CHAPTER XV.

HERMANNUS CONTRACTUS AND THE “VENI SANCTE SPIRITUS.”

One of the surprises of history is the long-delayed honor which comes to the modest and the meek. The notable and prominent attract to themselves much of the repute of any age. They even gain the credit of achievements to which they never put a finger. But by and by the “whirligig of time brings in his revenges,” and they that were last become first.

Thoughts like these are sure to come to us when we encounter such a name as this of the poor cripple of Reichenau. Whatever fame he had in his own day gradually disappeared and he has been only a shadowy figure for many years. It is true that Ersch and Gruber, in their great encyclopaedia, say of him that he is “one of the most meritorious men of the eleventh century.” It is also true that Ussermann—himself an almost forgotten authority—has labored to give Hermann his proper meed of praise; and that the Benedictines have patiently collated many little particulars concerning him. Yet he still remains locked up in Latin or in German or in French; and English readers can be pardoned for being utterly ignorant of him and of his works.

This man merits no small share of our notice. He came of good blood, for his father was the Count of Vöhringen in Suabia. He traced his kinship to the famous St. Udalric, whose sister, named Leutgarde, is mentioned (971) in the saintly bishop’s pages. Her son was Reginbald, slain in battle against the Hungarians in 955. This Reginbald had a daughter Bertha, who married Wolfrad, Count of Vöhringen, and died in 1032. Wolfrad, dying in 1010, had a son Wolfrad, who married a lady named Hiltrude and became the father of fifteen children—one of whom was Hermann. This is the simplest form of a genealogy, which the learned chronicler protracts in a marvellous manner, to the great confusion of the modern mind. I have not cared to follow him into the remoter affinities and alliances which add distinction to the poor little paralytic child, who at seven years of age was carried to the great school at St. Gall.

I have said that Hermann was a cripple. He was so completely helpless, indeed, that he could not move without assistance; and his days and nights were full of pain. He was “hump-backed and bow-breasted, crippled and lame.” (_Gibosus ante et retro, et contractus, claudus_. Pertz: _Monumenta: Scriptores:_ V., 268.) But his mind triumphed over these infirmities. A pathetic legend concerning him assures us that in the visions of the night the Virgin stood before him, radiant and beautiful. As in the old story about the choice of Hercules—which was probably the origin of this—she offers him strength of body combined with ignorance and weakness of mind; or wisdom and ability in a body which should be deficient and sickly to the day of his death. This “second Hercules”—as the chronicler admiringly calls him—promptly chose the last.

He had been born (for his ancestral records and his own _Chronicon_ help us to exactness) on July 18th, 1013. He was admitted to school, probably, though not certainly, at St. Gall, on September 15th, 1020. Hitherto his education had been absolutely neglected. He could not go about alone nor even speak intelligibly (_Annales Augustani_ [1042-55]. In Pertz: _Mon. Ger._, VII., 126) owing to his paralysis. But he had a devouring desire for knowledge, and rapidly mastered Latin, Greek, Arabic, and (probably) Hebrew, so that he possessed them equally well with his vernacular speech. The convent was the only place for such a poor little waif as he, and thus, within the learned cloisters of St. Gall, he followed reverently upon the shining path of Notker and Tutilo and Ratpert and Hartmann, and added his name to theirs in the development of the sequences and antiphons of the Church.

Nor was this all. He became an excellent historian, a distinguished musician, and a renowned philosopher and theologian. In mathematics he was equally skilled and ingenious. He is considered by some to have invented the astrolabe, the first instrument by which the height and distances of stars were calculated. Assuredly he wrote an exhaustive treatise upon its use, whether he originated it or not; and it is said that he added to his scientific studies the making of clocks and watches. He has left us essays upon the monochord, on the squaring of the circle, on computation and physiognomy and metrical rules and astronomy. These are marked by the inferior attainments of the age, as we might expect, but they display an amount of original research for which we are unprepared.

He was also an excellent scribe, and the library of St. Gall still contains a copy of a work ascribed to Anselm of Canterbury written by him in the fulfilment of a vow. He resembled the Venerable Bede in the universality of his knowledge, and, like Alcuin and Rabanus Maurus, he is one of the great teachers of his time. Always, during these darkening years, there appears to have been some ministering priest in the temple of education—some self-devoted, God-fearing man, who patiently kept the altar-fire burning, and spent his life, to the utmost verge, in climbing those altar-steps with fresh fuel for the flame.

We do not know how much of this work was begun or completed during his life at St. Gall. We are able to say that he translated Aristotle’s Poetics and Rhetoric from the Arabic language, and this of itself should award to him the very highest renown. It is impossible in a single sentence to do justice to this achievement and we must take it more at large.

