Chapter Seven Influence and Survival of Latin Hymns
I. Late Medieval Influence
From the creation of the Latin hymn in the fourth century by the earliest writers to the efforts of poets heralding the Renaissance, Christian hymnody left its imprint upon contemporary verse both secular and religious. The field of inquiry suggested by this thesis has never been fully explored although it abounds in fascinating possibilities for the student of medieval culture. The subject, of course, cannot be treated within the limits of this chapter but such hints may be offered as have resulted from a partial study of particular areas or fall within the bounds of reasonable assumption.
Perhaps the most pervading influence and the simplest to trace is the metrical. The iambic dimeter of Ambrose, both in its quantitative and in its rhythmical form, became a standard for poetry of all types, appearing even in the modern age as the long meter of the metrical versions of the Psalms. Trochaic verse, initiated in hymns by Hilary, employed most effectively by Fortunatus and always a favorite, rivalled the iambic in the vernaculars. As the metrical features of the Victorine sequence became increasingly popular, they were taken over bodily by secular poets writing both in Latin and in the modern European languages. Classical meters fostered by Prudentius and later by the Carolingian poets showed less vitality as poetical models. The liturgical hymn and the sequence are of prime importance in their metrical aspects but the meters of the piae cantiones and other religious lyrics were also widely appropriated. The origin of rhyme is a related problem which in the opinion of W. B. Sedgwick “centers around the Christian hymn.”1 Numerous publications by scholars who, like Sedgwick, have spoken with authority, bear witness to the general linguistic and literary interest attaching to these subjects of research.
Aside from aspects of meter and rhyme, medieval secular verse in Latin borrowed generously from the hymn; witness the songs of the wandering scholars as recorded in the collection edited under the title Cambridge Songs and also the goliardic poetry of the Carmina Burana.2 Well-known hymns are frequently parodied and, in general, the liturgical models are employed to create humorous allusion or pungent satire. The student song Gaudeamus igitur is a familiar illustration of this general group.
The adaptation of the sequence to secular purposes resulted in a novel type of verse, the modus, already cited in connection with the origin of the sequence, illustrated by the Modus florum of which many examples have been preserved varying in beauty and poetic conceit. Reference has been made in an earlier chapter to the deeper problems underlying sequence origins on the poetical side. Discussion among scholars as to the priority of the religious or secular Latin lyric is still active.3 Some would say that popular Latin verse arose by virtue of the hymnodic influence. Others would posit a vernacular impulse which eventuated in the Latin lyric both secular and religious.4
Apart from the lyric, there are in the general field of Latin verse many resemblances to hymnic models. The lengthy narrative poems of the Peristephanon in which Prudentius recounted the sufferings of the martyrs, St. Laurence, St. Vincent, St. Agnes, St. Eulalia and others, and celebrated their spiritual victories, have been called hymns. It has been argued that they were actually sung,5 in full, upon the festival days of the saints in question although the praises of St. Vincent, for example, are expanded to 576 lines, other hymns varying from 66 to 1140 lines. It may have been possible in the more leisurely tempo of medieval life to render the martyr hymns of Prudentius in their entirety. A far more provocative suggestion makes them the starting point for the medieval saints’ legend of which illustrations exist in lengthy Latin poems and later, in vernacular verse.
The contribution of hymns to the liturgical drama of the Church has been noted in connection with the sequence, Victimae paschali laudes. It is nowhere contended that the hymn created the drama but that the dramatic phraseology is often reminiscent of the hymn and that the role of the singers in the schola cantorum and the choir, as actors in the liturgical play, becomes significant in connection with the hymnic origins of these productions within the church.6
Finally, an interesting group of Latin poems having an interrelation with the hymn is illustrated by O Roma nobilis, a tenth century lyric praising the apostles and martyrs of the Eternal City (A. H. 51. 219).7
The transition from Latin to vernacular languages took place as soon as the latter were sufficiently developed to produce Christian verse. The Gospels were rendered into Germanic rhymed verse in the ninth century by Otfried the Frank who inserted a hymn of ten stanzas as a poetic version of the opening of St. John’s Gospel. It is written in seven-syllable couplets with four or six to a stanza.8 Otfried is said to have been influenced by Rabanus Maurus and with good reason since the latter was a recognized leader in mediating Latin patristic and other writings to the Germanic world of his day.
