the extravagant reverence for our Lord’s mother, the declaration that she was conceived without sin, and the institution of the feast of the Immaculate Conception, caused Archbishop John von Geissel of Koeln to write, in 1855, a new sequence for the Missal service,Virgo virginum praeclara.Last in the series of the Latin hymn-writers stands the present pope, Leo XIII., who is the third pope in the long series to whom any hymn can be ascribed with any degree of certainty, the other two being Damasus and Urban VIII. In his Latin poems, published in 1881, there are three hymns in honor of two bishops of Perugia who suffered martyrdom in the early age of the Church. They are not remarkable for poetical inspiration, although they show that his Jesuit masters imbued him with the rules of classic verse and expression. All his poems have been reprinted in this country (Baltimore, 1886), with an English version by the Jesuits of Woodstock College.In any other field of Christian hymnology we should close our account of the past by the expression of confidence in the fertility of the future. But as regards Latin hymnology, we feel that theperiod of greatest value has passed by, and the record is sealed. While it is true that“Generations yet unbornShall bless and magnify the Lord,”as Rouse sings, we feel that it will not be in the medium of a dead language, but in the tongues “understanded of the people.” The attempt to maintain Latin as the language—as the exclusive speech of Christian worship in Western Europe, is one of those parts of the Roman Catholic system which are already condemned by results. The comparative barrenness of Latin hymnology for the past hundred years is evidence enough that this is not the channel in which Christian inspiration now flows; and the attention paid even by Roman Catholic poets to hymn-writing in the national languages is fresh evidence of the readiness of that communion to adapt itself to new conditions as soon as this is seen to be inevitable.CHAPTER XXXI.LATIN HYMNOLOGY AND PROTESTANTISM.It has been asked by both Roman Catholics and Protestants—and not unfairly—whether the interest shown for the last half century by Protestant writers in the hymns of Latin Christendom, is a legitimate one. It is said by the former: “You are poaching on our preserves. All this you admire so much is what your fathers turned their backs upon when they renounced the Roman obedience. You cannot with any consistency attempt to naturalize in your churches and their services, hymns which have been written for a worship which differs in idea and principle, not in details merely, from your own. At best you can pick out a little here and a little there, which seems to suit you. But even then you are in danger of adopting what teaches doctrine which your Protestant confessions and their expositors denounce as idolatry, as when the compilers of the hymnal in use by American Presbyterians adopted Mr. Caswall’s English version ofQuicunque certum quaeritis,ignoring its express reference to the devotion to the Sacred Heart. This is a gross instance of what you are doing all the time. If it lead you back to the bosom of the Catholic Church we shall be glad of it. But it grates on Catholic nerves to see you employing the phrase which we regard as a serious statement of doctrinal truth, as though it were a mere purple patch of rhetoric.”This leads us to ask what the Reformation was in the idea of the Reformers themselves. They never took the ground that the religious life of Protestant nations and churches was out of all relation to the life of the nations and churches of Western Europe, as these were before Luther began his work. With all their regard for the Scriptures, they never assumed that out of these could be created a Christian Church upon ground previously held by Antichrist and him alone. Luther declared that the elements ofthe Church for whose upbuilding he was laboring were just those in which he had been educated. As he expressed it, these were found in the Catechism taught to every child in Germany, and which embraced the creed, the commandments, the sacraments, and the Our Father. What he had learned from study of the New Testament was to give these elements their due prominence, and to disengage them from the additions and corruptions by which they had been obscured. It was not a destructive revolution, but a change of doctrinal perspective for which he was contending. He never lost his relish for the good things he had learned in the Church of his childhood. While he rendered the service into the German speech of the people, he followed in the main the old order of the service in hisDeutsche Messe. He also rendered into German sixteen old hymns, twelve from the Latin, from Ambrose down to Huss, and four from the old German of the Middle Ages. In hisHouse-Postilhe speaks with great enthusiasm of the hymns and sequences he had learned to sing in church as a boy; and in hisTable Talk, while he censures Ambrose as a wordy poet, he praises thePatris Sapientia, but above all the Passion hymn of Pope Gregory the Great,Rex Christe factor omnium, as the best of hymns, whether Latin or German.Melanchthon’s gentler spirit more than shared in Luther’s reverence for the good in the mediaeval Church. The antithesis to Melanchthon, the representative of the extreme party among Protestants, is Matthias Flacius Illyricus, a man of Slavic stock and uncompromising temper. Yet he also searched the past for witnesses to the truth which Luther had proclaimed. He appeals to a hymn in the Breviary of the Premonstratensian Order, as old, he thinks, as the twelfth century, which testifies against saint worship:

Ecce Rex desideratusEt a justis expectatusJam festinat exoratus,Ad salvandum praeperatus.

Ecce Rex desideratus

Et a justis expectatus

Jam festinat exoratus,

Ad salvandum praeperatus.

Apparebit nec tardabit,Veniet et demonstrabitGloriam, quam praestolantur,Qui pro fide tribulantur.

Apparebit nec tardabit,

Veniet et demonstrabit

Gloriam, quam praestolantur,

Qui pro fide tribulantur.

If nothing whatever had been known as to the date of the two poems, we should have pronounced this an expansion of theDies irae, dies illaby a later poet, who had two objects in view: the first, to sharpen to the conscience of his readers the warnings of the impending judgment; the second, to complete the poem by bringing the joys of the judgment more prominently into view. And with all respect for Edelestand du Méril’s judgment, we would like to have more light on the date of his manuscript.

A manuscript still preserved at Liege in Belgium contains the letters of Guido of Basoches, which is either Bas-oha, a village near that city, or, as Mone thinks, a place near Châteaudun in France. Among these letters are given a number of hymns, which he sends to his correspondents. They show some power of versification, but nothing more, and are defaced by conceits and puns. Thus he puts the name of Stephen through the six cases of the Latin grammar in as many verses of a hymn.