The dictator Sylla brought the works of the great Greek philosopher, together with his library, to Rome, in the year B.C. 147. This was on the capture of Athens, and these writings were still comparatively unknown in Greece. The philosophy of the Peripatetic school was, of course, familiar to their countrymen; but it was by and through the Latin race and not the Greek, that the “Master of Syllogisms” was to become most potent. Aristotle’s was the controlling system of the Middle Ages. His rules of logic were imperative. They governed theology, and indeed every other form of metaphysics. They restrained with an iron grip the expanding ideas of men. It was against Aristotle, in the person of William of Champeaux, future Bishop of Chalons and founder of the school of St. Victor, that Peter Abelard laid his lance in rest. Even to the days of Dean Swift these ideas bore sway, and when that brilliant man sought his degree from Trinity College, Dublin, he was met by the question whether he reasoned according to Aristotle. And his reply, that he did well enough in his own fashion, was held to be little less than atheism. Nor is this the only comparison which might be aptly instituted between Swift and Abelard.

So Aristotle had his authority and held his sceptre down almost to our own time. But at the commencement his writings were either used in the Greek language or in the Arabic. In the twelfth century the schools of the Moors in Spain were the true centre of philosophy. They first applied his teachings to theology, and to these schools resorted many scholars from other parts of the continent. But such translations as these travelling students brought home were probably of a sort to make intricacy and subtlety more intricate and subtle. A fog had gathered over Europe, and the Dark Ages are indeed no myth. There were few points of light anywhere, and among these few were the bright spots called St. Gall and Reichenau.

Charles Jourdain asserts that only a part of Aristotle was known before 1200 A.D., and that this was through the translation of Boethius. (See Ueberweg: Hist. Philos., I., 367.) So that if Hermannus Contractus translated Aristotle at so early a date, it shows that his rendering was in advance of most, if not of nearly all those which were used in the Western schools. He had a brother, or uncle, Manegold, who died in Palestine. He had another brother Werner, who afterward became a legate to Gregory VII. (Hildebrand) in the fierce struggle between Pope and Emperor in 1077. And he was further well placed both by his family connections and his situation at a centre of learning, to secure the best manuscripts and the best Arabic instruction. (See an elaborate dissertation in Wegelin: _Thes. Rerum Suevicarum_, II., p. 120.) It evinces decided wisdom and toil on his part to have undertaken and completed this translation; and there is no doubt that the humble paralytic from his bed of suffering influenced materially the scholastic movements of the coming centuries. Could he have seen the swarming thousands who built the abbey of the Paraclete; could he have witnessed in vision the uprising of such schools as St. Victor in France and Oxford in England; could he have heard Roger Bacon confess his indebtedness to those pages; could he have foreseen the infinite consequences both to the preservation and the hindrance of human thought, with what strange zeal he would have traced each painful line!

But he could not know it. He had removed at thirty years of age to his perpetual celibacy at Reichenau—Augia the Rich, as it is called in the Latin tongue. It is built on an island in the western arm of the Lake of Constance. And there, with great mountains to gaze upon and fair waters to catch for him the rosy light of evening; with the brethren of the convent laboring cheerfully in their fields or toiling in their cells, Hermann of Vöhringen, Hermann of Reichenau, Hermannus Contractus, Hermann der Gebrechliche, Hermann the Cripple, spent his uneventful life.

Here he wrote the legends of some of the saints, and here he prepared his valuable compendium of universal history. He calls it a _Chronicon_, and condensed into its records the story of the world from A.D. 1 to the year 1054, the date of his own death. It is very brief through the first portion of its account of “the Six Ages.” Then its statements are fuller. When it reaches contemporaneous events it becomes exceedingly important to the historical student, for it is in the nature of a chronicle. Here also the man’s own personality occasionally appears. He speaks of Reichenau as _Augia nostra_ and mentions the basilica which Henry III. (“the Black”) has erected to “our patron, St. Mark the Evangelist.” This establishes the fact that Reichenau was his true residence, and gives us the standpoint of the little isle in Lake from which to look out across the dark-green and sometimes stormy waters upon the confusions of the time. These were the days when the Truce of God (1041 A.D.) was necessary in order to prevent the bloody feuds of the barons during Advent, Lent, and from Wednesday evening of each week until the following Monday morning. Yet amid all these conflicts Hermann the Paralytic remained secure, guarded by religion and surrounded by the peaceful lake. And like that lake the Rhine stream of secular affairs flowed always through his life clear and undisturbed.

It is during these closing scenes that a touching entry is made in the pages of the _Chronicon_. Under the year 1052 the crippled hand slowly traces these words: “At the same time, on January 9th, my mother Hiltrude, the wife of the Count Wolfrad, a pious, meek, generous, and religious woman, and one who was as devoted to and happy in her husband and her seven surviving children as any person could be, closed the last day of her life in about the sixty-first year of her age and the forty-fourth of her marriage, and was buried at the Villa of Altshausen, in a sepulchre under the chapel of St. Udalric which she had herself constructed.” And then follows a brief poem in which the merits and the love of this dear mother are affectionately told.

Hermann, on the best of testimony, was a person of just this amiable and beautiful spirit. He is called _hilarissimus_, as if to show his great cheerfulness. He was always a strict vegetarian in his diet. He hated injustice; scorned every sort of vice—and Heaven alone knows how much there then was of nameless wickedness!—and finally, he was thoroughly free from all envy and malice. It is a curious testimony to his breadth of mind that one of his biographers says of him (quoting the old adage), that he regarded nothing human as alien to his search.

