LIGHT.
Gaudium lucis AEternae.
When the twilight veil is closing
Gently o'er each darkening scene,
Love we not the shades reposing
Underneath its misty screen?
When, like ruins dim and hoary,
Forms are outlined on the sky,
See we not surpassing glory
In the day-god's closing eye?
Yes! But from the LIGHT is given
All the grace of coming night;
And the change from day to even
Is a change of varied light!
Silent midnight reigneth over
Scenes so lately bright and fair,
Shades like gliding spectres hover.
Round each faint-traced image there;
And the darkness' onward stealing
Shrouds the earth with dusky pall,
But from LIGHT, the dim revealing
Even of midnight's glories fall.
And the purer spirit-vision
Is a world all fair and bright;
Ever in the dream elysian
Joy is of "eternal light."
Marie.
From The Dublin University Magazine.
MEDIAEVAL BOOKS AND HYMNS.
[Footnote 212]
[Footnote 212: The reader will bear in mind that the author of the following paper is a Protestant minister.-ED. CATH. WORLD.]
The fall of Rome was the annihilation of a great dominant power, a power which had been supreme; and when the barbarians marched into her streets and devastated her homes, the world sunk back into a tenebrous night of social, intellectual, and moral darkness. Her mighty empire, held together like one country by her genius, was broken up and divided amongst the different tribes who had poured down from the north and overrun Europe, divided just as the fortune of war or the caprice of choice indicated. It was the approach of a moral chaos; but the hand whose guidance is to be felt in the life of individuals, and may be traced in the history of nations, did not abandon the world to the utter confusion of its own impulses. As the imperial power of Rome fell away and died out like an effete thing, wasted by its own' corruption, a new power was springing up in vigorous youth by the side of that which was declining. Christianity was advancing toward the west with rapid strides, victorious through the persecution of tyranny and the jealousy of philosophy; it was then taking its stand in the world as an influence; but if at this moment amid the vast changes and subversion of things which took place after the fall of Rome, Christianity had been merely a reformed philosophy, and had been left to the mercy of pagan barbarians, it would have been extinguished in its infancy. That was avoided by a remarkable concatenation of circumstances. For centuries there had been an apprehension in the Roman empire of an advance of the barbarous nations in the north of Europe, symptoms of which had manifested themselves in the earliest period of the Christian era. Toward the latter end of the second century the most powerful of these tribes, the Goths, impelled by some influx of other barbarians, advanced from their position near the mouth of the Vistula, invaded the Roman frontier, and took Dacia, where they were found by the Emperor Caracalla at the opening of the third century, in the middle of which they were allowed by Aurelian to settle along the banks of the Euxine, when they were divided into two parts—the "Ostro" or Eastern, and the "Visi" or Western Goths. In the next century a terrible alarm was raised amongst them, which even penetrated into the Roman empire, and up to its capital, where it was related that an awful race of beings—savage, ugly, inhuman, begotten of the devil—were pouring in thousands out of the deserts and plains of Asia into Europe. Such were the Huns. Already they had reached the territory of the Ostrogoths, whom they compelled to supply them with guides to lead them on toward the Visigoths. These latter at their approach fled in the extremity of terror toward the Danube, and implored the protection of Valens the emperor, who allowed them to settle in Moesia, upon the condition that they should defend the imperial frontier. In less than forty years afterward from defending the Roman frontier they sacked Rome. But during this interval an incident took place which had a great influence upon the destinies of Christianity. After the settlement with Valens, an intercourse of a somewhat friendly character sprung up between the Romans and [{805}] these barbarian defenders of the frontier. The church was suffering from her great Arian apostasy—a form of scepticism exactly parallel to that new light of modern times called Rationalism. Valens was an Arian, and, wishing to convert these pagan barbarians, sent a missionary amongst them in the person of the renowned Ulphilas, whom he made bishop of the Moeso-Goths. This great bishop labored assiduously for the conversion of the barbarians, invented an alphabet, and translated the Scriptures with his own hand into their strange idiom. His labors were blessed with success; the Goths embraced Christianity, though in the Arian form; and fifty years afterward, when Alaric led them into Rome, amid the tumult of the unfettered license of the soldiers, an order was issued to respect the churches of the apostles and the sacred places. In the midst of the devastation of the city and through the very thick of the riot, a band of priests and devotees were seen marching under the protection of Gothic soldiery, carrying on their heads the sacred vessels of St. Peter, and mingling with the shoutings of the ravagers the chant of solemn psalms. Under Gothic protection, and by the express order of the Gothic king, the sacred vessels were deposited in safety at the Vatican; numbers of Christians joined the procession and received shelter, whilst many who were not Christians also availed themselves of the opportunity to join the band of believers and escape in the general confusion. [Footnote 213]
[Footnote 213: Oroslus Hist., lib. vii. c. 39.]
This was the first indication of the new life which was to dawn upon the world under the influence of Christianity. Gradually all the tribes of barbarians yielded to its influence—the Burgundians in Gaul, the Vandals in Africa, the Suevi in Spain, the Ostrogoths, the Franks, and then the Saxons in England; but the early conversions of these barbarians were to the Arian form of Christianity then in the ascendant. Its principal tenet was the denial of the equality of the Son to the Father; and the heresy spread until the error, after being vigorously combated, was suppressed, and the new nations won back to the orthodox faith. Thus was this compensation for the overturn of civilization effected; the world was not abandoned to utter destruction, it was indeed given up to the hands of rude barbarians, but they in turn were subjected to a new influence which accompanied them to the various kingdoms founded upon the ruins of' the extinct empire, and formed the basis in each of those kingdoms of a new and higher civilization. With the fall of Rome the gods of the pagans were overturned, their temples destroyed; and in the midst of the devastation, the ruin, and, the despair into which the world was sinking, the Church of Christ arose as the guiding spirit, the pioneer of the new life. Another incident in connection with the establishment of Christianity, which saved the lore of ancient times from destruction, was the adoption of the Latin language by the church; for although that language had made a settlement in many of the countries subject to the Roman arms, yet a tendency soon sprung up, from the mixture with barbarian invaders, to the degeneracy of the Latin tongue and the rise of new and separate idioms. But it was preserved in comparative purity in the church, which naturally led to the preservation of its most noble monuments; and it ultimately became, when the modern languages were in their infancy, the tongue especially devoted to the transmission of learning. History, poetry, science, and what little there was of literature, found a medium of communication and a means of preservation in the Latin language. Had it not been adopted by the church then for some centuries, whilst the new tongues were gradually developing and settling into a form, the world would have been dark indeed, not a book, not a page, not a [{806}] syllable would have reached us of the thought, the life, or the events of that period.
From the fourth to the seventh century there would have been an impenetrable gap in the annals of humanity—the voice of history would have been hushed into a dead silence, and the light of the past which beacons the future would have been extinguished in the darkness of a universal chaos. In England, however, the case was somewhat different. From the earliest period of the Saxon domination there was a struggle for a literature in the vulgar tongue. The Saxons had brought with them a vast store of traditional poetry out of which one specimen has been preserved, consisting of an epic poem in forty-three cantos, and about 6,000 lines—the oldest epic of modern times. It is called, "The Gleeman's Song," and was composed by Beowulf in their native wilds and brought over with them in the fifth century. It is a strange poem, impregnated with the vigorous air of the North; strength and simplicity being its chief characteristics. The principal personage is Hrothgar the king, and the poem is full of incidental descriptions of manners and customs which afterward became native to England, and linger about among us even now: there are great halls, ale-carousals, fighting with giants, the elements of a rude chivalry, and an invincible prowess which dares both dragons and ghosts. But the first native writer in Anglo-Saxon after the conversion to Christianity is Caedmon, who lived in the latter part of the seventh century (680); The story of his miraculous inspiration is recorded by Bede. [Footnote 214]
[Footnote 214: Eccl. llist., lib. iv., c. 24.]
He was born in Northumbiria and was a monk of Whitby. He paraphrased large portions or the Scripture, and has aptly been called the Anglo-Saxon Milton; indeed it is more than probable that the Puritan poet borrowed the ideas of his sublime soliloquy of Satan in Pandemonium from this Saxon monk; After Satan's overthrow, Caedmon says—[Footnote 215]
[Footnote 215: Thorpe's edition of Caedmon.]
"Then spake he worde:
This narrow place is most unlike
that other that we formerly knew
high in Heaven's kingdom,
which my master bestowed on me,
Though we it for the All·powerful
may not possess.