There are five writers of this century, each of whom is credited with a single hymn. Rudolph of Radegg, a schoolmaster of Einsiedeln, wrote a hymn in honor of St. Meinrad, which beginsNunc devota silva tota. To Thomas Becket is ascribed theGaude Virgo, Mater Christi, Quia.... It is said to be his in a manuscript of the fifteenth century. To another Englishman, Bertier, is ascribed the only Latin hymn in the collections which relates directly to the Crusades,Juxta Threnos Jeremiae. It first appears in the chronicle of Roger of Hoveden, with the statement that Bertier wrote it in 1188. Last is Aelred (1104-66), who seems to have been a lowland Scotchman by birth, and to have shared the education of Henry, son of King David of Scotland. King David wished to make him a bishop, but he preferred the life of amonk. He made his way to the Cistercian monastery at Rievaulx in Yorkshire (not Revesby in Lincolnshire, as some say), and there spent his days, becoming abbot in 1146. That he was a most lovable man we must infer from his sermons to his monks. He is one of the few preachers in Dr. Neale’sMediaeval Preachers and Preaching(London, 1856), of whom we wish for more. His epitaph likens him, among others, to Bernard of Clairvaux, and the comparison is apposite. He was an English Bernard, with less personal force and grasp of intellect, but with the same gentleness and friendliness. His one hymn is thePax concordat universa, which is found in his works, but not in any of the collections. The theme is congenial.

The thirteenth century, the century of Francis and Dominic, of Aquinas and Bonaventura, of Thomas of Celano and Jacoponus, is the age of the giants.

Its anonymous hymns worthy of special mention are few in number. One of the most beautiful is the Easter hymn,Cedit frigus hiemale, in which the coincidence of Easter with spring furnishes the starting-point. It is probably French. TheAve quem desiderois a rosary hymn, which rehearses our Lord’s life, with a verse for each of the beads, which surely is better than the usualAve Marias. The use of rosaries is very ancient—pre-Christian even—but it was with the rise of the Dominican Order in this century that it became a sanctioned practice. TheJesu Salvator seculiand theO Trinitas laudabilishave been traced no further back than to this age; but they preserve the tone and style of the school of Ambrose. So theMysteriorum signifer, in honor of the Archangel Michael, recalls an earlier age, while theJesu dulce medicamensuggests the school of Bernard. This beautiful hymn has both thoughtfulness and unction to commend it. It represents the sounder tradition of Christian teaching in the mediaeval Church, and has been neglected unduly by Protestant translators. Mr. Crippen is the only one who has rendered it, and also theJuste judex Jesu Christe, a hymn of the same age and much the same character. Notable Marian hymns are theGaude virgo, stella Maris,Salve porta chrystallina, and theVerbum bonum et suave; with which may be named that to St. John,Verbum Dei Deo natum, often ascribed to Adam of St. Victor, and certainly of his school. Also of that school is the vigorous hymn in commemorationof St. Paul,Paulus Sion architecta. We add the terse and forceful hymn in commemoration of Augustine of Hippo,Salve pater Augustine, and the still finer in commemoration of the martyrs of the Church,O beata beatorum martyrum certamina, which has found translators in both Dr. Neale and Mr. Chambers. It is defective, as making them and not Christ the central theme.

St. Edmund, the archbishop who gave up the see of Canterbury because his heart was broken between the demands of the Pope and the exactions of the king, and died (1240) an exile in a French monastery, is credited with two Marian hymns, one of which is a “psalter,” or hymn of one hundred and fifty stanzas. They are not of great importance. Another is ascribed to Robert Grosstete, Bishop of Lincoln (died 1253), one of the great Churchmen who spoke the truth to the see of Rome. He was the friend of Simon de Montfort and of the Friars, and the foremost Churchman of England in his time, as zealous for the reformation of the clergy of his diocese and the maintenance of the Church’s rights against the King as for its relative independence of the Roman curia. TheAve Dei genetrixascribed to him exists only in a revised and not improved shape. Its twelve verses each begin with a word from the angelic salutation. The author seems to have borrowed from a hymn of Peter Damiani.

To Hugo, a Dominican monk, who was Bishop of Strasburg toward the close of the century, and had taught theology with success, is ascribed theAve mundi domina, in which Mary is greeted as a fiddle—Ave dulcis figella!

The fourteenth century, like the seventh, furnishes us with the name of not a single hymn-writer of real eminence, and of very few who are not eminent. Yet this century and the next exceed all others in the number of the hymns, which either certainly were written in this age, or can be traced no farther back. But the quality falls short as the quantity increases. Mary and the saints are the favorite themes; and those two great repositories of perverted praise, the second and third volumes of Mone’s collection, bear emphatic witness to the extent to which the hierarchy of saints and angels had come to eclipse the splendors of the White Throne and even of the Cross. There is not a single hymn of the highest rank which we can ascribe to these centuries of decay, when theMiddle Ages were passing to their death, to make way for the New Learning and the Reformation. But the great revival, which first swept over Italy and then reached Germany about 1470, which showed its power in the revival of “strict observance” in the mendicant orders, in the multiplication of new devotions and pilgrimages, and the accumulation of relics—that revival which laid such a powerful grasp on young Martin Luther and made a monk of him—bore abundant fruit in hymns both in Latin and the vernacular languages. It is a sign of the new age that the language consecrated by Church use no longer has a monopoly of hymn-writing, but men begin to praise as well as to hear in their own tongues the wonderful works of God.

