St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music

by E. G. P. Wyatt

DEPRECAMUR TE DOMINE

De-pre-ca-mur Te, Do-mi-ne,

in om-ni mi-se-ri-cor-di-a tu-a,

ut au-fe-ra-tur fu-ror tu-us et i-ra tu-a

a ci-vi-ta-te is-ta,

et de do-mo san-cta tu-a;

quo-ni-am pec-ca-vi-mus:

Al-le-lu-ya.

[[play tune: Deprecamur de domine]]

In 590 Pope Pelagius died. It was a time of great misery at Rome; there was famine and a pestilence in the city, the Tiber overflowed its banks, and the Lombards threatened invasion. The Popes were virtually the rulers of Rome at this time, and all the inhabitants turned to Gregory as their only hope. His proved abilities and high character were known to all, and he was unanimously elected by the clergy and the people. He shrank, however, from the office, and even petitioned the Emperor Maurice to withhold his confirmation of the election. While waiting for the Emperor’s answer, Gregory employed the occasion in preaching to the people, calling them to repentance. A Litany was sung through the streets of the city by seven companies of the clergy and people, starting from different churches and meeting at the Basilica of St. Maria Maggiore. From this litany, perhaps, was taken the processional antiphon, “Deprecamur Te Domine,” which was sung by Augustine and his companions on entering Canterbury at the outset of their English mission. At length the confirmation of his election arrived from the Emperor, and though Gregory still tried to avoid the office, he was eventually obliged to take it, and was consecrated September the 3rd, 590.

During the thirteen years of his popedom, Gregory had full scope for his talents as administrator, as well as ruler. The Roman Church had by this time become possessed of a great “patrimony,” and Gregory found time in the midst of his work of reforming the clergy and purifying the morals of the Church, to attend to even the smallest details in the management of these great estates. His letters give us the most vivid picture of his work and of his character. In them he is constantly giving directions and making arrangements that no injustice should be done to even the meanest peasant or serf on these estates; that their rents should be fixed, and no capricious exactions demanded of them, nor surcharges added to the payments legally due from them. He showed to the Jews a toleration and consideration which he did not always extend to schismatics, heretics, and heathen. He seems to have reserved his most violent language for Lombards and Patriarchs of Constantinople. He called worldly or negligent bishops to order, and in particular took vigorous measures to root out simony, which was very prevalent. He sent Augustine and his companions to England, and wrote them letters of exhortation and instruction; he found time to send them also church furniture, vessels and vestments, and a number of books.

He also became engaged in a controversy with John the Faster, the Patriarch of Constantinople, about the title of “Universal Bishop,” which was arrogated to the latter by himself and those about him. It was not a novelty, but Gregory seems to have seen the danger involved in its continued usage to the power which he claimed for the See of Rome. A whole series of his letters are consequently taken up with his vehement, not to say violent, protests against John’s use of the title. It is probably in connection with the fact that the Emperor Maurice had supported the Patriarch John in his claim of equality with the Pope of Rome, that the explanation is to be sought of a circumstance which remains the chief blot on Gregory’s fame. Maurice had given him little help against the Lombards, and had in various ways seemed to oppose or actually opposed Gregory in some of his reforms. When, therefore, Phocas murdered Maurice and usurped his throne, the Pope wrote him a fulsome letter of congratulation. He may not have been fully acquainted with the infamous character of Phocas, nor have fully known of the atrocious manner in which he had murdered the Emperor and his family, yet he must have known, at least, that he was a traitor, a murderer, and an usurper. Nothing can excuse him—knowing this—for writing in such a strain, saying “Glory to God in the highest,” and “Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad,” at the hopes aroused by the piety of the new Emperor.