We must cede our realm."
So Milton—
"O how unlike the place from whence they fell!"
and in the words of Satan—
"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,
That we must change for heaven, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right."
Caedmon's notion of Pandemonium is the prototype of Milton:
"But around me lie
iron bonds;
presseth this cord of chain,
I am powerless!
me have so hard
the clasps of hell
so firmly grasped.
Here is a vast fire
above and underneath;
never did I see a loathlier landskip;
the flame abateth not
hot over hell.
Me hath the clasping of these rings,
this hard polished band,
impeded in my course,
debarred me from my way.
My feet are bound,
my hands are manacled
. . . . .
About me the
huge gratings
of hard iron,
forged with heat,
with which me God
hath fastened by the neck."
Nearly all these ideas are incorporated in Milton's sublime picture—
". . . . down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire."
. . . . . Line 48.
"Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild?"
. . . . . Line 180.
"A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace, flamed."
Line 61 ". . . . torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed."
Line 67.
But after the death of Caedmon (680), there must have been a great deal of poetry written which is now lost, for we read that Bede, on his [{807}] death-bed, repeated several passages from national poets, one of which is preserved in that interesting description of the last moments of the great historian, written by S. Cuthbert, who was with him to the end. [Footnote 216] But the chivalrous poetry of tradition gave way to that of religion, which is the characteristic of Saxon song after the sixth century.
[Footnote 216: Asseri Annaies (Gale's Collec.) ann.; 731.]
We are also told that Aldhelm, bishop of Sherbourne, who died in the year 709, was one of the best poets of his day. But still at this period, although there was a struggle after a national literature, the great works were all written in Latin; and Bede, much as he admired the Saxon poets of his country, intrusted his Ecclesiastical History to the only idiom sacred to learning. Gildas and Nennius, who preceded Bede, also wrote in Latin. But the Saxons were the first out of all the barbarians to acquire a vernacular literature. Of that literature we are scarcely competent to judge; but from what has come down to us, from allusions in history, from the state of education among them, we may safely conclude that although little has survived, it was not a poor literature. We must remember the continual scenes of devastation which took place during the period of their domination; when monasteries were rifled, books burnt, and manuscripts wantonly destroyed. From the time of Alfred, only one Anglo-Saxon writer of any consequence has come down to us, Olfric; but from what we know of Saxon progress we may be assured there were many others. It is evident from the state of education among them. Before the middle of the seventh century schools had sprung up, and toward the latter end an impetus was given to learning by the labors of Theodore and Adrian, of whom Bede asserts that they gathered together a crowd of disciples, and taught them not only the books of Holy Writ, but the arts of ecclesiastical poetry, astronomy, and arithmetic, and adds in proof that some of their scholars were alive in his day who were as well versed in the Greek and Latin tongues as their own. [Footnote 217]
[Footnote 217: Eccl. Hist. lib., iv., c. 2.]
Even the ladies among the Saxons were well educated, for it was to them that Aldhelm addressed his work De Laude Virginitatis, and Boniface corresponded with ladies in Latin. In the ninth century also we find that schools were flourishing in various parts of the kingdom, especially the one at York, under Archbishop Egbert, who taught Greek, Latin, and Hebrew to the scholars, amongst whom was Alcuin the friend of Charlemagne. From the letters of Alcuin, but more especially from his History of the Church of York, we may learn that for the same there was a renowned library there, and as it is the earliest list of books—the first catalogue of an English library extant—we may as well subjoin it. Alcuin says that in his library were the works of Jerome, Hilarius, Ambrose, Augustine, Athanasius, Gregory, Pope Leo, Basil, Chrysostom, and others. Bede and Aldhelm, the native authors, of course were there. In history and philosophy there were Orosius, Boethius, Pompeius, Pliny, Aristotle, and Cicero. In poetry, Sedulius Juveneus, Prosper, Arator, Paulinus, Fortunatus, Lactantius; and of the classics, Virgil, Statius, and Lucan. Of grammarians there was a great number, such as Probus, Phocas, Donatus, Priscian, Servius, Eutyehius, and Commianus. Boniface was a great book collector, and used to send them home to England. So that we may fairly conclude that if the Danish depredations and the internal dissensions of the country had not been so fatal to the treasures hoarded up in monastic libraries we should have had much more of Saxon literature. The influence of Dunstan, too, gave an impulse to learning both in the country [{808}] generally and in the church. He himself was a scholar, a musician, an artist, an illuminator, and a man of science; [Footnote 218] but the most prominent figure is Bede, who, as we observed, wrote in Latin; he was well versed in Greek and Hebrew.
[Footnote 218: "Artem scribendi necne citharizaudi pariterque pingendi peritiam diligenter excoluit."—Cotton MSS.—-Cleop., B xiii., fol., 69. ]
He wrote many works—thirty-seven according to his own list, including compilations; but the most important was his Ecclesiastical History, which traces the course of the national church from the earliest times down to 731, within four years of his own death. In his introduction he honestly gives us a list of his materials, from which we can gather that in all parts of the country the bishops and abbots had instinctively turned their attention to historical writing; for he says he was indebted to Albinus, abbot of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, for the particulars of the Augustinian mission and the history of the Kentish Church generally, and to Northelm, a priest of London, who had discovered at Rome the epistles of Pope Gregory upon the subject; from Daniel, bishop of the West Saxons, he received much assistance as to the history of that province and the adjoining. Abbot Esius, of East Anglia, and Cunebert, of Lindsey, are also mentioned as contributing valuable materials. So that this history of Bede is compiled from the most authentic sources, and forms one of the most valuable collections of ecclesiastical annals extant in any nation. It is a fact worthy of note in the history of letters, that these early prelates of the Saxon Church, and in fact the monks in the various monasteries scattered over the country from the earliest period, and even down to their decadence, silently and patiently recorded the events of their times and of their church, and that their labors, such as have been rescued from the ravages of the past, form the only true "materia historica" of modern writers. But we pass on from the time of Bede to that of Alfred, under whose influence the Saxon language almost displaced the use of the Latin. The extraordinary vicissitudes of his life have been elsewhere recorded, but in literature he was an historian, a theologian, a commentator, and a transcriber. His principal works were translations of Gregory's Pastoral Care, the Universal History of Orosius, Boethius's Consolations of Philosophy, Bede's Ecclesiastical History, and several parts of the Bible; but he not only translated, but interpolated whole pages of his own. In the Pastoral Care he has inserted original prayers; in the History of Orosius there is a sketch of the state of Germany by him, and the translation of Boethius is tesselated with profound and pointed thoughts, which fairly entitle him to the name of philosopher. The greatest achievement of King Alfred was perhaps the reviving and restarting the Saxon Chronicle. It is probable that from the earliest times of the Saxon rule a national record of events had been kept somewhere, either from the instinct of preservation or by concert. The evidence of Bede proves that it was done in the church as regards ecclesiastical matters, and we know that in the time of Alfred there was a short record of bare events, with now and then a genealogy treasured up and handed down from age to age. It was his thought and care to reform these records and restart the Chronicle as a great national archive. For this purpose, he enjoined Plegmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, to collect what could be found, write it out fairly, and commence his labors as the chronicler of the period. From that time the records are fuller and more in detail, and down to the year 1154 it was kept up by different men in different monasteries, who were eye-witnesses of the events they recorded, and out of whose labors there are only six original MSS. extant of this great national work. The first is called the Plegmund, or Benet MSS., because it was, as we have said, compiled by Plegmund at the instigation of Alfred, and is preserved in Benet [{809}] (Corpus Christi) College, Cambridge. From the year 891 it is written in different hands and by different people down to the year 1070. The second copy is in the Cottonian Collection at the British Museum (Tiberius, A vi.), written apparently by one hand, which has been attributed to Dunstan, and it terminates at the year 977, eleven years before his death. The third copy is in the same collection (Cotton Tiberius, B i.), and is thought to have been written in the monastery of Abingdon; it reaches down to 1066. The fourth copy is also in the Cottonian collection (Tiberius, B iv.), written by different men down to the year 1079. The fifth manuscript is in the Bodleian library at Oxford (Laud, E 80), from internal evidence, written in the year 1122, compiled from older materials, and carried down in different hands to the year 1154, showing the gradual degeneracy of the Saxon language under Norman influence, from 1132 to the end. The sixth and last manuscript is in the Cottonian library (Domitian, A viii.). It has been accredited to a Canterbury monk; it is written in Latin and Saxon, and terminates in 1058. Besides these six, one other MS. is mentioned as of great value, being a transcription of a Cottonian MS., which perished in a fire at Dean's yard in 1731. It is in the Dublin library (E, 5-15), and was written by Lombard in 1863-64. [Footnote 219]
[Footnote 219: For a more detailed account of these MSS. see Preface to Bohn's edition of the Translation of Bede and Saxon Chronicle.]
