Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/599

583 WESTERN CITUnCIT.] H Y M N 8 583 highest type of the middle school, between the severe Am- brosian simplicity and the florid luxuriance of later times. ni Another celebrated hymn, which belongs to the first cutor. medifeval period, is the &quot; Veni Creator Spiritus &quot; (&quot; Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire &quot;). The earliest recorded occasion of its use is that of a translation (898) of the relics of St Marcellus, mentioned in the Annals of the Benedictine order. It has since been constantly sung throughout Western Christendom (as versions of it still are in the Church of England), as part of the appointed offices for the coronation of kings, the consecration and ordination of bishops and priests, the assembling of synods, and other great ecclesiastical solemnities. It has been attributed probably in consequence of certain corruptions in the text ifker. of Ekkehard s Life of Notker (a work of the 13th century) to Charlemagne. Ekkehard wrote in the Benedictine monastery of Sfc Gall, to which Notker belonged, with full access to its records ; and an ignorant interpolator, regardless of chronology, added, at some later date, the word &quot;Great&quot; to the name of &quot;the emperor Charles,&quot; wherever it was mentioned in that work. The biographer relates that Notker, a man of a gentle contemplative nature, observant of all around him, and accustomed to find spiritual and poetical suggestions in common sights and sounds, was moved by the sound of a mill-wheel to compose his &quot; sequence &quot; on the Holy Spirit, &quot; Sancti Spiritus adsit nobis gratia &quot; (&quot; Present with us ever be the Holy Spirit s grace &quot;) ; and that, when finished, he sent it as a present to &quot; the emperor Charles,&quot; who in return sent him back, &quot; by the same messenger,&quot; the hymn &quot; Veni Creator,&quot; which (says Ekkehard), the same &quot; Spirit had inspired him to write&quot; (&quot; Sibi idem Spiritus inspira- verat&quot;). If this story is to be credited, and, from its circumstantial and almost dramatic character, it has an air of truth, the author of &quot;Veni Creator&quot; was not Charlemagne, but his grandson Charles the Bald, who succeeded to the royal crown in 840, about the time when Notker was born, and to the imperial in 875. Notker himself long survived that emperor, and died in 912. The invention of &quot; sequences &quot; by Notker may be regarded &quot; ces - as the beginning of the later mediaeval epoch of Latin hymnody. In the eucharistic service, in which (as has been stated) hymns were not generally used, it had been the practice, except at certain seasons, to sing &quot;laud,&quot; or &quot; Alleluia,&quot; between the epistle and the gospel, and to fill up what would otherwise have been a long pause, by extend ing the cadence upon the two final vowels of the &quot; Alleluia &quot; into a protracted strain of music. It occurred to Notker that, while preserving the spirit of that part of the service, the monotony of the interval might be relieved by intro ducing at that point a chant of praise specially composed for the purpose. With that view he produced the peculiar species of rhythmical composition which obtained the name of &quot;sequentia&quot; (probably from following after the close of the &quot; Alleluia &quot;), and also that of &quot; prosa,&quot; because its structure was originally irregular and unmetrical, resembling in this respect the Greek &quot; troparia,&quot; and the &quot; Te Deum,&quot; &quot; llenedicite,&quot; and canticles. That it was in some measure suggested by the forms of the later Greek hymnody seems probable, both from the intercourse (at that time frequent) between the Eastern and Western churches, and from the application by Ekkehard, in his biography and elsewhere (e.g., in Lyndwood s Provincial V), of some technical terms, borrowed from the Greek terminology, to works of Notker and his school and to books containing them. 13 r Nc.ile, in n, learned dissertation prefixed to Ids collection of sequences from mediaeval Missals, and enlarged in a Latin letter to Dr Daniel (printed in the fifth volume of Daniel s Thesaurus), has investigated the laws of ctesura and modulation which arc discover able in these works. Those first brought into use were sent by their author to Nicholas I., pope from 858 to 867, who authorized their use, and that of others composed after the same model by other brethren of St Gall, in all churches of the West. Although the sequences of Notker and his school, &quot;which then rapidly passed into most German, French, and British Missals, were not metrical, the art of &quot;assonance&quot; was much practised in them. Many of those in the Sarum and French Missals have every verso, and even every clause or division of a verse, ending with the same vowel &quot;a,&quot; perhaps with some reference to the terminal letter of &quot; Alleluia.