He preserved this calmness and sweetness of temper to the farthest limit of his days. Not long before he died he said to his faithful friend, Berthold of Constance, “Do not, I say, do not ask me about this; but rather attend to what I will tell you, for in you I do not a little confide. I shall die doubtless in a very short time. I shall not live. I shall not get well.” He added that he was so “seized with an ineffable desire and delight toward that intransitory world and that eternal and immortal life,” that all things of this passing existence seemed empty and vain and dropped like motes (_flocci_) from him, in the breath of that heavenly air.

And then he proceeded to detail a vision in which he fancied himself reading and rereading the Hortensius of Cicero. His mind was clear; his hopes for religion and for education were high; but all was now over and he must depart. Therefore he quietly and pathetically ends by saying, “_Taedet quidem me vivere_”—indeed it is wearisome to me to live. And thus, on September 24th, 1054, he ceased from earth—in his forty-second year, and having carried the story of the world down to the end of his own career.

But his works follow him. I do most firmly believe him—and not Robert the Second—to have been the author of the _Veni Sancte Spiritus_.

The first person to attribute this hymn to the King of France is Durand, (_Rationale Divinorum Officiorum_, Lib. IV.) His book treats of ceremonial observances and is among the rarest of printed volumes. The splendid copy upon vellum in the Astor Library is not only beautiful in itself, but it is extremely valuable as the _third_ specimen of typography in existence. Only two works—one of them the Bible and another the Psalter of Mainz—had been previously printed from movable types. I have personally verified the reference and its English rendering is as follows:

“Notker, Abbot of St. Gall, in Germany, first composed sequences with notes of his own in the _Alleluia_. And Nicholaus the Pope [Nicholas II., 1059-1061] granted that they should be sung at masses. But Hermannus Contractus, a German, inventor of the astrolabe, composed these sequences: _Rex omnipotens_ and _Sancti Spiritus_ and _Ave Maria_ and the antiphons _Alma redemptoris mater_ and _Simon Barjona_. Peter, Bishop of Compostella, made the _Salve regina_. And the King of France, Robert by name, composed the sequence, _Veni Sancte Spiritus_ and the hymn _Chorus novae Hierusalem_.”

It is hard to crowd into a paragraph more errors than are in this. Notker was _not_ Abbot of St. Gall. Innocent III. was very severe upon Udalric of St. Gall, because such a spiritual and able man had lived and died unhonored among them; a simple monk whose labors and death received no special attention in their religious year.

Nor did Hermann write the _Sancti Spiritus adsit_; for this, on the best of testimony, was Notker’s. It was so sung at Rome under Innocent III.; and Ekkehard the Younger, in his history of Notker, pointedly claims it for him.

It is very doubtful whether Hermann invented the astrolabe for measuring the distances of stars. His two treatises are upon its use, and he is evidently very familiar with it. But it was first made serviceable in navigation by the Portuguese—if we are to believe Evelyn (in his _Navigation_)—and the study of astronomy was greatly cultivated by the Arabic schools in Spain and elsewhere about this period. J. A. Fabricius indeed mentions that the astrolabe was “commonly employed in the days of Ptolemy.”

The _Ave Maria_ is supposed by Koch to belong to the thirteenth century and some have ascribed it to Adam of St. Victor. It is, perhaps, by Heribert of Eichstettin (died 1042). Hermann wrote the _Ave praeclara maris stella_, which might have been mistaken for this other.

The _Salve regina_ is assigned by Durand to Peter of Compostella. Gerbert names several possible authors, but evidently follows the leadership of Durand. (_De Cantu, etc._, II., 27.) And yet Trithemius, with every really critical scholar, credits it to Hermann. It is exhaustively considered by Wegelin and definitely conceded to him. (_Thes. Rerum Suevicarum_, II., p. 120 _ff._)

Robert the Second cannot claim the _Chorus novae Hierusalem_. It is the production of Fulbert of Chartres (died 1029), and is included without question in every complete edition of his works.

Thus the absolute authority of Durand is much shaken. He was a lawyer in the thirteenth century, who studied at Bologna and taught at Modena; a legate of Pope Martin IV.; dean of the church at Chartres, and Bishop of Mende. The fact that he was dean of Chartres, and yet ascribes the _Chorus Novae_, not to Fulbert but to Hermannus, is suggestive, but not convincing.

