In considering the origin of the Christian hymn, one must remember that it is an outgrowth of man’s innate impulse to express his feelings in hymns and songs. That impulse is constitutional; man sings because he was so made that he cannot help singing.
Furthermore, the Christian hymn is the natural development of the Hebrew psalm, just as Christianity is the consummation of the Jewish religion. The two systems of religion are related as closely as the foundation and the superstructure of a great temple. We shall find the Hebrew voice of worship not only leading the songs of the Apostolic Church, but through all the succeeding ages sounding the controlling note of all Christian praise. David and the sons of Asaph led the choirs and congregations in chapel and church and cathedral as truly as they did those in the temple and synagogues. Christianity gave the Psalms a larger, more inspiring message and a more literary and more musical setting; but the thrumming of David’s harp has been heard through all the long centuries and is still heard around the world.
The Greek atmosphere in which the Early Church developed might be supposed to have influenced the character of the Apostolic hymnody; but the Greek Christians were not literary in culture, and the Greek religion had no congregationalsinging. It took several generations before it began to affect the form and music of the Christian hymnody, but eventually it was to become a formative force.
But when the baptism of the Holy Spirit vitalized and organized the Christian Church, the tide of sacred song began to swell. It had a great heritage from the dying Jewish church: its fundamental ideas, its laws, its prophets, its hope of the Messiah now transformed into a reality; but not the least of its inheritances were the habit of praise and worship, and the lyrics that gave them form.
We read that the Church was filled with joy and praised God. Incidentally, we learn that, despite sufferings from cruel scourging, Paul and Silas sang hymns in the Philippian prison, showing that with the new wine of Christian joy there were created new bottles to contain it. We may be sure this was not an isolated instance, but the occurrence of an established practice.
James says, “Is any merry, let him sing psalms.” Whether he meant David’s or “private” psalms is left open to conjecture. The American Revised Version translates it “praise.” Paul is most definite in recognizing “hymns and spiritual songs” as distinguished from “psalms.” Some commentators have interpreted the latter as David’s psalms, the “hymns” as the already accepted canticles, and the “spiritual songs” as the new songs, more or less improvised, that were sung by individuals, “teaching and admonishing one another,” “singing with grace in the heart.”
Paul’s conception of the hymn, therefore, was not a collective hymn, sung by all, but a hymn of edification sung by individual singers. The practice of solo singing assumed in Paul’s exhortations in Ephesians and Colossians, due to the perennial danger of governmental raids and persecutions, stillcontinued in the time of Tertullian (circa 198). He writes that after their common meal “each man, according as he is able, is called on, out of the Holy Scriptures, or of his own mind, to sing publicly to God. Hence it is proved in what degree he hath drunken”—a refutation of the common charge of gluttony and drunkenness.
In the eagerness to unearth traces of the supposed hymnody of the Apostolic church, the wish has been father to the thought, and passages have been pointed out as probable quotations from hymns current in the churches. Some of them are quite plausible, but others are examples of the periodic structure so manifest in the style of both Christ and Paul and in the Oriental proverbial form, but lacking the parallelism of the Psalms.
In Ephesians 5:14, Paul has the formula of quotation from the Old Testament, but no such passage, or anything approaching it, can be found in either the canonical or uncanonical books of the Old Testament. If we should substitute “it” for “he,” the second word of the passage “it” might refer to a hymn in common use. Westcott and Hort put it in metrical form, but the Revised Versions do not. It is very plausible, however; even in the English translation the structure is distinctly metrical:
“Awake, thou that sleepest,And arise from the dead,And Christ shall give thee light.”
“Awake, thou that sleepest,
And arise from the dead,
And Christ shall give thee light.”
Equally plausible is the passage in 1 Timothy 3:16, although not formally quoted:
“God was manifested in the flesh,Justified in the spirit,Seen of angels,Preached unto the Gentiles,Believed on in the world,Received up into glory.”
“God was manifested in the flesh,
Justified in the spirit,
Seen of angels,
Preached unto the Gentiles,
Believed on in the world,
Received up into glory.”
This is particularly true of such passages as have rhetorical warmth rather than inherent lyric quality. The extraordinary flight of the Spirit that has been called the “Hymn of Love” (1 Cor. 13) can be called a hymn only by stretching the limits of the definition beyond all reasonable bounds. Noble as it is, no composer has ever succeeded in setting it to worthy music. As well call Lincoln’s Gettysburg address a Memorial Day Hymn. The same may be said of the ecstatic passage which opens Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (1:2-12).
