CHAPTER III.

HILARY OF POITIERS AND THE EARLIEST LATIN HYMNS.

When Master Peter Abaelard was preparing his own hymns for use in the Abbey of the Paraclete, he prefaced them with a brief treatise. There were ninety-three of them, arranged for all the services of Heloise and her nuns, and he answers the request of his abbess-wife by sending them, somewhere in the neighborhood of the year 1135. “At the instance of thy requests, my sister Heloise,” he writes, “formerly dear in the world and now most dear in Christ, I have composed what are called in Greek, ‘hymns,’ and in Hebrew, ‘tillim.’” For it is plain that she has a vivid recollection of his “wild, unhallowed rhymes, writ in his unbaptized times,” and she would now have him tune his lyre, as Robert Herrick did, to a loftier strain.

Hence he made for these gentle sisters a hymn-book of their own, and so became the Watts or Wesley of their matins and vespers. With characteristic self-confidence he only included what he had himself prepared; but this introduction casts a great deal of light upon the knowledge and piety of the time respecting hymns.

“I remember,” continues Abaelard, “that you asked me for an explanation. ‘We know,’ you said, ‘that the Latin, and especially the French Church, have in psalms, and also in hymns, followed more a custom than an authority.’” This was quite true; and the remark is eminently characteristic of Heloise, whose scholarship was admirable, and whose disposition was of a sort to crave for and cling to a stronger nature. He then quotes for her the decree of the fourth Council of Toledo (A.D. 633), by which Hilary of Poitiers and Ambrose of Milan are established as the great fathers of Christian song in the Western Church, and by which the praise of God in hymns is sanctioned and commended.

To much the same effect are the words of Augustine of Hippo, centuries earlier. His beloved mother, Monica, had died, and nothing appeared to comfort him so much as one of these same holy songs. “Then I slept, and woke up again and found my grief not a little softened; and as I was alone in my bed, I remembered those true verses of thy Ambrose. For thou art the

“‘Maker of all, the Lord And Ruler of the height, Who, robing day in light, hast poured Soft slumbers o’er the night, That to our limbs the power Of toil may be renewed, And hearts be raised that sink and cower, And sorrows be subdued.’”

This is the _Deus creator omnium_ of the great bishop of Milan; and this, in consequence of Augustine’s quotation, is among the best authenticated and earliest hymns of the Latin Church.

But there were more ancient hymns than the Ambrosian or Augustinian. They bear the name of Hilary, and with them Latin hymnology really begins. It is true that in the previous century—the third—Cyprian of Carthage had written religious poetry, but he composed nothing which could be sung. There is, indeed, nothing previous to Hilary.

And now let us go back to the creation of this first and noblest light. For Hilary had been a heathen—a heathen of the heathen—in Roman Gaul. He was born in Poitiers (Pictavium) about the beginning of the fourth century. His father’s name was Francarius, whose tomb—although he must at first have lived as an idolater—is said by Bouchet to have been “for upward of fifteen hundred years” in the parish church of Clissonium (Clisson, near Nantes). We are indebted to Jerome for the main facts of Hilary’s life, and to Fortunatus for a large share in the filling up of the outlines. Hilary was so celebrated a man that contemporary references are more abundant and helpful in his career even than in that of Shakespeare. In those days he was at the summit of renown, a notable exception to the case of the prophet, “not being without honor save in his own country.” “For who,” says Augustine, “does not know Hilary the Gallic bishop?” And Jerome wrote to St. Eustacia that Hilary and Cyprian were the “two great cedars of the age.”

He was doubtless well educated. His Latin was good and copious, without possessing very great polish. His Greek was sufficient to fit him to translate the creeds of the Eastern Church, and to become familiar with their hymns. We have his own testimony that he lived in comfort, if not in luxury; and the inference is plain that his family were of consequence in the place. It was in his leisure that he took up Moses and the prophets; and there, in that famous old town of his birth, the mists of his idolatry thinned away. We do not know that any external pressure was brought to bear upon his mind, or that he was led by anything except a natural curiosity into this new learning.

Poitiers itself is a noble situation for such an intellect. It is perched on a promontory, and surrounded on all sides by gorges and narrow valleys. The isthmus, which joins it back to the ridge, was once walled and ditched across. The Pictavi, and afterward the Romans, understood the military advantages of the spot. It has always been the abode of scholars and of warriors. Here Francis Bacon once studied. Here Clovis, founder of the Merovingian dynasty, beat Alaric II., in 507, in fair battle. Here Radegunda the Holy lies buried. Here Fortunatus, the poet-bishop, dwelled. Here Charles Martel hammered the Saracens in 732. Here, in the Cathedral of St. Pierre, rest the ashes of Richard Coeur de Lion. Here, beneath these walls, fought Edward the Black Prince against King John of France, in 1356, when the English had the best of the day. For they had learned—as Bishop Hugh Latimer says that he himself was taught—how to draw the cloth-yard shaft to a head, and let it fly with a deadly aim. “In my tyme,” said Latimer, “my poore father was as diligent to teach me to shote as to learne anye other thynge, and so I thynke other menne dyd theyr children. Hee taughte me how to drawe, how to laye my bodye in my bowe, and not to drawe with strength of armes as other nacions do, but with strength of the bodye. I had my bowes boughte me accordyng to my age and strength; as I encreased in them, so my bowes were made bigger and bigger; for men shall never shoot well excepte they be broughte up in it.” (Sixth sermon before Edward VI.) It was such archery as this that laid the flower of France in the dust, and put John, their king, into prison.

Poitiers is thus a noble and appropriate birthplace for one who before the time of Charles the Hammerer was called the “Hammer of the Arians” (_Malleus Arianorum_), and who combined fighting with praying all through his life. Places and circumstances and the untamable blood of heroes have more to do with the making of men than we suppose; and Hilary was so distinctly a son of Caesar’s Gaul that he became its large, true, and free expression, appropriate to its landscape and harmonized to its atmosphere.

And as to his emergence from heathenism, there can be nothing more satisfactory to us than his own story. He has recorded that when he found, in Exodus, how God was called “I am that I am,” and when he read in Isaiah (40:12) of a deity who “held the wind in His fists,” and again (66:1) of Him who said, “Heaven is My throne and earth is My footstool,” then this _Deus immensus_ surpassed all his heathen conceptions of grandeur and power. And when he read (in Ps. 138:7) how this great God loved and cared for His children, so that one could say, “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, Thou wilt revive me; Thou shalt stretch forth Thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and Thy right hand shall save me”—then he was drawn toward this mighty being by a sentiment of confidence and trust. He also—turning the pages of the Wisdom of Solomon (13:5) in the Apocrypha—found it written that “by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionately the Maker of them is seen.” And then, encountering the Gospel of John, its opening sentences clarified his mind. All became plain. He accepted with calmness, firmness, and dignity the great doctrines of the Christian faith. He was imbued with John’s conception of that Word, “which was in the beginning” and “which was God.” From that moment he had a theology which was as pure as crystal and as indestructible as adamant. There is no muddiness about his ideas from this time onward, though Arians buzz and sting, and calamities rain upon him, and the path of duty is deep with mire and the future is dark. Every one of these things passes away. His own language as to this great change in his belief is as characteristic as it is beautiful: “I extended my desires further, and longed that the good thoughts I had about God, and the good life which I built on them, might have an eternal reward.” Like one of his own favorite saints in the Gospel and the Apocalypse of John, he was thus “led by the Spirit of God” to become one of the chanting choir before the throne.

It matters very little, therefore, to us of to-day, that, in 1851, Pius IX., himself a man of sweet and gentle temper, made Hilary a “Doctor of the Church”—a distinction reserved for those greatest ones, like Augustine and Chrysostom, whose learning and eloquence are world-renowned. The dead bishop did not need this posthumous distinction. He has long been recognized—to quote Professor Dorner—as “one of the most original and profound,” albeit not the easiest to understand at all times, of the great teachers of the Christian Church. We may hereafter attach more value to his work even than we do at present.