&quot; Artifices such as these naturally led the way to the adaptation of the same kind of composition to regular metre and fully developed rhyme. Dr Neale s full and large collection, and the second volume of Dr Daniel s Thesaurus, contain numerous examples, both of the &quot;proses,&quot; properly so called, of the Not- kerian type, and of those of the later school, which (from the religious house to which its chief writer belonged) has been called &quot;Victorine. &quot; Most Missals appear to have contained some of both kinds. In the majority of those from which Dr Neale s speci mens are taken, the metrical kind largely prevailed ; but in some (e.g., those of Sarum and Liege) the greater number were Not ker ian. Of the sequence on the Holy Ghost, sent by Notker (according to Ekkehard) to Charles the Bald, Dr Neale says that it &quot; was in use all over Europe, even in those countries, like Italy and Spain, which usually rejected sequences&quot;; and that, &quot;in the Missal of Palencia, the priest was ordered to hold a white dove in his hands, while intoning the first syllables, and then to let it go.&quot; Another of the most remarkable of Notker s sequences, beginning &quot;Media in vita&quot; (&quot;In the midst of life we are in death &quot;), is said to have been suggested to him while observing some workmen engaged in the construction of a bridge over a torrent near his monastery. Miss Winkwortli states that this was long used as a battle-song, until the custom was forbidden, on account of its being supposed to exercise a magical influence. A translation of it (&quot; Mitten wir im Leben sind &quot;) is one of Luther s funeral hymns ; and all but the opening sentence of that part of the burial service of the Church of England which is directed to be &quot; said or sung &quot; at the grave, &quot; while the corpse is made ready to be laid into the earth,&quot; is taken from it. The &quot;Golden Sequence,&quot; &quot; Veni, saucte Spiritus &quot; (&quot;Holy Spirit, Lord of Light &quot;), is an early example of the transi tion of sequences from a simply rhythmical to a metrical form. Archbishop Trench, who esteems it &quot; the loveliest of all the hymns in the whole circle of Latin sacred poetry,&quot; is inclined to give credit to a tradition which ascribes its authorship to Robert II., king of France, sou of Hugh Capet (997-1031). Others have assigned to it a later date, some attributing it to Pope Innocent III., and some to Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury. Many translations, in German, English, and other languages, attest its merit. Berengarius of Tours, St Bernard of Clairvaux, and Abelard, in the llth century and early in the 12th, followed in the same track; and the art of the Victorine school was carried to its greatest perfection by Adam of St Victor (who died between 1173 and 1194), &quot;the most fertile, and&quot; (in the concurrent judg ment of Archbishop Trench and Dr Neale) &quot;the greatest of the Latin hymnographers of the Middle Ages.&quot; _ The archbishop s selection contains many excellent specimens of his works. But the two most widely celebrated of all this class of compositions, works which have exercised the talents of the greatest musical composers, and of innumerable trans lators in almost all languages, are the &quot;Dies Ir8e&quot;DiesInc (&quot; That day of wrath, that dreadful clay &quot;), by Thomas do Celano, the companion and biographer of St Francis of Assisi (who died in 1226), and the &quot; Stabat Mater st.ibat dolorosa &quot; (&quot; By the cross sad vigil keeping &quot;) of Jacopone Mater. or Jacobus do Benedictis, a Franciscan humorist and reformer, who was persecuted by Pope Boniface VIII. for his satires on the prelacy of the time, and died very old in 1306. Besides these, the 13th century produced the famous sequence &quot; Lauda Sion Salvatorem &quot; (&quot; Sion, lift