It has been suggested that the choral passages of the Book of Revelation are quotations from current hymns. If that were true, how could the little gatherings of Christians have risen to the majesty of these marvelous hymns of adoration, either vocally or spiritually? They are so intimately a part of the stupendous scenes in which they appear as to make their being merely quotations seem impossible. Only the itch of a German-type scholarship to press out the last drop of possibility from any given historical material, and the calm assurance that the results must be true, since it has recognized them, can explain this hypothesis.
These hymns are too integral a part of the scenes, too consonant with their elevated spirit, and logically too inevitable, that they should have been mechanically introduced or even adapted from current hymns—they are too choral in the grand manner.
In general, we may accept the same judgment of Dr. Lyman Coleman, in his workThe Primitive Church. “The argument is not conclusive, and all the learned criticism, the talent and the taste, that have been employed on this point, leave us little else than uncertain conjecture on which to build a hypothesis.”
“The Odes of Solomon” is a Syriac collection of hymns which good authorities claim to be of the Apostolic Age; one authority, Mrs. Gibson, insists that it precedes Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, while the most conservativeconcede that it belongs to the first century, or the first half of the second.
Its discoverer, Dr. Rendell Harris, Director of studies at Woodbrooke, the Quaker center at Selly Oak, England, says of the “Odes”: “They are utterly radiant with faith and love, shot through and through with what the New Testament calls ‘the joy of the Lord.’” He quotes one of them: “A great day has shined upon us; marvelous is He who has given us of His glory. Let us, therefore, all of us unite together in the name of the Lord, and let us honor Him in His goodness, and let us meditate in His love by night and by day.”[1]
The first stanza of Ode XXVI is translated as follows:
I poured out praise to the Lord,For I am his:And I will speak his holy song,For my heart is with him,For his harp is in my hands,And the odes of his rest shall not be silent.I will cry unto him from my whole heart;I will praise and exalt him with all my members.For from the East and even to the WestIs his praise;And from the South and even to the NorthIs his confession:And from the top of the hills to their utmost boundIs his perfection.
I poured out praise to the Lord,
For I am his:
And I will speak his holy song,
For my heart is with him,
For his harp is in my hands,
And the odes of his rest shall not be silent.
I will cry unto him from my whole heart;
I will praise and exalt him with all my members.
For from the East and even to the West
Is his praise;
And from the South and even to the North
Is his confession:
And from the top of the hills to their utmost bound
Is his perfection.
It is likely that the reason why no definitely recognized collection of hymns has survived from Apostolic times, and immediately thereafter, is that the singing, outside of the Psalms and Gospel canticles, was largely extemporaneous. The later hymnic form and structure had not yet developed. Dr. Neale, who deserves to be recognized as a high authority, referring to the apostolic “hymns” and “spiritual songs,” says: “From the brief allusions we find to the subject in the New Testamentwe should gather that the hymns and spiritual songs of the Apostles were written in metrical prose.” Rhyming did not come into use until very much later. The singing was in recitative with rather formless melodies. Such extemporizations as appealed to the body of believers were passed on from place to place, the very best from generation to generation, from memory and by word of mouth, for illiteracy was the common lot of the mass of early believers. These people’s spiritual songs were presently lost, much as were most of our early American “spirituals” that served so excellent a purpose.
Indeed, it would be entirely correct to conceive of the stream of devout song flowing steadily on from the “hymns and spiritual songs” of the Apostolic times down through the centuries until our own time, sometimes finding temporary subterranean channels, as with the Albigenses, the Hussites, and the Lollards, but always inspiring, refreshing, and comforting the generations as it passes. It was theLaus Perennis, the unfailing sacrifice of praise, that day and night rose without break or intermission to the ears of the Almighty. In every generation, hymns that had nobly served preceding generations were replaced by new ones fresh from throbbing hearts that had re-experienced the vital truths of Christianity.
It is no condemnation of a hymn that the Church lays it aside. That it served only for a season may have been due to its peculiar adaptation to the individuality of the age, to the temporary conditions and needs among God’s saints of that particular time.