The reverence for the Virgin reaches its height in theTe Matrem laudamusand theVeni, praecelsa domina, parodies of theTe Deumand theVeni, sancte Spiritus, which have nothing but ingenuity and offensiveness to commend them to Protestant readers. Of genuine poetical merit are theRegina coeli laetareandStella maris, O Maria. Of the deluge of hymns in commemoration of the saints, we notice only theNardus spirat in odorem, which indicates the growing worship of our Lord’s grandmother, by which Luther was captivated; theCollaudemus Magdalenaof the Sarum Breviary, which Daniel calls “a very sweet hymn” (suavissimus hymnus). From it is extracted theUnde planctus et lamentum, of which Mr. Duffield has made the following translation. Both Mr. Chambers and Mr. Morgan have translated the whole hymn.

Whence this sighing and lamenting?Why not lift thy heart above?Why art thou to signs consenting,Knowing not whom thou dost love?Seek for Jesus! Thy repentingShall obtain what none might prove.

Whence this sighing and lamenting?

Why not lift thy heart above?

Why art thou to signs consenting,

Knowing not whom thou dost love?

Seek for Jesus! Thy repenting

Shall obtain what none might prove.

Whence this groaning and this weeping?For the purest joy is thine;In thy breast thy secret keepingOf a balm, lest thou repine;Hidden there whilst thou art reapingBarren care for peace divine.

Whence this groaning and this weeping?

For the purest joy is thine;

In thy breast thy secret keeping

Of a balm, lest thou repine;

Hidden there whilst thou art reaping

Barren care for peace divine.

In theSpe mercede et coronawe have the Churchly view of Thomas Becket’s career and its bloody end; and theO Rex, orbis triumphatorandUrbs Aquensis, urbs regalisrepresent the German effort to raise Charles the Great to a place among the saints of the calendar.

Hymns which deal with much greater themes are the metrical antiphon,Veni, sancte Spiritus, Reple, whose early translations hold a high place in German hymnology; theRecolamus sacram coenam, which Mone well characterizes as a side-piece to the great communion hymn of Thomas Aquinas,Lauda, Sion, Salvatorem. Like that, it aims at stating the doctrine of Transubstantiation in its most paradoxical form (stat esus integer). The century furnishes several pretty Christmas hymns—En Trinitatis speculum,Dies est laetitiae,Nunc angelorum gloria,Omnis mundus jucundetur, andResonet in laudibus—all of German origin seemingly and early known to the German people by translations. This is the festival which the childlike and child-loving Teutons always have made the most of; and these hymns, with others of the next century, are among the earliest monuments of the fact. To this, or possibly the next century, belongs the mystical prayer-hymn,Anima Christi, sanctifica me, which came to be ascribed to Ignatius Loyola, because it was a favorite with him.

The most notable hymn-writer of the century is Conrad, prior of Gaming, a town in Lower Austria, where he lived during the reign of Charles IV. (1350-78). We have his manuscript collection in a copy made in the next century and preserved at München. It contains thirty-seven hymns which probably are his, and many of them certainly so. Some certainly are recasts of earlier hymns. Thus he has tinkered Hildebert’s great hymn, without at all improving it. Most of his hymns relate to Mary, the apostles, and the other saints of the Church. His hymns show a certain facility in the use of Latin verse, but no force of original inspiration. They are correct metrically and, from the standpoint of his Church, theologically. TheO colenda Deitasis the most notable.

From the same quarter of Germany and the banks of the same Ems River, Engelbert, Benedictine abbot of Admont in Styria (died 1331), offers us a Marian psalter, which has been ascribed to Thomas Aquinas, but of which two verses content even Mone. Aegidius, Archbishop of Burgos in Spain, from 1295 to 1315, haswritten a hymn to the alleged portrait of Christ impressed on the handkerchief of Veronica. It is in the rollicking Goliardic metre, but the subject is handled with skill and success. It has been conjectured that he is the author of thePatris sapientiain the same metre, which some put back to the twelfth century and others ascribe to Pope Benedict XII., who died in 1342. This is one of the many hymns to whose recitation an indulgence was attached.

That the fifteenth century saw the invention of printing is a cardinal fact for the hymnologist. It was especially in the service of the Church that the new art found employment, and more missals, breviaries, and other Church books were printed between its discovery, in 1452, and the beginning of the Reformation, than of any other class of books. From this time, therefore, we have to deal with both written and printed sources, and printing was the means of saving a multitude of good hymns and sequences which else might have been lost utterly. The century also witnesses that great revival of learning to whose advancement printing contributed greatly, and which in its turn prepared men for the Reformation. We have seen in the chapter on the two breviaries how it affected the editing of old hymns and the writing of new. But this does not begin until the sixteenth century.

As in the case of the preceding century, we are embarrassed by the abundance of bad, mediocre, and middling good hymns, by the fewness of those which are really good, and the absence of such as would be entitled to take the highest rank. The best of the anonymous which we can trace farther back than to the printed breviaries are the continuation of the series of German Christmas hymns, whose beginning we noticed in the fourteenth century. Such are theIn natali Domini, theNobis est natus hodie, theQuem pastores laudavêre, thePuer nobis nascitur, theEia mea anima, theVerbum caro factum est, and thePuer natus in Bethlehem. Of the last, Dr. A. R. Thompson’s translation is as follows:

The child in Bethlehem is born,Hail, O Jerusalem, the morn!

The child in Bethlehem is born,

Hail, O Jerusalem, the morn!

Here lies he in the cattle-stallWhose kingdom boundless is withal.

Here lies he in the cattle-stall

Whose kingdom boundless is withal.

The ox and ass do recognizeThis Child, their Master from the skies.

The ox and ass do recognize

This Child, their Master from the skies.

Kings from the East are journeying,Gold, frankincense, and myrrh they bring.

Kings from the East are journeying,

Gold, frankincense, and myrrh they bring.

Who, entering in turn the place,The new King greet with lowly grace.

Who, entering in turn the place,

The new King greet with lowly grace.

Seed of the woman lies he there,And no man’s son, this Child so fair.