This then was the man who had determined to enter upon a Christian life. He was already married and had one daughter—Abra by name—and possessed a certain repute as a man of reading and of affairs. His origin protected him from a contempt of pagan learning; and his marriage protected him from that one-sided development which has Romanized the once Catholic Church. The period in which he lived was one of transition—from classic literature to Christian literature, and from the Latin of far-off Virgil and Cicero to the Latin which was to become the uniting tongue of all scholars in that Babel of the Middle Ages. This language was now shaping itself to its new work and becoming, like English under the genius of Chaucer, a living speech. In the moulding hands of these first Christian writers it became flexible, not always fluent or graceful or even strictly grammatical, but capable at least to carry what would otherwise have been lost. Greek was gone, and French and German and English had not yet appeared. As a Gallo-Roman, then—a post-classic Latinist—Hilary gives in his allegiance to Christianity, and his wife and daughter are baptized with him into the true faith.

So far much is conjectural; and more is vague and to be derived from the shadows cast upon the screen of history by the “spirit of the years to come yearning to mix itself with life.” We emerge, however, into historical certainty about the year 351. Then, on the death of their bishop—who is thought to have been Maxentius, the brother of St. Maximin of Trier—his townspeople clamored for Hilary. The _Histoire Litteraire de la France_ sets this election down for the year 350; but that authority, in this and a great many other instances, is profuse and multitudinous and not absolutely safe. We are certainly not far out from the correct date in saying 351.

It illustrates a condition of things which are suggestive of the simplicity of the early Church, when we find that in spite of his being a married man and a father—and in spite of Cyprian’s and of Tertullian’s praises of celibacy—Hilary was heartily chosen and almost forced into the episcopate. In this position he exhibited “all the excellent qualities of the great bishops.” We are told that he was “gentle and peaceable, given particularly to an ability to persuade and to influence.” With these he joined “a holy vigor which held him firm against rising heresies.” And Cassian says that Hilary “had all the virtues of an incomparable man.” The fact, after all, speaks for itself more loudly than these commendations. He was so much one of themselves that the people of Poitiers would not have selected him, if they had not known him to be the best man for the mitre.

From this time began that career of stainless honor which has outlasted the very walls which echoed his voice. He was known from Great Britain to the Indies. He ranks second only to Athanasius as a defender of the faith; and—as we already noted—he is classed by Jerome with the great bishop of Hippo whose portrait is given to us so vividly in Charles Kingsley’s _Hypatia_. And to us of our century and of our convictions in favor of charity and culture, it is particularly praiseworthy that he never gave up his secular scholarship, and that he never flagged or faltered in defending opinions which were as large and liberal as they were undeniably orthodox. He was an oak which stood against the blast unshaken, and which yet held, in the heart of its great branches, sweet nests of singing birds and leafy coverts of shade and peace.

Hilary was not suffered to be inactive. It was the period at which the Arian heresy was in full incandescence. No one holding the opinions of the Bishop of Poitiers could well remain neutral. He had—in conformity with a custom soon to become a law—separated his life from that of his home; but he appears always to have cherished a warm love for his wife and child. This placed him, however, in perfect freedom from other cares, and at liberty to devote himself to the eradication of false doctrine. Constantius, the Emperor, was an Arian, and this made the perplexity of the position very great. An honest man might ruin all by his blunt independence—but an honest man dare not be silent. And, besides, Hilary had neither attended the Synod of Arles (353) nor that of Milan (355), and was somewhat out of the ecclesiastical tide.

That he was no coward was soon shown to everybody’s satisfaction. He prepared a letter to the Emperor as brave as it was keen, and which touched up with a vigorous lash the cringing sycophants and shuffling hypocrites about the court. Hilary is notably strong when he denounces the substitution of force for reason—and perhaps his doctorate came to him only in 1851 (when he could not well care much for it) because this doctrine of his was not altogether what Mother Church has been in the habit of teaching and practising! I may refer to the recent work of the Rev. R. T. Smith upon _The Church in Roman Gaul_ as fully confirming this statement. St. Martin of Tours is there called to bear testimony that the Bishop of Poitiers held such opinions just as sturdily in his days of power as in these times of trial and persecution. He was, in short, a thoroughly sincere man, and it took him only a few years—until 355—to get into the hottest bubbling spot of all the caldron. At that date, in company with other leaders of the church in Gaul, he drove out a very pestilent fellow—Saturninus, the Bishop of Arles—as a seditious and irreconcilable element in their midst. With him was cast out Valens, and with Valens was cast out Ursacius. But of all these, Bishop Saturninus was the angriest and the most revengeful.

