Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/669

 HYMNODY

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HYMNODY

clumsy form. In England Wulstan (Wolstan) of Winchester (d. 990) and St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1109) were prominent though there is still great obscurity regarding the hj'ranal activity of the latter. Finally Italy is represented not only by VVido of Ivrea (eleventh centurj') and Alberich of Monte Cassino (d. lOSS), but by those brilliant writers Alphanus of Salerno (d. 10S.5) and St. Peter Damian (d. 1072). The t^-o latter, especially St. Peter Da- mian, are poets of great fertility. Alphauus wTOte only in classical metre and is admirable for the purity of his expression and the skill of his forms. St. Peter Damian chose the rhythms of the Middle Ages and contented himself with a less ornate form; but the plainer cloak hides a depth of intellect, a richness of fancy, and a warmth of feeling which captivate and inspire the reader. Especially beautiful is his rhythmus, often ascribed to St. Augustine:

Ad perennis vita? fontem | mens sitit nunc arida,

Claustra carnis praesto frangi | clausa qusrit anima, etc.

(3) Period of Zenith and of Decline (until the rise of Humanism). — In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the zenith of the culture of the Middle Ages, there ap- peared such a wealth of poems of the highest order that it is impossible to mention here all the poets and their principal works. Still less is it possible to give an appreciation of them or to note the more important of the far greater number of poems by unknown au- thors. The newly founded religious orders took an active share in hymnody and enriched the list of hymn WTiters with glorious names. The poetic forms became even richer, the language more elegant, the rhythm more regular, and the rhyme purer. In the first rank comes France. Marbod, Bishop of Rennes (d. 1123), Balderic, Abbot of Bourgueil (1130), the Archbishop of Tours, Hildebert of Lavardin (d. 1133), and Reginald — by birth and education French — who became a monk of St. Augustine at Canterbury (d. 1136) form a group of poets, with the common trait that they still follow mostly the quantitative principle. Their works, especially those of Hildebert, are bril- liant ; the writers are book-poets, and votaries of the epic and didactic style, but apart from profane poetry, they contribute relatively little to hymnody proper. Next to them comes as representative of the accentuating principle Godefried, Abbot of Vendome (d. 1132). Then follows Peter Abelard, Abbot of St. Gildas (d. 1 142) who composed a complete hjinn-book for his convent," The Paraclete". Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny (d. 1156) and St. Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153) stand, the one as a friend the other as an opponent, in close relation to the remarkable Abelard. The former devoted himself to a considerable extent to the quantitative as well as to the accentual poetrj', and not without result. But St. Bernard contrib- uted to hymnody only three rhj'thmical hymns on St. Victor and St. Malaehy. All the other poems ascribed to liim are unauthentic, particularly the cele- brated "Jesu dulcis memoria". The above-men- tioned rhythmical hymns show that Bernard, the great preacher, was but a mediocre poet. The name of the .\bbot of Clairvaux has been connected too with that beautiful " Mariale " which is best known by the verses beginning: "Omni die die Mariae | Mea laudes anima ". But the author of this polished hjmm is the contemporarj' monk of Cluny, Bernard de Morlas (d. about 1140).

The zenith, not only of this period but of all hjTn- nody, was reached by Adam of St. Victor (d. 1142). His numerous sequences, the exact number of which has not yet been determined, are incomparably beau- tiful. The splendid

Laudes crucis attoUamus Nos, qui crucis exsultamus

Special! gloria is also ascribed to him ; but it seems more probable that

Adam had an equally gifted forenmner among the monks of St. Victor who wrote this sequence, and to whom therefore must now be ascribed some other se- quences which until lately bore the signature of Vic- tor. We must further mention in France Adalbert, Bishop of Mende (d. 1187), Guido of Bazoches (d. 1203). Goswin of Bossut (d. about 12.30), and particu- larly Phihppe de Grevia, Chancellor of the churches of Paris (d. 1236). Through the last named poet the poetic art of the "cantio " reached its highest point of perfection in a number of songs which appeal more to the intellect than to the heart. But Phihppe also wrote several very fer\-ent hjTrms. France and Ger- many must share the honour of claiming Julian von Speier (d. about 1250), choir-master at the court of the Frankish king and later a Minorite in the Francis- can Convent at Paris. He composed wonderful rhj-thmical Offices of St. Francis and St. Anthony.

In Germany, out of the great number of rehgious poems WTitten in this period several may be ascribed to each of the following names: Henry of Breitenau (d. about 1150), Udalscalch of Maissach, Abbot of St. Ulrich and St. Afra in Augsburg(d. 1150), St. Hildegard, supe- rior of the Rupertsberg convent near Bingen (d. 1179), Herrat, Abbess of Hohenburg (d. 1195), and Blessed Hermann Josef of Steinfeld (d. 1241). In Flanders we find Alanus of Lille (d. 1203) celebrated for his alle- gorical poem " Anticlaudianus ", also Adam de la Bass^e (d. 125S). England has but few great poets during this period: Alexander Neckam, Abbot of Cir- encester (d. 1217), John Hoveden, the confessor of Queen Eleanor of England (d. 1275), and John Peck- ham, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1274). Hoveden wrote besides other poems the delightful nightingale song "Philomena" a long IjTic-epic on the Life and Passion of Our Lord; and Peckham is immortal through his beautiful rhj'thmical Office of the Holy Trinity. Italy also witnessed in the thirteenth cen- tury the rise among her children of hymn writers no less celebrated and gifted. They were: Thomas of Capua (d. 1243), writer of the hj-mn on St. Francis "In cselesti collegio" and "Decus morum dux Mino- rum"; Rainerius Capocci of Viterbo (d. 1252); Thomas of Celano (d. about 1250), to whom we owe, it is said, besides other sequences the immortal "Dies irae"; St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), the profound singer of the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar in the hymns "Pange lingua gloriosi", "Sacris sollemniis" and "Verbum supemum prodiens", in the sequence "Lauda Sion salvatorem" and in the rhj-thmical prayer "Adoro te devote", poems that are highly esteemed; Bonaventiu'e (d. 1274), the devout writer of the "Lignum vitae", of a rhj-thmical Office of the Passion of Our Lord, and of a beautiful song of the Cross, " Recordare sanctae crucis '. About the end of the thirteenth centurj' the touching classical se- quence "Stabat mater" must have been wTitten in Italy too, by a Franciscan monk, but whether by Jacopone da Todi (d. 1306) is more than doubtful. Finally we note Orrigo Scaccabarozzi, archpriest of Milan (d. 1293), who has left numerous liturgical poems of mediocre value.

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries hjTnnody still flourished. But the creative power con- tinued to decrease slowly. Many beautiful poems were written, but their number in comparison to the number of inferior ones dwindled, particularly in the fifteenth centurj', and above all in France, which had held the premier place in hjTnnody. The outer form was neglected more and more, the accentual principle with the regular rhj-thm gradually sank again during the fifteenth centurj' to the bare counting of sj'llables. Of the poets of this period only the most important are mentioned here: the Cistercian monk Christan von Lilienfeld (d. before 1332); the Carthusian Kon- rad von Gaming (d. 1360); Archbishop Johann von Jenstein of Prague (d. 1400); and the Venerable