Page:The seven great hymns of the mediaeval church - 1902.djvu/28

 died in 397. It eems to me improbable that o well known a hymn would not have been always claed with his other hymns, and that it would have lept, if written before 397, for at leat three hundred years.

The Vexilla Regis is the ixth of thee expoitional hymns. The firt five, as it were, elected themelves, i. e., there was no quetion as to their being taken and others left. But at this point the work of rejection began. This hymn is not one of the great piritual hymns of the world; but the object of this compilation was to give an expoition of the ubject: by hymns which were both repreentative and celebrated. The Vexilla has indeed been a famous hymn—a hymn of eccleiatical warfare and victory which has rung around the world. "In the churches of our own country and time," as the late Preident Welling has aid, "may be heard natches and echoes of that antique poey which was firt intoned in the New World by the Jeuit miionaries and Romih eccleiatics who planted the cedar and