II. The Later Hymnal
The enlargement and diversification of the Hymnal to which Canon Douglas referred in the words quoted at the close of Chapter Two, occurred within the general historical limits of the Carolingian era and with the exception of Spain and the British Isles, within the general geographical limits of Carolingian political influence. The hymn cycles of the period, recorded in manuscripts which reflect the numerical increase in hymns as well as their diffusion upon the continent, are associated with religious centers, for example, St. Martial, Laon, Douai, Moissac, St. Germain-des-Prés, Corbie, Jumièges, Reichenau, Treves, Schäftlarn near Munich, Murbach, Rheinau, St. Gall, Einsiedeln, Bobbio, Monte Cassino, Benevento, Padua, Toledo, Canterbury, Naples and many other places. The nucleus of the Later Hymnal has been identified with the hymn cycle found partly in a hymnarium of the ninth century from St. Paul’s in Lavantthal, Carinthia, and partly in a similar manuscript from Karlsruh, both manuscripts being associated with Reichenau.[20] The basic hymns from this group of sources current in the Carolingian period are listed in the [appendix] to this chapter. A complete list of the manuscript sources (prior to 1100), including the above and others, with an index of the hymns which they contain, approximately 800 in number, was provided by James Mearns, the English hymnologist, in his Early Latin Hymnaries.[21]
So much for the evidence as to the actual hymns in use from sources available at the period when the Later Hymnal flourished. The origin of the Later Hymnal, however, is far from clear. It has been defined as a collection arising about the seventh century which superseded the Old Hymnal and has since prevailed.[22] This opinion advanced by Blume and affirmed by Walpole, depends upon the theory that the later cycle had been in use in the British Isles since the period of Gregory the Great. An Anglo-Irish cycle therefore, was posited which took possession of the continent, usurping the original Benedictine hymnal. As early as 1911, Blume’s theory was questioned by Wilmart, the Benedictine scholar, who asserted that the early cycle constituted a Gallican hymnal only,—a possibility mentioned above. He thought that the Later Hymnal was a new version of the Benedictine cycle representing a normal growth through the centuries. Other critics of note have adopted one or the other viewpoint, Frere following that of Blume; and Raby, that of Wilmart.[23] A final solution is obviously impossible for lack of manuscript evidence.
At the accession of Charlemagne, 768, the future of liturgical hymnody was uncertain as the forces of Roman usage and Benedictine practice were in conflict and the possibility of transferring the Benedictine heritage to the church extremely doubtful, as the preceding survey has already made clear. Secondary forces, however, were at work to achieve this very end. First, the early gains made in compiling the Gallican Hymnal and extending it to the secular clergy were never entirely lost. A precedent had been set. Second, the Benedictine cycle was enjoined wherever the Rule was effective and its use was further stimulated by royal capitularies upon the subject of music and singing. Third, the establishment of monastic centers of music in the leading Benedictine abbeys was productive of literary as well as musical effort, attested by the very manuscripts of hymn collections gathered there. The manuscripts of St. Gall, for example, cover every department of contemporary medieval hymnology.
Charlemagne was particularly interested in St. Gall but was also concerned with the monastic centers at Mainz, Fulda, Treves, Cologne, Bamberg, Hersfeld, Lorsch, Würzburg and Reichenau.[24] He founded Neustadt and endowed twelve monasteries in Germany. Meanwhile missionary zeal had guided Benedictine pioneers beyond the old boundaries, and Bavaria and Frisia had already been opened to missions and incidentally to the full round of Benedictine activities. Louis the Pious was active in monastic reform through his association with Benedict of Aniane; he was a special patron of St. Gall and he stimulated the efforts of leaders from Corbie to found New Corbie. Charles the Bald was a benefactor of Marchiennes, Compiègne, Prum and St. Denis.[25] Prior to this period, the numerous and influential foundations established on the continent by Irish monks had adopted the Benedictine Rule, swelling the total number of centers devoted to religious and educational activities.