Scarcely any country in Europe possesses such an historical treasure as this, so authentic and so characteristic. It is a very interesting study to note its many peculiarities; there are sad gaps in its records, as though the sorrow of the land was too great to be recorded, and the hand had failed; there are songs of triumph at the defeat of the enemy, and pathetic lamentations over desolated homes; there are noble panegyrics upon men of blessed memory, who had fought up bravely for their church and country, and words of bitter scorn for traitors, cowards, and profligates; it contains pious reflections, ejaculations, and aspirations; it is a most vivid picture of the manners, the thoughts, the joys, the sorrows of the most interesting and important period in the history of our country, as though the life itself, with its characters and incidents, were made to pass before our eyes in a rapid panorama.
Such was the result of one of Alfred's many plans for the good of his kingdom. His own diligence as a writer and translator told vitally upon the language, then rapidly improving. Latin manuscripts had for some time previously been interlined with Anglo-Saxon "glosses"—that is, interpretations of Latin words and passages in Anglo-Saxon—and this gradually led to the complete transcription of Latin MSS. into Anglo-Saxon, and the writing of original matter in the vernacular tongue. [Footnote 220]
[Footnote 220: A specimen of this interlinear translation may be seen in the Cottonian collection—Vespasian, A i.—a Psalter written in the year 1000, in Latin capitals, with an Anglo-Saxon interpretation between the lines.]
Although only one writer of any consequence has been handed down to us from the time of Alfred, yet we may fairly infer that many others lived and wrote, whose works were destroyed in the ravages made by the Danes from that time to the Norman conquest, and afterward when Norman monks looked with contempt upon Saxon MSS., and used them for other purposes, such as binding or transcription after erasure. The Latin then once more became the language of literature in this country. Still the Saxon lived, and would not be trampled out by the Normans, though it degenerated sadly until, in the fourteenth century, an idiom sprung up by a mingling of the two, which has been called Semi-Saxon. Out of this came the early English, from which, after an additional Saxon infusion from Puritan times, came the idiom we now use, whose strong Saxon basis bids fair to make it live through all time, and, is spreading it in every quarter of the world.
It will be interesting to note at this point that two men managed to preserve a great deal of literary matter out of the gross Vandalism which was rife, Archbishop Parker and Sir Robert Cotton. Parker's collection is in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and those of Cotton in the British Museum, the present reference to which, under the titles of Roman emperor's, arose from the circumstance that in his own library they were arranged on shelves, over each of which was a bust of one of the Roman emperors. In this way, and by the diligence of these two men, many valuable MSS. were rescued which had passed into the hands of private individuals and booksellers.
All hopes of a national vernacular literature were, however, frustrated by the advent of the Normans. Centuries before, the French had ceased to sing their mournful litany, "A furore Normannorum libera nos Domine," and had found it advisable to give these troublesome strangers a settlement. Here they had multiplied and thriven until the middle of the eleventh century, when they were the most promising people in Europe. There are traits in the Norman character not unlike the Roman. The Gothic tribes generally adopted the language and, to a certain extent, the customs of the countries they conquered; but the Normans, like the Romans, always endeavored to graft their own language and customs upon their vanquished. As soon, therefore, as William had made his tenure sure in England, he began the work of Saxon extermination by ordering that the elements of grammar should be taught in the French language, that the Saxon caligraphy should be abandoned, and all deeds, pleadings in courts, and laws should be in French. Saxon then sunk into contempt, and those of the old race who were more politic than patriotic set to work vigorously to acquire the elements of the favorite tongue. Then also the custom of writing books in Latin was revived, and continued, as regards all important works, down to the sixteenth century; for although books were written in English before that time, the language was in a very crude state; for as in Germany and other countries, so in England, the event which first fixed the language was the translation of the Bible into the vernacular; the book, which everybody read, soon became an authority, and was appealed to on points of language. Still the influence of the Normans was beneficial, both upon the manners and the literature of the country. The Saxons, with all their greatness, were not a very refined people; they were given to carousals of which we can scarcely form any conception, their diet was coarse, and their manners unpolished; but the Normans, if not more simple in their habits, were more refined. Norman extravagance found vent, not in drunken orgies and riotous feasting, but in fine buildings, horses, trappings, and dress. [Footnote 221] The importation of provincial poetry in the shape of Trouvère poems, romances, and fabliaux, had a refining effect upon the literature, and laid the foundation of English chivalry. But the most beneficial effect was the introduction of two or three master spirits into the country, whose friendship William had formerly cultivated. Of the two most important we will give a rapid sketch.
[Footnote 221: There is a very good comparison of the manners of the two races drawn by William of Malmesbury in his Gesta Regum; and, being related to both, he is likely to have given a fair estimate.]
In the early morning of a day in the first quarter of the eleventh century, a poor young scholar walked through the gates of Pavia, staff in hand, into the open country, and made his weary way across the Alps. He was heavy in heart and light in purse; he had lost his parents, and had left his native city to seek the scanty livelihood of a vagrant scholar, and yet bound up in that ragged form, as it were in an undeveloped germ, were wealth, power, and influence; he was making his way, [{811}] as far as he knew, to some of those French schools of disputation which had sprung up, where a poor scholar whose wits had been sharpened by scanty fare, might, by a happy sophism or a crushing conclusion, earn a bed and refreshment for the night; but he was in reality making his way to fame, distinction, and wealth, to a conqueror's court, and to the episcopal throne of Canterbury. This ragged scholar, who thus left his native city, was Lanfranc, a name familiar to English ears and ever memorable in English history, For some years he led this vagrant life, travelling from place to place, disputing and studying, when he once more returned to Pavia and established himself as a pleader. His eloquence soon brought fame and competence; but urged by some hidden impulse, he threw up the prospects open to him; once more left the city, and once more took his way across the Alps and settled at Avranches in Normandy, where many schools were established. He soon found disciples; but the secret yearning of his heart developed itself—the monastery of Bea was not far distant, and to it he bent his steps, hoping to find that peace which the cloister alone could afford. But he was not allowed to remain in obscurity, his scholars and others, attracted by his fame, crowded around him, flocked to his lectures, and the school of Bea became so renowned that the attention of the young Duke of Normandy, who also had in him the germ of a glorious career, was attracted to this rising dialectician, and through the medium of intellectual intercourse a friendship was engendered which procured for the conqueror of England a wise and trusty adviser, and paved the way to fortune for, the poor student. The remainder of his career may be summed up in a few words. William had just founded a new monastery at Caen, and over it, he placed his friend as abbot. But during the twenty years which had elapsed between the time of his settlement at Bea and his elevation to the abbacy of Caen, the school he had founded had become most renowned, and some of the great men of after times boasted of having sat there at Lanfranc's feet. Among these were Bishops Guimond, Ives, and another Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm. On one occasion after the elevation of Lanfranc to the primacy of England, he was obliged to visit Rome and have an audience of Pope Alexander II., who paid him such marked respect that the courtiers asked the reason, and the Pope replied, "It is not because he is primate of England that I rose to meet him, but because I was his pupil at Bea, and there sat at his feet to listen to his instruction."
While at Caen, however, he entered into the renowned controversy with Berenger upon the doctrine of the real presence in the Eucharist, Berenger admitting the fact but denying the change of substance. The results of this controversy, however, were anticipated by neither party. It led to a thorough change in the mode of investigation of truth, more especially of divine truth. Berenger had adopted the course of arguing the point upon the grounds of pure reason, a course not unfamiliar to an expert dialectician like Lanfranc, but utterly novel in theological disputation, where authority was omnipotent. Lanfranc himself says of his opponent that he desired "relictis saeris auctoritatibus ad dialecticam confugium facere." But like a true athlete, he meets his adversary with his own weapons, and for the first time in Europe men beheld a vital theological dogma being discussed by champions who had agreed to throw aside all the weight of authority and rely upon the strength of their own logic. This was the first signal for the union of scholasticism with theology, which prevailed in Europe for centuries, tingeing even the writings of the early reformers. What Lanfranc had done in the pressure of controversy, Anselm took up with all the ardor of a convert; and the change which passed over the thought of Europe [{812}] amounted to a sort of intellectual revolution. But to return to the fortunes of Lanfranc;—soon after William had been consecrated he returned to Normandy, taking with him Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose deposition he ultimately procured, when he immediately installed his friend and adviser, Lanfranc, into the see of Canterbury. At first, however, Lanfranc declined the post, upon the grounds that he did not know the language; but his objection was overruled, and in the year 1070 he was consecrated and took up his residence in England.