Whatever conclusion we reach regarding the song service during the Apostolic age, because of the meager facts we have regarding it, we have sufficient information regarding the second, third, and fourth centuries to be sure that the hymn had become a more and more important feature of the religious life. The tide of song swells louder and higher as the generations pass. Clement of Alexandria, the reputed writer of the earliest surviving Christian hymn, “Shepherd of tender youth,” writes, “We cultivate our fields, praising; we sail the sea, hymning.” Jerome writes to Marcellus, “You could not go into the field, but you might hear the plowman at his hallelujahs, the mower at his hymns, and the vinedresser singing David’s psalms.” Tertullian, a little earlier, when the antiphonal singing was still in vogue, objects to the marriage of a Christian with an unbeliever, because they cannot sing together, whereas the Christian mates each would challenge the other “which shall better chant to the Lord.” The early church was, therefore, a singing church.
Tertullian was not a writer of hymns, for he declared “We have a plenty of verses, sentences, songs, proverbs.” We do not have their hymns, but we have the names of prominent hymn writers who sealed their faith with their blood: Ignatius,Athenogenes, Hippolytus, and many others who did not win a martyr’s crown.
All these hymns blossomed out of the consuming love for the Lord Jesus Christ, for which the Jewish psalms could give no expression. That they were used for public worship we have the testimony of Pliny (A.D.110). His report from Bithynia to the Emperor Trajan was that “the new sect have a custom of meeting before dawn on a stated day and singing by turn a hymn to Christ as God.”
Unless we accept the Syriac “Odes of Solomon” as an apostolic hymnbook, none of the “spiritual songs” of that age survive. The hymn written (or quoted?) by Clement in 170 is accepted as the earliest hymn handed down to us, with the “Candlelight Hymn” as possibly contemporaneous.
Clement’s hymn “Shepherd of tender youth” is found in most of our hymnals and is in actual use.[1]Dr. Henry M. Dexter’s version, as generally used, is an attenuation suited to the taste of our day rather than a faithful reproduction of the original, which begins with a rather violent figure, “Curb for stubborn steed” (E. H. Plumptre).
The date of the “Candlelight Hymn” is very uncertain. It was so old in 370 that another St. Basil could throw no light on its origin: “It seemed fitting to our fathers not to receive the gift of light at eventide in silence, but on its appearing immediately to give thanks.” The version by John Keble is still in use:
“Hail, glad’ning Light, of His pure glory pouredWho is the immortal Father heavenly, blest,Holiest of holies, Jesus Christ, our Lord!Now we are come to the sun’s hour of rest;The lights of evening round us shine;We hymn the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit divine.”
“Hail, glad’ning Light, of His pure glory poured
Who is the immortal Father heavenly, blest,
Holiest of holies, Jesus Christ, our Lord!
Now we are come to the sun’s hour of rest;
The lights of evening round us shine;
We hymn the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit divine.”
In the very nature of the case, these individual songs and hymns andpsalms had no authority back of them. They were the “spirituals,” the Gospel songs of their day and generation. Most of them were improvisations for a single service—flying sparks from the anvil of the Spirit. Undoubtedly others had a longer life, were written out and passed from hand to hand and even from generation to generation.
These hymns were mostly in Greek, though some were in Syriac, and as far as they were given a standard form they used Greek classical meters. Some were modeled on the Septuagint psalms and were known as “private psalms.” Many were odes, like the “Odes of Solomon.”
But it is quite evident that this body of song was never regarded as on an equality with the Psalms of the Jewish church, or with the Canticles of the New Testament. These had the sanctions of the rapidly crystallizing canon of the New Testament, and the established canon of the Old, which gave an authority that was lacking in the current hymnody. The relation was even more pronounced than that in our own day between the body of hymns surviving through the generations recognized as “standard” and the current religious songs of the hour.
In addition to the Psalms taken over from the Jewish psalter (not over one-half of which were ever sung) and the Canticles of Luke’s Gospel, there gradually rose a subsidiary body of canticles which by the fourth century had been for the most part fully formulated. They were developments of passages from both the Old and New Testament. In addition to the ejaculatory responses, “Alleluia” and “Hosanna,” the following were hymns authorized to be used in Christian services:
1. TheGloria in Excelsis, developed from the song of the angels as found in Luke, known as the Greater Doxology.
2. TheTer Sanctus, based on Isaiah 6:3, possibly later associated with Revelation 4:8, and called the Cherubical Hymn.
3. TheBenedicite, the song of the three Hebrew childrenin the furnace, a paraphrase of the forty-eighth Psalm, likely taken from the Apocrypha.