Seed of the woman lies he there,

And no man’s son, this Child so fair.

Unwounded by the serpent’s sting,Of our own blood comes in the King.

Unwounded by the serpent’s sting,

Of our own blood comes in the King.

Like us in mortal flesh is he,Unlike us in his purity.

Like us in mortal flesh is he,

Unlike us in his purity.

That so he might restore us menLike to himself and God again.

That so he might restore us men

Like to himself and God again.

Wherefore, on this his natal day,Glad, to our Lord, we homage pay.

Wherefore, on this his natal day,

Glad, to our Lord, we homage pay.

We praise the Holy Trinity,And render thanks, O God, to thee!

We praise the Holy Trinity,

And render thanks, O God, to thee!

What Ruskin remarks of the disposition of the art of the time to dwell on the darker side of things—to insist on the seeming preponderance of darkness over light, death over life—is seen also in its hymns. The Advent hymn,Veni, veni, rex gloriae, is as gloomy a lucubration as ever was associated with a Church festival. TheHomo tristis esto, which is a study of the Lord’s passion apart from His resurrection, is hardly more gloomy. But other poets have more joyful strains. In theHaec est dies triumphaliswe have an Easter hymn, and an Ascension hymn in theCoelos ascendit hodie, which are fittingly joyful; and in theSpiritus sancte gratiaan invocation of the Comforter more prosaic than its great predecessors, but with its own place in the presentation of that great theme. A rather fine Trinity hymn is theO Pater, sancte, mitis atque pie, written in a sort of sapphic verse with iambic feet before the caesura, and trochaic following it, the feet in each case being determined by accent, not quantity. Mr. Chambers and Mr. Hewett both have translated it.

Of the innumerable hymns and sequences to the saints, we notice that our Lord’s grandmother comes in for an increasingshare. Mone in his third volume gives twenty-five, of which sixteen belong to this century and eight to the fourteenth. It is significant that one of them,O stella maris fulgida, is a hymn to Mary, which was altered to the new devotion to her mother. She is hailed in others as the “refuge of sinners” (peccantibus refugium), and declared immaculate (Anna labe carens), and exalted in a way which suggests that the other members of the genealogical line which connects our Lord with Adam have been neglected most unfairly. Why stop with His grandmother and exclude His grandfather? It was in the next century that the cult of Joseph came to the front. Of the Marian hymns of this time theVirginis in gremiois about the best, and theAve hierarchiacomes next. TheAve Martha gloriosa, in commemoration of Martha of Bethany, is a fine hymn in itself, and interesting as one of a group of hymns composed in Southern France in honor of this particular saint. A Church myth brings her to Provence to kill the monster (τερας) from which Tarascon takes its name, and the Church at Arles still bears a sculptured representation of the victory. Her real function in Provence was to take the place of the Martis or Brito-Martis, who was the chief loyal deity, and from whom Marseilles probably took its name. She was either of Cretan or Phoenician origin, and corresponded to the Greek Artemis, her name meaning Blessed Maiden. So her myth was transferred to the over-busy woman of Judea

which saved a great deal of trouble.

A hymn to the crown of thorns,Sacrae Christi celebremus, is quite in the manner of Adam of St. Victor; the same marvellous ingenuity of allusion to remote Scripture facts, and the same technical mastery of flowing verse. TheNovum sidus exorituris the oldest Transfiguration hymn—that being now a Church festival—and by no means the worst.

The sequence on the Three Holy Kings (or Magi), who brought offerings to the infant Saviour, which beginsMajestati sacrosanctae, is referred by some critics to the next century. But as it occurs in the list of sequences which Joachim Brander, a monk of St. Gall, drew up in 1507 for Abbot Franz von Gaisberg of that monastery, it probably belongs to the fifteenth century. Branderenumerates three hundred and seventy-eight sequences, specifying their subjects and authors, the latter not always successfully, and closes with that which Franz von Gaisberg composed in honor of Notker Balbulus. His list will be found in Daniel’s fifth volume. Of this, in commemoration of the three kings, whose relics are supposed to rest in the cathedral at Koeln (Cologne), he says that it is beautiful and one of the best. Mr. Duffield has left a translation of part:

“A threefold gift three kings have broughtTo Christ, God-man, who once was wroughtIn flesh and spirit equally;A God triune by gifts adored—Three gifts which mark one perfect Lord,Whose essence is triunity.

“A threefold gift three kings have brought

To Christ, God-man, who once was wrought

In flesh and spirit equally;

A God triune by gifts adored—

Three gifts which mark one perfect Lord,

Whose essence is triunity.

“They bring him myrrh, frankincense, gold;Outweighing wealth of kings untold—A type in which the truth is known.The gifts are three, the emblems three:Gold for the king, incense to deity,And myrrh, by which his death is shown.”

“They bring him myrrh, frankincense, gold;

Outweighing wealth of kings untold—

A type in which the truth is known.

The gifts are three, the emblems three:

Gold for the king, incense to deity,

And myrrh, by which his death is shown.”

Of hymn-writers, the most prolific is Jean Momboir, generally known by his Latin name Johannes Mauburnus. He was born in 1460 and died in 1503, and was a Canon Regular in the congregation founded by the Brethren of the Common Life in the Low Countries. He lived for a time at Mount St. Agnes, which makes his emphatic testimony as to the authorship of theDe Imitationeof especial importance. His huge ascetic work, theSpiritual Rosegarden(Rosetum spirituale) made him famous, and he was invited to France to reform the Canons Regular, according to the strict observance used in the Low Countries. He was thus, like John Staupitz, a representative of the current revival of that age, which tended to greater austerity, not to faith and joy. He spent the last six years of his life in this labor, dying at Paris in 1503. He was the friend and correspondent of Erasmus. His hymns generally begin with an O, and seem to be written on a system like that of the scholastic treatises. Indeed, hisRosegarden, both by its bulk and its method, suggests aSummaof Christian devotion. From his poem,Eia mea anima, given, there has been extracted the pretty Christmas hymn,Heu quid jaces stabulo, which has been translated several times into English and German.