The numerical increase in the Benedictine abbeys offers in itself presumptive evidence of a greater use of hymns. What is known of the monastic centers and their store of hymnaries offers direct proof. A closer bond between the Order and the cultural activities of the age is found in the great personalities drawn from Benedictine ranks to serve the imperial designs. Of particular interest here are the statements regarding hymns and hymn singing which appear in contemporary writings.
Alcuin was chiefly interested in the Roman liturgy as such but he wrote De psalmorum usu, Officia per ferias and the Epistolae, the last of which shows a special interest in music. Rabanus Maurus testifies to the general use of hymns by secular as well as regular clergy. Amalarius of Metz mentions the use of hymns outside the monasteries. Walafrid Strabo traces the use of hymns from the time of Ambrose and repeats the Canon of Toledo recommending hymns. He says that churches which do not use hymns are exceptional.[26] The testimony is scattered but it points to the adoption of the hymnal by the secular clergy. It should also be recalled that the Ambrosian tradition of musical independence was constantly maintained at Milan.
As the Latin language became more and more an exclusive clerical possession, the old safeguards provided by monastic walls were no longer necessary. The whole body of clergy whether regular or secular became the custodians of the hymnaries used in monastic and diocesan centers of music and scholarship.[27] The Christian laity of Europe at this period may have been largely ignorant of their hymnic heritage because the Carolingian extension of hymn writing and hymn singing occurred within clerical ranks. There was at this time scant indication of the future course of Latin hymnology which would ultimately restore to the layman his original possession handed down from the Early Christian Church.
The poetical writings of the era included a substantial body of religious verse from which hymns are attributed to the following authors: Paulus Diaconus, 1; Paulinus of Aquileia, 7; Alcuin, 3; Theodulphus, 1; Rabanus Maurus, 2; Walafrid Strabo, 5; Florus of Lyons, 2; Wandelbert of Prum, 1; Paulus Albarus of Cordova, 1; Cyprian and Samson, 2; Sedulius Scottus, 2; Milo, 2; Ratbod, 2; Hucbald, 1; Hartmann, 4; Ratpert, 4; Eugenius Vulgarius, 1; these with 73 of doubtful authorship make a total contribution of 114 hymns.
(See [Illustrative Hymns, VIII.] Ut queant laxis resonare fibris, “In flowing measures worthily to sing,” Paulus Diaconus.)
Ambrosian meters are set aside in favor of the classical meters of the Greeks, the Sapphic and elegiac meters proving to be the most popular thereafter. To what extent this influence is actually observable in hymn cycles may be determined by a comparison of the list of Carolingian hymns with the lists of hymns provided by Blume, Julian or Mearns. Batiffol selected thirteen as found in later breviary lists[28] but the actual direct contribution is much larger if other than breviary hymns are admitted. Moreover, the literary and liturgical studies of the time broadened the original Benedictine concept that the hymns of the monastic cycle should be Ambrosian in style. The hymns of Sedulius and particularly of Prudentius and Fortunatus were recognized, introduced or freely adapted to ecclesiastical usage.
The direct influence of Celtic culture upon the new hymn cycles must be associated with the introduction of biblical and liturgical works containing hymns into Frankish territory. Later, hymns were written by Celtic scholars, for instance, Samson, Sedulius Scottus (enumerated above) and possibly others who are anonymous. Blume’s theory of the Anglo-Irish hymn cycle, originally sponsored by Gregory the Great and finally transferred to the continent, illustrates the most decisive form which Celtic influence has so far been presumed to have exerted. The list of hymns (see [Appendix]) bears, on the contrary, no resemblance to the group of contemporary Celtic hymns.[29] It seems much more probable that Gregory, the Benedictine Pope, approved the use in Anglo-Irish lands, of the continental hymn cycle which the Order was responsible for carrying northward with it when it entered Britain. In any case, the Benedictine cycles from the ninth century onward are enriched from every aspect of the diverse culture of the age, in which the Celtic contribution, both direct and indirect, is important.
