III. Characteristics
For the most part the hymn writers of the later hymn cycles are anonymous, like their predecessors in this field. Anonymity is then the first characteristic to be noted concerning the hymnal in this period, which makes it necessary to survey the whole as an objective achievement of the age, not of a few individuals.
Next to the anonymity of its authorship, possibly the most conspicuous feature of the new hymnal is the enlargement of each of its general divisions, the Common and the Proper of the Season and the Common and the Proper of Saints. The old hymn cycle, it will be recalled, comprised thirty-four hymns as listed by Blume. The later cycle in its nucleus numbers thirty-seven hymns of which seven are repeated from the old cycle. In ten representative tenth century hymnals, the hymns number from about fifty to about one hundred, many of them common to several lists.[35]
Not only is the total number of hymns increased but festival hymns are multiplied, the ecclesiastical year as it was later known being fully established in hymnology. Advent, Nativity, Epiphany, Lent, the Passion, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost and Trinity have their own groups of hymns. The various feasts of the Virgin and that of All Saints are honored. Among the Apostles, Sts. Peter, John and Andrew are praised; of other biblical saints, Sts. John the Baptist, Stephen, Paul; of the angels, St. Michael; of martyrs, the Innocents and St. Laurence; of local saints, Sts. Martin of Tours, Gall, Germanus, Martial, and a number of others. So stands the record of manuscripts of the tenth century when hymnal gains had been consolidated. The process went steadily onward as Latin hymns for the offices continued to be written to the end of the Middle Ages. A few have been added since the sixteenth century but, with certain exceptions, the great body of office hymns of the medieval church was permanently established by 1100, the date which Mearns selected as a boundary line. The same sources enriched the present-day Roman breviary which by a paradox of history, has preserved to modern times the representative hymns to which the Roman liturgy of that early period was so inhospitable.
As a matter of fact, in the interval between and including the fourth and the eleventh centuries, the Latin hymn, considered in its literary implications and in its liturgical usage, was founded for the ages. Attaching to the word hymn its strictest sense and narrowest function, that of the office hymn, the student perceives the great significance of this department of medieval hymnology as compared with the sequence, processional and extra-liturgical hymns of the Middle Ages. It becomes more evident that here is the core and heart of Latin hymnody. The Church could and did in the event, dispense with much of its medieval collection, but never with the hymnal. Here was preserved the ethics of the Christian life, the intimacy of the scriptural narrative, the presentment of the Christian feasts and the praise of God and of his saints.
Appendix
Later Hymnal (See Anal. Hymn., 51, Introduction p. xx-xxi)
Ad parvas horas Iam lucis orto sidere Nunc sancte nobis spiritus Rector potens verax Deus Rerum Deus tenax vigor
Ad vesperas Lucis creator optime Immense caeli conditor Telluris ingens conditor Caeli Deus sanctissime Magnae Deus potentiae Plasmator hominis Deus Deus creator omnium (In Old Hymnal) O lux beata trinitas (Mozarabic)
Ad nocturnas horas Primo dierum omnium Somno refectis artubus Consors paterni luminis Rerum creator optime Nox atra rerum contegit Tu trinitatis unitas Summae Deus clementiae
Ad matutinas laudes Aeterne rerum conditor (In Old Hymnal) Splendor paternae gloriae (In Old Hymnal) Ales diei nuntius Nox et tenebrae et nubila Lux ecce surgit aurea Aeterna caeli gloria Aurora iam spargit polum
Ad completorium Christe qui lux es et dies (In Old Hymnal; Mozarabic) Te lucis ante terminum
Proprii de tempore Ad cenam agni providi (In Old Hymnal) Aurora lucis rutilat (In Old Hymnal)
De communi sanctorum Martyr Dei qui unicum Rex gloriose martyrum Aeterna Christi munera (In Old Hymnal) Sanctorum meritis inclita gaudia Virginis proles opifexque Iesu corona virginum Summe confessor sacer