Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/595

579 EASTERN CHURCH.] HYMNS 579 of Theodoret has sometimes been supposed to refer the origin of antiphonal singing to a much later date ; but this seems to relate only to the singing of Old Testament Psalms (TTJV AamSiKTyv /xeAwStav), the alternate chanting of which, by a choir divided into two parts, was (according to that statement) t first introduced into the church of Antioch by two monks famous in the history of their time, Flavianus and Diodorus, under the emperor Constantius II. Other evidence of the use of hymns in the 2d century is u y- contained in a fragment of Caius, preserved by Eusebius, which refers to &quot;all the psalms and odes written by faithful brethren from the beginning,&quot; as &quot;hymning Christ, the Word of God, as God.&quot; Tertullian also, in his description of the &quot; Agapae,&quot; or love-feasts, of his day, says that, after washing hands and bringing in lights, each man was in vited to come forward and sing to God s praise something either taken from the Scriptures or of his own composi tion (&quot;ut quisque de Sacris Scripturis vel proprio ingenio potest &quot;). Bishop Bull believed one of those primitive compositions to be the hymn appended by Clement of Alexandria to his Pasdagogus; and Archbishop Ussher considered the ancient morning and evening hymns, of which the use was enjoined by the Apostolical Constitutions, and which are also mentioned in the &quot; Tract on Virginity &quot; printed with the works of St Athanasius, and in St Basil s treatise upon the Holy Spirit, to belong to the same family. Clement s hymn, in a short anapa3stic metre, beginning (TTOfjuov TTwXwj/ uSawi/ (or, according to some editions, /?tt&amp;lt;r/Aeti dyt oji/, Aoye 7rav$a/j.a.Twp translated by Mr Chat- field, &quot; O Thou, the King of saints, all-conquering Word &quot;), is rapid, spirited, and well-adapted for singing. The Greek &quot; Morning Hymn &quot; (which, as divided into verses by Arch bishop Ussher in his treatise De Symbolis, has a majestic rhythm, resembling a choric or dithyrambic strophe) is the original form of &quot; Gloria in Excelsis,&quot; still said or sung, with some variations, in all branches of the church which have not relinquished the use of liturgies. The Latin form of this hymn (of which that in the English communion office is an exact translation) is said, by Bede and other ancient writers, to have been brought into use at Rome by Pope Telesphorus, as early as the time of the emperor Hadrian. A third, the Vesper or &quot; Lamp-lighting &quot; hymn (&quot; &amp;lt;S? IXapov dyias 80^7/5,&quot; translated by Canon Bright &quot;Light of Gladness, Beam Divine &quot;), holds its place to this day in the services of the Greek rite. In the 3d century y- Origen seems to have had in his mind the words of some other hymns or hymn of like character, when he says (in his treatise Against Celsus) ; &quot; We glorify in hymns God and His only begotten Son ; as do also the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, and all the host of heaven. All these, in one Divine chorus, with the just among men, glorify in hymns God who is over all, and His only begotten Son.&quot; So highly were these compositions esteemed in the Syrian churches that the council which deposed Paul of Samosata from the see of Antioch in the time of Aurelian justified that act, in its synodical letter to the bishops of Rome and Alexandria, on this ground (among others) that he had prohibited the use of hymns of that kind, by uninspired writers, addressed to Christ. After the conversion of Constantino, the progress of hyrunody became closely connected with church controver sies. Tli6ie had been in Edessa, at the end of the 2d or early in the 3d century, a Gnostic writer of conspicuous ability, named Bardesanes, who was succeeded, as the head of his sect or school, by his son Harmonius. Both father and son wrote hymns, and set them to agreeable melodies, which acquired, and in the 4th century still -in retained, much local popularity. Ephraem Syrus, the first voluminous hymn writer whose works remain to us, think ing that the same melodies might be made useful to the faith, if adapted to more orthodox words, composed to them a large number of hymns in the Syriac language, principally in tetrasyllable, pentasyllable, and heptasyllabic metres, divided into strophes of from 4 to 12, 10, and even 20 lines each. When a strophe contained five lines, the fifth was generally an &quot; ephynmium,&quot; detached in sense, and consisting of a prayer, invocation, doxology, or the like, to be sung antiphonally, either in full chorus or by a separate part of the choir. The Syriac Chrestomathy of Hahn (published at Leipsic in 1825), and the third volume of Daniel s Thesaurus Hymnologicm, contain specimens of these hymns. Some of them have been translated into (uninetrical) English by the Rev. Henry Burgess (Select Metrical Hymns of Ephrem Syrus, &c., 1853). A con siderable number of those so translated are on subjects connected with death, resurrection, judgment, c., and display not only Christian faith and hope, but much sim plicity and tenderness of natural feeling. Theodoret speaks of the spiritual songs of Ephraem as very sweet and profit able, and as adding much, in his (Theodoret s) time, to the brightness of the commemorations of martyrs in the Syrian Church. The Greek hymnody contemporary with Ephraem fol lowed, with some licence, classical models. One of its favourite metres was the Anacreontic ; but it also made use of the short anapajstic, Ionic, iambic, and other lyrical measures, as well as the hexameter and pentameter. Its principal authors were Methodius, bishop of Tyre (who died about 311 A.D.), Synesius, who became bishop of Ptole- mais in Cyrenaica in 410, and Gregory Nazianzen, for a short time (380-381) patriarch of Constantinople. The merits of these writers have been perhaps too much depreci ated by the admirers of the later Greek &quot; Melodists.&quot; They have found an able English translator in the Rev. Allen Chatfield (Songs and Hymns of Earliest Greek Christian Poets, etc., London, 187G). Among the most striking of their works are /^i/weo Xptcrre (&quot; Lord Jesus, think of me &quot;), by Synesius; ere rov a&amp;lt;f&amp;gt;@iTov fj.ova.f&amp;gt;x f l v (&quot; ^ Thou, the One Supreme&quot;) and TL trot fo Acts ytvicrOai (&quot;O soul of mine, repining &quot;), by Gregory ; also dvw$ev TrapfcVoi (&quot; The Bride groom cometh&quot;), by Methodius. There continued to be Greek metrical hymn writers, in a similar style, till a much later date. Sophrouius, patriarch of Jerusalem in the 7th century, wrote seven Anacreontic hymns ; and St John Damascene, one of the most copious of the second school of &quot; Melodists,&quot; was also the author of some long composi tions in trimeter iambics. An important development of hymnody at Constantinople Period arose out of the Arian controversy. Early in the 4th of Arian century Athanasius had rebuked, not only the doctrine of cc Arius, but the light character of certain hymns by which he endeavoured to make that doctrine popular. When, towards the close of that century (398), St John Chrysostom was raised to the metropolitan see, the Arians, who were still numerous at Constantinople, had no places of worship within the walls ; but they were in the habit of coming into the city at sunset on Saturdays, Sundays, and the greater festivals, and congregating in the porticoes and other places of public resort, where they sung, all night through, antiphonal songs, with &quot; acroteleutia &quot; (closing strains, or refrains), expressive of Arian doctrine, often accompanied by taunts and insults to the orthodox. Chrysostom was apprehensive that this music might draw some of the simpler church people to the Arian side ; he therefore organized, in opposition to it, under the patronage and at the cost of Eudoxia, the empress of Arcadius (then his friend), a system of nightly processional hymn-singing, with silver crosses, wax-lights, and other circumstances of ceremonial pomp. Riots followed, with bloodshed on both sides, and with some personal injury to the empress s chief