Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/600

584 584 HYMNS [WESTERN CHURCH. thy voice and sing &quot;), and the four other well-known sacra- Aquinas, mental hymns of St Thomas Aquinas, viz., &quot; Pange lingua gloriosi corporis mysterium &quot; (&quot; Sing, my tongue, the Saviour s glory&quot;), &quot; Verbura supermini prodi ens &quot; (&quot;The Word, descending from above &quot; not to be confounded with the Ambrosian hymn from which it borrowed the first line), &quot; Sacris solemniis juncta sint gaudia &quot; (&quot; Let us with hearts renewed our grateful homage pay &quot;), and &quot; Adoro Te devote, latens Deitas &quot; (&quot; O Godhead hid, devoutly I adore Thee &quot;), a group of remarkable compositions, written by him for the then new festival of Corpus Christi, of which he induced Pope Urban IV. (1261-1265) to decree the observance. In these (of which all but &quot;Adoro Te devote,&quot; &c., passed rapidly into Breviaries and Missals) the doctrine of transubstantiation is set forth with a wonderful degree of scholastic precision ; and they exercised, probably, a not unimportant influence upon the general reception of that dogma. They are undoubtedly works of genius, powerful in thought, feeling, and expression. Medieval These and other mediaeval hymn-writers of the 12th and hymns. 13th centuries may be described, generally, as poet-school men. Their tone is contemplative, didactic, theological ; they are especially fertile and ingenious in the field of mystical interpretation. Two great monasteries in the East had, in the 8th and 9th centuries, been the principal centres of Greek hymnology ; and, in the West, three monasteries, St Gall, near Constance (which was long the especial seat of German religious literature), Cluny in Burgundy, and St Victor, near Paris,- obtained a similar distinction. St Gall produced, besides Notker, several dis tinguished sequence writers, probably his pupils, Hart- mann, Hermann, and Gottschalk, to the last of whom Dr Neale ascribes the &quot; Alleluiatic Sequence&quot; (&quot; Cante- mus cuncti melodum nunc Alleluia&quot;), well known in England through his translation, &quot; The strain upraise of joy and praise.&quot; The chief poets of Cluny were two of its abbots, Odo (who died in 947) and Peter the Venerable (1122-1 156), and one of Peter s monk&quot;, Bernard of Morlaix, who wrote the remarkable poem on &quot; Contempt of the World&quot; in about 3000 longrolling &quot;leonine-dactylic &quot; verses, from parts of which Dr Neale s popular hymns, &quot; Jerusalem the golden,&quot; &c., are taken. The abbey of St Victor, besides Adam and his follower Pistor, was destined after wards to produce the most popular church poet of the 17th century. There were other distinguished Latin hymn-writers of the later mediaeval period besides those already mentioned. Bernard The name of St Bernard of Clairvaux cannot be passed of Clair- over with the mere mention of the fact that he was the vaux. author of some metrical sequences. He was, in truth, the father, in Latin hymnody, of that warm and passionate form of devotion which some may consider to apply too freely to Divine Objects the language of human affection, but which has, nevertheless, been popular with many devout persons, in Protestant as well as Roman Catholic churches. Spee, &quot;Angelus,&quot; Madame Guyon, Bishop Ken, Count Zin- zendorf, and Frederick William Faber may be regarded as disciples in this school. Many hymns, in various lan guages, have been founded upon St Bernard s &quot; Jesu dulcis memoria&quot; (&quot;Jesu, the very thought of Thee&quot;), &quot;(Jesu dulcedo cordium&quot; (&quot; Jesu, Thou joy of loving hearts &quot;), and &quot;Jesu Rex admirabilis &quot; (&quot; Jesu, King most wonderful &quot;), three portions of one poem, nearly 200 lines long. Cardinal Damiani, the friend of Pope Gregory VII., Marbode (bishop of Rennes) in the llth, Hildebert (arch bishop of Tours) in the 12th, and Cardinal Bonaventura in the 13th centuries, are other eminent men, who added poetical fame, as hymnographers, to high public distinction. Before the time of the Reformation, the multiplication of sequences (often as unedifying in matter as unpoetical in style) had done much to degrade the common conception of hymnody. In some parts of France, Portugal, Sardinia, and Bohemia, their use in the vernacular language had been allowed. In Germany also there were vernacular sequences as early as the 12th century, specimens of which may be seen in the third chapter of Miss Winkworth s Christian Singers of Germany. Scoffing parodies upon sequences are said to have been among the means used in Scotland to discredit the old church services. After the 15th century they were discouraged at Rome. They retained for a time some of their old popularity