4. TheGloria Patrior Lesser Doxology, apparently handed down from the Apostolic time, developed from the baptismal formula. It was expanded during the Arian controversy, adding “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.”[2]
The inferiority of the popular hymnody became ever more pronounced as the hymn was employed by heretical sects as a means of propagating their pernicious doctrines. Bardesanes and his son Harmonius in Edessa, Asia, a little later composed an entire psalter of one hundred and fifty psalms, “deserting David’s truth and preserving David’s numbers,” as Ephrem Syrus expressed it.
The Gnostic hymns during the third century were slowly undermining the faith of the people, but it was not until Arius appeared with his denial of the deity of Jesus Christ and spread broadcast his “Thalia,” a collection of practical hymns emphasizing practical duties and the value of the daily life of the people, as well as magnifying the humanity of Jesus, that the full extent of the revolution in the religious sentiment of the people became evident. He fitted his measures to well-known popular tunes, sung only by those “who sing songs over their wine with noise and revel.”
Arius, an ungainly giant of tremendous force of personality and unbounded energy, thus began a movement that was to convulse with its controversy the whole Roman Empire through many generations, even down to our own times, and was to prepare Asia and Northern Africa for the superimposition of the Mohammedan personality and cult upon an emasculated Christianity.
In 269, Paul of Samosata, an Arian Bishop, banished from his churches the hymns that had come down from the second century because they were addressed to Christ as God and “as being innovations, the work of men of later times.” Hebegan the Arian fashion of propaganda by means of hymns. As an answer to this came the great hymnic outburst of the fourth century, headed by Gregory of Nazianzus and participated in by St. Chrysostom.[3]
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Synod that met in Laodicea in 363 ordered that “psalms composed by private men must not be read in the church, nor uncanonical books, but only the canonical of the New and Old Testament.”
Nor need we wonder that with the Arian fanatics interrupting orthodox services by starting their heterodox hymns, the same Synod decided that “beside the psalm singers appointed thereto who mount the ambo and sing out of the book, no others shall sing in church.”
This robbing the lips and the hearts of the congregation of its share of the public praise, in order to prevent Gnostic and Arian heretics from profaning public services with their strife and contention, hardened into a perpetual prohibition, and in the Greek church the people are mute to this day.[4]
It should be remembered that these prohibitions applied only to public services and their liturgies. Outside the walls of the larger churches the people were still singing. Indeed, the popular song was used by the orthodox to displace the heretical songs of the Arians, as was done by Chrysostom in Constantinople, in order to stem the tide of attack on the doctrine of the deity of Christ.
The reaction of the Greek Church to the hymnic attack of Arians interests us because of its influence on the general development of the Christian hymn.
Of the earliest hymn writers we know little, and their work has not come down to us. We have a hymn of Methodius (311) based on the parable of the ten virgins, of considerable vigor and merit.
The most prominent figure that greets us is that of Gregory of Nazianzus (327-389). He was called to Constantinople by the Emperor Theodosius to lead the orthodox forces against the Arian enemy. He was appointed court preacher, Patriarch of the Eastern Church, and president of the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople; but the pious, gentle monk, while a great preacher and a fertile hymn writer (it is said that he wrote thirty thousand hymns), was not fitted for the strife and intrigue rampant in the Capital; within a few years he returned to his cell at Nazianzus in Cappadocia. His hymns are ranked very high. Dr. Brownlee has given an excellent version of his “Evening Hymn”:
“O word of truth! In devious pathsMy wayward feet have trod;I have not kept the day sereneI gave at morn to God.
“O word of truth! In devious paths
My wayward feet have trod;
I have not kept the day serene
I gave at morn to God.
And now ’tis night, and night within,O God, the light hath fled!I have not kept the vow I madeWhen morn its glories shed.
And now ’tis night, and night within,
O God, the light hath fled!
I have not kept the vow I made
When morn its glories shed.
For clouds of gloom from nether worldObscured my upward way;O Christ, the Light, thy light bestow,And turn my night to day!”
For clouds of gloom from nether world
Obscured my upward way;
O Christ, the Light, thy light bestow,
And turn my night to day!”
Synesius (375-430), Bishop of Cyrene, was a brilliant man, a friend of Hypatia, whom most general readers know as the heroine of Charles Kingsley’s great historical romance. He wrote some very tender hymns and poems that have been widely appreciated. He is best known by his hymn, “Lord Jesus, think on me,” a free paraphrase of which (by Allen W. Chatfield) is found in some of our hymnals.