He attached great importance to preaching, and many of his sermons remain to this day. He also wrote “Liber Pastoralis Curæ,” a treatise on the responsibilities and duties of Bishops. This book had immense influence; it was circulated in Spain; the Emperor had it translated into Greek; it was an authoritative text-book in Gaul for centuries; and it was translated into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred, and was widely disseminated in England. But it is in the services and service-books of the Church that he set his mark most conspicuously. He organized and enriched them, even the Canon of the Mass in which he added to the prayer of oblation the words “Diesque nostras in tua pace disponas.” The work which has been traditionally ascribed to him in the department of Church Music we shall enter into more fully.

From his monastic life onwards Gregory seems to have suffered from bad health, due in part, probably, to his extreme asceticism while living in his monastery. During the last few years of his life he was in continual pain from gout, which makes his activity and his achievements still more astonishing. For long he was confined to his bed altogether. He died on March 12th, 604. In contrast to the enthusiasm with which his accession to the Papacy was greeted, he was now accused by the fickle population of having caused the famine, which was then raging, by his lavish expenditure, though the latter was largely due to the charitable relief which he habitually gave to alleviate the distress which prevailed all the time that he filled the Papal chair. But he was canonized after his death by universal consent in the West, and the Council of Cloveshoo, in 747, fixed the 12th of March for his veneration: “That the birthday of the blessed Pope Gregory, and also the day of the burial of St. Augustine the Archbishop and Confessor (who being sent to the English by the said Pope, our father Gregory, first brought the knowledge of the Faith, the sacrament of Baptism, and the notice of the Heavenly Country), which is the 26th of May, be honourably observed by all: so that each day be kept with a cessation from labour, by ecclesiastics and monastics; and that the name of our blessed father and doctor Augustine be always mentioned in singing the Litany after the invocation of St. Gregory.”

THE
GREGORIAN TRADITION.

The tradition that St. Gregory reformed the Plainsong of his day, especially that of the Antiphonale Missarum, seems to have been held universally till 1675, when Pierre Gussanville brought out an edition of Gregory’s works, in which he threw doubts on the tradition. He was followed in 1729 by George, Baron d’ Eckhart, a friend of Leibnitz, who put forward the theory that it was Gregory II., and not Gregory I., who had done this work. In 1772, at Venice, a new edition of Gregory’s works was published by Gallicciolli; and in this were reproduced the arguments of Eckhart, leaving the question open for future investigation. Nothing more was heard of the theory till 1882, when, at the Congress of Arezzo, some speakers reproduced the doubts of Eckhart and Gallicciolli.

This did not attract much attention at the time, and the question was again reopened in 1890 by M. Gevaert in a lecture given in the presence of the Académie and of the King of the Belgians. The earlier “doubters” had argued the question from a purely historical standpoint: M. Gevaert lays stress especially on the musical side of the question. Theirs was chiefly negative; he proposes a theory of his own. He wishes to substitute Gregory II. or III. for Gregory I. The traditional view has been upheld against him by Dom Morin, Dr. Peter Wagner, and Rev. W. H. Frere.

The Historical Evidence may be summarized as follows, working backwards from a time when the Gregorian tradition was in existence beyond all question:—

I.—John the Deacon (c. 872), Vita St. Gregorii, lib. II., cap. vi., Antiphonarium Centonizans, Cantorum Constituit Scholam. “In the house of the Lord, like a most wise Solomon, knowing the compunction which the sweetness of music inspires, he compiled for the sake of the singers the collection called ‘Antiphoner,’ which is of so great usefulness. He founded also the School of Singers who to this day perform the sacred chant in the Holy Roman Church according to instructions received from him. He assigned to it several estates, and had two houses built for it, one situated at the foot of the steps of the Church of the Apostle St. Peter, the other in the neighbourhood of the buildings of the patriarchal palace of the Lateran. There to-day are still shown the couch on which he reposed while giving his singing lessons; and the whip with which he threatened the boys is still preserved and venerated as a relic, as well as his authentic Antiphoner. By a clause inserted in his deed of gift, he laid down under pain of anathema that these estates should be divided between the two portions of the School in payment for the daily service.“—(Patr. Lat., lxxv., 90.)