among German Protestants, and were only gradually relinquished in France. A new &quot; prose,&quot; in honour of St Maxentia, is among the compositions of Jean Baptiste Santeul ; and Dr Daniel s second volume closes with one written in 1855 upon the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The taste of the Renaissance was offended by all deviations from Romai classical prosody and Latinity. Pope Leo X. directed the whole vision body of the hymns in use at Rome to be reformed ; and a volume hymn, of &quot; new ecclesiastical hymns,&quot; prepared by Ferreri, a scholar of Vicenza, to whom Leo had committed that task, appeared in 1523, with the sanction of a later pope, Clement VII. The next step was to revise the whole Roman Breviary. That undertaking, after passing through several stages under different popes (particularly Pius V. and Clement VIII.), was at last brought to a conclusion by Urban VIII., in 1631. From this revised Breviary a large num ber of mediaeval hymns, both of the earlier and the later periods, were excluded ; and in their places many new hymns, including some by Pope Urban himself, and some by Cardinal Bellarmine and another cardinal (Silvius Antoniaims) were introduced. The hymns of the primitive epoch, from Hilary to Gregory the Great, for the most part retained their places (especially in the offices for everyday of the week); and there remained altogether from seventy to eighty of earlier date than the llth century. Those, however, which were so retained were freely altered, and by no means generally improved. The revisers appointed by Pope Urban (three learned Jesuits, Strada, Gallucci, and Petrucci), professed to have made &quot; as few changes as possible &quot; in the works of Ambrose, Gregory, Pru- dentius, Sedulius, Fortunatus, and other &quot; poets of great name.&quot; But some changes, even in those works, were made with consider able boldness ; and the pope, in the &quot; constitution&quot; by which his new book was promulgated, boasted that, &quot; with the exception of a very small number ( perpaucis ), which were either prose or merely rhythmical, all the hymns had been made conformable to the laws of prosody and Latinity, those which could not be corrected by any milder method being entirely rewritten.&quot; The latter fate befel, among others, the beautiful &quot; Urbs beata Hierusalem,&quot; which now assumed the form (to many, perhaps, better known), of &quot; Coelestis urbs Jerusalem.&quot; Of the &quot;very few&quot; which were spared, the chief were &quot; Ave maris stella &quot; (&quot; Gentle star of ocean &quot;), &quot; Dies Ira, &quot; &quot; Stabat Mater dolorosa,&quot; the hymns of Thomas Aquinas, two of St Bernard, and one Ambrosian hymn, &quot;Jesu nos- tra Redemptio &quot; (&quot;0 Jesu, our Redemption &quot;), which approaches nearer than others to the tone of St Bernard. A then recent hymn of St Francis Xavier, with scarcely enough merit of any kind to atone for its neglect of prosody, &quot; O Deus, ego amo Te &quot; (&quot; God, I love Thee, not because&quot;), was at the same time introduced without change. This hymnary of Pope Urban VIII. is now in general use throughout the Roman Communion. The Parisian hymnary underwent three revisions the first in Paris. 1527, when a new &quot; Psaltery with hymns&quot; was issued. In this revisi such changes only were made as the revisers thought justifiable upon the principle of correcting supposed corruptions of the original text. Of these, the transposition, &quot; Urbs Jerusalem beata,&quot; instead of &quot; Urbs beata Hierusalem,&quot; may be taken as a typical example. The next revision was in 1670-1680, under Cardinal Perefixe, pre ceptor of Louis XIV., and Francis Harlay, successively archbishops of Paris, who employed for this purpose Claude Santeul, of the monastery of St Magloire, and, through him, obtained the assist ance of other French scholars, including his more celebrated brother, Jean Baptiste Santeul, of the abbey of St Victor, better known as &quot; Santolius Victorinus.&quot; The third and final revision was completed in 1735, under the primacy of Cardinal Archbishop de Vintimille, who engaged for it the services of Charles Coffin, then rector of the university of Paris. Many old hymns were omitted in Archbishop Harlay s Breviary, and a large number of new compositions, by the Santeuls and others, was introduced. It still, however, retained in their old places (without further changes than had been made in 1527) about seventy of earlier date than the llth century, including thirty-one Ambrosian, one by Hilary, eight by Prudentius, seven by Fortunatus, three by Paul the Deacon, two each by Sedulius, Elpis, Gregory, and Hrabanus Maurus, &quot;Veni Creator,&quot; and &quot; Urbs Jerusalem beata.&quot; Most of these disappeared