Anatolius (d. 458) is known to us, not as the able and noble Byzantine pontiff, but as the original writer of two quite different hymns, translated by Dr. Mason Neale: the evening hymn, “The day is past and over,” and the descriptive hymn, “Fierce was the wild billow.” He was one of the first to forsake the classical forms and to put his thoughts into harmonious prose. He wrote few hymns, but all of great excellence.
The earlier Greek hymn writers wrote in the classical measures and evinced an admirable sense of form; but the later hymnists, following the example of Anatolius, wrote in rhythmical prose and not by any means as felicitously. Moreover, the later Greek language greatly degenerated, losing its lucidity and subtlety of expression.[1]
The later Greek hymns had many ecclesiastical and theological phrases difficult to render. They were filled with grotesque figures; the worship of Mary, and even of the saints,is offensive. Being mostly in rhythmical prose, they were not intended to be sung—at most only to be chanted. Really they were not hymns in the ordinary sense of the word; rather they were the raw materials of hymns. As Dr. Brownlie says, “The writers are not poets, in the true sense, and their language is not Greek as we have known it.”
The more conspicuous of these later Greek devotional writers do not appear until the eighth century.
Andrew of Crete (660-732), an archbishop, was a very voluminous devotional writer. Among his more important works are the “Great Canon,”[2]the “Triodion,” and the “Pentecostarion.” The “Great Canon” has more than three hundred stanzas, illustrating by Scripture examples the feelings of a penitent confessing his sins. He is represented in some of our hymnals by the hymn, “Christian, dost thou see them?” translated by Dr. John Mason Neale and said to be taken from the “Great Canon.”
The other hymnists of this century are John of Damascus (d.780), his foster-brother Cosmas, the Melodist (d.760), and Stephen the Sabaite, his nephew (725-794).
John of Damascus wrote the best Greek of his generation and was most poetical in spirit and style. Gibbon calls him the “last of the Greek Fathers.” His verse is characterized by being written in iambics (the most common measure in modern hymns). His best-known hymn is “’Tis the day of resurrection,” taken from his great Easter canon, styled the “Queen of Canons” and the “Golden Canon” by the Greek Church.
John’s foster-brother, Cosmas, survives in the Christmas hymn, “Christ is born! exalt his name.” Although his canons are very thoughtful, his style is often turgid and difficult to follow.
Stephen the Sabaite, the nephew of John of Damascus, the third of this “nest of singing birds” (to use Dr. Gillman’s phrase), came to Mar Saba as a boy and remained there all hislife. Dr. Neale found the inspiration of his hymn “Art thou weary, art thou languid?” in some lines of Stephen.
These three Greek hymn writers were monks in the monastery of San Saba, to be seen to the north from the highway between Jerusalem and Jericho, on the rugged heights overlooking the Jordan valley.
Another group of Greek hymn writers appears a little later, headed by Theodore (759-826), abbot of the Studium, a great monastery at Constantinople. The group was quite controversial, the occasion being not the Deity of Christ, but the enforced destruction of ikons, or images. The hymns of this group were not all controversial. Theoctistus (c.890), an obscure and later member of it, when the heat of strife had presumably subsided, could write this devout hymn of praise to Christ:
“Jesu, name all names above,Jesu, best and dearest.Jesu, fount of perfect love,Holiest, tend’rest, nearest.
“Jesu, name all names above,
Jesu, best and dearest.
Jesu, fount of perfect love,
Holiest, tend’rest, nearest.
Jesu, source of grace completest,Jesu purest, Jesu sweetest.Jesu, well of power divine,Make me, keep me, seal me thine.”
Jesu, source of grace completest,
Jesu purest, Jesu sweetest.
Jesu, well of power divine,
Make me, keep me, seal me thine.”
Joseph of the Studium (c.840), because of his many hymns, was called the Hymnographer. He wrote too much to write well. His work is characterized as tautological, tawdry, tedious. Three of his hymns, however, had enough suggestiveness to inspire Dr. Neale to write “Let our choir new anthems raise,” “O happy band of pilgrims,” and “Safe home, safe home in port.” Dr. Neale’s pump seems to have needed but slight priming to bring up stirring lyrics from the deepest spiritual experiences and emotions!