At this period hymnology in the Greek-speaking world was at its height. Yet proof is sought in vain that Greek hymns were used in the west, either in the Greek language or in translation. The hymnal of the Western Church received from Greek sources its recorded tunes, not its words. Although the earliest liturgical manuscript with musical notation dates from the ninth century, the Greeks had already given their neumes to the west. As for the hymn melodies which are crystallized in these manuscripts when they do appear, theories of origin abound. A definite system of notation was in existence from the seventh century but hymns had been sung from the fourth century.
In modern times through the consecrated efforts of Benedictine students of the chant, working chiefly at Solesmes, a collation of the existing musical manuscripts produced in the Middle Ages, has been made. Their object has been to determine the authentic melodies of the Benedictine cycle throughout its long history. Today the results of their scholarship are available to the public and the great hymns which they have fostered may be heard as well as read in their medieval form.
The assimilation by the Franks, of alien cultures whether through conquest or peaceful interchange, may have been to a certain extent inevitable and involuntary. Such phenomena occur in every period of history. It is the conscious appropriation by the Carolingian leaders of a cultural heritage and its organization through existing institutions which reveals their true genius. This same process had taken place when Roman genius secured and conserved the achievement of the Greeks. In the field of religious culture with which this volume is concerned, an unbroken continuity had been maintained from the days of the primitive church. Even in the minor category of Christian hymnology, the hymnal as such, created in the fourth century, was to flourish all the way into our own times and might have done so without any special intervention. Historically speaking, in the ninth century and under Frankish auspices, a transformation took place which must be attributed to the conscious effort of Frankish churchmen who, receiving the old hymnology, restored it to formal worship with a much larger content and a greatly diversified form. Herein lies the fundamental contribution of Germanic genius to the Later Hymnal.
Individual hymn writers of the Carolingian age have been named above as far as they are known, of whom Theodulphus of Orleans, Rabanus Maurus and Walafrid Strabo are perhaps the most notable.
A Goth by race, a Spaniard by birth, Theodulphus, (c. 760-c. 821), belonged to that population dwelling north and south of the Pyrenees which the Franks had amalgamated into their kingdom. He was learned in all the wisdom of that age and a man of action in a sense understandable in any age. Bishop of Orleans, courtier, officer in the administration of Charlemagne, he served the church and the state with equal distinction. Theodulphus as a poet of sacred verse is best known for his Palm Sunday processional hymn, Gloria, laus et honor tibi sit, “All glory, laud and honor,”[30] which he wrote during the period of his fall from royal favor under Louis the Pious. This beautiful processional hymn, a triumph of Carolingian verse, invested with all the attraction of legend and religious pageantry, has been a favorite in every period of Christian history. Theodulphus was not a member of the regular clergy and he did not, as far as we know, write hymns for the monastic cycle. He represents the contemporary trend which brought the hymn into new areas of worship in the offices and ceremonies of the cathedral.
Rabanus Maurus, (780-856), of Germanic origin, was primarily a theologian. His boyhood studies were completed at Fulda. As a young man he became a pupil of Alcuin at Tours. In his maturity he returned to Fulda reaching the climax of his career as Abbot of Fulda and later, as Archbishop of Mainz. As a writer, Rabanus undertook to hand on, through excerpts, the knowledge of his predecessors. He wrote commentaries on the Bible, discussed ecclesiastical organization and discipline, theology, liturgy and worship and the liberal arts. He made translations into German with the collaboration of Walafrid and a Latin-German glossary for the Scriptures. In connection with worship he became interested in the Latin hymns which were rapidly spreading through the west. He discussed the Psalms as hymns and then the hymns of Hilary and Ambrose, saying of the Ambrosian hymns, how widespread had become their prestige in his day. We know from other evidence that he was acquainted also with the hymns of Sedulius, Columba and Bede. It seems almost certain that he practiced the art of poetry although we are restricted to a very small remnant of verse conceded to be his. The poems include a number of hymns for the festivals of the seasons and of the saints, illustrating the vogue for the classic in metrical forms. Like Theodulphus, he wrote for processional ceremonies. The Pentecostal hymn, Veni, creator spiritus, has been persistently associated with the name of Rabanus but without adequate proof. It is a lasting hymn of the ninth century.