This extract may be taken to prove that—

1. In 872 at Rome Gregory I. was believed to be the author of the Antiphoner which bears his name.

2. The Schola Cantorum looked upon Gregory I. as its founder and endower.

3. The Schola was still believed to possess his “authenticum Antiphonarium” and certain other objects connected in the popular mind with the memory of what Gregory had done for the cause of the ecclesiastical chant.

It is certainly an important point that the Schola itself attributed its foundation to Gregory I. Such a tradition would be carefully preserved in an important corporation like this.

A further witness to the existence of St. Gregory’s couch is to be found in Notitia Ecclesiarum Urbis Romæ, an itinerary assigned by de Rossi to the seventh century, (de Rossi, Rom. Sot., vol. i., pp. 138-143.)

II.—Pope Leo IV. (847-855) to the Abbot Honoratus, Ex registro Leonis IIII. “There is something quite incredible, the sound of which has reached our ears: a thing which, if true, tends rather to diminish our consideration than to give it honour, to obscure it rather than to give it lustre. It appears in short that you feel nothing but aversion for the beautiful chant of St. Gregory, and for the manner of singing and reading laid down and taught by him in the Church, so that you are in disagreement on this point not only with the Holy See, which is near to you, but also with almost the whole Western Church, with all who use Latin to offer their praises to the Eternal King and pay Him the tribute of harmonious sounds.

“All these Churches have received with so much eagerness and ardent affection this tradition of Gregory, and after having received it unreservedly they find so much pleasure in it, that even now they apply to us for more of it, thinking that perhaps something more which they do not know of, may have been preserved among us. This Holy Pope Gregory, a servant of God and a famous preacher and a wise pastor, who did so much for the welfare of mankind, he it was who also composed this chant, which we sing in the Church and everywhere, with great pains and with a complete knowledge of the musical art. He wished by this means to act more powerfully upon men’s hearts in order to arouse and touch them; and in fact the sound of his sweet melodies has gathered in the Churches not merely spiritual men, but also those who are less cultivated and sensitive.

“I pray you not to allow yourself to remain in disagreement either with this Church, which is the chief head of religion, and from which no one wishes to stray, or with all those Churches of which we have spoken, if you love to live in complete peace and concord with the Universal Church. For if—which we do not believe—your aversion for our instruction and for the tradition of our holy Pontiff is such that you are not willing to conform in every point to our rite, both in chants and lessons, know that we will repel you from our communion; for it is fitting and healthful for you to follow the usages for which the Roman Church, mother of all and mistress of you, shows such great love and invincible attachment. For this reason we order you, under pain of excommunication, to conform in the Churches both in singing and reading exclusively to the order instituted by the Holy Pope Gregory and followed by us, and without fail to practise and sing it in future with the utmost zeal. For if—which we cannot believe—anyone shall attempt by any means whatever to turn you from the right path by leading you to a tradition other than that which we have just prescribed to you for the present and the future, we not only order that he be deprived of partaking of the Holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, but in virtue of our proper authority and that of all our predecessors, we decree that in punishment of his audacity and presumption he remain under a perpetual anathema.”—(Cod. Brit. Mus., add. 8873, fol. 168.)

Pope Leo, the author of this letter, had himself been a pupil at this same monastery of St. Martin. From thence also the priest John, the Precentor of St. Peter’s, had set out 200 years before to teach the English the system of chanting and reading followed at St. Peter’s.

The above extract throws an important light on the progress of the Gregorian reform of the ecclesiastical chant. In the latter half of the ninth century a powerful monastery close to Rome had not yet adopted it. Compare with this fact the presence of the Ambrosian chant in the province of Capua in the middle of the eleventh century (Kienle, in Studien und Mittheilungen des Benedictiner und Cistercienser-Orden, 1884, p. 346), and the Ambrosian rubrics of various books copied a little later for churches at Rome itself (Tomasi, Opp. vol. vii., pp. 9 & 10), and it will be seen how gradually the Gregorian books attained their universal supremacy.