Otfried was the first of many medieval poets whose religious lyrics in the vernacular, often revealing the inspiration of the Latin hymn, have been preserved. Their verse appears in Wackernagel’s great collection in which he has edited 1448 specimens from the time of Otfried to that of Hans Sachs.9
Celtic churchmen were pioneers among medieval Latin hymnists, their earliest contribution dating from the sixth century. Religious lyrics in the Celtic tongue must have been produced and recorded before the Danish invasions although the destruction of these manuscripts delayed the compiling of new vernacular collections until the eleventh century. The hymn Hymnum dicat turba fratrum, written in trochaic tetrameter, and preserved in the Bangor Antiphonary, to which reference has been made in Chapter One, apparently influenced the metrical system of Celtic poetry. The metrical pattern used by Otfried, a quatrain of seven-syllable lines with rhymed couplets, is commonly found.10 Latin influence is at least tentatively acknowledged by scholars in the rhyme and stanza structure of Celtic poetry prior to the eleventh century.11
After the creation of the Latin sequence, vernacular poetry is overwhelmingly affected by this new type of hymn. Germanic poets followed the leadership of Notker. The Victorine school, rejecting the strophic system and rhythmic model of the Germans, built the couplet and rhyme, already existing in hymns, into a characteristic structure which proved to be easily transferable to vernacular uses. It has been asserted that the lyric poetry of the Middle Ages, in German, French, Provençal and English was reborn in this conquest of the vernacular by the Latin sequence.12 At the same time, the possible influence of the vernacular over the Latin must not be ignored. There is a resemblance, for instance, between the narrative elements of sequences written in honor of saints and the ballads of secular poetry.13 Whatever the conflicting currents may have been in the period of origins, the smooth-flowing stream of the vernacular religious lyric with its many tributaries, refreshed the spirit of medieval man and recalled to memory his religious heritage.
The vitality of this new religious poetry which flourishes in the later centuries, in which the Latin hymn suffered so marked a deterioration, suggests that the future of the hymn, like other media of Latin literature, was to be realized in a new linguistic environment. It was not the verity but the language that was destined to change.
In order to appreciate the variety and interest of that vernacular lyric poetry which arose within the sphere of influence of the Latin hymn, illustrations may be culled from many parts of Europe. Mary-Verse in Meistergesang is the title chosen by Sister Mary Schroeder for her study of one aspect of the German lyric.14 A very large proportion, perhaps two-thirds of the songs are religious in content, showing to a degree, their dependence upon hymnal poetry, while nearly one-fourth of them are devoted to the praise of the Virgin. Occasionally, a Latin sequence has been freely translated, paraphrased or elaborated.
The Swedish vernacular is represented by the patriotic poem of Bishop Thomas of Strängnäs, who, in the fourteenth century, wrote in praise of the national hero, Engelbrekt. Metrical and stanza form are both of the hymnal type.15
The Romance languages afford myriad examples of the sequence form. St. Martial, near Limoges, already cited as a center in the production of the sequence, and Paris, the home of the Victorine school, are both places of origin for vernacular lyrics. A close connection has been traced between the sequence and the French romantic lyric, especially the lai, a connection amply illustrated and tabulated for the convenience of the student.16 More familiar, perhaps, than the lais are the appealing lines of François Villon, “Dame des cieulx, regente terrienne,” which possesses all the charm of the Marian lyric at its best.