To him at Bea succeeded as teacher, Anselm, who made great advances in the scholastic mode of teaching. He was also prior of the monastery, and during this period he wrote six treatises on the Fall of Satan, on Truth, on Original Sin, on the Reason why God created Man, the Liberty of the Will, and the Consistency of Freedom with the Divine Prescience. These great questions were then uppermost in men's minds, and they were treated by Anselm in the new and more attractive mode of appeal to pure reason. Whilst in the midst of these studies he was appointed abbot of his monastery, which he reluctantly accepted, and in the year 1093, fifteen years afterward, four years after the death of Lanfranc, he was appointed by William II. to the archbishopric of Canterbury. His relations with the king were not happy; he opposed that obstinate and rapacious monarch, and a series of misunderstandings ensued, which led him to retire to Rome to consult with the Pope. During his absence he wrote that book by which he is most known, Cur Deus Homo, Why God was made Man. He also took a prominent part in the Council of Bari, in 1098, where he procured the decision against the Greek delegates, upon the question of the Procession of the Holy Ghost. Upon the death of William he returned; but the rest of his life was occupied in continual disputes on points of privilege with the king, Henry, and he died in the year 1109.
But we will now advance to the consideration of that great change which came over the thought of Europe, and bears the name of scholasticism. The controversy of Lanfranc with Berenger on the doctrine of the real presence, may be accepted as the point where the new method was applied to theology; from that time it became the favorite mode. But although the scholastic philosophers professed to rely upon bare reason, they appear to have instinctively felt that great want of human nature, the want of an oracle, and they found their oracle in the works of Aristotle, then in use in the university and schools of Spain, sadly perverted by being filtered through an Arabic translation. Men flew to Arabic grammars, and to Spain, to Arabic versions of Aristotle, and the Stagyrite then became the oracle of the Scholastics just as the fathers were of their opponents. But still, as is and must be the case in all religious controversies, both parties lay under the same necessity, and, after all, drew their premises from the same quarter. The defender and the opposer were alike subject to the influence of revelation; without that, the opponent would have wanted the subject of opposition, and the defender the object of his defence, so that the premises of both appear to be involved in the same thing, and in fine the Scholastics fell back also upon the fathers, as may be seen in the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the handbook of scholasticism, which is nothing but a mass of extracts from the fathers and popes, worked up together into a system of theology. In its earliest form it cannot be denied that scholasticism did good. It was a healthy revival of intellectual life, it stimulated all classes of thinkers, and created a passion for inquiry; it brought out such great minds as Abelard, Duns Scotus, and Thomas Aquinas. The very subjects upon which men debated gave an elevation to thought, and the result was an intellectual activity which has rarely been equalled. It must be remembered also that the schoolmen did not discard [{813}] the facts laid down by the fathers; they were not infidels, but their investigations turned more upon the mode of operation—they accepted the divine presence in the Eucharist, but what they wanted to ascertain was the way in which it manifested itself. They believed in the Incarnation, but they desired to know the exact mode in which that sacrifice had worked out human redemption.
But we must return to the development of English literature. After the Norman Conquest, we have already observed, the Latin tongue became once more the medium of communication for the learned, and all great works were written in that idiom, so that there were three tongues used in England: the Latin by the clergy and scholars, the Norman-French by the court and nobles, and the Saxon, which fell to the common people. The literature of that period was rich in some departments, poor in others. In philosophy, whatever we may think of its merit, it was anything but scanty, and a perfect library of scholastic writings has come down even to our times, a desert of argumentation and reasoning, but containing veins of gold, could a mortal ever be found endowed with the patience to dig deep enough, and labor long enough to open them. The Book of Sentences, by Peter the Lombard, bishop of Paris, to which we have already alluded, was one of the wonders of the twelfth century. It was divided into four parts: the first treated of the Trinity and divine attributes, the second of the Creation, the origin of angels, of the fall of man, of grace, free will, of original and actual sin; the third of the Incarnation, faith, hope, charity, the gifts of the spirit, and the commandments of God; and the fourth treated of the Sacraments, the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, and the state of the righteous in heaven. Although a great deal is borrowed from the fathers, yet there is in this work a marked tendency toward the scholastic method; he wanders into abstruse speculations and subtle investigations as to the generation of the Word, the possibility of two persons being incarnate in one, sins of the will and of the action. It did much to mould the thought of succeeding writers, and it won for its author the title of Master of Sentences; it was appealed to as an authority; what the "Master" said was a sufficient answer to an opponent. Another great work was the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, a book which excites admiration even now. Duns Scotus and Occam, also contributed voluminously to the stores of scholastic theology. The literature, however, was richer in history. Whilst the theologians were debating about questions beyond the reach of the human intellect, a band of quiet pious men devoted their time to the recording the tale of human actions. Upward of forty men lived from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, who have written the history of the country from the earliest periods down to the dawning of the sixteenth century. Probably no country in the world is richer in historical material than ourselves; and as an admirable instance of monastic diligence, and evidence of intellectual activity in what has been usually termed an age of dense ignorance, we subjoin a table of the historical writers, upon whose labors the authentic history of the country must rest. [Footnote 222]
[Footnote 222: We omit in our list the supposititious history of Croyland, by Ingulphus, which has been disposed of by Richard Palgrave, as of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, and of little historical value.]
MONASTIC WRITERS OF ENGLISH HISTORY.
Twelfth Century.
William of Poictiers, History of Conquest—Chaplain to William I.
Ordericus Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History to
1141—Monk of St. Evroult.
Anonymous, Gesta Stephani.
William of Jumièges, History of
Normandy—Monk of Jumièges.
Florence of Worcester, Chronicon ex
Chronicis to 1119—Monk of Worcestcr.
Matthew of Westminstcr, Flores
Historiarum—Doubtful.
[{814}]
William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, Historia
Novella, Gesta Pontificum, Vita Anselmi,
De Antiquitate Glastoniae—Monk of Malmesbury.
Eadmer, Historia Novorum, and others—
Monk of Canterbury.
Turgot, Confessor of Margaret, Queen of
Malcolm Canmore; wrote her Life and
History of Durham (called Simeon of Durham),
History of St. Cuthbert, De Rebus
Anglorum, and other works—Monk of Durham.
Ailred, Account of Battle of Standards—Abbot
of Rivault, York.
Geoffrey of Monmouth, British History—Monk of Monmouth.
Alfred of Beverley, Gestis Regum—Canon of
St. John's, Beverley.
Giraldus Cambrensis, Itinerarium Cambriae,
Topographia Hiberniae, De Rebus a se Gestis,
etc—Politician.
Henry of Huntingdon, Eight Books History,
Julius Caesar to 1154—Archdeacon.
Roger of Hovenden, Chronicle, 732 to 1202,
in continuation of Bede.
William of Newburgh, Hist. from Conquest to
1197—Monk of Newburgh.
Benedictus Abbas, Chronicle, 1170 to 1192
—Abbot of Peterboro'.
Ralph de Diceto, Two Chron., one 589 to
1148, and the other to 1199, Hist. of
Controversy between Henry and à Becket,
Lives of Archbishops of Canterbury to
1200, in the Anglia Sacra—Archdeacon of London.
Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicle, from 1100
to end of century, three other pieces, Contests
between Monks and Archbishop Baldwin,
History of the Archbishops, from Augustine
to Walter, 1205—Monk of Canterbury.
Thirteenth Century.
Richard of Devizes, Chron. of Reign of Richard I—Monk.
Jocelyn de Brakelond, Chron., 1173 to 1202
—Monk of St. Edmondsbury.
Roger of Wendover, Hist. to 1235—Monk of St. Albans.
Matthew Paris, Historia Major. Conq. to
1259—Monk of St. Albans.
Fourteenth Century.
William Rishanger, Continuation of M. Paris
to 1322, Wars of the Barons—Monk of St. Albans.
John of Brompton, [Footnote 223]
Chron. to 1199, from Saxons—Monk of Jerevaux.