III.—Hildemar (between 833 and 850), author of a commentary on the Rule of St. Bennet, speaks of St. Gregory as the composer of the “Roman Office”: “Beatus Gregorius qui dicitur Romanum Officium fecisse.” (Expositio Regula ab Hildemaro tradita, p. 311, Ratisbon, 1880.)

IV.—Walafrid Strabo (807-849). De Ecclesiasticarum rerum exordiis et incrementis (composed about 840). “The tradition is that St. Gregory, just as he regulated the order of the masses and of consecrations [i.e., the Sacramentary and the Pontifical Rituale] so also had the greatest part in the arrangement of the liturgical chants, following the order which is observed to this day as the most fitting: as is commemorated at the head of the Antiphoner.” (Op. cit. c. xxi., Patr. Lat., cxiv., 948.)

This refers, strictly speaking, to the Antiphonale Missarum. But the following extract treats directly of the chants of the office contained in the Liber Responsorialis, or corresponding volume for the hour services.

“As for the chants for use at the different hours, whether of the day or of the night, it is believed that it was St. Gregory who assigned to them their complete arrangement, just as he had already done, as we have said, for the Sacramentary.” (c. xxv., 958.)

These two passages establish the fact that there was a tradition in the middle of the ninth century that St. Gregory set in order the ecclesiastical music. It seems also that there was an inscription at the beginning of the Antiphoner stating as a fact that he had done this. The following extract helps us to identify what this inscription was.

V.—Agobard of Lyons (779-840). Liber de Correctione Antiphonarii, c. xv., Patr. Lat. civ., 336. “But because the inscription serving for title to the book in question [i.e., the Antiphoner] puts in the forefront the name of ‘Gregorius Præsul,’ thereupon some people imagine that the work was composed by the Blessed Gregory, Pope of Rome and illustrious doctor.”

He is here defending the chant of Lyons against the ultramontane efforts of Amalarius to introduce the Roman ways. He goes on to try to prove that the Antiphoner defended by Amalarius cannot be St. Gregory’s, because he had forbidden the use of words not taken directly from Scripture.

VI.—Amalarius of Metz (815-835) is undoubtedly the person who played the foremost part in the fusion of the Gallican element with the rest of the Gregorian or Gelasian Liturgy, from which combination has come in substance the Roman Liturgy in use to-day. He had travelled much, and had been at Rome. He is a weighty authority in the present question. The following extracts are taken from a supplementary chapter of his De Divinis Officiis, published by Mabillon, in his Vetera Analecta (Paris, 1723). He is speaking of the Pope Gregory who is the author of the Dialogues, and who sent St. Augustine into England.

“Amongst the monks who have been raised to the Supreme Pontificate can be cited Denys, and Gregory of incomparable memory. Now Gregory, amongst many other things by which he furthered the advantage of the Church, had the glory of being the chief organizer of the Office for clerical use.” (p. 93.)

“In the time of St. Bennet the whole order of psalmody had not yet been fixed with precision in the Psalter and the Antiphoner: it was the incomparable Pope Gregory of holy memory, himself a zealous observer of the rule of St. Bennet and an imitator of his monastic perfection, who afterwards regulated the arrangement of it under the direction of the Holy Spirit.” (pp. 93-4.)

“Far from blaming those who preserve the Gregorian usage, they should rather praise them.” (p. 94.)

“In the authentic model of St. Gregory, the Alleluia and the Gloria are suppressed at the Mass for Innocents’ Day, in order to express the grief of the mothers or of the Church.” (p. 96.)

Amalarius was commissioned by Louis the Debonair to procure at Rome a copy of the Antiphoner to serve as a model for an uniform use in place of the varying uses then to be found. The Pope in answer to his request replied, “I have no Antiphoner that I can send to my son and lord the Emperor. Those which we had, were taken to France by Wala, Abbot of Corbie, when he came here on a mission.” On his return to France, Amalarius went to Corbie, where he found the four volumes brought by Wala. They contained an inscription saying that this collection was put in order by Pope Adrian I. But he found that they differed from the books at Metz, which were older still; so in despair he made a compilation of his own, taking from each what seemed to him the best.