The most striking characteristic of the Greek hymnody is its sheer objectivity. It is self-forgetful in its rapt, ecstatic contemplationof the doctrines and facts of the Christian faith. It is never experiential or self-analytical except when it confesses sin and unworthiness. The sustained dignity and elevation of its praise and adoration are other admirable traits. Its consciousness of God, its unflawed acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, its assurance of the indwelling Spirit, give it a liturgical value beyond that of any other ancient hymnody.
The early disciples in the West were accustomed to use the Greek language, as may be gathered from Paul’s writing his Epistle to the Romans in Greek. It is probable that their religious services were largely in that language until there were Romans enough added to the churches to make the use of Latin necessary.
That great ode, the “Te Deum,” comes to us only in a Latin form. The tradition is that it was an antiphon improvised by Ambrose and Augustine on the occasion of the latter’s baptism, but that is doubtless a hero-worshiping fancy of the ninth century. That a good deal of it came from the Greek was to be expected and is quite certain, whether the Dacian Bishop, Nicetius of Remisiana, gathered up the Greek material or not (circa 400).
On the other hand, there is no Greek version extant, except a much later one which is evidently a translation from the Latin.
It may have been written (or compiled) during the Arian controversy as a creedal song to be sung by clerical or monastic choirs. It may have grown by gradual accretion, from generation to generation, like the Easter hymn “Jesus Christ is risen today,” which, begun in the fourteenth century, was not given final form until 1816.
This magnificent ode, for it is a hymn only by a considerable extension of the definition, appears in our modern hymnals only as a chant, and is practically never sung in our non-liturgical congregations. It has been used as a choral text throughout all its history, never as a congregational hymn. It has had unnumbered settings by the greatest composers of Christendom.
It is the high festival ode of the ages, used in celebrating victories or other stately occasions of great public interest. Its comprehensiveness, nobility of thought, and elevated style befit the coronation of kings or the investiture of popes. For the mass of our churches, great as it is, it has only a historical interest. It might find impressive use as a responsive reading.
Bishop Hilary of Poitiers (circa 300-367), “the hammer of the Arians,” was exiled into Phrygia by Constantius because he called the Arian emperor “The Antichrist.” In his exile he came in touch with the fierce propaganda waged on both sides by means of hymns. His controversial zeal recognized the opportunity, and he wrote a great many anti-Arian hymns, which he gathered on his return to France into hisLiber Mysteriorum. That his book was lost was no great calamity, for his fiery, combative spirit, valuable enough at the time, had no message for future generations. He woke a new interest in singing and furnished a more practicable model. He undoubtedly suggested the antiphonal singing he found in the “Hinterland” of Asia Minor and thus prepared the way for his fellow-countryman, Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. If the latter is recognized as the father of Latin hymnody, and even of all the Western hymnody, Catholic and Protestant, Hilary is its grandfather.
Ambrose (340-397) had been a lawyer, not a product of the ecclesiastical system, and he brought to his office a freshness of insight and of resources that might have been atrophiedin the mechanical clerical education of his day. The value of song in supporting the spirits of his followers when besieged for days in his cathedral suggested to his practical mind, stimulated by his musical nature, its wider use when the battle was won.
Ambrose broke new ground for Latin hymnody in several essential particulars. He transformed the merely reading hymn, confined to the clergy, to a singing hymn for the congregation, writing hymns for the express purpose of promoting congregational song. He passed by the artificial classical meters for the simplest of lyrical meters, four lines of four iambic measures each, which has come down to us through the centuries as Long Meter. He also introduced the free use of rhymes.
Ambrose was not only a learned man of great ability, but—what is more to our present purpose—a man of great piety and devotion. He sought to vitalize and actualize the devotions, personal and collective, of the Christian Church, to make them genuine and heartfelt as against the formalists to whom the mere letter is all-important. His hymns are evidences of his spirituality. There is room for stanzas from only a few of them:
“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.
Thee, in the morn with songs of praise,Thee, in 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, in the evening time, we seek;
Thee, through all ages, we adore,
And suppliant of thy love we speak.”
In spite of the opposition of the Roman See, and the later effort of Charlemagne, in his zeal for the Gregorian system, to destroy all copies of the Ambrosian hymns and tunes, the “Ambrosiani” still keep a small place in the Roman Breviary.