A year of something like good order followed, when lo, the Arians came to the front with a synod of their own complexion at Beziers. Here Hilary found himself in the vocative case altogether. The tables were turned upon him, and it was he who must now go forth a banished man. The power was against him, and he set out with bowed head and sad heart upon one of those pride-humbling journeys which have not seldom brought the greatest results to religion, and which not a few of the best men have taken in their day. In this manner Bernard went to meet Abaelard; Martin Luther went to the diet at Worms; and John Bunyan took his way to Bedford jail.

Principal among the causes of his sadness was that he was snatched away from his constant and congenial duty of explaining the Scriptures to the people of his diocese. Still he had nothing for it but to go; and so, somewhere about 356, we find him in Phrygia. He is accompanied by Rodanius, Bishop of Toulouse, who had plucked up considerable courage by seeing how well Hilary took his defeat.

In 357 the Church in Roman Gaul sent him their greeting, from which that of his own Poitiers people was not absent. And the Gallic bishops, having perceived him to be capable of much good service in his enforced residence abroad, bade him inform himself and them upon the creeds and customs of the Eastern Church. This he had already, to a degree, undertaken. And in 359, whom do we find entering a convocation of bishops at Seleucia but our very Hilary, opposing with a strong and unflinching philosophic power all those—and there were many there—who denied the consubstantiality of the Word.

There were one hundred and sixty of these bishops at Seleucia, of whom one hundred and five—a very handsome majority—were “semi-Arians.” Of the remaining fifty-five there were nineteen classed as Anomoeans—those who held that the Son was _unlike_ the Father in essence, or ἀνόµοιος—and the rest were heretics of different grades of badness. It was the natural outcome of the difficulties with Athanasius, where the royal authority was on the side of the Arians. The Roman Catholic historians are therefore not complimentary to this synod—or rather “double council” of Seleucia and Rimini—and this was assuredly no very comfortable body of Christians for a banished bishop to exhort. But he did it with effect, and proceeded to the council at Constantinople (360) and did it again; and presently (361) Constantius died and the Nicene Creed was victorious.

So was Hilary, who—in 360-61—returned to Poitiers, where, as soon as his crozier was once more well in hand, he levelled Saturninus and compelled him to abandon his diocese. He then turned upon Auxentius of Milan, who only escaped the same or a worse fate by clinging to Valentinian, the reigning Emperor, and was denounced by Hilary as a hypocrite for his pains. Our bishop appears in these days to have been decidedly a member of the Church Militant; and perhaps it was natural enough when one had survived the reigns of Constantius, Julian the Apostate, and Jovian, for him to be as he was. I am not commenting upon these exciting scenes; I desire rather to go back and show how they produced the hymns of which we are to speak.

It was in 357—at the same date with the letters from the bishops and from the churches—that Abra, his daughter, wrote to him herself. From this epistle we learn that her mother still lived, and we observe the dutiful and loving daughter apparent in every line. In reply Hilary sends a well-composed and even imaginative letter. Under the figures of a pearl and a garment he charges her to keep her soul and her conduct pure. He rather recommends a single life, but not in any such extravagant eulogy of celibacy as some would have us suppose. It is more after the style of what Grynaeus affirmed of him—that he was so moderate in these opinions as to suffer his canons to marry—since it would be hard for an unbiassed mind to draw any harsh conclusions from the language; yet all this is of small consequence compared with the enclosure—two Latin hymns, one for the morning and one for the evening, which she may use in the worship of God. The first of these is the _Lucis largitor splendide_; but the second is probably lost. It is said that it was the hymn, _Ad coeli clara non sum dignus sidera_—“To the clear stars of heaven I am not worthy,” etc. This is very doubtful indeed, so much so that we may decline to receive it on several grounds. It is to be found in the superb folio edition of Hilary’s works (Paris, 1693) prepared by the Benedictines of St. Maur. Yet if internal evidence is to weigh at all we must reject it without scruple. It is not a hymn in any true sense, and certainly has no reference to the _evening_ hour of worship. It contains a gross phrase or two, which are not suggestive of Hilary, who would scarcely have said that he would “despise Arius” by “modulating a hymn” against him, nor would he have spoken of the “barking Sabellius” or the “grunting Simon.” The verses are unpleasantly flavored with earthliness, and to think that a young girl would be inclined to sing ninety-six lines of an abecedary—or “alphabet-hymn”—is absurd. Moreover, the editors of the edition of 1693 only print four stanzas, and express their own disbelief that Hilary wrote it, based upon these facts and upon their no less important criticism of the style, which is _masculine_ throughout, and refers to ideas highly inappropriate to the use intended. Mone is nearer to the correct doctrine when he assigns it to a period between the sixth and eighth centuries. Daniel (4:130) prints it in full and quotes Mone’s remark that an Irish monk is likely to have been its author. It is in the metre familiar to modern eyes in the _Integer vitae_ of Horace, but it displays neither taste nor poetry nor any religious fervor. That it begins each stanza with a consecutive letter of the alphabet is no proof of anything except wasted ingenuity. So that, I repeat, we do well to reject it and to leave it rejected.