Now it has been argued that if these Antiphoners had either of them borne the name of Gregory the Great, Amalarius would not have had the audacity to alter them in this manner, nor would he if there had existed anywhere in Gaul any bearing his name. But this idea has arisen from the confusion attending the name “antiphoner.” The book that Amalarius was dealing with was not the Antiphoner for Mass, but the Antiphoner for Divine Service. There were great variations in the latter in different localities down to the reform by Pius V., far more than in the former. When the “famous authentic model of Gregory” is spoken of, it is the Antiphonale Missarum which is meant.

VII.—Amalarius, Bishop of Trèves (809-814). Liber Officiorum, from a MS. at Trèves, quoted by Morin, fol. 6, De Missa Innocentium. “The Mass of the Innocents begins in the Diurnal with this Rubric: ‘Gloria in Excelsis Deo is not sung, nor Alleluia, unless it be Sunday; this day is passed in a sort of sadness.’ The Holy Pope Gregory, in whom dwelt in very truth the Holy Ghost, and to whom is due the composition of this office, means us to share the feelings of the pious women who bewailed and lamented the death of the Innocents. And if it is permitted to transgress the order of so great a Father, it would equally be lawful to chant Alleluia with the complete office of the day on Good Friday.”

It is a question here of the Antiphoner of the Mass.

(fol. 7.) On the day of the Epiphany “we lose one of the chants which we have at Christmas, viz., the Invitatory. St. Gregory, the organizer of the offices, meant by this peculiarity to recall to our memory as strongly as he could what passed formerly at the time of the accomplishment of the mysteries which we honour. That is why we chant in the sixth place the psalm which we had avoided in the beginning. It is true that certain blunderers treat this with indifference and contempt, thinking it much better to follow the ordinary usage of each day. But, as we have already said, he wished by this to distinguish” &c., &c.

This passage refers to the Antiphoner of the Office.

(fol. 9-10.) “That is why Gregory, the author of our office, has placed Septuagesima.... However, Gregory the institutor of our office....”

It is a question of the Antiphoner and of the Sacramentary.

(fol. 39.) “The author of our office, who is none other than Gregory....”

He is referring to a portion of the Antiphoner of the Mass.

In the following passage Amalarius distinguishes the work of the two first Gregories as to the Thursdays in Lent.

(fol. 102.) “The Holy Pope Gregory in arranging the offices of the year had left vacant the Thursdays of Lent.... A long time after him another Pope, Gregory the younger, ordained that these days should also be celebrated by Masses and Prayers, but with less solemnity, and he borrowed wherever he could material to form the offices of these Thursdays.”

VIII.—Pope Adrian I. (772-795). A MS. from Saint Martial de Limoges contains this passage (Paris, Bibl. Nat., No. 2400.) “Adrian II., after the example of his predecessor of the same name, completed the Gregorian Antiphoner in several places. He also arranged a second prologue in hexameter verse to be chanted at High Mass on the first day of Advent. This prologue begins in the same way as another very short one composed by the first Adrian to be sung at all the Masses of this first Sunday in Advent, but that of Adrian II. is composed of a greater number of verses.”

We have seen the passage in which Walafrid Strabo speaks of the inscription at the beginning of the Antiphoner, ascribing its origin to Gregory I., and again that in which Agobard of Lyons tells us that the inscription contained the words “Gregorius Præsul.” There are five forms extant of the prologue in hexameter verse. The shortest, and therefore the one probably composed by Adrian I., is as follows:—

“Gregorius Præsul meritis et nomine dignus

Unde genus ducit, summum ascendit honorem.

Renovavit monumenta patrum priorum: tunc

Composuit hunc libellum musicæ artis

Scholæ cantorum anni circuli: Ad te levavi.”

