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 sole[18] 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.