CHAPTER II.

THE STUDY OF THE LATIN HYMNS.

The genealogy of the song of praise in the mediaeval and modern Christian Church is both simple and beautiful. It begins far back, as we have seen, in the chants and psalms of the Hebrew. Then it changes to the Syriac and the Greek. Then it emerges into the Latin. Next it is caught up in the old High-German poetry, and at length it becomes the modern English hymn. The line of direct descent is like that of some high and puissant family whose inheritance is transferred now to one branch and now to another, but whose noble lineage is never lost.

When the reader or the worshipper is attracted to-day by some ancient hymn-writer’s name, he naturally asks for information. He is aware that hymnology is called a branch of study, like any other scholastic pursuit. He is also aware that the more usual English and German hymns have their historians, and, to a limited degree, that they have been analyzed, classified, compared, and their text settled. Even their impelling causes and surroundings are known, as in the case of the touching lyrics of George Neumark and Paul Gerhardt, or the pathetic strains of Cowper, or the stirring notes of Charles Wesley.

But occasionally a bird of strange plumage flies across this peaceful sky or perches and sings in these religious groves. The name of some Greek father—an Anatolius or a John of Damascus—appears as the original author. The hymn-horizon widens out to an earlier age. When one sings the _Te Deum Laudamus_, he discovers that it has its antecedent in the Greek liturgy. And when he employs that fine version of Bishop Patrick,

“O God, we praise Thee and confess,”

he is put upon a track of inquiry by which he discerns an even earlier rendering in the oldest prayer-books, beginning—

“We praise Thee, God, we knowledge Thee The only Lord to be.”

These little hints and stray gleams of outlook through the mists of uninformation are intensely alluring. And when by some happy chance it is learned that this old Latin sequence is traditionally ascribed to Ambrose, Bishop of Milan; when it is accredited to the spontaneous utterance of Augustine and his great preceptor at the time of Augustine’s baptism; when it is noted as a derivative from that Greek psalmody whence the holy Ambrose obtained so many of his hymns; and when it opens thus a door into the heaven of the earlier worship of the Church, then indeed the reader is proportionately stimulated to further question.

For the most part it will be found that the Latin language contains the best of the Greek, and the inspiration of the majority of the first German hymns. In the dead ark of the Middle Ages was kept this rod that budded and this golden pot with its sacred heavenly food. It is amazing that this treasure has been so well preserved, but it is none the less certain that we now have it safely, never to be lost again.

There are no Latin hymns—let us here say—earlier than Hilary of Poitiers (died 366). His _Hymnarium_ has perished, and all but one of the compositions attributed to himself are doubtful. The “evening-song” which he sent to his daughter Abra, while he was in exile among the followers of the Eastern Church, forms the connecting link between Greek and Latin hymnody. The true _hymn_—a different thing from the rhythmic but unmetrical _sequence_—here takes its rise. In this small, pure fountain-head reappear the percolating praises of the two previous centuries. The short lines drop with a gentle tinkling melody upon the ear. As yet there is no rhyme, although there is an occasional lightening of the lyric by some such verbal art.

But with Ambrose the full stream begins to sweep along. There can be no doubt that many ungathered and traditional stanzas were in his time discoverable in the Church—much as it can be observed that phrases in prayer or in exhortation are the inheritance of our own generation from days of struggle and of trial among our Christian ancestors. And what better could a beleaguered bishop do, when he was shut up in a church “for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ,” than to collate these old hymns? Twelve possibly—eight, or less, with moderate certainty—can be regarded as of his own composition. The rest of the ninety or a hundred are commonly received as “Ambrosian,” since they share his spirit and partake in some degree of his method. The rules of the Venerable Bede are not infallible, and modern criticism frequently rejects what the early collectors are disposed to assign to this single illustrious source.

Augustine wrote no actual hymns, but he was the cause of hymns in others—as, notably, in the case of Cardinal Peter Damiani. The Ambrosian music and the Augustinian theology served for inspiration to many later men. Yet the assignment of these Latin hymns to their proper authors is, at the best, a most precarious undertaking. A few, quoted or mentioned by competent witnesses—as when Augustine quotes Ambrose—seem duly authentic. This is, however, a rare occurrence. Generally we proceed upon the mere _dictum_ of the first compilers—especially of Thomasius, George Fabricius, and Clichtove.