[Footnote 223: Authorship doubtful.]
Thomas Wickes, Chron., of Salisbury to 1304
—Canon of Osney.
Walter Hemingford, Hist. Conquest to 1273
—Monk of Gisbro'.
Robert of Avesbury, Hist. Reign of Edward
III to 1356—Register of Canterbury.
Nicholas Trivet, Hist. from 1135 to 1307—Dominican.
Adam Murimuth, Chron. 1303 to 1337—Monk.
Henry Knyghton, Hist. from Edgar to Richard II—Canon of Leicester.
Thomas Stubbs, Chron. of Archbishops of
York to 1373—Monk.
William Thorne, Chron. of Abbots of St.
Augustine, 1397—Monk.
Ranulph Higden, Polychronicon [Footnote 224] to 1357—Monk.
[Footnote 224: Caxton printed it, with a continuation of his own, to 1460.]
Fifteenth Century.
Thomas Walsingham, Hist. Brevis to Hy. of
Normandy—Monk of St. Albans.
Thomas Otterbourne, Hist. to 1420—Franciscan.
John Whethamstede, Chron. 1441 to 1461—
Abbot of St. Albans.
Thomas Elmham, Life of Henry V.—Prior of Linton.
William of Worcester, Chron. 1324 to 1491—Monk.
John Rouse, Hist. Kings of England to 1490—
Chaplain to Earl of Warwick.
Monastic Registers.
Glastonbury, 63 to 1400
Melrose, 735 to 1270
Margan, 1066 to 1232
Waverly, 1066 to 1291
Ely, 156 to 1169
Abingdon, 870 to 1131
Bishops of Durham, 633 to 1214
Burton 1004 to 1263
Rochester, 1115 to 1124
Holyrood, 596 to 1163
Add to these many historical documents which have been preserved from destruction, such as the Doomsday Book, the Liber Niger, rolls and public registers, and we have a repertoire of historical materials such as scarcely any other nation in Europe can boast of. From the time when the Saxon Chronicle was commenced down to the age of printing, the pens of the monks were unwearied in recording the history of their country; and although they had their share of human weakness, and were influenced in matters of opinion frequently by the treatment shown to their order, still among such a mass of writers the truth may surely be ascertained. The severity of criticism applied to history in these [{815}] days is driving men rapidly to active research among these origines histoicae. Formerly when a man wrote a history, he framed his work upon other men's labors and his own fancy, as was instanced in the case of Robertson, who coolly tells us that he had made up his mind to write a history of something, but was undecided whether it should be a history of Greece, of Leo X., William III. and Anne, or Charles V. At last he decided upon the latter, and we may infer from a letter of his to Dr. Birch in what degree of preparation he was for the work. He says: "I never had access to any copious libraries, and do not pretend to any extensive knowledge of authors, but I have made a list of such as I thought most essential to the subject, and have put them down as I have found them mentioned in any book I happened to read." In another letter he admits: "My chief object is to adorn as far as I am capable of adorning the history of a period which deserves· to be better known." Hume was no better than Robertson, for it appears that the latter had consulted the great English historian about Mary, who sent him a version which Robertson at once used. But shortly after Hume received some MSS. from Dr. Birch, who went more deeply into these things, and in consequence he wrote to his friend Robertson to the following effect: "What I wrote to you with regard to Mary, etc., was from the printed histories and papers, but I am now sorry to tell you that by Murdin's State Papers the matter is put beyond all question. I got these papers during the holidays by Dr. Birch's means, and as soon as I read them I ran to Millar and desired him very earnestly to stop the publication of your history till I should write to you and give you an opportunity of correcting a mistake so important, but he absolutely refused compliance. He said that your book was finished; that the whole narrative of Mary's trial must be wrote over again; that it was uncertain whether the new narrative could be brought within the same compass with the old; that this change would require the cancelling a great many sheets; and that there were scattered passages through the volumes founded on your own theory." [Footnote 225]
[Footnote 225: Disraeli's Literary Miscellanies.]
We quote these letters to show how history was written in bygone times by men who until the days of Maitland and Froude have been regarded as authorities. The blind led the blind, and the History of Scotland— whole sheets of which ought to have been rewritten, and scattered passages founded upon theory erased—was given to the world, because the printer refused to disturb the press, and the author was disinclined to demolish such a fair creation. But the day for imaginative history is past, and a new light is dawning upon the world, the necessity of which is apparent from these revelations. For the future the historian must write from manuscripts or printed copies of manuscripts, or his theories and his fancies will be soon dissipated under a criticism which is becoming daily more powerful, and acquiring new compass as fast as the labors of the Record Office are being brought to light. The narrative of the most vital periods of our country's history will have to be rewritten. We are being gradually taught that the dark ages were not so dark as our conceptions of them; that some of our favorite historical villains may yet be saved; and that many of the gods we have worshipped had very few claims to divinity. The very fact of there being such a repertoire of historical materials created by the labors of those forty monks of different monasteries; the existence of a voluminous and important controversy involving the vital questions of religion, and argued with scholarship, logical acuteness, wit, and vigor; the works of piety, art, and architecture which have come down to us from that age—must convince us that, however rude the physical mode [{816}] of life may have been, the intellectual activity and mental calibre of the men of those days, when we remember their immense disadvantages, were little inferior to those of our day. We produce many things, but not many great things; but the labors of mediaeval monasticism were not multa sed multum, and they live now, and probably will live when much of this multiform literature of our times will be obliterated by the impartial, discriminating hand of time.
We cannot pass over this period of what we may call national Latin literature—that is, when the literatures of all nations were written in Latin—without noticing the history of one book which has ever stood out prominently from the mass of mediaeval productions, not only from its intrinsic excellence, but from the unfathomable mystery connected with its authorship. We allude to the treatise De lmitatione Christi, popularly attributed to Thomas à Kempis. His claim rests chiefly upon the fact that the first printed copy was made from a manuscript written by him and signed "Finitus et completus Anno Domino, 1441, per manus patris Thomae Kempis in monte S. Agnetis prope Swoll." But there is in this subscription no evidence of authorship; it was the usual formula appended to copies. Kempis was an inveterate copyist, and it will be a sufficient proof of the untenable nature of this argument if we mention that a copy of the Bible made by him is subscribed in a similar manner—"Finitus et completus Anno Domini, 1439, in Vigilia S. Jacobi Apostoli per manus Fratris Thomae à Kempis ad laudem Dei in Monasterio S. Agnetis." There is no evidence, therefore, of authorship in the subscription of the MS.
But doubts existed soon after the publication of the work about its authorship, and another MS. was discovered at Arône bearing the inscription, "Incipiunt capitula primi libri Abbatis Johannis Gesen De Imitatione Christi et contemptu omnium vauitatum mundi," and at the end was written "explicit liber quartus et ultimus Abbatis Johannis Gersen de Sacramento Altaris." The house in which this document was found belonged to the company of Jesus, but as it had formerly been held by Benedictines, some vigilant members of that active body at once declared it must have been written by one of their order. They managed to get possession of it, and immediately brought it out with the addition in the title after the name of Gersen of "Abbatis Ordinis Sti. Benedicti." Then commenced that celebrated controversy between the two monastic orders, the Augustines, who advocated the claims of Thomas à Kempis, and the Benedictines, who fought for Gersen. A volume might be written easily upon the bare history of that controversy, as some hundreds of volumes were during its progress. It began immediately after the publication of this Benedictine claim in the year 1616, and it raged in different countries in Europe for more than two centuries, the last controversy coming to a conclusion in 1832, which arose from the discovery of a MS. at Paris, copied in 1550, and a document purporting that it was bequeathed to one of the De' Avogadri family in the year 1347. This further confirmation of the antiquity of the work gave rise to the last controversy which ended like all the others in increasing the doubt as to Thomas à Kempis's authorship and the uncertainty of the whole question.