About the year 1270, Alfonso X of Castile made a collection of 400 poems in the Galician-Portuguese dialect, the Cántigas de Santa María around which a considerable literature has grown up. All are devotional in subject matter. Alfonso X was a literary patron. Ramon Lull (c. 1315) was himself a poet who wrote in the Catalan tongue although his mystical writings are better known than his poetry. His Hours of our Lady St. Mary was modeled upon the hymn and set to a hymn tune.17
The Italian poets of religious verse flourished as writers both in the vernacular and in Latin. St. Francis of Assisi, (1181-1226), whose Cantico di fratre sole18 is known and loved by countless persons in our own day, was among the earliest poets of the Laudi spirituali. The origin of the laudi has been traced in part to the ejaculations of the flagellants of northern Italy where bands of these penitents were commonly seen in the thirteenth century. A century earlier, religious societies of singers, the laudisti, were in existence in Venice and Florence. Arezzo knew such a group as early as 1068.19 Included among the known writers of laudi are Jacopone da Todi, (1230-1306), and Bianco da Siena, (c. 1307), both classified today as writers of hymns.
The movement represented by the laudisti spread to France, German-speaking lands, the Low Countries and Poland. Everywhere the vernacular was used with popular unison melodies. As we approach the Renaissance, Florence is still conspicuous for her authors of the religious vernacular lyric, among them Lorenzo di Medici and Savonarola, (1452-1498), better known as the Florentine preacher whose passionate denunciations of the evils of his day brought him into conflict with the Church and resulted in his execution. His Laude al crucifisso has been translated in part by Jane F. Wilde as a hymn, “Jesus, refuge of the weary.”
The English religious lyrics of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may be read with enjoyment in the collections of Carleton Brown whose appraisement of this poetry was the fruit of great learning and a sympathetic discernment of human values.20 Here the Latin hymn may be found as it was translated, adapted and imitated in English verse. The Latin sequence, as it increased in popularity, was taken over by English poets with great success. Some of these writers who appropriated the Latin models, like William Herebert, Jacob Ryman and John Lydgate, are known to us by name while others are anonymous. Their poetic themes are varied but Marian verse appears in many forms: hymns, laments, and rhymed petition. Incidentally, a knowledge of the Latin original must be presupposed on the part of the English laity of this period. Chaucer wrote for the layman who must have understood his use of the sequence Angelus ad Virginem in the “Miller’s Tale” and the sequence Alma redemptoris mater in the “Prioress’ Tale.”
English macaronic verse best reveals the Latin hymn. Over and over again, Latin quotations are used, sometimes embedded in the text, sometimes added as refrains, an understanding of which is always vital to the appreciation of the poem.
The carol, although extraneous to true hymnody, because of its non-liturgical character and usage, was related to Latin origins; to some extent, to the cantio and the conductus. A form of vernacular lyric, the carol often shares the macaronic features which were common in the blended phraseology of the European languages with Latin in this popular type of late medieval verse. It is relevant here as a religious lyric which bears the unmistakable mark of the hymnic inheritance. Whatever is true of the English carol is equally true of the carol in other lands. To-day these lyrics are of great interest and of increasing usage in the Christian Church at large. Their musical and poetic aspects are both subjects of enthusiastic research. Many persons in our modern society who have never studied the classical languages are able to sing the Latin words and phrases they contain, with understanding, as did their medieval predecessors.