All, then, that is left us is the _Lucis largitor splendide_—“Thou splendid giver of the light.” The letter went back from Seleucia to Poitiers and carried this hymn, at least, with it. Hilary had sent this and its companion, _ut memor mei semper sis_—“that you may always remember me.” And we may fancy the lovely high-born daughter of that earnest and scholarly man as, daily and nightly, she sits at her window—perchance with her gaze wistfully turned to the eastward. There she sang these simple, beautiful hymns—she the first singer of the new hymns of the Latin Church. Among the themes for Christian art yet left to us there is hardly one more suggestive than this—for Abra doubtless sang her father’s hymns to her father’s loyal people. It may even be supposed that he gave her the tunes as well as the words, and that, by morning and by night, the battle-scarred Poitiers re-echoed this voice of the exiled bishop.

Of the hymn itself as much can be said in favor as we have just said against its pretended and ill-matched companion. It breathes the Johannean sentiments throughout. It celebrates the Light, the Son of God, the glory of the Father, “clearer than the full sun, the perfect light and day itself.” To one who is acquainted with the Greek hymns it is instantly suggestive of those pellucid songs—its atmosphere is all peace and its trust is as restful to the tired spirit as the quiet coming of the rising day. It may easily have been a translation from the Greek, or, even more easily, the natural up-gush of melody which was touched into life by the frequent hearing of the Eastern hymns. Hilary never learned it in an Arian church, nor did he find it among controversialists. Its nest, where it was first reared, was in some corner of a catacomb or in some nook of the Holy Land. This hymn, then, we may safely accept as the oldest authentic original Latin “song of praise to Christ as God.”

Whether the Bishop of Poitiers had much or little learning, he wrote a valuable book on _Synods_, and translated for us many useful and otherwise inaccessible confessions of faith and statements of doctrine. Erasmus—himself no brave man, nor one likely to estimate moral courage properly—calls this letter to Abra “_nugamentum hominis otiose indocti_”—the trifling production of a man lazily uneducated! Well, perhaps it would have been as well if some of that same “luxurious ignorance” of Hilary could have secured the “laborious learning” of Erasmus from exhibiting, at the end of life, its own inefficiency. Jerome said that whoever found fault with Hilary’s knowledge was compelled to concede his philosophic skill; and it reminds one of the remark of Dante Rossetti, who said that nothing in our age could stand comparison with a sonnet of Shakespeare, for, rough as it might seem, _Shakespeare wrote it_. It was this manhood behind the Latin which went for more than all Rotterdam!