So Durand was the first person to affix the name of Robert II. to the _Veni Sancte_. Trithemius comes next in order; the Abbot of Spanheim; historian and scholar; indefatigable in researches, but erratic and prejudiced; born 1462 and dying 1516. His true name is Johann von Trittenheim and we derive this, and other information about authors and their works, from his _Liber de Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis_—a biographical dictionary like those of Jerome, Gennadius, and Isidore, to whose works he really furnishes an Appendix. Egon (sometimes known as Ego) in his account of Reichenau’s distinguished men (_De Viris illustribus Augiae divitis_, quoted by Pez: _Thesaurus Anecdotorum_, I., 3; 68. Cf. Migne, 143) declares that Trithemius was “unjustly hostile to the monks of Reichenau” in asserting that “our Hermannus” was from St. Gall, when even Metzler conceded, on behalf of his own convent, that Hermann had changed his residence from St. Gall to Reichenau. Be this as it may, the positive statement of Trithemius, which gives the _Veni Sancte_ to Robert II. instead of to Hermann, has been generally accepted. Cardinal Bona (1677), Louis Archon (1704-11), and others agree with him.

But there is a break in the continuity of faith. Clichtove—an authority much esteemed—expresses no opinion about the author of the _Veni Sancte_ further than to say _quisquis is fuerit_—whoever he was.

Rambach, in his _Anthology_, comes now to the rescue. (_Anthologie_, I., 227.) He says it is “_ganz unstreitig von Robert;_” and all the German critics, with the single exception of Daniel, have followed this authority blindly. Whatever the Germans said has usually been enough for the English. Therefore the _Veni Sancte_ is in every collection attributed, without a shadow of doubt, to Robert the King.

There should have been less positiveness about this if the accurate Daniel had been noticed more carefully. He praises the language of Clichtove, who says that the author, “whoever he was,” must have been “inwardly filled with light,” and he italicizes the _quisquis is fuerit_. But as Robert, with only three others, appears to have escaped the wreck of the sequences in the sixteenth century, even Daniel allows the _Veni Sancte_ to him; and Archbishop Trench finds that “there exists no good reason why we should question” that Robert wrote it.

We may dismiss any conjectures about Innocent III. having been its author, although great efforts have been made to credit this hymn to his pen. Dom Remy Cellier and Migne seem the most strongly partisan, but their remarks and references are weak. (_Scriptores Ecclesiastici_, vol. xiii., p. 109, note. Also _Patrologia_, 141; 901.)

A sample of the general looseness of citation can be found in Kehrein (No. 125), who announces that Gerbert “holds Hermannus Contractus to be the author” of the _Veni Sancte_. Gerbert does nothing of the kind. He names Hermann _with others_. It is quite true, though, that he does _not_ name Robert.

Setting aside Innocent III. for cause—although Brander of St. Gall, in his _Index Sequentiarum_, grants this to him—the authorship of the hymn rests between the king and the monk. I say “for cause,” since Innocent was at the summit of temporal power, and his position was a very tempting one to posthumous flattery. He is credited with the _Ave mundi spes Mariae_. He did not write the _Stabat Mater_, nor did he compose the _Veni Sancte_. Let any one examine the _Ave mundi_ and he will renounce all hope that the man who prepared this could ever have written the others, or either of them. Besides, Wrangham is likely to be correct when he assigns this latter sequence to Adam of St. Victor. It is precisely in Adam’s style of metrical composition; it is not found before the fourteenth century, and its tone is modern. It can therefore be said that Innocent deserves no place among the Latin hymn-writers.

Now, Robert II. is much in the same condition as Innocent III. His is a shining name to which to affix popular hymns. He has been credited with the _Ave maris stella_—the parent of all hymns to the Virgin. The sequence _Sancti Spiritus adsit_ is not his, on the testimony already adduced; but in the year 1110 the “ancient customs of Cluny,” collected by St. Udalric (Hermann’s ancestor) gives us this “at Pentecost” (D’Achery: _Spicilegium_, I., 641), with the “response,” _Spiritus sanctus_. This would serve to show that such praise to the Holy Spirit was usual. With the _Chorus Novae_ we have already dealt. And the _Rex omnipotens_ belongs to Hermann though it is ascribed to Robert—another instance of inaccuracy, which casts a ray of light upon the present problem.

Those sequences of which Robert was the possible author are printed in Migne’s _Patrologia_ (141, 959 _ff._). Only one of them merits a word of notice. It is the _Te lucis auctor personent_. Daniel assigns this to the fourteenth or fifteenth century, but Mone and Koch to the fifth. These last are probably right. It is early found in the Anglo-Saxon Church and is among the old Vatican MSS. and the hymns collected by G. Cassander. It is scarcely possible that it comes down as late as the eleventh century.

