CHAPTER VIII.

CAELIUS SEDULIUS AND HIS ALPHABET HYMN.

Latin hymnology gives a distinguished place to a hymn of twenty-three stanzas, each stanza containing four lines and beginning with a letter of the alphabet in regular order. Thus from A to Z all the letters appear except J, U, and W. Caterva is spelled Katerva, to answer for K. Y is represented by _Ymnis_, which is another form of _Hymnis_. And at last _Zelum_ concludes the list. The author struggles with a difficulty when he takes _Xeromyrrham_ to answer for X, but otherwise the ideas and versification are so excellent as to have made the hymn classic. The Roman Breviary uses two selections from it. One commences _A solis ortus cardine, ad usque_, and the other, _Hostis Herodes impie_. The general subject is the Nativity, but the poem soon proceeds to the Miracles of our Lord, and closes with an ascription of praise for His Resurrection.

There can be no doubt about the authorship. Old manuscript codices, and the tradition of the Church, assign it definitely to Caelius Sedulius—sometimes called Caius Caelius Sedulius—who flourished near the middle of the fifth century. But his personal history is much harder to come at, and the few facts which we possess only stimulate our curiosity to know more. And besides, he is so entangled with another Sedulius—also a poet, also a celebrated author, also a Scot, and also involved in much obscurity—that nearly every notice of his name contains more or less of error. This second Sedulius, however, wrote no hymn which has survived, and therefore needs no further mention. He is always named Sedulius _Scotus_, to distinguish him from our Sedulius, who is invariably called _Caelius_ Sedulius. He flourished somewhere between 721 and 818, while the best ascertained date of his predecessor’s life appears to be 434.

Our sources of information regarding Sedulius are Isidore of Seville and Fortunatus of Poitiers. Jerome (Hieronymus) left a catalogue of authors from the time of St. Peter to his own day. This was continued by Gennadius, as Notker of St. Gall tells us, and then it was still further extended by Isidore. Neither Jerome nor Gennadius mention our poet; the first because he died in 420, before Sedulius had achieved distinction, and the second possibly for the same reason, as his death occurred about 496 at Marseilles. Isidore (who died 636) then undertook to supply the deficiencies of the catalogue and inserted a brief note respecting Sedulius.

Earlier than Isidore, however, is Fortunatus (530-609), who names our author as one of the five first Christian poets. Juvencus he dates at 330 A.D.; Sedulius flourished in the first half of the fifth century; Prudentius was converted in 405; Paulinus died in 458, and Arator was at his zenith in 560. This would seem to fix pretty closely the period to which Sedulius belongs.

References in the manuscripts are of no additional value. They tell us that he was a “Gentile layman,” or, in other words, a person not of Italian birth; that he learned philosophy in Italy; was converted and baptized by Macedonius, a presbyter; and that he wrote his theological works in Arcadia, or, as some say, Achaia. The Vatican “Codex of the Queen of Sweden” calls him a “verse-maker” and “teacher of the art of heroic metre.” Another codex adds that he also taught other varieties of metrical composition, and that all this happened in the days of the younger Theodosius, son of Arcadius, and of Valentinian, son of Constantine. Of his specific writings still another codex states that he “put forth in Achaia this book against error and composed in verse a commendation of the Christian faith.”

Some Sedulius, “notable for his writings,” appears to have found his way into Spain where, in the year 428, Isicius, a Palestine monk, who had become Bishop of Toledo, detained him for his good fellowship at Toledo. With him is said to have tarried a certain Bishop Oretanus, and the inference is that these three worthies held numerous symposia upon theology and literature. But the story is denied by Nicolaus Antonius, the historian of old Spanish scholarship.

Those minute and laborious investigators, the Benedictines, have, with ant-like patience, threaded every corner of the labyrinth in which these stray facts are gathered. They assert that Macedonius probably received him after he had been baptized by some one else. And while we do not know under what master he studied theology, nor even where the school was located, we know that Sedulius became presbyter in a church whose bishop’s name was Ursinus, and where Ursicinus, Laurentius, and Gallicanus were his co-presbyters.

Ussher relates that the epithet _Scotigena_—the Scot—was frequently applied to him. Trithemius gives us to understand that he was led by love of learning to visit France, then Italy, then Asia, and then Achaia, and that his reputation was gained in the city of Rome. Sixtus Senensis compares him to Apollonius of Tyana in his zealous pursuit of wisdom; and enlarges the list of countries which he traversed by adding Britain and Spain. Under Theodosius and at Rome, he too declares Sedulius to have been famous in prose and verse. But Ussher first claimed him for Britain; and Ussher it was who maintained that he was a pupil of that Hildebert who ranks among the earliest of the Irish bishops. It must not be forgotten that somewhere in Britain in those days there was the light of Christianity, for in 432 St. Patrick set out from Scotland “to convert Ireland.” Nor can we omit to notice that Ussher styles Sedulius “Scotus Hybernensis,” thus originating the expression “Scotch-Irishman,” but using it in exactly the reverse of its modern sense.

