Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/598

582 582 HYMNS [WESTERN CHURCH. present in an objective and not a subjective manner. They have exercised a powerful influence, direct or indirect, upon many of the best works of the same kind in all succeeding generations. With the Ambrosian hymns are properly classed those of Hilary, and the contemporary works of Pope Damasus (who wrote two hymns in commemoration of saints), and of Prudentius, from whose Cathemerina (&quot; Daily Devotions &quot;) and Peristephana (&quot; Crown-songs for Martyrs &quot;), all poems of considerable, some of great length, about twenty-eight hymns, found in various Breviaries, were derived. Prudentius was a layman, a native of Sara- gossa, and it was in the Spanish ritual that his hymns were most largely used. In the Mozarabic Breviary almost the whole of one of his finest poems (from which most churches took one part only, beginning &quot; Corde natus ex parentis &quot;) was appointed to be sung between Easter and Ascension-Day, being divided into eight or nine hymns ; and on some of the commemorations of Spanish saints long poems from his Peristephana were recited or sung at large. He is entitled to a high rank among Christian poets, many of the hymns taken from his works being full of fervour and sweetness, and by no means deficient in dignity or strength. 5th and These writers were followed in the 5th and early in the 6th 6th century by the priest Sedulius, whose reputation per- centuries. }j a p g exceeded his merit ; Elpis, a noble Roman lady, wife of the philosophic statesman Boetius ; Pope Gelasius ; and Ennodius, bishop of Pavia. Sedulius and Elpis wrote very little from which hymns could be extracted ; but the small number taken from their compositions obtained wide popu larity, and have since held their ground. Gelasius was of no great account as a hymn-writer ; and the works of Ennodius appear to have been known only in Italy and Spain. The latter part of the 6th century produced Pope Gregory the Great, and Venantius Fortunatus, an Italian poet, the friend of Gregory, and the favourite of Radegunda, queen of the Franks, who died (609) bishop of Poitiers. Eleven hymns of Gregory, and twelve or thirteen (mostly taken from longer poems) by Fortunatus, came into general use in the Italian, Gallican, and British churches. Those of Gregory are in a style hardly distinguishable from the Ambrosian ; those of Fortunatus are graceful, and some times vigorous. He does not, however, deserve the praise given to him by Dr Neale, of having struck out a new path in Latin hymnody. On the contrary, he may more justly be described as a disciple of the school of Prudentius, and as having affected the classical style, at least as much as any of his predecessors. The poets of this primitive epoch, which closed with the 6th century, wrote in the old classical metres, and made use of a con siderable variety of them anapaestic, anacreontic, hendecasyllabic, asclepiad, hexameters and pentameters, and others. Gregory and some of the Ambrosian authors occasionally wrote in sapphics ; but the most frequent measure was the iambic dimeter, and, next to that, the trochaic. The full alcaic stanza does not appear to have been used for church purposes before the 16th century, though some of its elements were. In the greater number of these works,
 * i general intention to conform to the rules of Roman prosody is

manifest ; but even those writers (like Prudentius) in whom that conformity was most decided allowed themselves much liberty of deviation from it. Other works, including some of the very earliest, and some of conspicuous merit, were of the kind described by Bede as not metrical but &quot;rhythmical,&quot; i.e. (as he explains the term &quot;rhythm&quot;), &quot;modulated to the ear in imitation of different metres.