Hilary is credited with a great deal, doubtless, that he never wrote. So he is, by Fortunatus, with miracles which he never performed. Alcuin and others assign to him the _Gloria in Excelsis_, but this was certainly more ancient than Hilary, being quoted by Athanasius in his treatise on Virginity. He could at best merely have translated it. This he might also have done for the _Te Deum laudamus_. And since we know that he prepared a _Liber Hymnorum_—the first actual hymn-book of the Western Church—we have some reason to think that he would not have altogether forgotten the greatest chants of the early Christians. This hymn-book is utterly lost to us. This is not the same as the _Liber Mysteriorum_—the book of the mysteries—and its existence, like that of its companion work, rests upon the testimony of Jerome. Doubtless in it there were other poems and songs from which the Hilarian authorship has been broken or lost. It was not the ancient custom either to preserve the author’s name, or even to retain the precise form of his hymn. He threw his little lyric—as the Israelites did their jewelry—into the common treasury of the Church; and in the Breviaries, where so many of these hymns are to be discovered, a later and more critical scholarship may identify some of them hereafter. As delicate insects are preserved in amber, we there find much that we should otherwise have lost; but, like that very amber, when its electricity is excited, his was that sort of reputation which attracted many anonymous trifles—as, for example, the _Ad coeli clara_—to itself.

Of Hilary’s other writings, with exception of his work on the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia, we have the full text. His commentaries on the Psalms and on Matthew; his controversial pamphlets against Constantius; his book of _Synods_; his twelve books _De Trinitate_—these are accessible in the _Patrologia_ of Migne.

It was undoubtedly believed at the time of the fourth Council of Toledo that he had written many pieces “in favor of God, and of the triumphs of apostles and martyrs;” and both Jerome and Isidore of Seville declare him to have been the first among the Latins to write Christian verse. But to show how uncertain is the conjecture that is thus started, I may mention that the _Ut queant laxis_ of Paul Winfrid, the “Deacon,” is credited to Hilary by the _Histoire Litteraire_. The same authority also claims for him the first _Pange lingua_ (_Pange lingua gloriosi, praelium certaminis_), which is sometimes assigned to Claudianus Mamertus, but is the well-authenticated composition of Venantius Fortunatus, the troubadour and friend of Radegunda, the wife of Clotaire. We may as well admit that a great man did not necessarily do all the great things of his day.

Besides, the search after truth in this matter is complicated marvellously by the trade of the hymn-tinkers, who put new bottoms and tops and sides to a great many religious lyrics. Here is a case in point in Mone (vol. iii., p. 633). The hymn begins _Christum rogemus et patrem_—“We call on Christ and on the Father.” It has seven stanzas. The _first_ stanza is from a morning hymn, supposed to be by Hilary. The _second_ is from an Ambrosian hymn. The _third_ and _fourth_ are from another Ambrosian hymn to the Archangel Michael. The _fifth_ is from a very noble Ambrosian hymn—the _Aeterna Christi munera_—of which Daniel says that it itself has been “wretchedly torn to pieces by the Church” (_ab ecclesia miser e dilaceratum_). The _sixth_ and _seventh_ stanzas are also Ambrosian—from the _Jesu corona virginum_. Thus this single hymn of seven stanzas is mere patchwork, gathered from that Ambrosian hymnody which the Breviaries supply. And finding all the rest of it credited to Ambrose and to his century, we are inclined to doubt that Hilary should be considered as the author of any portion at all.

Indeed the identification of Hilary’s hymns—except the _Lucis largitor_—is purely conjectural. It rests mainly on the hymnological acumen of Cardinal Thomasius, which may or may not be liable to error. Kayser refuses, on one ground or another, to positively endorse any, except the one which all now concede. Next to this in probability stands the _Beata nobis gaudia_ (though it is doubted by Professor March), and then the _Deus pater ingenite_, which is taken from the Mozarabic Breviary. The _Jam meta noctis transiit_, the _In matutinis surgimus_, and the _Jesu refulsit omnium_, have only the authority of Thomasius. The _Jesu quadragenariae_, Daniel says, is an old hymn, but very certainly composed later than the time of Hilary. The _Ad coeli clara_ we have already rejected. Thus we have one authentic and five conjectural Hilarian hymns. There is, however, great doubt resting on the _Jesu refulsit omnium_; and if I consulted merely my own judgment, I should declare against it, if only in view of the _rhymes_—a characteristic which it would scarcely possess if it were genuinely of the fourth century. And while we are upon this somewhat ungrateful duty of trying to set matters right, shall we pass over the slip which Mrs. Charles makes in her capital little book? (_Christian Life in Song._ Am. ed., p. 74.) For she says that “The Hilary who wrote the hymns was the canonized Bishop of Arles.” There was, much later, a Hilary of Arles; and there was another Hilary of Rome, and there were also others of the same name; but none of them wrote hymns. He of Arles assuredly did not.