Next to him comes Casimir, Crown Prince of Poland, whoseOmni die dic Mariaeis a Marian hymn in one hundred and twenty six verses. Father Ragey, however, asserts inLes Annales de Philosophie Chretiennefor May and June, 1883, that Casimir is not the author but the admirer of these verses, that they are an extract from a poem in eleven hundred verses, and that Anselm of Canterbury is the probable author. On this he bases an argument for the reconciliation of England to the Church, which is devoted to the cult of our Lord’s mother. The poem, whosoever wrote it, is a fine one—too good, Protestants will think, for the theme, and too good to take its place among the other verses ascribed to Anselm of Canterbury. Here also there is room to ask a close examination of the manuscripts to which Father Ragey appeals, with reference to their dates. The controversy over the antiquity of theQuicunque vult salvus esseand the authorship of theImitationsuggest caution in taking theipse dixitof diplomatists.

To an unknown Babo, and to Jacob, schoolmaster of Muldorf, are attributed Marian hymns of no great value. More important is Dionysius Ryckel (1394-1471), a Belgian Carthusian, the character of whose multitudinous writings is indicated by his title,Doctor Ecstaticus. He wrote aComment on Certain Ancient Hymns of the Church(Enarratio in Hymnos aliquot veteres ecclesiasticos), which puts him next to Radulph de Rivo (ob.1403) among the earliest of the hymnologists. To Dionysius is ascribed also the long poem on the Judgment, from which Mone has given an extract—Homo, Dei creatura, etc.—by way of comparison with theDies Iraeand theCum revolvo toto corde. It evidently has been influenced by the former, but is devoted to a picture of eternal torment.

To John Huss we owe the beautiful Communion hymn,Jesus Christus, noster salus, which shows that his alleged heresies did not touch the Church doctrine on this point.

To Peter of Dresden, schoolmaster of Zwickau in 1420, and afterward described as a Hussite or a Waldensian, is ascribed the

“In dulci jubiloNu singet und seit fro,”

“In dulci jubilo

Nu singet und seit fro,”

which is the type of the mixed hymns of this age. It was his purpose to secure the introduction of hymns in the vernacular intothe Church services, as his friend Jakob of Misa sought to do in Bohemia. In mixed hymns of this kind he seems to have tried to find the sharp end of the wedge. Some ascribe to him thePuer natus in Bethlehem, which also exists in the mixed form. Both hymns long stood in the Lutheran hymn-books in the mixed form,—for instance, in theMarburg Hymn-Book, which was used by the Lutherans of Colonial Pennsylvania.

The invention of printing from movable types, about 1452, by Johann Gutenberg of Mainz marks an era in Latin hymnology, because of the prompt use of the new method to multiply the Church books in use in the various dioceses. In every part of Western Europe, from Aberdeen, Lund, and Trondhjem, on the north, to the shores of the Mediterranean, the missals, breviaries, and hymnaries were given to the early printers, with the result of bringing to light many fine hymns and sequences whose use had been merely local. The Sarum Breviary and Missal and those of Rome and Paris were printed more frequently than any other. To the Sarum Breviary we owe the fine Transfiguration hymns—Coelestis formam gloriaeandO nata lux de lumineandO sator rerum reparator aevi, which Anglican translators have made into English hymns; to the Missal the fine sequence on the crown of thorns,Si vis vere gloriari, of which Dr. Whewell published a translation inFrazer’s Magazinefor May, 1849. To the York Processional (1530) we owe the four “proses” which beginSalve festa dies, toto venerabilis aevo, which suggest to Daniel that “in England also there was no lack of those who celebrated the divine majesty in very sweet hymns.”

To the Breviary and Missal of Trondhjem (Drontheim, anciently Nidaros) we owe some of the finest hymns and sequences recovered at this time. Of these theJubilemus cordis voceis the most characteristic and perhaps the most beautiful—full of local color and characteristic love of nature. Mr. Morgan has translated it; but the dedication hymn,Sacrae Sion adsunt encaenia, has found more favor with Anglican translators, and commends itself by scriptural simplicity. Of course this breviary has fine hymns to St. Olaf, the king who did so much to make Norway a Christian country, although hardly so much as his neglected predecessor, Olaf Tryggveson. Similarly the Swedish missals honor King Eric and St. Birgitta.

The German Church books yield less that is novel probably because the earlier German sources have been so much more thoroughly explored. The breviaries of Lubec, of Mainz, of Koeln, and of Meissen furnish most, but chiefly in praises of the Mother of our Lord and the saints. TheGloriosi Salvatoris nominis praeconiaof Meissen is an exception, and has found many admirers and several translators. From Mainz comes the fine hymn in honor of the apostles,Qui sunt isti, qui volant, and that for the martyrs,O beata beatorum, and the Passion hymn,Laus sit Regi gloriae, Cujus rore gratiae.

It is different with the French Church books and those of Walloon Belgium. From the Breton see of Rennes, and those of Angers, Le Mans, and Poitiers in the adjacent provinces of Northwestern France come some of the best hymns of this class. From Rennes comes the pretty and fanciful sequence on the Saviour’s crown of thorns,Florem spina coronavit; from Angers the Christmas hymn,Sonent Regi nato nova cantica, which shows how far the French lag behind the Germans of the same age in handling this theme; also the Advent sequence,Jubilemus omnes una, which suggests Francis’s “Song of the Creatures,” but lacks its tenderness. From Le Mans theDie parente temporum, which Sir Henry Baker has made English in “On this day, the first of days.” From Poitiers the fine Advent sequence,Prope est claritudinis magnae dies, translated by Mr. Hewett. From Noyon, in Northeastern France, the two Christmas hymns,Lux est orta gentibusandLaetare, puerpera, whose beauty is defaced by making the Mother and not the divine Child the central figure.