&quot; It would be more correct to call them metrical (e.g., still trochaic or iambic, &c., but, according to new laws of syllabic quantity, depending entirely on accent, and not on the power of vowels or the position of consonants, laws by which the future prosody of all modern European nations was to be governed. There are also, in the hymns of the primitive period (even in those of Ambrose), anticipations, irregular indeed and inconstant, but certainly not accidental, of another great innovation, destined to receive important developments, that of assonance or rhyme, in the final letters or syllables of verses. Archbishop Trench, in the introduction to his Sacred Latin Poetry, has traced the whole course of the transition from the ancient to the modern forms of versifica tion, ascribing it to natural and necessary causes, which made such changes needful for the due development of the new forms of spiritual and intellectual life, consequent upon the conversion of the Latin speaking nations to Christianity. From the 6th century downwards we see this transforma- 6th tion making continual progress, each nation of Western centi Christendom adding, from time to time, to the earlier dowi hymns in its service-books others of more recent and fre- w quently of local origin. For these additions, the com memorations of saints, &c., as to which the devotion of one place often differed from that of another, offered especial opportunities. This process, while it promoted the develop ment of a mediaeval as distinct from the primitive style, led also to much deterioration in the quality of hymns, of which, perhaps, some of the strongest examples may be found in a volume published in 1865 by the Irish Archaeo logical Society from a manuscript in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. It contains a number of hymns by Irish saints of the 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries, in several instances fully rhymed, and in one mixing Erse and Latin barbarously together, as was not uncommon, at a much later date, in semi-vernacular hymns of other countries. The Mozarabic Breviary, and the collection of hymns used in the Anglo-Saxon churches, published in 1851 by the Surtees Society (chiefly from a Benedictine MS. in the college library of Durham, supplemented by other MSS. in the British Museum), supply many further illustrations of the same decline of taste : such sapphics, e.g., as the &quot; Festum insigne prodiit coruscum &quot; of Isidore, and the &quot;O veneranda Trinitas laudanda&quot; of the Anglo-Saxon books. The early mediaeval period, however, from the time of Gregory the Great to that of Hildebrand, was far from deficient in the production of good hymns, wherever learn ing flourished. Bede in England, and Paul &quot; the Deacon, the author of a fairly classical sapphic ode on St John the Baptist,- in Italy, were successful followers of the Ambrosian and Gregorian styles. Eleven metrical hymns are attributed to Bede by Cassander ; and there are also in one of Bede s works (Collectanea et Plores) two rhythmical hymns of considerable length on the Day of Judgment, w T ith the refrains &quot; In. tremendo die&quot; and &quot;Attende homo,&quot; both irregularly rhymed, and, in parts, not unworthy of comparison with the &quot; Dies Ira.&quot; Paulinus, patriarch of Aquileia, contemporary with Paul, wrote rhythmical tri meter iambics in a manner peculiar to himself. Theodulph, bishop of Orleans (793-835), author of the famous pro cessional hymn for I D alm Sunday in hexameters and penta meters, &quot; Gloria, laus, et honor tibi sit, Ilex Christe Redemptor&quot; (&quot;Glory and honour and laud be to Thee, King Christ the Redeemer&quot;), and Hrabanus Main us, arch bishop of Mainz (847-856), the pupil of Alcuin, and the most learned theologian of his day, enriched the church with some excellent works. Among the anonymous hymns of the same period there are three of great beauty, of which the influence may be traced in most, if not all, of the &quot;New Jerusalem&quot; hymns of later generations, includ ing those of Germany and Great Britain: &quot; Urbs beala Hierusalem&quot; (&quot;Blessed city, heavenly Salem&quot;); &quot;Alleluia piis edite laudibus&quot; (&quot;Alleluias sound ye in strains of holy praise,&quot; called, from its burden, &quot;Alleluia pcrenne&quot;) ; and &quot;Alleluia dulce carmen&quot; (&quot;Alleluia, song of sweetness&quot;), which, being found in Anglo-Saxon hymnaries certainly older than the Conquest, cannot be of the late date assigm d to it, in his Medieval Hymns and Sequences, by Dr Neata. These were followed by the &quot;Chorus nova3 Hierusalem&quot; (&quot;Ye Choirs of New Jerusalem&quot;) of Fulbert, bishop of Chartres (1007-1028). This group of hymns is remarkable for an attractive union of melody, imagination, poetical colouring, and faith. It represents, perhaps, the best and