III. Later Sequences
From the sequences of the later Middle Ages only a few have gained eminence but in certain cases as high a place as any in the whole range of their composition. Thomas Aquinas shows himself master of the sequence as well as the hymn in his Lauda Sion Salvatorem, “Praise, O Sion, praise thy Saviour,” a model of the Victorine technique.
(See [Illustrative Hymns, XV.] Lauda Sion Salvatorem, “Praise, O Sion, praise thy Saviour.”)
Dies irae, “Day of wrath,” most majestic of all sequences, universally acknowledged as the greatest achievement of Latin hymnology, was probably written by the Franciscan Thomas of Celano. It was originally used at Advent, later for All Souls’ Day and for requiem masses. The Judgment theme is obviously inspired by the words of the Prophet Zephaniah (1:15) from which the opening line Dies irae, dies illa is taken. A special literature, together with a multitude of translations, has grown up around this hymn which deserves consideration impossible here. It should be read not only with reference to its biblical sources but with the great Judgment portals of the medieval cathedrals in mind, since the sculpture and literature of the age here find a meeting place.[8] No less significant for its interpretation is the prevalence of the Black Death in the ages which produced it.[9] The thought of a period in which pain and death were so tragically familiar and before which the medieval man stood helpless, is faithfully reflected in contemporary hymns.
The lament in its poetic form is associated with the Marian hymnology of the fourteenth century. The Stabat mater dolorosa, “By the Cross her vigil keeping,”[10] its finest expression, like the Dies irae, needs little comment in these pages.
(See [Illustrative Hymns, XVI.] Stabat mater dolorosa, “By the Cross her vigil keeping.”)
In this period it seems, at least to the present writer, that the Italian-born poets of the religious lyric come into their rightful heritage. The poets of England and of the French, German and Spanish-speaking lands had at one time or another held the palm in the field of hymnody. At the very moment, so to speak, when the genius of Dante and Petrarch had established the fame of Italian letters, the Christian hymn found new spokesmen in a literary medium which had originated in the same environment a thousand years before.
What has already been said of the multiplication of new feasts as the medieval ages progressed, is true in an even greater degree in the later centuries. The Feast of Corpus Christi is only one of many which marked this period of religious devotion, and incidentally required new sequences. If the collection of liturgical proses edited by Daniel in his Thesaurus Hymnologicus and reprinted in volumes 54 and 55 of the Analecta Hymnica be accepted as a guide, the new demands become clear. From the period of Adam of St. Victor, 174 feasts were furnished with sequences, many times over in the case of the more important festivals. The actual liturgical collections from which the Analecta Hymnica was compiled constitute a more specific source of information. If the attention of the student is fixed upon the sequences used in well-known missals and troparies from the thirteenth century and later, in the leading ecclesiastical centers of Europe, a wealth of material is revealed. Many of these sequences in the great collections are unfamiliar to the modern student, some have never been translated into English, but as a whole they are truly representative of this body of poetry in the period of its greatest interest. A tropary of St. Martial of the thirteenth century contains an anonymous Easter sequence, Morte Christi celebrata (A. H. 8. 33), “Christ’s passion now is o’er,”[11] which bears comparison with the better-known sequences which have been named above.