From the Missal of Belgian Tournay we have the Easter sequence,Surgit Christus cum tropaeo, and the transfiguration sequence,De Parente summo natum, which have found and deserved translators. From that of Liege several sequences, of which the best is that for All Saints Day,Resultet tellus et alta coelorum machina. In the South it is the breviaries of Braga, in Portugal, and Piacenza, in Italy, which have furnished most new hymns.

From the breviaries of the great monastic orders come many hymns, those of the Franciscans furnishing the greater number. That of the Cistercians furnishes theDomine Jesu, noverim me, noverim Te, one of the many hymns suggested by passages in the writings of Augustine of Hippo.

This notice of the early printed Church books, which Daniel, Neale, Morell, and Kehrein have brought under requisition, carries us over into the century of the Reformation, which also is that in which the Renaissance began to affect the matter and manner of hymn-writing. Already in the fifteenth century we have hymns of the humanist type by Aeneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II.); by Adam Wernher of Themar, a friend of Johann Trithemius, a jurist by profession, and the instructor of Philip of Hesse in the humanities; and by Sebastian Brandt, the celebrated author of the “Ship of Fools.” All these give careful attention to classic Roman models in the matter of both prosody and vocabulary. If we were to put Brandt’sSidus ex claro veniens Olympoalongside thePuer natus in Bethlehem, we should see how little of the life and force of simplicity and reality there was in the new poetry.

The sixteenth century begins with the hymns of the humanist Alexander Hegius, a pupil of the school at Deventer and aprotégéof the Brethren of the Common Life, who may have known Thomas à Kempis, as he was born in 1433, or at latest in 1445. He died in 1498, but his hymns appeared in 1501 and 1503. He was the friend of Rudolph Agricola and of Erasmus, and introduced the new learning, especially Greek, into Holland. His hymns are pagan in their vocabulary, although in accord with the orthodoxy of the time. Two lines of his,

“Qui te ‘Matrem’ vocat, orbisRegem vocat ille parentem,”

“Qui te ‘Matrem’ vocat, orbis

Regem vocat ille parentem,”

might have suggested two of Keble’s, which have given no small offence,

“Henceforth, whom thousand worlds adore,He calls thee ‘Mother’ evermore.”

“Henceforth, whom thousand worlds adore,

He calls thee ‘Mother’ evermore.”

To Zacharias Ferrari ample reference has been made in the chapter on the Breviaries. Specimens of his work may be found in Wackernagel’s first volume, as also of the hymns of Erasmus (1467-1536), of Jakob Montanus (1485-1588), of Helius Eobanus Hessus (1488-1540), and Marc-Antonius Muretus. To these Roman Catholic humanists—Eobanus Hessus afterward became a Lutheran—might have been added J. Ludovicus Vives (1492-1540), Marc-Antonio Flaminio (1498-1550), and Matthias Collinus (ob.1566). Wackernagel does add Joste Clichtove (ob.1543), and Jakob Meyer (1491-1552), who did not attempt original hymns, but recast in classic forms those already in use. Clichtove was a Fleming, and one of the earliest collectors.

The series of Protestant hymn-writers joins hard on to that of the Roman Catholic humanists. In the main they belong to the same school. Their hymns are not, like the Protestant German hymns, the spontaneous and inevitable outpouring of simple and natural emotion—a quality which puts Luther and Johann Herrmann beside Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas of Celano. They are the scholastic exercises of men singing the praise of God in a tongue foreign to their thought. Even the best of them, George Fabricius of Chemnitz, whose edition of the early Christian poets has laid us under permanent obligations, although the most careful to avoid paganisms in his hymns, and the most influenced by the earlier Latin hymns, never impresses us with the freedom and spontaneity of his verse. The series runs: Urbanus Rhegius (ob.1541), Philip Melanchthon (1497-1572), Wolfgang Musculus (1497-1563), Joachim Camerarius (1500-74), Paul Eber (1511-69), Bishop John Parkhurst of Norwich (1511-74), Johann Stigel (1515-71), George Fabricius (1516-71), George Klee, or Thymus (fl.1548-50), Nicholas Selneccer (1530-92), Ludwig Helmbold (1532-98), Wolfgang Ammonius (1579), and Theodore Zwinger (1533-88). Recasts of old hymns both as to literary form and theological content we have from Hermann Bonn (1504-48), Urbanus Rhegius, George Klee, and Andreas Ellinger (1526-82). The last-named was a German physician who graduated at Wittemberg in 1549. HisHymnorum Ecclesiasticorum Libri Tres(1578) is described by Daniel as the most copious collection he has seen, but worthless as an authority in its first and second books, as the hymns in these are altered for metrical reasons. Hermann Bonn was a Westphalian, who became the first Lutheran Superintendent in Lubeck, and introduced the Reformation into Osnabruck. He published the first hymn-book in Platt-Deutsch in 1547.

To a later generation belongs Wilhelm Alard (1572-1645), the son of a Flemish Lutheran, who fled to Germany from the Inquisition. Wilhelm studied at Wittemberg, and became pastor at Crempe in Holstein, and published two or perhaps three small volumes of original Latin hymns. Dr. Trench has extracted from one of these two hymns. Of that to his Guardian Angel, ChancellorBenedict, Dr. Washburn, and Mr. Duffield have made translations. This is Mr. Duffield’s:

When specious joys of earth are mine,When bright this passing world doth shine,Then in his watchful heavenly placeMy angel weeps and veils his face.

When specious joys of earth are mine,

When bright this passing world doth shine,

Then in his watchful heavenly place

My angel weeps and veils his face.