Of our own Hilary it may be added that the rest of his life was earnest, but comparatively quiet. We shall find Gregory of Tours and Fortunatus asserting that he raised the dead and healed the sick, and cast out devils (some of them in the shape of snakes) from a boy’s stomach; but these stories belong naturally to a credulous and superstitious age. More to the purpose is it to find that the bishop had entered upon the composition of tunes for his hymns, and had taken up calligraphy and the ornamentation of manuscripts. There was a book of the Gospels found, on which was indorsed, “_Quem scripsit Hilarius Pictavensis quondam sacerdos_”—“which Hilary of Poitiers, formerly a priest, wrote.” A similar book was left by St. Perpetuus, Bishop of Tours, to Bishop Euphronius, Fortunatus’s friend. This is attested by his will, executed in 474. “I saw,” says Christian Druthmar (ninth century), “a book of the Gospels, written in Greek, which was said to have been St. Hilary’s, in which were Matthew and John,” etc. But whether Hilary wrote this is naturally an open question.

The good bishop died at Poitiers—as Jerome and Gregory of Tours declare—but the date is still a matter of some uncertainty. Valentinian and Valens were upon the throne, and it is safe to say that 367-68 was the year. January 14th has also been assigned by some authorities, but with no better reason than a generally received tradition to this effect, and the fact that this is his day in the Roman calendar. His body was, however, scattered rather widely. It was removed from its tomb in the time of Clovis—a bone of his arm was in Belgium, and some other portions of his anatomy were in Limoges. About the year 638, Dagobert is stated to have placed his remains in the Church of St. Dionysius, and so confident of this fact were the people of Poitiers, in 1394, that they vehemently asserted that they had his relics there in perfect safety. “Calvinistic heretics” were said to have burned the mortal remnants of the great “hammer of the Arians,” and the Pictavians took this method to meet the calumny. For aught we know to the contrary they were perfectly right, and the dust of their bishop is still resting peacefully in their midst.

For his works, the Paris edition of 1693 is the best; but the _Patrologia_ of J. P. Migne contains all that any one can need or care to see. It is the full reprint of the Paris volumes, together with biographical and critical notes, in Latin, prepared with great diligence and research; but, of course, from the Roman Catholic point of view.

THE HYMNS OF HILARY.

I. HYMNUS MATUTINUS.

1. Lucis largitor splendide, Cujus sereno lumine Post lapsa noctis tempora Dies refusus panditur;

2. Tu verus mundi Lucifer, Non is, qui parvi sideris Venturae lucis nuntius Angusto fulget lumine,

3. Sed toto sole clarior, Lux ipse totus et dies, Interna nostri pectoris Illuminans praecordia:

4. Adesto, rerum conditor, Paternae lucis gloria, Cujus admota gratia Nostra patescunt corpora;

5. Tuoque plena spiritu, Secum Deum gestantia, Ne rapientis perfidi Diris patescant fraudibus,

6. Ut inter actus seculi Vitae quos usus exigit, Omni carentes crimine Tuis vivamus legibus.

7. Probrosas mentis castitas Carnis vincat libidines, Sanctumque puri corporis Delubrum servet Spiritus.

8. Haec spes precantis animae, Haec sunt votiva munera, Ut matutina nobis sit Lux in noctis custodiam.

I. A MORNING HYMN.

1. Thou splendid giver of the light, By whose serene and lovely ray Beyond the gloomy shades of night Is opened wide another day!

2. Thou true Light-bearer of the earth, Far more than he whose slender star, Son of the morning, in its dearth Of radiance sheds its beams afar!

3. But clearer than the sun may shine, All light and day in Thee I find, To fill my night with glory fine And purify my inner mind.

4. Come near, Thou maker of the world, Illustrious in thy Father’s light, From whose free grace if we were hurled, Body and soul were ruined quite.

5. Fill with Thy Spirit every sense, That God’s divine and gracious love May drive Satanic temptings hence, And blight their falsehoods from above.