II. Influence and Survival of Latin Hymns Since the Middle Ages
The writing of Latin hymns by no means died out with the medieval era in the sixteenth century. The great prestige of Latin studies fostered by the Renaissance alone would have been sufficient to perpetuate the practice. The Church, too, was engaged in a movement to standardize and improve the Latinity of the breviary hymns which resulted in the Trentine cycle as we know it today. A concurrent movement toward uniformity of rites appreciably reduced the number of breviaries and the variety of their hymns, but those breviaries which maintained an independent existence had their own complete cycles. Such were the Cluniac Breviary of 1686 and the Paris Breviary of 1736 for which new hymns were written and sung side by side with those of medieval origin. Among post-Renaissance poets represented in these collections were the Frenchmen Jean-Baptiste de Santuil and his brothers Claude and Baptiste. Freshly inspired by classical studies, the new hymn writers repudiated medieval ruggedness and stylistic neglect in favor of the smooth and finished Latinity affected by contemporary poets. From the substantial body of verse produced in these centuries, Adeste fideles, “O come, all ye faithful,” has proved a favorite. Sometimes classified as a hymn, sometimes as a carol, it originated in the English colony at Douay about the year 1740, from the pen of John Francis Wade.21
The continuity of the Roman Use, however, was not disturbed. The Roman Breviary had acquired its cycle of hymns in the processes of evolution which have been traced in the preceding chapters. Trentine revisions under the guidance of Pope Urban VIII, (1623-1644), made with the highest motives but often deplored by later scholars, transformed the medieval originals into products of the Renaissance. The Trentine Breviary contains many of the finest medieval hymns which, although they have suffered alterations, have carried the traditional heritage into modern times.22
By virtue of its prestige and its world-wide circulation, the Roman Breviary has been the vehicle by which the Latin hymn has penetrated into the modern vernacular languages in translations. It is a subject of frequent comment that the full treasury of hymns has not been drawn upon by the Catholic Church since the hymns of the Roman Breviary have monopolized the field. The historical reason for this is clear and also for the fact that in the Roman Missal only five sequences, each of recognized superiority, have been retained.
The restriction of Latin hymns in Roman Catholic liturgical usage to a relatively small number allows certain exceptions. The Benedictine and other religious orders use their own cycle of breviary hymns and present-day Catholic hymnals in popular use often contain translations of hymns and sequences additional to those of the Roman Breviary and Missal.
Protestant Churches are not limited in their selection of Latin hymns for translation, making their choices from the entire medieval store. The revival of Latin hymns in a translated form, which marked the Oxford Movement in the Anglican Church in the mid-nineteenth century, drew upon the Sarum Breviary as one native to English soil and therefore appropriate to the English Church. That these hymns were largely represented in the Roman Breviary, was well-known but the earlier and unrevised texts were preferred. In his function as a translator, John Mason Neale was preeminently a leader in the task of making known to the adherents of the Church of England their heritage of hymns.
An attempt was made at this time to perpetuate not only the words but the Gregorian Chant as a suitable musical setting for the vernacular. Here the innovators were only partly successful and the chant, although enthusiastically employed at first was gradually abandoned in the English Church as the sole musical vehicle for the Latin hymn in translation. Similarly Latin hymns have been taken over into other modern languages by translators of Protestant as well as Catholic allegiance.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the influence of Latin hymn meters continued to be felt in vernacular hymnody. Metrical versions of the Psalms made by Isaac Watts are often illustrative of old Latin forms which may also be recognized in his own hymns. This may not have been a conscious imitation of Latin originals for by this time hymn meters were ingrained in English poetry, but merely an indirect reflection, for example, of the Ambrosian model.
More subtle has been the influence in modern times of the most ancient canons of hymnic expression; objective presentation of scriptural narrative, doctrinal emphasis and a certain joyful austerity in the praise of God. During the three and a half centuries which have passed since the era of the Protestant Reformation, the Christian hymn has experienced a succession of literary movements, reflecting, for example, the spirit of the Age of Reason and of the Romantic Era. Contemporary musical evolution has, in turn, been vitally important to the growth of the hymn as it has been mated with the melodies of the Genevan Psalter, the chorales of Bach, the musical novelties of instrumental origin, the folk song and latterly the native music of regions open to missionary enterprise.
Throughout this varied experience the stream of medieval Latin hymnody has continued its course. As an accompaniment of Roman Catholic worship this was only to be expected. The conquest by the Latin hymn of areas beyond the limits of the Roman Church is more significant. The most recent hymnals of leading Protestant denominations, to which the Latin hymn in translation has made a modest but genuine contribution, bear witness to the ageless character of this hymnody. Modern investigation of hymn sources, their origins, authorship and influence, has created the study of documentary hymnology as it is known today. In the processes of this inquiry the medieval Latin hymn has been invested with new interest in the minds of a multitude of worshipers, both Catholic and Protestant, who have hitherto been unaware of, or indifferent to, their common heritage.