But when with tears my eyes o’errunDeploring sin that I have done,Then doth God’s angel, set to keepMy soul, rejoicing, cease to weep.

But when with tears my eyes o’errun

Deploring sin that I have done,

Then doth God’s angel, set to keep

My soul, rejoicing, cease to weep.

Far hence be gone, ye fading joys,Which spring from earth’s too brittle toys!Come hither, tears! for I would showThat penitence by which ye flow.

Far hence be gone, ye fading joys,

Which spring from earth’s too brittle toys!

Come hither, tears! for I would show

That penitence by which ye flow.

I would not be in evil glad,Lest he, my angel, should be sad;Rise then, my true, repentant voice,That angels even may rejoice.

I would not be in evil glad,

Lest he, my angel, should be sad;

Rise then, my true, repentant voice,

That angels even may rejoice.

Another on the Eucharist Mr. Duffield alone has translated:

When I behold thy sacred blood,Thy body broken for my good;O blessed Jesus, may they beAs flame and as a light to me.

When I behold thy sacred blood,

Thy body broken for my good;

O blessed Jesus, may they be

As flame and as a light to me.

So may this flame consume awayThe sins which in my bosom stay,Destroying fully from my sightAll vanity of wrong delight.

So may this flame consume away

The sins which in my bosom stay,

Destroying fully from my sight

All vanity of wrong delight.

So may this light which shines from theeBreak through my darkness utterly,That I may seek with fervent prayer,Thine own dear guidance everywhere.

So may this light which shines from thee

Break through my darkness utterly,

That I may seek with fervent prayer,

Thine own dear guidance everywhere.

A very different group are the hymn-writers of the Jesuit Order, to whom we owe many hymns which have been ascribed to mediaeval authors, although they have marked characteristics which betray their authorship. Thus theEia Phoebe, nunc serenahasbeen ascribed to Innocent III., theO esca viatorumto Thomas Aquinas, theO gens beata coelitumto Augustine, thePone luctum, Magdalenato Adam of St. Victor; while the later Middle Ages have been credited with theAngelice patrone, theEcquis binas columbinas, theJesu meae deliciae, and thePlaudite coeli. The LondonSpectatorascribes a very early origin to theDormi, fili, dormi. All these are Jesuit hymns, collected by Walraff (1806) out of thePsalteriolum Cantionum Catholicarum a Patribus Societatis Jesu. The title of that collection (Psalteriolum) is suggestive of the contents. As the critics of the Society long ago remarked, there is a mark of pettiness on the literature, the art, the architecture, and the theology of the Jesuits. In both prose and poetry they tend to run into diminutives. No hymn of theirs has handled any of the greatest themes of Christian praise in a worthy spirit. The charge made against them by the Dominicans that in their labors to convert the Chinese and other pagans they concealed the cross and passion of our Lord, and presented Him as an infant in His mother’s arms, whether literally true or not, is not out of harmony with their general tone. Christ in the cradle or on the lap of His mother is the fit theme of their praises. In their hands religion loses its severity and God His awfulness. To win the world they stooped to the world’s level, and weakened the moral force of the divine law by cunning explanations, until, through Arnauld and his fellow-Jansenists, “Christianity appeared again austere and grave; and the world saw again with awe the pale face of its crucified Saviour.”

Some of the Jesuit hymns are very good of their kind. TheDormi, fili, dormianticipates the theme of Mrs. Browning’s “The Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus,” and of Dr. George Macdonald’s “Babe Jesus Lay on Mary’s Lap.” It is beautiful in its way, but betrays its Jesuit origin by its diminutives. TheEcquis binas columbinasis a very graceful poem, and the best passion hymn of the school, but is below the subject. TheTandem audite meis a hymn based on the false interpretation of Solomon’s Song, but is very pretty. ThePone luctum, Magdalenais perhaps the greatest of all Jesuit hymns, and has found nine Protestant translators to do it into English. It is rather a fine poem than a fine hymn. TheParendum est, cedendum estis a death-bed hymn whose length and ornateness rob it of a sense of reality. Of theAltitudo, quidhic jacesand thePlaudite CoeliMr. Duffield has left versions which will enable our readers to judge of their worth for themselves:

Majesty, why liest thouIn so low a manger?Thou that kindlest heavenly firesHere a chilly stranger!O what wonders thou art doing,Jesus, unto men;By thy love to us renewingParadise again!

Majesty, why liest thou

In so low a manger?

Thou that kindlest heavenly fires

Here a chilly stranger!

O what wonders thou art doing,

Jesus, unto men;

By thy love to us renewing

Paradise again!

Strength is made of no account;Space is here contracted;He that frees in bonds is bound;Time’s new birth enacted.Yes, thy little lips may touchMary’s spotless bosom;Yes, thy bright eyes weep for menWhile heaven’s joy shall blossom.

Strength is made of no account;

Space is here contracted;

He that frees in bonds is bound;

Time’s new birth enacted.

Yes, thy little lips may touch

Mary’s spotless bosom;

Yes, thy bright eyes weep for men

While heaven’s joy shall blossom.

Lo! heaven rejoices,The air is all bright,And the earth gives her voicesFrom depth and from height.For the darkness is broken,Black storm has passed by,And in peace for a tokenThe palm waves on high.

Lo! heaven rejoices,

The air is all bright,

And the earth gives her voices

From depth and from height.

For the darkness is broken,

Black storm has passed by,

And in peace for a token

The palm waves on high.

Spring breezes are blowing,Spring flowers are at hand,Spring grasses are growingAbroad in the land.And violets brightenThe roses in bloom,And marigolds heightenThe lilies’ perfume.

Spring breezes are blowing,

Spring flowers are at hand,

Spring grasses are growing

Abroad in the land.

And violets brighten

The roses in bloom,

And marigolds heighten

The lilies’ perfume.