6. That in the acts of common toil Which life demands from us each day, We may, without a stain or soil, Live in Thy holy laws alway.

7. Let chastity of mind prevail To conquer every fleshly lust; And keep Thy temple without fail, O Holy Ghost, from filth and dust.

8. This hope is in my praying heart— These are my vows which now I pay; That this sweet light may not depart, But guide me purely through the day.

II. HYMNUS MATUTINUS.

1. Deus, Pater ingenite, Et Fili unigenite, Quos Trinitatis unitas Sancto connectit Spiritu.

2. Te frustra nullus invocat, Nec cassis unquam vocibus Amator tui luminis Ad coelum vultus erigit.

3. Et tu suspirantem, Deus, Vel vota supplicantium, Vel corda confitentium Semper benignus aspice.

4. Nos lucis ortus admonet Grates deferre debitas, Tibique laudes dicere, Quod nox obscura praeterit.

5. [Et] diem precamur bonum, Ut nostros, Salvator, actus Sinceritate perpeti Pius benigne instruas.

II. A MORNING HYMN.

1. Eternal Father, God, And sole-begotten Son, Who with the Holy Ghost Art ever Three in One.

2. None calleth Thee in vain, Nor yet with empty cry Doth he who seeks Thy light Lift up his gaze on high.

3. Do Thou, O God, behold With mercy them that pray; Receive their earnest vows And take their guilt away.

4. The kindling sky forewarns Our souls what praise we owe To Him at whose command The night has ceased below.

5. We ask a happy day, That Thou shouldst guide our ways In constant faithfulness, O Saviour, to Thy praise!

III. HYMNUS PENTECOSTALIS.

1. Beata nobis gaudia Anni reduxit orbita, Cum Spiritus paraclitus Illapsus est discipulis.

2. Ignis vibrante lumine Linguae figuram detulit, Verbis ut essent proflui, Et charitate fervidi.

3. Linguis loquuntur omnium; Turbae pavent gentilium: Musto madere deputant, Quos Spiritus repleverat.

4. Patrata sunt haec mystice, Paschae peracto tempore, Sacro dierum circulo, Quo lege fit remissio.

5. Te nunc, Deus piissime, Vultu precamur cernuo: Illapsa nobis coelitus Largire dona Spiritus!

6. Dudum sacrata pectora Tua replesti gratia, Dimitte nostra crimina, Et da quieta tempora!

III. WHITSUNDAY HYMN.

1. What blessed joys are ours, When time renews our thought Of that true Comforter On the disciples brought.

2. With light of quivering flame In fiery tongues He fell, And hearts were warm with love And lips were quick to tell.

3. All tongues were loosened then, And fear, in men, awoke Before that mighty power By which the Spirit spoke.

4. Achieved in mystic sign Has been that paschal feast, Whose sacred list of days The soul from sin released.

5. Thee then, O holiest Lord, We pray in humble guise To give such heavenly gifts Before our later eyes.

6. Fill consecrated breasts With grace to keep Thy ways; Show us forgiveness now, And grant us quiet days.

IV. HYMNUS MATUTINUS.

1. Jam meta noctis transiit, Somni quies jam praeterit Aurora surgit fulgida Et spargit coelum lux nova.

2. Sed cum diei spiculum Cernamus, hinc nos omnium Ad te, superne Lucifer, Preces necesse est fundere.

3. Te lucis sancte Spiritus Et caritatis actibus Ad instar illud gloriae Nos innovatos effice.

4. Praesta Pater piissime Patrique compar unice, Cum Spiritu paraclito Nunc et per omne saeculum.

IV. A MORNING HYMN.

1. The limit of the night is passed, The quiet hour of sleep has fled; Far up the lance of dawn is cast; New light upon the heaven is spread.

2. But when this sparkle of the day Our eyes discern, then, Lord of light, To Thee our souls make haste to pray And offer all their wants aright.

3. O Holy Spirit, by the deeds Of Thine own light and charity, Renew us through our earthly needs And cause us to be like to Thee.

4. Grant this, O Father ever blessed; And Holy Son, our heavenly friend; And Holy Ghost, Thou comfort best! Now and until all time shall end.