So far as these partial facts and conjectures go we are safe in affirming that Sedulius was a learned and studious person, probably an Irishman—for at that time Scot and Irishman were synonymous—and that he gained renown about the year 434, having studied in Italy, travelled extensively, and been a resident in Achaia. The temptation is, however, irresistible to make him Irish rather than Scotch, upon the strength of the most ancient “bull” on record. It is found in the Alphabet Hymn and reads thus:

“Quarta die jam foetidus Vitam recepit Lazarus, Cunctisque liber vinculis Factus superstes est sibi.”

“Upon the fourth day Lazarus Revived, though all malodorous; And freed from the enchaining ground Himself his own survivor found!”

The writings of Sedulius are more numerous than might be supposed. Those which have been preserved are nine, two in verse and the rest in prose. The most elaborate is a commentary on the four Gospels, dedicated to the abbot Macedonius and to which he prefixed his _Carmen Paschale_. He also wrote on the Pauline Epistles, as did his namesake of the ninth century. To Theodosius he addressed a book. He wrote treatises on the books of Priscian and Donatus, the grammarians. He also treated of the miracles of Christ in prose and sent out many “epistles of Sedulius Scotigena.” His poetry is comprised in the Alphabet Hymn; in the _Carmen Paschale_ whence we get nothing for hymnology except the hexameter _Salve Sancta Parens enixa_ (_puerpera regem_); and in the Elegy, from which comes the _Cantemus socii_.

The _Carmen Paschale_ is an epic in the Virgilian style. The Elegy is an exhortation to the faithful. But the Alphabet Hymn has enriched the Church with two lyrics, one on the Nativity and one on the Slaughter of the Innocents. By placing the first stanza side by side with the first stanza of the famous Ambrosian hymn, it is easily seen that they are the same.

_Ambrosian._

“A solis ortus cardine Et usque terrae limitem Christum canamus principem Natum Mariae virginis.”

_Sedulian._

“A solis ortus cardine Ad usque terrae limitem Christum canamus principem Natum Maria virgine.”

But this is no unusual occurrence in days when the language of the Psalms was employed in the Ambrosian hymns, and when the Ambrosian hymns themselves furnished a convenient foundation for the later praises of the Church. Not only did Sedulius imitate them closely, but Ennodius, Fortunatus, Gregory, Bede, Rabanus, and Damiani—with many other unknown writers—studied and copied their metre and expression. A curious instance of this same copying and following can be found in our own hymn. In it the stanza, _Ibant magi quam viderant_, contains two lines which have been inserted bodily in a production of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. It is true that they are very suggestive and beautiful, but when Sedulius wrote

“Stellam sequentes praeviam Lumen requirunt lumine,”

he wrote what was original with him, but which was sheer theft in the hands of the author of _Hymnis laudum preconiis_, who nevertheless takes the couplet to grace the feast of the Three Kings.

Latin hymns are by no means all beautiful or all graceful. The earlier pieces appear and reappear—fragments from the better workmanship of the past—throughout the Dark Ages. And here we must leave Sedulius. If he was indeed the companion of Hildebert, his story belongs to that fabulous age of the British Church when bishops were but simple pastors and when great purity and truth prevailed. In the Alphabet Hymn there are references to the direct Scripture narrative; to the “enclosed John” who greets the Saviour; to Him fed with a little milk, who Himself feeds the birds; to the great Shepherd revealed to shepherds; to Herod who seems to fear a King who does not covet earthly dignities; to the Magi who seek their Light from the light; to the healing of the sick and the raising of the dead; to the water that blushes into wine, as perhaps Crashaw had read; to Peter who fears by nature and walks the wave by faith; to Lazarus “his own survivor;” to Judas the _carnifex_ who professed peace by his kiss which was not in his soul; to Him who triumphing over Tartarus returned of Himself to heaven. Such is the hymn, and upon reading it one is not surprised that Fortunatus called its author _Sedulius dulcis_—the sweet Sedulius. Nay, Rudolph of Dunstable goes so far as to perpetrate a pun, and declares that Sedulius _sedulously_ sings of things that are old and new. And the dear man of God, Dr. Martin Luther of blessed memory, who had no relish for Ambrose’s hymns, called our Irishman a _poeta Christianissimus_, and translated into his massive German both the hymns the Breviary had extracted from his chief poem.