We think it can be shown that the De lmitatione was known before the birth of Thomas à Kempis, and about the time of the existence of Gersen; but the evidence of the claim of the Gersenites is so slender that the mere chronological coincidence is not sufficient to maintain it. Passages have been collected from works written long before the time of à Kempis word for word the same as in the De Imitatione. In the conferences of Bonaventura to the people of Toulouse, written about 1260, there are many such passages; [{817}] and in an office written by Thomas Aquinas for the Pope Urban IV., about the same time, there are many other passages. [Footnote 226] In fact, in the Conferences a whole paragraph is quoted verbatim, concluding with the phrase, "as may be seen in the pious book on the 'Imitation of Christ.'" Criticism has labored diligently to discover in its text evidences indicative of the nationality of the author, but they have ended in contradictions which seem to insinuate that it might be the joint production of pious minds in different countries, which would leave to Thomas à Kempis the honor of having collected and arranged them into one form. However, instead of wasting time over a fruitless investigation, we prefer taking the book as it is with its wealth of spirituality, with its calm beauty, its power of soothing the perturbed spirit, its subtle analyses of the human heart [Footnote 227] and the springs of human action, its encouragement to a godly life, its fervor, its eloquence, and its strange power; and we are driven to the conclusion that it is the most marvellous book ever produced—most marvellous from the universal influence it has exerted over the minds of men of all creeds, ages, and countries, and from its adaptability to the common yearnings of all humanity. Like the gospel, of which it is the exponent, and therefore from which it derives the quality, it stands out in its marked individuality, in the midst of every phase of life through which it has passed, a distinct thing, having nothing in common with the world or worldly pursuits, but trying to wean men from them, or at least from allowing them to gain an ascendency over their affections. In the present age this isolation is more striking. We are far too philosophical, too scientific, too logical, to attend to the ascetic ravings of this "monkish" book. The business of life runs high with us, runs too noisily, to allow us to listen to its small voice. We are so deeply engaged in the pursuits of pleasure and the acquisition of wealth, that we have no time for the "Imitation of Christ." We are involved in great undertakings—Atlantic telegraphs, principles of physical science, railway committees, parliamentary reforms, and drainage questions, absorb all our attention. But philosophy, science, and logic fail to exempt humanity from its ills. The hour comes when man falls sick, sick unto death; then in that moment when philosophy deserts pain, and science affords no consolation; when logic is dumb, and the soul with instinctive apprehension is clamoring for help, then is the moment for such a book as this. And it was in such a moment that La Harpe, cast into a dungeon of the Luxembourg, with nothing but death before him, accidentally meeting with this book, and opening its pages at the words "Ecce adsum! Ecce ad te venio quia vocasti me. Lacrymae tuae et desiderium animae tuae, humiliatio tua et contritio cordis inclinaverunt me et adduxerunt ad te," [Footnote 228] he fell upon his face heartbroken and in tears. We must conclude this portion of the subject by repeating that the Latin language retained its position as the language of literature until the time of the Reformation. But during the fourteenth century there was a tendency to blend the two vernacular tongues spoken in England—the French and the Saxon. In the struggle for precedence the Saxon conquered, and out of it came the present vigorous idiom spoken by the English; but nothing of any consequence was written in this tongue until it became settled and confirmed.
[Footnote 226: These passages may be seen collected in parallel columns in a work by M. De Gregory on L'Histoire du Livre de l'Imitation. Paris,1843.]
[Footnote 227: Vide the analysis of Temptation, lib. I., c. xiii., and the well-known chapter on the Royal Road of the cross, lib. II., c xii.]
[Footnote 228: "De Imi., lib. III., c. xxi., sec. 6. Behold me! behold I come to thee because thou hast called me. Thy tears and the desire of thy soul, thy humiliation and contrition of heart have inclined and led me unto thee.">[
We now advance to the consideration of one of the most beautiful emanations of Christianity in the world—-her hymns. We take up these [{818}] hymns of the church, and we find that they bear testimony, not only literary but historical, as to the state of the church at any given time, and certainly one of the best and purest testimonies that can be found. Few, if any, writers have sufficiently investigated this branch of ecclesiastical history, the evidence of the hymnology of the church. If we appeal to her controversial theology we shall find invariably a mass of one-sided representation, mutual vituperation, and invective; if we go to ecclesiastical history we shall find that those histories are written by minds working under the bias of some inclination toward sect or theory; but if we take up the hymns of the church we shall have the pure, free, outspoken voice of the church—we shall see, as it were, its internal organization, its emotions, its aspirations, its thoughts, living, throbbing, palpitating—the very heart of the church itself.
The song of Christianity has never ceased in the world; it has continued in an unbroken strain. It began at its very outset in the song of the mother of its founder, and it has been going on ever since. As the voice of one age dies away, the strain is taken up by the next. It has sunk at times into a low plaintive melody, and at others mounted into a grand swelling psalm, heard above the noise of the world, which ceases its strife to listen· to its music. Of this melody we shall now endeavor to give a brief history. We begin at the coming of our Lord; but the whole worship of the true God is marked by the psalmody of rejoicing hearts. The children of Israel by the Red Sea broke out into the first recorded song; a considerable portion of the Scripture is in that form; Jesus with his disciples sung a hymn at the Last Supper; the apostles continued the practice, and from post-apostolic times there have come down to us three great hymns, whose origin is lost in their remote antiquity—the Ter Sanctus, the Gloria in Excelsis, and the Te Deum. These hymns were used in the very earliest ages of the church. Of the latter there is a legend that it was sung by Ambrose spontaneously at the baptism of Augustine.
The periods of hymnology may be divided into two great sections—the earliest or Greek period, extending to the dawn of the fourth century, when the second or Latin division commences; and this latter may be subdivided into three parts—the Ambrosian, the Barbarian, and the Mediaeval. The earliest Greek hymns are anonymous; there is one to Christ on the Cross:—
"Thou who on the sixth day and hour
Didst nail to the cross the sin
Which Adam dared in Paradise,
Read also the handwriting at our transgressions,
O Christ our Lord! and save us."
There is one on repentance, commencing:—
"Receive thy servant, my Saviour,
Falling before thee with tears, my Saviour,
And save, Jesus, me repenting."
And a simple doxology:—
"God is my hope,
Christ is my refuge,
The Holy Spirit is my vesture.
Holy Trinity, glory to thee!"
The first name of a hymn-writer which has reached us is that of Clement of Alexandria, who lived toward. the close of the second century. One of his hymns is called, Hymn of the Saviour. But it is recorded by St. Basil that a hymn was well known in the first and second centuries, called, Hail, Gladdening Light! which was sung in the churches at the lighting of the lamps:—
"Hail, Jesus Christ! hail, gladdening light
Of the immortal father's glory bright!
Blessed of all saints beneath the sky,
And of the heavenly company!
"Now, while the sun is setting,
Now, while the light grows dim,
To Father, Son, and Spirit,
We raise our evening hymn.
"Worthy thou, while time shall dure,
To be hymned by voices pure.
Son of God, of life the giver,
Thee the world shall praise forever!"
There were several Syriac hymns at this period. Ephraim Syrus, a [{819}] monk, and deacon of Mesopotamia. wrote, The Children in Paradise, On Palm Sunday, The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, and another, called, The Lament of a Father on the death of his Son, which used to be sung at the funerals of children. Gregory of Nazianzen is the best known of the Greek hymn-writers. There are two hymns to Christ extant by him, and an evening hymn. In one of the hymns to Christ the following passage occurs:—
"Unfruitful, sinful, bearing weeds and thorns,
Fruits of the curse—ah! whither shall I flee?
O Christ, most blessed! bid my fleeting days
Flow heavenward, Christ, sole fount of hope to me!
"The enemy is near—to thee I cling!
Strengthen, oh! strengthen me by might divine;
Let not the trembling bird be from thine altar driven—
Save me—it is thy will, O Christ!—save me, for I am thine."
Gregory's life was spent in a continual conflict with Arianism. At the age of fifty he went to Constantinople, and as all the churches were in the hands of the Arians, he preached in the house of a relative. He was soon subject to persecution, was pelted in the streets, arrested, tried, and with much difficulty acquitted. Ultimately he succeeded; the Arian heresy passed away; the house where he had so faithfully preached became the Church of "Anastasia;" the truth had risen there. But time, though it brought success, had left him a sad, lonely old man. He was made Patriarch of Constantinople by the Emperor Theodosius; but he had lost all his dearest relatives, and he threw up his dignity and retired from the world. In that retirement he wrote a beautiful hymn, which sums up his life. We quote the first and last verses:—
"Where are the winged words? Lost in the air.
Where the fresh flower of youth and glory? Gone!
The strength of well-knit limbs? Brought low by care.
Wealth? Plundered. None possess but God alone.
Where those dear parents who my life first gave,
And where that holy twain, brother and sister? In the grave.
"This as thou wilt, the Day will all unite,
Wherever scattered, when thy word is said;
Rivers of fire; abysses without light,
Thy great tribunal, these alone are dread.
And thou, O Christ my King, art fatherland to me—
Strength, wealth, eternal rest, yea all, I find in thee." [Footnote 229]
[Footnote 229: These extracts from translations of Greek hymns are quoted from The Christian Life in Song, where the full versions may be seen.]
St. Andrew of Crete, St. John of Damascus, St. Cosmas, Bishop of Maiuma, and Chrysostom, were amongst the Greek hymn-writers. Their productions are characterized by the greatest simplicity and fervor, reliance upon Christ and love to God being the most prominent topics. We now come to the period of Latin hymns, and we begin with the first or Ambrosian division. The principal writers are Ambrose, Hilary, and St. Prudentius. Augustine, in his Confessions, quotes one of Ambrose's hymns, as having repeated it when lying awake in bed, "Atque ut eram in lecto meo solus, recordatus sum veridicos versus Ambrosii tui: Tu es enim. [Footnote 230 ]
[Footnote 230: August. Confess., lib. ix., c. 12.]
"Deus creator omnium
Polique rector, vestiens
Diem decoro lumine
Noctem sopora gratia.
"Artus solutos ut quies
Reddat laboris usul,
Mentesque fessas adievet
Lactusque solvat anxios."
Ambrose was born about the year 340; his father was a prefect of Gaul, and belonged to a noble family. Before the age of thirty he himself was consul of Liguria, and dwelt in Milan. Up to this time he had no notion of becoming an ecclesiastic. But Anxentius, the Arian bishop, having died, a dispute arose between the citizens of Milan and the emperor, as to who should appoint the successor, each trying to evade the responsibility. It was left to the people; the city was in a state of great excitement, and a tumultuous assemblage filled the cathedral, in the midst of whom appeared Ambrose in his civil capacity, to command peace, and it is said that in the lull which ensued, a voice was heard crying, "Ambrose is bishop," which the whole mass of people, seized by a sudden impulse, repeated. [{820}] Soon afterward he was ordained and consecrated. The majority of the people were opposed to Arianism, and he was soon involved in a dispute with the Empress Justina, who required him to give up the Portian Basilica to the Arians. He refused, and accompanied by a multitude of people, took possession of the church, and fastened the doors. The imperial troops besieged them for several days, during which time the people kept singing the hymns of Ambrose. Monica, the mother of Augustine, is said to have been amongst the crowd in the church. One of Ambrose's hymns was used for centuries as a morning hymn, called Hymn at the Cock-crowing; another Advent hymn, Veni Creator gentium; one for Easter, Hic est dies verus Dei. St. Hilary, Bishop of Arles in the sixth century, is the next of the Ambrosian period; the best known of his hymns is that to the morning, Lucis largitor splendide. But the most prominent name of the period after Ambrose is Prudentius, who was born about 348, practised in the courts as a pleader, and in his fifty-seventh year forsook the world, and spent the rest of his days in religious exercises. One of his great hymns is for Epiphany, O sola magnarum urbium, another on the Innocents, Salvete flores martyrum; but the hymn most known is a very beautiful, perhaps his most beautiful composition, a funeral hymn, beginning Jam maesta quiesce querela. After the reformation, this hymn was adopted by the German Protestants as their favorite funeral hymn, their version beginning "Hört auf mil Trauern und Klagen."
The resurrection of the body is thus expressed—
"Non si cariosa vetustas
Dissolverit ossa favillis
Fueritque cinisculus arens
Minimi mensura pugilli:
"Nec si vaga flamina et aurae
Vacuum per inane volantes
Tulerint cum pulvere nervos
Hominem periisse licebit"
"For though, through the slow lapse of ages,
These mouldering bones should grow old,
Reduced to a handful of ashes.
A child in its hands may enfold.
"Though flames should consume it and breezes
Invisibly float it away,
Yet the body of man cannot perish,
Indestructible through its decay."
The next period of hymnology is what we have termed the barbarian, because it began at the time when the northern invaders were settling down in the various parts of Europe, which had fallen to their arms. Though not so fertile in hymns, yet some beautiful things were produced in this period. We shall only mention three hymn-writers—Gregory the Great, Venantius Fortunatus, and Bede. The principal hymn of Gregory's is the Veni Creator Spiritus; but the most distinguished hymn-writer of this era is Fortunatus; he was an Italian, born about 530; a gay poet, the delight of society, until Queen Radegunda persuaded him to be ordained, and to settle at Poictiers, where she, having left her husband, was presiding over a monastic establishment. There is a beautiful hymn of his, which commences—
"Pange lingua gloriosi
Praelium certaminis."
We quote two verses (v. i. and viii.) of the late Dr. Neale's translation:
I.
"Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle,
With completed victory rife.
And above the cross's trophy,
Tell the triumph of the strife;
How the world's Redeemer conquered,
By surrendering of his life.
VIII.
"Faithful cross, above all other,
One and only noble tree,
None in foliage, none in blossom,
None in fruit, compares with thee;
Sweetest wood and sweetest iron,
Sweetest weight sustaining free."
A portion of one of his poems, on the resurrection of our Lord, was sung in the Church for ten centuries as an Easter hymn. It commences, Salve festa dies toto venerabilis aevo. [Footnote 231] In another of his poems, De Cruce Christi, there occurs a beautiful image of the Cross as the tree around which the True Vine is clinging:
"Appensa est vitis inter tua brachia, de qua
Dulcia sanguineo vina rubore fluunt." [Footnote 232]
[Footnote 231: Trench's Sacred Latin Poetry, p. 152.]
[Footnote 232: For the whole see Trench's Sacred Latin Poetry, p.130.]
But his most celebrated hymn is the one written on the occasion of the sending the true cross by the emperor to Radegunda, at the consecration of a church at Poictiers. It is called Vexilla Regis prodeunt:
I.
"The royal banners forward go,
The cross shines forth with mystic glow,
Where he in flesh, our flesh who made,
Our sentence bore, our ransom paid.
VI.
"With fragrance dropping from each bough,
Sweeter than sweetest nectar thou:
Decked with the fruit of peace and praise,
And glorious with triumphant lays.
VIl.
"Hall, altar! hail, O Victim! Thee
Decks now thy passion's victory,
Where life for sinners death endured,
And life by death for man procured." [Footnote 233]
[Footnote 233: Dr. Neale's Mediaeval Hymns.]
Bede the Venerable wrote hymns also; the two best known are the Hymnum canamus gloriae, and Hymnum canentes martyrum.
We now advance to the last and richest of all the periods of hymnology, the mediaeval. The list is headed with the royal name of Robert II. of France, who wrote, hymns, one of which is a Veni Sancte Spiritus. Peter Damian, the cardinal bishop of Ostia, who died in 1072, wrote many hymns, but the two greatest are De Die Mortis and Ad perennis vitae fontem. [Footnote 234] Adam of St. Victor was another prolific hymn-writer; thirty-six of his productions are extant, and well known. [Footnote 235]
[Footnote 234: Trench's Sacred Latin Poetry, pp. 278, 315. ]
[Footnote 235: Ibid., pp. 53. 111, 160, 202, 212, 227.]
Peter the Venerable and Thomas à Kempis have also left hymns behind them. But it was reserved for Archbishop Trench to dig out of the mouldering relics of the past a hymn written by a monk of Clugny, one Bernard de Morlaix, the translation of which, by Dr. Neale, has supplied the church of every denomination with favorite hymns; The most general name by which it is known is Jerusalem the Golden. The original is a poem of about three thousand lines, called De Contemptu Mundi, a melancholy satire upon the corruptions of the times. The first appearance of it in print, is in a collection of poems, De Corrupto Ecclesiae Statu, by Flacius Illyricus. We cannot speak too highly of this poem of Bernard, nor of the merits of Dr. Neale's translation. The original is written in one of the most difficult of all metres, technically called "leonini cristati trilices daetylici," a dactylic hexameter, divided into three parts, with a tailed rhyme and rhymes between the two first clauses. Dr. Neale gives a specimen of this verse in English:
"Time will be ending soon, heaven will be rending
soon, fast we and pray we;
Come the most merciful; comes the most terrible,
watch we while may we."
The imagery in the original poem is gorgeous; but Dr. Neale has exceeded the original [Footnote 236] in many parts of his translation'. We add a few gems. The opening lines are—
"Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt vigilemus!
Ecce minaciter imminet arbiter ille supremus.
Imminet, imminet, ut mala terminet, aequa coronet
Recta remuneret, anxia liberet aethera donet."
