Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/664

 HYMNODY

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HYMNODY

poetical feeling, variety, and depth may be placed be- side the greatest productions of ancient poetry. This effective artistic form which awoke with a magic cry the poetic genius of the Hellenes and lent to the lethargic tongues measures of ancient power is rhyth- mical verse" (" Gesch. der byzant. Lit.", Munich, 1897, p. 655). To a greater degree the above is true in regard to Latin hymnody, especially for the Middle Ages.

The Christian poets did not all immediately aban- don the old classic quantitative metre for the accen- tual. Many even reverted to its use later particularly in the age of the t'arlovingians. It is interesting, however, to note that such hymns found no real fa- vour with the people and therefore were rarely incor- porated in the Liturgy. Occasionally, indeed, their lack of rhythm was redeemed by excellent qualities; for instance, when they employed a very popular metrical form and took care that the natural word accent should correspond as far as possible with the accent required by the quantitative metre, i. e. the accented syllables of the word should occur in the long accented place of the verse scheme. The last case is therefore a compromise between the quantita- tive and the accentual or rhythmical principles. We have an example of all these excellent qualities in the hymns of St. Ambrose. He observes the rules of quantity, but chooses a popular metre, the iambic dimeter, with its regular succession of accented and unaccented .syllables, from which arises the so-called alternating rhythm which marks the human step and pulse and is, therefore, the most natural and popular rhythm. He usually avoids a conflict between the word accent and the verse accent; his quantitative hymns can therefore be read rhythmically. This is one of the reasons of the lasting popularity of the hymns of St. Ambrose. The metre he selected, a strophe consisting of four iambic dimeters, was so popular that a multitude of hymns were composed with the same verse scheme, and are called In/mni Ambrosiani. Soon, however, many writers began to neglect the quantity of the syllaliles and their verses became in the fifth century purely rhythmical. The earliest known writer using such rhythmical iambics is Bishop Auspicius of Toul (d. about 470) ; hence, the purely rhythmical strophe is called the Au- spician strophe. Both these iambic dimeters prol> ably sprang from the versus saltirnlus. the favour- ite metre of the profane popular poetry of the Romans.

Next to this metre in popularity was the versu.i popularis or iroXiTiKis, the name of which explains its character. Christian poetry adopted this metre also on account of its popularity. For instance, let us compare the following child-puzzle verse:

Rex erft, qui reete fdciet | qui non faciet, non erft with the beginning of a hymn of St. Hilary of Poitiers:

Adce cdrnis gl6ri6sse | 6t cadiici corporfs.

This verstt.<! pnpularis and the iambic dimeter are the two metres in which most of the early Christian hymns were written, both in Latin and in Greek. This proves that Christian hymnotly strove for popularity even in its outward form. For a similar reason the quantitative principle was gradually abandoned by hymn writers in favour of the rhythmical. " It is cer- tainly no mere chance ", as has been very justly said in the '■' Byzantinische Zeitschrift" (XXII, 244), "that Christians were the first to break away from the learned game of long and short syllables mtended for the eye alone; for they wished to reach the ear of the masses. The.se early Christians strove for and at- tained by means of the metrical system of their ecclesi- astical poetry that which in German religious poetry was first achieved by Luther .... contact with the people, with their ear, and thus, with their heart." The further development of this rhytlmiical poetical

form, especially in Latin, is thus briefly described by Meyer: "Ilrst, from the fifth century a slow grop- ing struggle with many essays, clumsy but still attrac- tive in their ingenuousness. In the eleventh century begins the contrast of a finished art which in complete regularity creates the most various and beautiful forms, on the surviving examples of which the Ro- mance poets an<l al.so, to some extent, the Ger- manic poets model their work even to-day" (Meyer, " Gesammelte Aljhandlungen zur mittella- teinischen Rhythmik", Berlin, 1905, 1, 2). The rhythmical principle, especially in its union with rhyme, gained a complete victory over the ancient classic prosody.

IV. Hymnody op the Orient. — A. Si/riacHymnndy. — The first known Christian hymn writer among the Syrians is also the first in point of importance and fecundity, St. Ephracm the Syrian (c. .373). It is im- possible to say which of the many songsascribed to him are authentic as there is no satisfactory edition of his works. His poems may be divided into the two classes so common in Syriac hymnody: "Memre"and "Madrascho". The former are poetic speeches or expositions of the Holy Scriptures in uniform metre without division into strophes; they scarcely come within our pre.sent scope. The "Madrasche" on the contrary are songs and hymns composed in strophes, the strophes consisting of from four to six verse lines and closing as a rule with a refrain. St. Ephraem was particidarly fond of the seven-syllable verse line, hence called the Ephraemic. The quantity of the syllables is scarcely regarded, the syllables for the most part being .simply counted. Among the songs which are ascriljed to St. Ephraem, no fewer than sixty-five are directed against different heretics; others have as their theme Christmas, Paradise, Faith, and Death. To this last subject he dedicated eighty-five hymns, probably intended for funeral services. Many of his songs, of which several are .set to the same tuiie, were adopted by the Syriac Liturgy and have been preserved in it ever since. The main tenor of these hymns is often very di.ssimilar to that in the early Greek and especially the Latin hymnody. The sensuousness and the glow of Oriental imagina- tion and the love of symbolism are evident, in some hymns more, in others less. Among the disciples and imitators of Ephraem we may note in particular Cy- rillonas (end of the fourth century) whose hymns on the Crucifixion, Easter, and the (irain of Wheat arc still extant; Bala'us (c. 430) after whom the Syriac pentasyllable verse is called the " baleasic "; James of Sarugh (d. 521) named by his contemporaries the "flute of the Holy Spirit and the harp of the believing church", thotigh he was a Monophysite. None of these equalled St. Ephraem in poetic gift. Syriac hymnody may be said to have died out after the seventh century as a result of the conquest of Syria by the Arabs, though the following centuries prduce<l several poets whose hymns are chiefly to be foimd in the Nestorian P.salter.

B. Grcfk Hijmnody. — Here also we must be con- tented with the barest outlines, only a .small part of the material has been gathered from the libraries, notwithstanding the publications by Pitra, t'hrist, Paranikas, Daniel, and Amphilochius and the <letailed investigations l)y Mone, Bouvy, \\ illu'lni Meyer, and especially Kruniliacher. Greek hymnody, if we take hymn in tli(^ wider sense of the word, begins with St. Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 3S9). In their outer form his numerous and often lengthy poems still rest on ancient classical foundation and are exclusively governed liy the laws of quantity. Their language unites delicacy and verbal richness to subtility of ex- pression and precision of theological definition while glowing with the warmth of feeling. The smaller por- tion of his poetical compositions are lyrical, and even among these only hymns in the wider sense of the