Among the contemporaries of Ambrose, no hymnist stands out more conspicuously than the Spaniard, Prudentius (348-424). He also had been a lawyer and a man of affairs. He had more literary gifts than Ambrose, and his poems show more personality, more charm, more unaffected sincerity. Bentley calls him “the Horace and Virgil of the Christians.” A single stanza may illustrate his spirit and style:
“The bird, the messenger of day,Cries the approaching light;And thus doth Christ, who calleth us,Our 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.”
Mention should be made of Fortunatus (530-609). He was, like the later Marot of psalm-version fame, “the fashionable poet of the day,” a precursor of the troubadours. Later in life he became religious, a priest, an almoner of a monastery, and finally Bishop of Poitiers. He wrote a processional to be used at the reception of a piece of the true cross presented by Queen Rhadegunda. The hymn “Vexilla regis prodeunt” has come down the ages. Dr. Neale calls it “one of the grandest in the treasury of the Latin church.” We make room for the first and last stanzas of Dr. Neale’s translation:
“The royal banners forward go;The cross shines forth in mystic glow;Where he in flesh, our flesh who made,Our sentence bore, our ransom paid.
“The royal banners forward go;
The cross shines forth in mystic glow;
Where he in flesh, our flesh who made,
Our sentence bore, our ransom paid.
* * * * * * *
* * * * * * *
Hail, altar! Hail, O Victim! TheeDecks now thy passion’s victoryWhere life for sinners death endured,And life, by death, for man procured.”
Hail, altar! Hail, O Victim! Thee
Decks now thy passion’s victory
Where life for sinners death endured,
And life, by death, for man procured.”
The influence and power of the Roman hierarchy were steadily exercised against the use of hymns and in behalf of the sole use of Scripture psalms and canticles. It is a far cry from Gregory the Great to John Calvin and John Knox, demanding the sole use of canonical material in the services ofthe church; and a like far cry from the Council of Toledo in Spain in 633, which made a strong plea for the use of hymns in the church’s devotions, to Isaac Watts and his prefaces to his several collections of modified psalms and of hymns. It was only toward the end of the twelfth century that hymns of “human composure” were used in Roman churches, and then were sung by clerical choirs in the larger basilicas of the capital city. The people were still shut out from their use.
But the impulse to write devotional material for the church service persisted. The Venerable Bede (672-735), scholar, theologian, philosopher, historian, general encyclopedist, wrote both Latin and Anglo-Saxon hymns in his faraway monastery at Yarrow, England. Theodulph (d.821), Paulus Diaconus, Odo of Cluny, Cardinal Damiana, and other minor hymnists wrote hymns, some of which, transformed by skillful translators, have found use in our day.
Notker, called Balbulus (850-912), of St. Gall in Eastern Switzerland, became weary of the long-drawn-out notes of the cadences of the final syllable of the “Alleluia,” which was prolonged to enable the deacon to ascend to the rood-loft to chant the Gospel. It was suggested that a text be supplied, a syllable for every note. At first these texts had no metrical form and were called Proses. Later they were given a definite form and were called sequences, because they followed the “Alleluia.” These sequences continued to be written for over three centuries and were brought to technical perfection by Adam of St. Victor.
These sequences, however, were an evidence of the abiding urge for lyrical expression rather than a step in the progressive development of the Christian hymn.
A more important figure in our study of Latin hymns is Rabanus Maurus (776-856), archbishop of Mainz, Germany, a great scholar, an influential teacher, a profound theologian, avoluminous writer, as well as a great hymn writer. He had been a notable figure in German church history before hymnological investigators proved that he was the writer of the great hymn, “Veni, Creator Spiritus,” the worthy successor of Fortunatus’ “Vexilla regis prodeunt.” Its authorship had been credited at different times to Ambrose, Gregory the Great, Charlemagne, and Notker Balbulus. It is the only metrical hymn officially recognized by the early English Church. It is sung at high ceremonies like the coronation of kings or the consecration of bishops. The accepted version is by Bishop Cosin. It appears in our leading hymnals.
The next bead in our rosary of great hymns is “Veni, Sancte Spiritus,” by the helpless little paralytic and humpback, Hermannus Contractus (1013-1054). An excellent historian, a renowned philosopher and theologian, a mathematician of unusual attainments, in short a universal and encyclopedic scholar, his chief glory now is that he wrote this hymn which Archbishop Trench rated “as the loveliest of all the hymns in the whole cycle of Latin sacred poetry.” There is space for one stanza only, the third of this great hymn:
“O most blessed Light divine,Shine within these hearts of thine,And our inmost being fill;Where thou art not, man hath naught,Nothing good in deed or thought,Nothing free from taint of ill.”
