II
Now the founders of Christianity were Jews, and Oriental influences were never absent from the church, even in Rome. Furthermore the apostles of Christianity in Rome were humble, untutored men, and the majority of their converts were drawn from the same class—the class which in all ages has naturally taken refuge in any creed which contradicts the views and practices of its masters and oppressors. Christ’s message of hope to the humble in spirit came home first to the humble in material possessions. ‘Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles.’ For three centuries the Christians in Italy were subjected to constant oppression and often to fiercely violent persecution. Their rites were performed in dark and secret places and, presumably, without any noise that could be avoided. Under the circumstances one is tempted to conclude that music was severely ignored by the first Christians in Rome. They had every reason to avoid it. It was likely to attract undesirable attention; it was associated primarily in their minds with the sensual orgies of their pagan oppressors, and, finally, the first Christians themselves were not of the class likely to possess much musical culture. Nevertheless, it is practically certain that they intoned some of their services in a simple, discreet way. They must have chanted their psalms, at least, probably as the Hebrews did. This chant, it would perhaps be safe to assume, was responsorial and consisted of a low, more or less monotonous, recitative.
By the time the Edict of Milan (313 A. D.) struck off the fetters that bound Christianity the Church had already gathered to her bosom many of the most influential and cultured Roman citizens. Their advent must have changed gradually the whole complexion of the Roman church. With their cultivated taste for art they probably furnished the prime impulse toward the æstheticism which gradually came to be a distinguishing feature of the church ritual. After the Edict of Milan the church jumped almost at a bound to a position of social and political influence which soon became one of social and political predominance. The most influential of its members no longer came from the lowly and oppressed, but from the rich and powerful. Every reason that had operated against the use of music in the primitive church had disappeared, and with it had disappeared for a time the Oriental tendencies which the founders of the church had consciously or unconsciously incorporated with it. There is little doubt that during the third and fourth centuries Græco-Roman culture penetrated to the innermost shrine of Western Christianity and remained an active agent in the formulation of liturgical music long after the Orient had again become a predominant influence through the removal of the seat of empire to Byzantium.
It is unfortunately not within our power to indicate the point at which the Græco-Roman kitharœdic chant began to influence Christian religious music, nor do the relative proportions of a general history permit us to study the question here. However, it is sufficient for us to know that the kitharœdic chant was the direct ancestor of the Christian hymnody in the West. ‘Among various kinds of pieces of which the Roman antiphonary is composed,’ says Gevaert, ‘none is known by literary documents to be so old as the strophic hymnody; from the musical point of view it marks the transition from the vocal melopæia of antiquity to the liturgical chant properly so called.’ We find this transition fully accomplished in the hymns of St. Ambrose (d. 397), who is unquestionably the most striking and influential figure in early liturgical music. Gevaert aptly calls him the ‘Terpander of Western Christianity.’ His works are full of reference to music, many of which are naïvely charming. For example, he writes: ‘The angels praise the Lord, the powers of heaven sing psalms unto him, and even before the very beginning of the world the cherubim and seraphim sang with sweet voice Holy, Holy, Holy!’ He mentions the music of the spheres and recalls that it has been said the axle of heaven itself turned with a perpetual sweet sound that might be heard in the uttermost parts of the earth where there are certain secrets of Nature; that the wild beasts and birds might be soothed with the delight of voices blending. Even more practical, he points out that those things we wish well to remember we are accustomed to sing, for that which is sung stays the better in our memories. His hymns produced a great effect upon St. Augustine, who wrote of them in his ‘Confessions’ in terms almost extravagant; and a whole century later Cassiodorus constantly cites St. Ambrose and bears witness to the wide and everlasting nature of his influence on Christian hymnody.
Six hymns which have come down to us are attributed with certainty to this gifted saint. They are the Deus creator omnium, Jam surgit hora tertia, Æterne rerum conditor, Veni redemptor gentium, Illuxit orbi jam dies, and Bis ternas horas explicans. Probably also he was the author of O lux beata Trinitas, Hic est dies verus Dei, Splendor paternæ gloriæ, and Æterna Christi munera. The melodic forms of these hymns are borrowed directly from the Greeks and Romans. Stripped of their melismas their primitive contours are easily recognizable, and their structure is thoroughly in accord with the modal theory of the classic Greeks. All of these hymns which seem to be the most ancient belong to one of the principal kitharœdic modes—the Dorian, Iastian, or Æolian. The Ambrosian hymns in the Dorian mode have the same melodic texture as the hymn to Helios and the main part of the song to the Muse (see pp. 126-127 above). Hymns after the manner of Ambrose in the Iastian and Æolian modes are frequent in the Catholic hymnody.[49]
The Græco-Roman complexion of the Ambrosian hymns is still further evident in their metrical form. ‘The old ecclesiastical hymns composed in iambic dimeters and ascribed to Bishop Ambrose,’ says Riemann, ‘are still firmly founded upon the antique art, as they respect absolutely the quantity of the syllables and introduce long syllables and short ones only where it is in accordance with the laws of classic poetry.’[50] The eight syllable iambi of the Ambrosian verse became extremely popular in ecclesiastical hymnody, and the Breviary, as it is to-day, contains many hymns in that measure. But this was not the only metrical form of classic Rome that became incorporated in the liturgy of the Church. Vanantius Fortunatus in the sixth century introduced the trochaic tetrameter, which was a favorite popular verse among the ancient Romans, and still survives in the rhythm of the Roman saltarello and the Neapolitan tarantella. The elegant Sapphic strophe, so dear to Latin lyricists, made its appearance subsequent to the Carlovingian epoch. As long as Latin prosody remained dominant the ecclesiastical hymns were more or less metrical, but as literary Latin passed into desuetude these chants lost their isochronous rhythm. At the beginning of the eighth century the vogue of metrical verse had already passed. With it passed, too, the classic melopæia which had gradually become enriched by accessory inflexions.[51]
There was quite a large school of hymn writers in the Ambrosian style, among whom may be mentioned especially St. Augustine (350-430), St. Paulinus of Nola (ca. 431), the Spanish poet Prudentius (fourth century),[52] Sedulius (fifth century), Ennodius and Venantius Fortunatus (sixth century). The style spread rapidly from Milan into the different western provinces of the Roman empire. A text of the time of Sidonius Apollinaris (second half of the fifth century) tells us that at the feast of Christmas all the churches of Gaul and Italy resounded to the hymn Veni creator gentium, and Rhabanus Maurus, bishop of Mayence in the middle of the ninth century, tells us that the Ambrosian hymns were then in use in all the churches of the West.[53] Further proof of their wide prevalence is furnished by the rules of St. Benedict and Aurelian of Arles (first half of sixth century). For many centuries, however, they were frowned upon by Rome. The Council of Braga (563) expressly excluded from the divine office all chants in verse and all texts not taken from the sacred scriptures. Three centuries later the deacon Amalarius, charged by Louis the Pious with regulating the chants of the office for all the churches of the Frankish empire, leaves hymns completely aside in conformity with the usage of Rome at that time. In fact, the local rite of Rome had not yet welcomed hymns as late as the beginning of the twelfth century.