Robert’s other sequences are six in number and of no importance. His personal history is pathetic enough. He was the son of Hugh Capet; born at Orleans in 970 and died at Melun, July 20th, 1031, having been sole king since 996, though he had been crowned in 988. His first wife was Susanne, an Italian princess; and we learn from his contemporary, Richer of Rheims, that one of his first public acts was to repudiate her on the plea that she was too old for him, and that he refused to restore her dowry. His next marriage was with his distant cousin Bertha—a cousin four times removed—the widow of the Count of Blois. This marriage was inconvenient to the Emperor Otho, as it would have brought the House of Capet into the line of succession to certain lordships in the old Kingdom of Burgundy. So Pope Gregory V., the kinsman of Otho, required Robert to give up Bertha, not because Susanne was still alive, but because the Church forbade the marriage of cousins in even the fourth degree. At first Robert refused, but when his kingdom was laid under an interdict, he showed as little manhood in standing by his second wife as he had shown humanity and justice to his first. Such a ban was too severe to be borne and the king yielded, though Baronius says he tried to take back his wife Bertha in spite of it all. His life and kingship belong to French history, and can be found there. His disposition was that of a monk and not of a monarch. He founded four monasteries and built seven churches. He supported three hundred paupers entirely and a thousand in part. His reign lasted—thanks to ecclesiastical influence—for thirty-four years. It was troubled and not especially pleasant; and for his third wife the king had married the handsome shrew Constance, the daughter of William Count of Arles. Pious and excellent man that he is reputed to have been, he had a natural son, Amauri, who was great-great-grandfather to Simon de Montfort. Truly, when all is said and done, Robert II. is hardly the author in whom we would like to believe with all our hearts when we sing—

“Holy Spirit, come and shine Sweetly in this heart of mine.”

_Per contra_, Hermann of Reichenau grows more interesting the more he is studied. He has been so unfortunate as to be confused with other persons in two or three cases. By Brander he is identified with Hartmann of St. Gall, and the sequence _Rex omnipotens_ is taken from him.[8] The pretty little sequence, _Veni Sancte Spiritus et reple_, which Königsfeld thinks to be his, is doubtless no earlier than the fourteenth century and by some anonymous composer who has merely imitated the great masters.

Beside the _Rex omnipotens_ he composed the _Ave praeclara maris stella_, where his name gains another misprint and becomes “Heinricus, monachus San Gallensis.” This poem was thought worthy of the authorship of Albertus Magnus (Albert von Regensburg), and to him accordingly Wackernagel and Koch credit it. Mone has vindicated the claim of Hermann which is set forth in Migne. (_Patrologia_, 143; 20 _ff._) So that we are again sure of a piece which has been meritorious enough to be coveted.

Then comes the antiphon _Simon Barjona_, which Du Meril calls _Simon Baronia_ and of which no trace remains. Two other sequences are, however, extant, and are beyond any question or debate. They are the _Salve regina_, which Daniel calls a “most celebrated antiphon,” and the _Alma redemptoris mater_, the refrain of which Chaucer used in that “Prioress’s Tale,” which Wordsworth has modernized.

In addition we must observe that the _Veni Sancte_ is attributed to Hermann simultaneously and by the same authority as that which credits him with the other sequences. Two pieces—_Vox haec melos pangat_ and _Gratus honos hierarchia_—are lost. But the _Salve regina_ was worth contending for; and Gerbert names Gregory II., Peter of Compostella, St. Bernard, and “Adhemar, Episcopus Podiensis” (Bishop of Puy and his own candidate) together with Hermannus Contractus. Nevertheless, Trithemius, Gerbert, and, indeed, everybody are heard to declare that Hermann was “the marvel of the age,” the best man of his time in music and the author of a work on metrical rules. He is known as Doctor Egregius, and it is beyond any peradventure that he was _capable_ of writing the _Veni Sancte_.

The only arguments that are employed to prove that Robert was the author are very weak. The _first_ is that there was no sufficient competitor. But surely Hermannus Contractus is now a competitor of real merit and importance. Then, too, the king was a kind of religious pet, and such persons receive more than their due. But the _second_ argument is weaker still. It amounts in brief to the harmony displayed in the poem between the king’s life and his lovely verses. It strikes one, however, that an invalid like Hermann might have had fully as deep a religious experience as any such king. Moreover—and this is a vital fact—the _Veni Sancte_ is found in the _German_ hymnaries almost exclusively. This point was insisted upon in the controversy about the _Veni, Creator_; and Charles the Great in this respect had the advantage over Gregory the Great, until the claim of Rabanus Maurus, another German, was thoroughly examined. But among all the sources carefully edited by Kehrein from Daniel, Mone, and elsewhere, the French collections do not present themselves. On the contrary, in this elaborate list we find St. Gall, Kreuzlingen, Freiburg, Karlsruhe, Mainz, Ebersberg, Rome (1481), Venice (1497), with later examples printed at Cologne, Prague, Eichstettin, Lubeck, and Basel. Brander also found the hymn in the earliest codices of the three great neighboring cloisters of St. Gall, Einsiedeln, and Reichenau. Meanwhile the only notice of it in France comes from the Paris Breviary, which is of recent date.

There is but one consideration further. I trust that I have established the perfect possibility that Hermannus Contractus might have been the author equally as well as Robert. The men lived in the same period to which, on the testimony of the best critics, the hymn is considered to belong. They were alike in possibilities of Christian experience and of musical and poetical temperament. But here they begin to diverge; and the preference is decidedly in favor of Hermann, whose hymn is found in the three oldest codices of his own neighborhood; of St. Gall, where he studied; of Einsiedeln, where it is possible that he was a resident; and of Reichenau, where he certainly lived from the age of thirty until his death. He could scarcely have gone about very much in his helpless and crippled condition; and these three conventual establishments are within a moderate distance of each other. From his seventh year he was to be discovered always somewhere in that vicinity, and the historians of St. Gall and of Reichenau positively claim the _Veni Sancte_ as his.

It is only left for us to lay the _Salve regina_ side by side with the _Veni Sancte_. A man who wrote upon metre ought to possess some excellence in the art of which he wrote, and these pieces placed together display a graceful and ingenious versification which is not at all usual in that century. It is not claimed that either Robert or Hermann wrote other hymns in the identical stanza form of the _Veni Sancte_. Therefore nothing is available for direct comparison. But as to the spirit of each there can be no debate. Robert never composed anything else like the _Veni Sancte_, and it certainly seems as if Hermann did compose a sequence which bears a passing resemblance; and which I have endeavored to translate with its occasional rhymes and assonances:

Salve regina, mater misericordiae Vita, dulcedo et spes nostra, salve. Ad te clamamus exules filii Hevae. Ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle. Eia ergo advocata nostra, illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte Et Jesum benedictum fructum ventris tui nobis post hoc exilium ostende, O clemens, O pia, O dulcis virgo Maria.

Hail O queen, mother of pitifulness! Life and delight and our confidence, hail! To thee we exiles, children of Eve, are crying. To thee we aspire, groaning and moaning in this the vale of our sorrow. Lo, thou therefore, our advocate, turn upon us those pitiful eyes of thine, And after this exile show us Jesus, the blessed fruit of thy womb, O merciful, O pious, O sweet Virgin Maria.

This is another of his sequences, the _Rex regum Dei agne_, found by Brander among the antiquities of St. Gall:

King of kings, Lamb of God, mighty Lion of Judah,

The death of sin by the merit of the cross and the life of justice; giving the fruit of the tree of life for the taste of wisdom; the medicine of grace for the loss of glory,

Since thy blood restrained the might of the sword of flame, opening the garden of paradise, the seed of obedience, the medicine of grace.

This day is illustrious to the Lord; peace is on the earth, lightning to the shades below and light to the saints above; the day of the double baptism of law and gospel.

Christ is the passover to man; while the old passes the new arises; rejoice my heart, freed from ferment, full of the bread unleavened.

Since the enemy are overwhelmed, with stained door-posts eat the sacrifice on the paschal night, at home, with the bitter herb of the field,

Let your loins be girt and your shoes bound on, have the staff in the hand, and eat the head with the legs and the purtenance thereof.

Wash us this day, O Christ, cleansing us with hyssop; and make us worthy of this mystery, drying the sea, boring the jaw of Leviathan with a mighty hook.

Rejoice us with the cup and fill us; arouse us, drinking from the brook in the way, thou our propitiation, thou priest and sacrifice, thou wine-press and stone of offence and grape!

O fragrant flower of the virgin rod, O light full of sevenfold dew, Fairer in beauty than the juice of the grape, The blush of the rose, the candor of the lily.

How camest thou with such pity to bend to the help of this little world; that thou mightest share our sorrows and be our Redeemer from the birthmark of sin, bearing the curse of sin?

O Lord, Kinsman of thy servants,

The hope of the first and of the last resurrection,

Confirm thy covenant to the seed of Abraham, and us, O Leader immortal, reviving with thyself, who are dead with thee to our old father Adam, strengthen, joining us to thy mightier members.

Give us the paschal feast of the life eternal, thou Paschal Lamb!

The question before us is not one of theology but of literature. Did the man who wrote those verses write these also?

Veni, Sancte Spiritus, Et emitte coelitus Lucis tuae radium. Veni, pater pauperum, Veni, dator munerum, Veni, lumen cordium;

Consolator optime, Dulcis hospes animae, Dulce refrigerium: In labore requies, In aestu temperies, In fletu solatium.

O lux beatissima, Reple cordis intima Tuorum fidelium! Sine tuo numine Nihil est in homine, Nihil est innoxium.

Lava quod est sordidum, Riga quod est aridum, Sana quod est saucium; Flecte quod est rigidum, Fove quod est frigidum, Rege quod est devium!

Da tuis fidelibus In te confidentibus Sacrum septenarium; Da virtutis meritum, Da salutis exitum, Da perenne gaudium!

Come Holy Spirit, And send forth the heavenly Ray of thy light. Come, Father of the poor; Come, giver of gifts; Come, light of hearts.

Thou best consoler, Sweet guest of the soul, Sweet coolness; In labor, rest; In heat, refreshment; In tears, solace.

O blessedest light, Fill the inmost parts Of the heart of thy faithful! Without thy divinity Nothing is in man, Nothing is harmless.

Wash what is base; Bedew what is dry; Heal what is hurt; Bend what is harsh; Warm what is chilled; Rule what is astray.

Give to thy faithful, In thee confiding, Thy sevenfold gift. Give the reward of virtue; Give the death of safety; Give eternal joy.

This very singular construction of clauses is apparent to the eye at once. Let it be remembered that Robert uses it nowhere else, and that the most of Hermann’s writings are gone. This chance for the “higher criticism” is therefore taken from us. If it could be shown, however, that this was a method employed by the monk of Reichenau in his prose works, the case might be regarded as absolutely proven, in so far as it demonstrates that the bulk of the presumptive evidence is in his favor.

But here we are at fault. We can only add probability to probability and leave all absolute demonstration alone. Pez has preserved not merely Egon’s account of Hermann’s life, but he has edited Hermann’s treatises on the astrolabe (_Thes. Anecdot. Tom._, III., pt. 2, p. 94) from a MS. codex in the monastery of St. Peter at Salzburg. His musical treatise is reprinted by Gerbert. (_Scriptores Eccl. de Musica_, vol. ii., p. 124.) The didactic poem reciting the combat of the Sheep and the Flax—always recognized as the production of Hermann—is in Migne’s _Patrologia_ and also in Du Meril’s _Poesies Populaires_. Unfortunately none of these writings are of a sort to help us. We cannot by their assistance make any headway in critical analysis.

It is noticeable that J. A. Fabricius in his great work on the Middle Age and later Latin writers, allows Hermann to be the author of the _Veni Sancte_, following the testimony of Egon and Metzler. And it is more than noticeable that Du Meril—himself a Frenchman—should also apparently concede the hymn to this German.[9]

I have made an exhaustive search for everything bearing upon the life and writings of Hermannus Contractus. I have pursued him and Robert through the _Quellen_ of German history; through the writings and compilations of Canisius and Despont and Urstitius and Martene and Mabillon and D’Achery and Pertz and the _Monumenta Germaniae Historica_ of the “Society for Opening the Sources of German History.” In these and in the encyclopaedias of La Rousse and Ersch-Gruber and the great _Patrologia_ of Migne, I have investigated every by-path and blind alley. It is abundantly clear that he was the most distinguished man of his region, and, likely, of his period. Usserman and Possevin have devoted attention to him. (_Prodromus Germ. Sacr. Tom._ I., p. 145 _sqq._, _De Apparatu_.) His didactic poem on the “Eight Principal Vices” is in Haupt’s _Zeitschrift_, vol. xiii. His lives of Conrad and of Henry III. have not been preserved. That he was a very voluminous writer is also evident. After giving the names of some of his sequences Metzler adds that there were _cetera mille alia_—a thousand more. So also speaks Trithemius; and indeed this testimony is universal.

A single line of inquiry has been left to the American student. We have lists of the MSS. in the various libraries of Europe. If it were only possible to examine these with reference to the _Veni Sancte_ the matter could be definitely settled. The Rheinau (Reichenau) library is rich in hymnaries. Haenel’s “No. 53”—whose library number is 91—is, for instance, a _Liber hymnorum_ of the tenth to the twelfth centuries. There are several others—breviaries and collections of hymns—dating to the twelfth century; and one book, “No. 124” (Lib. No. 75), which is marked _Sequentiae propriae_, etc., and which is likely to have the _Veni Sancte_. In the eleventh century at St. Gall they have “No. 381” (St. Gall No. 486) which is a _codex insignis_—a very beautiful MS.—containing the “earliest collection of hymns and poems of writers dwelling at St. Gall.” In this same century appears the Anselm, which is noted as a _codex nobiliter scriptus ab Herimanno, qui se hoc libri decus ex voto perfecisse testatur_ (_pag._ 6), a manuscript elegantly written by Hermann [“Herimann” is his own spelling of his name in the _Chronicon_, by the way], who says on page 6 that he has accomplished this excellent volume in pursuance of a vow. Among these St. Gall MSS. can be found the _Salve regina_, bearing the date 1437. If it were made a point of investigation it might be discovered that in both Reichenau and St. Gall the _Veni, Sancte Spiritus_ is in codices which utterly remove it from the perplexity of its authorship, and positively join it to the name of Hermann.

One can sum up the whole discussion in a few sentences. Robert wrote no other valuable hymns; Hermann did write several. Robert was not specially skilled in metrical science; Hermann was the author of a treatise on the subject. Robert was a poet and a musician; Hermann was his superior in both departments. Robert had trouble and sorrow and Christian experience; Hermann must certainly have had as much as he, and more. Robert has had poems attributed to him which have failed of proof, and none of his own verses seem ever to have been misappropriated or missing; Hermann has had more taken from him than given to him.

In the matter of authority we are to note:

1. That the historians of St. Gall and of Reichenau claim for Hermann the _Veni Sancte_.

2. That the hymn is found in the earliest codices of both places; and of Einsiedeln, which is in the neighborhood.

3. That Clichtove is in doubt and Daniel is in doubt; that J. A. Fabricius and Du Meril incline toward Egon’s statement; that Trithemius is not entirely unprejudiced; and that Migne, gathering nearly everything (as I have verified from the originals), leaves a strong presumption in Hermann’s favor.