“O most blessed Light divine,
Shine within these hearts of thine,
And our inmost being fill;
Where thou art not, man hath naught,
Nothing good in deed or thought,
Nothing free from taint of ill.”
The tide of the years had been flowing quietly with only here and there rapids or an eddy, but now the current was hastening toward the great whirlpool of the Crusades. Hildebert, Peter the Hermit, Bernard of Clairvaux, Abelard, Peter the Venerable, Adam of St. Victor, stand out as lighthouses on an uncharted sea.
Not the least of these was Bernard, the abbot of Clairvaux (1091-1153), scholar, orator, statesman, and man of affairs, of whom Archbishop Trent declares: “Probably no man duringhis lifetime ever exercised a personal influence in Christendom equal to his; the stayer of popular commotions, the queller of heresies, the umpire between princes and kings, the counsellor of popes.” This does not suggest the writer of such a hymn as “Jesu dulcis memoria,”[1]the tenderest, sweetest sacred lyric of the Middle Ages. But he was credited with it for centuries until it was found in a manuscript of the eleventh century and there credited to a Spanish Benedictine abbess, an origin more consonant with its spirit and with its finished Latinity. Would we knew more about her, this medieval precursor of Anne Steele, Sarah F. Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth P. Prentiss, and Fanny Crosby! Dr. S. W. Duffield holds “Bernard to be the real author of the modern hymn—the hymn of faith and worship”; but now the iconoclastic modern hymnologist denies him even the authorship of the “Salve Caput Cruentatum.”[2]
We know very little about the other Bernard, who was a monk in the greater abbacy of Cluny; but his authorship of the great indictment of the Roman church of his time, “De Contemptu Mundi,” is undoubted. His great poem of three thousand lines[3]occupied itself with the vice and moral filth which his pure soul detested. In his disgust with the moral ordure in which his feet were immersed, he suddenly takes wing and rises to the heights to contemplate “the Heavenly Land.” Dr. Neale, out of scattered lines and phrases of the original, with additions of his own, constructed the wondrous mosaics which we delight to sing: “Brief life is here our portion,” “Jerusalem, the Golden,” “For thee, O dear, dear country.”
One thinks of Thomas Aquinas (1227-1274) as the Aristotelian logician, the profound Augustinian theologian, the philosopher, the invincible protagonist of medieval orthodoxy, rather than as a hymn writer; yet some of our present day hymnals contain two communion hymns of profound thought and deep feeling written by him. “Pange, lingua, gloriosi” isperhaps the finer; here is one stanza of Edward Caswell’s version:
“Now, my tongue, the mystery tellingOf the glorious body sing,And the blood, all price excellingWhich the Gentile’s Lord and KingOnce on earth amongst us dwellingShed for this world’s ransoming.”
“Now, my tongue, the mystery telling
Of the glorious body sing,
And the blood, all price excelling
Which the Gentile’s Lord and King
Once on earth amongst us dwelling
Shed for this world’s ransoming.”
The other, “Lauda, Sion, Salvatorem,” has been rendered by Alexander R. Thompson, as follows:
“Zion, to thy Saviour singing,To thy Prince and Shepherd bringingSweetest hymns of love and praise,Thou wilt never reach the measureOf thy most ecstatic lays.”
“Zion, to thy Saviour singing,
To thy Prince and Shepherd bringing
Sweetest hymns of love and praise,
Thou wilt never reach the measure
Of thy most ecstatic lays.”
We now reach the consideration of hymns and poems of great excellence in themselves but without the appeal, or practicability as hymns, possessed by the foregoing. Some of them appear in liturgical hymnals, or in more formal hymnals of non-liturgical churches, but their use is limited.
Among these is Francis of Assisi’s “Canticle of the Sun,”[4]not a hymn, but a psalm of praise for all created things. For our day it has chiefly literary and antiquarian interest.
His follower and biographer, Thomas of Celano (?-1255), however, wrote a sequence or hymn that has intrigued the interest of generation after generation. Mozart’s “Requiem” uses parts of it as its text. Goethe introduces it in his “Faust.” Unnumbered translations of it have been made into all civilized languages. Theodore Parker called it the “damnation lyric.” In the original “Dies irae” there were eighteen stanzas. The version of W. J. Irons has fourteen stanzas of three lines each, a few of which follow: