Page:The seven great hymns of the mediaeval church - 1902.djvu/127

Rh after the Dies Iræ was written (1268), he lot his wife, and, broken-hearted, renounced the world to join, like Thomas of Celano, the Order of St. Francis. In the ardor of his devotion, he tried to atone by elf-ought tortures not only for his own ins, but, like our Saviour, for the ins of others. At laft his orrows ank into infancy and ended in death.

Dying about the time that Petrarch was born, and while Dante was till a young man, his Cantate Spirituali mark the dawning day of the Italian language. In an old Venetian copy of thee, the hitorian of the Francicans (Wadding) found a number of Latin poems, amongt which was the, and thus etablihed for the Order of St. Francis the honor of producing, within the ame century, the two mot celebrated of Latin hymns.

When the firt edition of this book was publihed, there was a weaknes in the Englih expoition of the STABAT MATER which no earch after fitting tranlations could cure, and the reader was warned that few Englih verions had been made, and not one that trictly