I may appear to make a good deal too much of this matter of mediaeval jealousy. But no student of those times needs to be told that the jealousy between the various cloisters was excessive. There is a letter of the Reichenau monk Gunzo, written in 960. (_Martene_, I., 296.) It is addressed to the “holy congregation at Reichenau” and describes his journey to St. Gall. The distance was great enough to exhaust the learned brother; he was lifted off of his beast and carried in by hospitable hands. Notwithstanding which he vents his indignation upon their methods and their lack of scholarship. They are self indulgent; they are a fraud on the face of the earth. _Nihil inde sed fraudis molamina parabantur_—they do nothing there except contrive a great mass of deception, says the angry Gunzo. They attacked him on his grammar; and he attacked them in turn on their loquacity. The epistle is grimly humorous at this distance of time; but the bitterness was altogether too genuine to be pleasant.

Far away from the most of these noises—separated by the waters of the lake from the trampling pilgrim-bands who went to and fro between the East and West—Hermann of Reichenau passed his quiet hours. His convent was rich. Its abbot was said to be able to journey to Rome and not sleep anywhere on the way except upon his own soil. It had been founded in 724 under the auspices of Charles Martel. Such was the admirable situation of this religious house—sufficient to itself in the midst of all changes.

They buried Hermann in his ancestral tomb at Altshausen. In 1631 “three bones” of him were exhumed and carried “by force” to the monastery of Ochsenhausen, but who took them and who resisted the taking of them, we are not told. These are the meagre particulars of a life gentle, patient, and unassuming—the life of a scholar and of a poet—who mastered great obstacles by the genius of faith.

Three hundred years before Christ there came into Ceylon the Buddhist missionary Mahinda. The king received him kindly and built for him and his monks a convent on the hill Mihintale, to the east of the royal city. On the western face of this hill Mahinda had his own retreat cut out from the living rock. Still can be seen—though after two thousand years—this study in which the great teacher of Ceylon “sat and thought and worked through the long years of his peaceful and useful life.” Under the cool shadow of his rock, with his stone couch on which to repose, and with the busy plain, so far removed from him, sending its faint noises up from below, there wrought the sage. And there he died at last and was buried in the neighboring Dagāba. Modern times have nearly forgotten him, but no story of that valley or that island is complete without his name.

And so, in this later manner, lived and died Hermann Count of Vöhringen, who laid down earthly honors to take up the pursuit of heavenly glory; who overcame peevishness of mind and weakness of body by faith and hope and love; who looked out upon his times from this serene distance, and who went to his last sleep beneath the shadow of the rock.

Note.—I am not ignorant that Jourdain (_Recherches critiques sur l’Age et l’Origine des Traductions latines d’Aristote_. Paris, 1819 and 1843) has attacked the ascription of translations of Aristotle from the Arabic to our Hermann, denying that the cripple of Reichenau possessed any knowledge of that tongue. Briefly stated his arguments are these: 1. That Trithemius followed Jacobus of Bergamo in ascribing to H. Contractus a knowledge of Arabic. 2. That Metzler (whom he calls _Mezler_) has added the statement about the Poetics and Rhetoric. 3. That every one else has followed these two authorities. 4. That “H. Alemannus” wrote in _Toledo_, to which the other Hermann could not have journeyed. 5. That the translations were by this “H. Alemannus” (Hermann the German) who flourished in the first half of the thirteenth century.

It is enough of a reply to say: 1. That the concluding words of a manuscript relate, not to its author, but to its transcriber. The MS. mentioned by Jourdain and the other MS. in the Bibliotheque Royale of the fifteenth century (viz., _Doctrina Matumeti, quae apud Saracenos magnae auctoritatis est, ab Hermanno latine translata._ Cod. MS., No. 6225) are both later than their original date. This second MS. may be by Hermann de Schildis, a monk of the thirteenth century. 2. Every one has not “followed” the authority of Metzler and Trithemius. The “Anonymus Mellicensis” (twelfth century) enumerates treatises by Hermannus Contractus upon Computation, Astronomy, Physiognomy and Poetry, which at least imply that Aristotle had largely affected his studies. 3. It is notable also to find H. _Alemannus_ quoting Cicero in his two introductions, when we know H. _Contractus_ to have been very fond of Cicero. 4. H. Alemannus says that he has met great “impediments” and “difficulties” in accomplishing this translation, and that the difference between Latin and Arabic poetry forbade a poetical rendering. Which would coincide with H. Contractus’s personal obstacles and with his natural desire as a poet to attempt a rendering in verse. 5. H. Alemannus refers to “Johannes Burgensis” (John of Burgau, in Suabia) as a bishop and the king’s chancellor and his personal friend and the promoter of this work. I cannot find “John of Burgau;” but H. Contractus was a Suabian, and Suabia is very near to Reichenau. H. Contractus was also closely associated with Conrad and Henry III., whose lives he wrote.

It is a curious question this. It is only another proof of the neglect into which a great man has fallen. For Hermann is called “nostri _miraculum_ seculi” by the next generation who came after him. And there is no _absolute_ proof that, “without lexicon or grammar” (for so Jourdain puts it), he could not have mastered Arabic. Observing the topics of his other writings cognate to those of Aristotle, I am therefore not in the least inclined to yield to even M. Charles Jourdain.