These early compilations are sufficiently scarce. Professor Dr. H. Ad. Daniel gives a list of some which, except for the books of “the venerable Thilo” in the Yale Library, are beyond the reach of American students. Dating from 1492 and running into the first decade of the sixteenth century there were many “Expositions” of hymns, of which the work of Clichtove (Basle, 1517) remains to us in the greatest number of editions. Up to the middle of the present century this book was practically indispensable to any correct knowledge of the original texts. Since that time it, as well as every similar work, has received attention, and its contents have been often reproduced.

Other and later laborers are such as Cardinal Thomasius (Rome, 1741), who follows upon the traces of George Cassander, the Liberal Catholic (Paris, 1616). We are possibly more indebted to Cassander than to Thomasius for the correct designation of a good deal of the authorship. Both of these editors collate the text with other versions, and thus prepare the way for later and more accurate work. Both depend to a notable degree upon the book of George Fabricius (Basle, 1564), which is quite rare; although Thomasius’ works are said by Daniel to be sufficiently uncommon in Germany, as they certainly are in America. The recent republication of the Mozarabic Breviary in J. P. Migne’s _Patrologia_ brings this volume, however, within easy reach.

Thus we are naturally led to speak of the sources of the hymns themselves—sources from which these editors have secured them. As a part of religious worship they were incorporated into the various breviaries, of which hundreds must have been in use before the unification begun by the Church of Rome in the sixteenth century. Besides these church books, there were collections of hymns alone made by mediaeval schools, whose manuscripts still exist in European libraries.

The only method by which to ascertain the number and extent of these treasures was to gather and classify them. And strangely enough this labor has been performed by Protestants rather than by Catholics. Cassander’s book was forbidden at Rome, as he was what now would be called an Old Catholic; Luther, George Fabricius, and Hermann Bonn were in no better odor of sanctity; and for our own times the standard work is that of Herman Adelbert Daniel, who was a Lutheran professor at Halle, while close behind him come several others of the same religious belief.

The necessary and highly difficult task of getting the materials together has been exhaustively performed. Professor Daniel’s investigations extended to the original copies in monasteries and abbeys almost without number. But F. J. Mone enlarged even upon this. Daniel’s _Thesaurus_ in five volumes was completed in 1856—having been several years in course of publication—and it stands as yet unrivalled. Mone’s _Lateinische Hymnen des Mittelalters_ appeared in 1853-55, and was therefore available for the conclusion of Daniel’s great work. Its value consists in the fact that it is derived exclusively from manuscripts and from material hitherto untouched. The Germans, indeed, have made Latin hymnology a special branch of study, considering that it is profitable to them for its value religiously and historically. From old Flacius Illyricus’ appendix to the _Catalogus Testium Veritatis_ has been recovered the original of Bernard of Cluny’s “Jerusalem the Golden”—a poem which would never have been known by us if this same Matthias Flacius had not preserved it as a testimony against the corrupt state of the Church.

We must then add the German names of Schlosser, and Simrock, and Fortlage, and Stadelmann, and Jacob Grimm, and Königsfeld, and Bässler, and Kayser, and Kehrein, and Morel. Wackernagel and Koch, the great historians of German hymnology, have also done admirable service in prefixing the Latin hymns to the earlier part of their collections and histories of German praise. There is a host of lesser names, and there have been some separate discoveries worthy of note. Thus the English ritualists, under the lead of Newman and Neale, unearthed some capital lyrics. The _Hymni Ecclesiae_ of Cardinal J. H. Newman, being half derived from the Paris Breviary, contain hymns which are scarcely to be found elsewhere—many of them, as our Index will show, being accessible only in those pages. The _Sequentiae Medii Aevii_ of Dr. John Mason Neale also bring to us texts which are extremely scarce. Archbishop Trench, in his collection of eighty hymns, has avoided anything like Romanism even to the occasional expurgation of a phrase; but he has given us a few hymns which are difficult to procure. Königsfeld’s selection of one hundred is admirable; and Bässler’s and Simrock’s little books have made a very good choice. More recently still Professor F. A. March, of Lafayette College, has prepared a selection of one hundred and fifty of these hymns for the use of institutions of learning; and this, for every purpose, is the finest and most satisfactory series of texts at our command. The ordinary student can learn much from this before he needs to attempt the larger and more expensive works.

In making an exhaustive index of all the originals before us, these collections soon dwindle into a very diminutive form. There are about three thousand five hundred hymns in the various books. And they are of all sorts—good, bad, and indifferent. The good are the pure and true utterance of pious spirits—such lyrics as the _Veni, Redemptor_, and the _Veni, Sancte Spiritus_, and the _Vexilla Regis_. The positively bad are those which are either poor in execution—a common fault—or decidedly defective in religious tone. Many so-called “hymns” are nothing but plagiaries or parodies upon older compositions. Some are debased into mere patchwork. There are a few which are macaronic, and a great many in which poverty of phrase is helped out by wholesale pilfering. Moreover, it is easy to find those which are highly objectionable in point of taste and theology, to say nothing of prosody or Protestantism. And if Protestants are principally energetic in restoring and editing these hymns, to the frank and generous extent of overlooking what is unpleasant in them, it ought to follow that they should not be blamed for preferring only those lyrics in which the broad and Christian fervor of devout souls can be observed.

Of those hymns which are upon the border line, the pathetic _Stabat Mater_ may stand as an example. It would be bigotry to reject it from the list—as one compiler has done—while it would certainly not be fair to Protestants to utilize it, in any close translation, for the worship of the Church universal.

Perhaps there are not less than from four to five hundred of these hymns, then, to which no cause of blame can attach—which are as dear to the Church of the Roman Catholics as to that of the Catholic Protestants. On such common ground the heartiest sympathy and co-operation can develop the riches which yet remain. Already it is Caswall, the priest, and Newman, the cardinal, and Neale, the ritualist, who have given to our daily praise the happiest versions. It is Ozanam who has discovered several unknown hymns; and Gautier and Digby S. Wrangham who have brought out Adam of St. Victor; and the ninety-seven pieces of Abaelard are reprinted from Cousin’s text in Migne’s _Patrologia_. The study of these sacred verses has been comparatively limited in range and nationality, but it has had the incomparable advantage of being thorough.

Thus we are to-day possessed of the text of every really fine sacred Latin lyric. Somewhere or other it has bloomed and has been gathered by some acute hymnologist. The text, too, is tolerably clarified. Translations into our own tongue have been made by such men as Caswall and Newman and Neale (who have rendered all the hymns of the Roman Breviary), and by Mant, Chandler, Pearson, Kynaston, and many others. In America the Rev. Dr. Washburn, Dr. Coles, and Chancellor Benedict have been as prolific as any. Scattered renderings have obtained place in various hymnals. And we are now prepared at last for the general and popular interest which should be taken in this vast treasure of the Latin tongue.

Nothing is more surprising than the utter misinformation which prevails. A few scholars, like Dr. Schaff and Dr. William R. Williams, have endeavored to illuminate our American darkness. But, speaking only now of the Latin hymns, the story of their authors remains obscure and the romantic history of their origin remains for the most part untouched.

Yet Prudentius, the Spaniard, was a classic survival in Spain. And Damasus, the pope, was associated with certain dramatic scenes. And Venantius Fortunatus, troubadour and bishop, furnishes us with a most striking portrait of the times in his attachment to the abbess-queen, Radegunda. The list presumably includes Elpis, the wife of Boethius, the “last of the Romans;” and Coelius Sedulius, the Briton; and Gregory the Great and the great archbishop, Rabanus Maurus, and perhaps Robert II. of France. It calls into fresh life the histories of the Venerable Bede and of Alcuin; of the two Bernards, the one of Clairvaux and the other of Cluny; of Peter the Venerable and of Abaelard and Heloise; of Adam of St. Victor, and Thomas of Celano; of Bonaventura and Aquinas and à Kempis and Xavier. It shows us that mad Solomon, poor Jacoponus; and it leaves us with verses from John Huss, the martyr, to be read by the light of the Reformation’s dawn.

Thus largely does the subject of the Latin hymns traverse the ages. From the fourth to the sixteenth centuries of the Christian era it is the one stream which was fed from Alpine or from Pyrenean snows—a “river of God that is full of water,” which expands into the stately movement of the Notkerian and Gottschalkian sequence, or gently murmurs its song of trust with the missionary Xavier as he writes the exquisite melody of that hymn, _O Deus, ego amo te!_ To understand and to love these lyrics is to be better fitted for this nineteenth century of praise. Not the persecutors and the injurious, not the cruel and the cold-hearted will then remain to us; but the _Dies Irae_ will utter its trumpet-voice above the dead phrases of a formal service, and the _Salve caput cruentatum_ will call us afresh to the foot of the cross.