Rise then, O my praises,Fresh life in your veins,As the viol upraisesThe gladdest of strains.For once more he sees usAlive, as he said;Our holy Lord JesusEscaped from the dead.

Rise then, O my praises,

Fresh life in your veins,

As the viol upraises

The gladdest of strains.

For once more he sees us

Alive, as he said;

Our holy Lord Jesus

Escaped from the dead.

Then thunder ye mountains,Ye valleys resound,Leap forth, O ye fountains,Ye hills echo round.For he alone frees us,He does as he said,Our holy Lord JesusAlive from the dead.

Then thunder ye mountains,

Ye valleys resound,

Leap forth, O ye fountains,

Ye hills echo round.

For he alone frees us,

He does as he said,

Our holy Lord Jesus

Alive from the dead.

The later additions to the stock of Latin hymns are important only to the student of Roman Catholic liturgies, as connected with the new devotions sanctioned from time to time by the Congregation of Sacred Rites. Thus the devotion to the Sacred Heart led to the writing of the hymnQuicunque certum quaeritis, which the Roman Breviary has copied from the Franciscan, and whose translation by Mr. Caswall has found its way even into Protestant hymn-books. And the crowning sanction of the extravagant reverence for our Lord’s mother, the declaration that she was conceived without sin, and the institution of the feast of the Immaculate Conception, caused Archbishop John von Geissel of Koeln to write, in 1855, a new sequence for the Missal service,Virgo virginum praeclara.

Last in the series of the Latin hymn-writers stands the present pope, Leo XIII., who is the third pope in the long series to whom any hymn can be ascribed with any degree of certainty, the other two being Damasus and Urban VIII. In his Latin poems, published in 1881, there are three hymns in honor of two bishops of Perugia who suffered martyrdom in the early age of the Church. They are not remarkable for poetical inspiration, although they show that his Jesuit masters imbued him with the rules of classic verse and expression. All his poems have been reprinted in this country (Baltimore, 1886), with an English version by the Jesuits of Woodstock College.

In any other field of Christian hymnology we should close our account of the past by the expression of confidence in the fertility of the future. But as regards Latin hymnology, we feel that theperiod of greatest value has passed by, and the record is sealed. While it is true that

“Generations yet unbornShall bless and magnify the Lord,”

“Generations yet unborn

Shall bless and magnify the Lord,”

as Rouse sings, we feel that it will not be in the medium of a dead language, but in the tongues “understanded of the people.” The attempt to maintain Latin as the language—as the exclusive speech of Christian worship in Western Europe, is one of those parts of the Roman Catholic system which are already condemned by results. The comparative barrenness of Latin hymnology for the past hundred years is evidence enough that this is not the channel in which Christian inspiration now flows; and the attention paid even by Roman Catholic poets to hymn-writing in the national languages is fresh evidence of the readiness of that communion to adapt itself to new conditions as soon as this is seen to be inevitable.

It has been asked by both Roman Catholics and Protestants—and not unfairly—whether the interest shown for the last half century by Protestant writers in the hymns of Latin Christendom, is a legitimate one. It is said by the former: “You are poaching on our preserves. All this you admire so much is what your fathers turned their backs upon when they renounced the Roman obedience. You cannot with any consistency attempt to naturalize in your churches and their services, hymns which have been written for a worship which differs in idea and principle, not in details merely, from your own. At best you can pick out a little here and a little there, which seems to suit you. But even then you are in danger of adopting what teaches doctrine which your Protestant confessions and their expositors denounce as idolatry, as when the compilers of the hymnal in use by American Presbyterians adopted Mr. Caswall’s English version of

ignoring its express reference to the devotion to the Sacred Heart. This is a gross instance of what you are doing all the time. If it lead you back to the bosom of the Catholic Church we shall be glad of it. But it grates on Catholic nerves to see you employing the phrase which we regard as a serious statement of doctrinal truth, as though it were a mere purple patch of rhetoric.”

This leads us to ask what the Reformation was in the idea of the Reformers themselves. They never took the ground that the religious life of Protestant nations and churches was out of all relation to the life of the nations and churches of Western Europe, as these were before Luther began his work. With all their regard for the Scriptures, they never assumed that out of these could be created a Christian Church upon ground previously held by Antichrist and him alone. Luther declared that the elements ofthe Church for whose upbuilding he was laboring were just those in which he had been educated. As he expressed it, these were found in the Catechism taught to every child in Germany, and which embraced the creed, the commandments, the sacraments, and the Our Father. What he had learned from study of the New Testament was to give these elements their due prominence, and to disengage them from the additions and corruptions by which they had been obscured. It was not a destructive revolution, but a change of doctrinal perspective for which he was contending. He never lost his relish for the good things he had learned in the Church of his childhood. While he rendered the service into the German speech of the people, he followed in the main the old order of the service in hisDeutsche Messe. He also rendered into German sixteen old hymns, twelve from the Latin, from Ambrose down to Huss, and four from the old German of the Middle Ages. In hisHouse-Postilhe speaks with great enthusiasm of the hymns and sequences he had learned to sing in church as a boy; and in hisTable Talk, while he censures Ambrose as a wordy poet, he praises thePatris Sapientia, but above all the Passion hymn of Pope Gregory the Great,Rex Christe factor omnium, as the best of hymns, whether Latin or German.

Melanchthon’s gentler spirit more than shared in Luther’s reverence for the good in the mediaeval Church. The antithesis to Melanchthon, the representative of the extreme party among Protestants, is Matthias Flacius Illyricus, a man of Slavic stock and uncompromising temper. Yet he also searched the past for witnesses to the truth which Luther had proclaimed. He appeals to a hymn in the Breviary of the Premonstratensian Order, as old, he thinks, as the twelfth century, which testifies against saint worship:

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