All the five forms begin with the same two first lines. Eckhart got over the difficulty caused to his theory by these lines by supposing that “Gregorius Præsul” meant not Gregory the Great, but Gregory II. But he does not explain how “Unde genus ducit,” &c., can refer to the latter. But it fits Gregory I. in this way: Pope Felix was his great-great-grandfather; so that, on succeeding to the papacy, he as it were entered on a family inheritance.

This prologue proves that the Antiphoner was ascribed by tradition to St. Gregory in the latter half of the eighth century.

IX.—Egbert, Archbishop of York (732-766), is a still more important witness. Born about 678, he was ordained deacon at Rome, and received the archiepiscopal pallium from Gregory III. in 735. He was the disciple and friend of Bede, the confidant and benefactor of St. Boniface, and the teacher of Alcuin. Shortly after he became archbishop he composed a work addressed to his brother bishops, and called De Institutione Catholica. The following extracts from it refer to the Ember-day Fasts.

“As for us in the Church of England, we always observe the Fast of the First Month in the first week of Lent, relying on the authority of our teacher, St. Gregory, who has thus regulated it in the model which he has handed down to us in his Antiphoner and his Missal through the medium of our pedagogue the Blessed Augustine.” (Patr. Lat. lxxxix., 441.)

“As for the Fast of the Fourth Month, the same St. Gregory, by the same envoy, has prescribed in his Antiphoner and his Missal the week which follows Pentecost as that in which the Church of England ought to celebrate it. And this is attested not only by our own Antiphoners, but also by those which we have inspected with their corresponding missals in the Churches of St. Peter and St. Paul.” (Ibid.)

Egbert brings us back to the seventh century, but during that century (the beginning of which saw the death of Gregory) we have no direct evidence. There are some considerations, however, which may account for this.

In the first place, we have very little light thrown on the history of St. Gregory by the sources of the seventh century. Apart from his Registrum there is little recorded that would by itself justify his surname of the Great. In the Liber Pontificalis there are only a few lines about him, whilst the Hellenic Popes, who sat in the Papal chair from 685 to 741, have detailed biographies, generally very laudatory. The mission of Augustine for the conversion of England is undoubtedly one of the most striking facts in Gregory’s life; but the only chronicler of the seventh century who mentions it is the Continuator of Prosper. Is it surprising, then, that there is a still more profound silence on a fact less calculated to attract outside attention, such as is the recasting of the liturgical books peculiar to the Church at Rome?

In the second place, care must be taken not to apply the ideas of to-day to another age. It must not be supposed that the Gregorian Reform was promulgated throughout the Western Churches in the same manner, for instance, as the Reform of Pius V. The modern system of centralization did not then exist. When Gregory took the liturgical books in hand, he had at first in view only the Papal chapel, and the churches at Rome under his immediate supervision. It was their importation into England in the lifetime of St. Augustine, and into the Frankish Empire two hundred years after, under the pressure exerted by the first Carlovingians, which gave the greatest impetus to their universal use. In Italy, on the contrary, and even at Rome, it came about gradually only through the insistence of such Popes as Leo IV. and Stephen X. that the Gregorian Chant in the end completely supplanted that in use in early times in the Peninsula. This explains why the first witnesses in favour of the Gregorian tradition come to us from England and Carlovingian Gaul.

Again, one ought not to expect to find the chroniclers laying stress on the Gregorian origin of the Roman books in the lifetime of those who were contemporaries and disciples of the great Pope, and who had themselves introduced the book from Rome. The fact would be taken as a matter of course. It would not be till these had passed away that a tradition would begin to form, and stress be laid on the fact; and this brings us to the date of Archbishop Egbert.

Besides, who would have suspected the full importance of this Gregorian form, and, in particular, have foreseen that it would put a limit to the period of elaboration of the Western liturgy? So many Popes had already taken the matter in hand. The great work of Gregory was to organize, set in order, and fix. But only time can show what is really fixed. The greatness of his work is only apparent after having remained unaltered for centuries.

These considerations tend to show that there is no cause for surprise that it should have taken so long for people to realize the greatness of Gregory’s work in setting in order the music of the Church.