(See [Illustrative Hymns, IX.] Veni, creator spiritus, “Creator-Spirit, all-Divine.”)
Walafrid Strabo, (809-c. 849), was like Rabanus of Germanic origin and like him a member of the regular clergy. At Reichenau he received his early education and at Fulda his theological training under Rabanus. Walafrid was drawn into the courtly circle of Louis the Pious whose son Charles he tutored and whose wife Judith became his literary patron. His life was one of scholarship, prosperity and contentment almost to the end of his career. Louis had appointed him Abbot of Reichenau, a place dear to him from boyhood. From these happy surroundings and from his garden which he immortalized in careful and loving description, he was ousted during the civil conflict following the death of the emperor. At the end he was restored to Reichenau and there he died. His hymns like those of Theodulphus and Rabanus, although few in number, were written in the spirit of the classical revival. Some were intended for festivals and others which will be described in connection with processional hymnody, were written to honor royal patrons.
In reviewing the basic hymns of the Later Hymnal (see [Appendix]), one finds only two of Mozarabic origin whereas nine were duplicated in the Old Hymnal in Spain and Gaul. The new cycles in areas under Frankish influence appear to diverge from the Mozarabic as they become more diversified. At the same time, Mozarabic sources reveal a parallel evolution of the hymnal in the Iberian peninsula. The existing manuscripts were collated and edited in 1897 by Blume in volume twenty-seven of the Analecta Hymnica under the title Hymnodia Gotica, comprising 312 hymns of which 210 were identified by him as Mozarabic in origin.
The hymns of Spain, first assembled under the auspices of Gothic churchmen as recounted in [Chapter Two], continued to increase with the encouragement and participation of Mozarabic liturgists, scholars and prelates. The generation that supported Isidore of Seville was succeeded two hundred years later by the group associated with Eulogius, Archbishop of Cordova (d. 859), who fostered the old traditions under Moslem control.[31] In spite of a ruling power alien in every aspect of culture, Christian hymnology held its own. After the Moorish invasions, it is estimated that between thirty and forty hymns were written, several of which contain references to the yoke of the oppressor and petitions for its removal.[32] When the movement toward the expulsion of the Moors had been successfully initiated and the Roman Rite introduced (1089) the Mozarabic hymnals were comparable to the finest of the continental cycles. In certain instances the contacts between Spain and Gaul were close and direct even under the rule of the Moslems. Theodulphus of Orleans combined the Gothic and Carolingian trends. Alcuin was indebted to Mozarabic sources in his reform of the Frankish rites.[33] Hymns of Mozarabic origin appeared in other parts of western Europe and vice versa.
(See [Illustrative Hymns, X.] Deus immensa trinitas, “O glorious immensity.”)
The possible influence of Arabian music and poetry upon the Christian hymn has been a tempting idea and one most elusive of pursuit. Studies of medieval Spanish music and musical instruments have failed to demonstrate that the ecclesiastical chant in Spain was thereby affected. Such novelties as it may have possessed have been traced to influences similar to those which had long before affected the Ambrosian chant and been transmitted to the west. As for the tentative assumption that Arabian lyric poetry influenced contemporary hymn writers in Spain, the evidence narrows to the mono-rhyme or repeated end-rhyme common to Arabian poetry and to several Mozarabic hymns.[34] The whole subject of the Arabian impact, highly controversial as it is, appears to be concerned with influences, which when scrutinized, are observed to spring from cultures prior both to Christianity and to Islam.
The Mozarabic Hymnal in its fully developed version possessed an unusually large number of hymns honoring local saints. This feature must be referred to the history of the Roman persecution in the Iberian peninsula where the complete destruction of the Church was intended and martyrdom was the rule. Again the Hymnal is unique in its hymns for public occasions either of mourning and intercession in time of war, pestilence, drought and flood or of joy, in festivals of the consecration of bishops, the coronation of kings and thanksgiving for full harvests.