"The world is very evil,
The times are waxing late,
Be sober and keep vigil,
The Judge is at the gate;
The Judge that comes in mercy,
The Judge that comes with might,
To terminate the evil,
To diadem the right."
[Footnote 236: The best edition of this poem is the little shilling volume by Dr. Neale, called the Rhythm of Bernard de Morlaix, published by Hayes, Lyall-place, Eaton-square. It contains between two and three hundred of the original lines, with Dr. Neale's complete translation.]
Dr. Neale has proved himself a true poet in this translation; the rendering is most happy, and the whole version forms one of the finest sacred poems in the language. The lines—
"Patria luminis, inscia turbinis, inscia litis.
Cive replebitur amplificabitur lsraelitis
Patria splendida, terraque florida, libera spinis
Danda fidelibus est ibi civibus, hic peregrinis,"
are thus happily rendered—
"And the sunlit land that reeks not
Of tempest nor of fight
Shall fold within its bosom
Each happy Israelite;
The home of fadeless splendor,
Of flowers that fear no thorn,
Where they shall dwell as children,
Who here as exiles mourn."
Then the episode—
"Sunt radiantia jaspide moenia clara pyropo."
"With jaspers glow thy bulwarks,
Thy streets with emeralds blaze,
The sardius and the topaz
Unite in thee their rays;
Thine ageless walls are bonded
With amethyst unpriced;
The saints build up its fabric,
And the corner·stone is Christ.
* * * * *
Thou hast no shore, fair ocean!
Thou hast no time, bright day!
Dear fountain of refreshment.
To pilgrims far away.
* * * * *
They stand, those halls of Sion,
Conjubilant with song,
And bright with many an angel
And all the martyr throng;
The Prince is ever in them,
Their daylight is serene;
The pastures of the blessed
Are decked in glorious sheen.
There is the throne of David,
And there, from care released,
The song of them that triumph,
The shout of them that feast;
And they who, with their leader,
Have conquered in the fight,
For ever and for ever
Are clad in robes of white."
But we must pause, for to give all the beauties of this poem would be to transcribe the whole. Another St. Bernard, the well-known abbot of Clairvaux, was a contemporary with him of Clugny. He was one of the most influential men of his age, a man far in advance of it; the adviser of popes and the confidant of kings. Many hymns are attributed to him, one of the most beautiful being that known as Jesu Dulcis Memoria. In Trench's Sacred Latin Poetry there is a selection of fifteen verses, but the original consists of forty-eight verses. [Footnote 237] It is a fine specimen of the ardent loving poetry so characteristic of the period. A very beautiful version, or rather imitation of this poem, is extant in the Harleian MSS., written in the reign of Edward I., and as it is a very good specimen of the English of the period, and represents the spirit of the original, we venture to quote a verse or two. [Footnote 238]
[Footnote 237: Sti. Bernardi Clarae Vallensis Opp: Benedictine edition, vol. ii., p. 895.]
[Footnote 238: Printed also in the Percy Society's Publications, vol. iv., p. 68.]
I.
"Jesu, suete is the love of thee,
Nothing so suete may be;
Al that may with eyen se
Haveth no suetnesse ageynes the.
XIV.
"Jhesu, when ich thenke on the,
And loke upon the rode tre;
Thi suete body to-toren se,
Hit maketh heorte to smerte me.
XVIII.
"Jhesu, my saule drah the to,
Min heorte opene ant wyde undo;
This hure of love to drynke so,
That fleysshliche lust be al for-do.
XLV.
"Jesut thin help at myn endyng,
Ant ine that dredful out-wendyng
Send mi soule god weryying,
That y ne drede non eovel thing."
We can only notice one other grand hymn, selected also from a long poem of Bernard, addressed to the different portions of the body of Christ on the cross. This is from the Ad Faciem, and commences— [Footnote 239]
[Footnote 239: For the Latin, see Trench's Sacred Latin Poetry, p. 139.]
"Salve caput cruentatum
Totum spinis coronatum."
As it is one of the finest mediaeval hymns, and has been translated into nearly all European languages, we give the translation:—
"Hail! thou head so bruised and wounded,
With the crown of thorns surrounded;
Smitten with the mocking reed,
Wounds which may not cease to bleed,
Trickling faint and slow.
Hail! from whose most blessed brow
None can wipe the blood drops now.
All the flower of life has fled;
Mortal paleness there instead.
Thou, before whose presence dread,
Angels trembling bow.
"All thy vigor and thy life
Fading in this bitter strife;
Death his stamp on thee has set,
Hollow and emaciate,
Faint and drooping there.
Thou, this agony and scorn,
Hast for me a sinner borne;
Me, unworthy—all for me,
With those signs of love on thee.
Glorious face appear!
"Yet in this thine agony,
Faithful shepherd, think of me;
From whose lips of love divine
Sweetest draughts of life are mine,
Purest honey flows,
All unworthy of thy thought,
Guilty, yet reject me not;
Unto me thy head incline.
Let that dying head of thine
In mine arms repose.
"Let me true communion know
With thee in thy sacred woe,
Counting all beside but dross,
Dying with thee on the cross;
'Neath it will I die.
Thanks to thee with every breath.
Jesus, for thy bitter death;
Grant thy guilty one this prayer—
When my dying hour is near, t
Gracious God, be nigh.
[{823}]
"When my dying hour must be,
Be not absent then from me;
In that dreadful hour I pray
Jesus come without delay,
See and set me free.
When thou biddest me depart,
Whom I cleave to with my heart,
Lover of my soul be near,
With thy saving cross appear;
Show thyself to me," [Footnote 240]
[Footnote 240: Quoted in Christian Life in Song.]
There is an excellent version of this in German in the Passion Hymn of Paul Gerhard, beginning—
"O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden,
Voll Schmerz und voller Hohn!"
But the grandest of all the mediaeval hymns is that attributed to Thomas of Celano, known as the Dies Irae. Its authorship is uncertain; it burst upon the world after a long silence in the church, like some strain wafted over the earth on the winds of heaven. It has always been the favorite hymn for solemnities in every country. In Germany upward of sixty translations have been made of it. Goethe has effectively introduced it into the "Faust" in the cathedral scene, where Marguerite is tempted by the evil spirit, who, when the choir chanted the words—
"Dies irae, dies illa,
Solvet saeclum in favilla,"
whispers sardonically into her ear—
"Grimm fasst dich!
Die Posaune tönt!
Die Gräber beben!
Und dein Herz,
Aus Aschenruh
Zu Flammenquallen
Wieder aufgeschaffen
Bebt auf;"
and so on through the whole scene, corrupting the meaning of the hymn in the mind of the broken-hearted girl. It was muttered by the dying lips of Walter Scott, and has employed the genius of such men as Schlegel, Fichte, and Herder. We give one passage—
"Recordare, Jesu pie,
Quod sum causa tuae viae,
Ne me perdas illa die.
"Querens me sedisti lassus,
Redemisti crucem passus,
Tantus labor non sit cassus."
"Think of me, good Lord, I pray,
Who troddest for me the bitter way,
Nor forsake me in that day.
"Weary sat'st thou seeking me,
Diedst redeeming in the tree,
Not in vain such toil can be."
The mediaeval period was one rich in art and active in intellectual work. The great difference between that age and this is, that in mediaeval times intellectual life was concentrated, and now it is spread abroad; we get more books and readers, but less great books and thinkers. Perhaps there has never been a time of such vigorous intellectual effort in England, unless we except the Elizabethan age, than that of the scholastic controversies of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. It was in this age, too, that the essentially mediaeval art of illumination flourished in all the lettered monasteries of Europe, the age when all the great cathedrals were built; and when that enchanting song whose notes we have just been listening to was improvised and sung. The God who presides over the economy of nature presides also over that of life. His hand is in both, upholding, protecting, guiding. We take up a phase of human history like this mediaeval phase, and to us it appears contradictory, objectless, useless; but we must remember that it is but one part of the great economy, that as every phase of nature has its separate use, so every period in the history of humanity contributes its share to the general result. There are no arid dark wastes in history any more than in nature. Progressing geographical science is gradually revealing to our minds the fact that Central Africa is not the deadly useless desert of our imagination, but is probably belted and intersected with rivers, whose fertilizing power has only to be applied. So a progressive historical science is rapidly clearing away the darkness of these dark ages, revealing to us treasures which have long lain hidden. We speak of the past as antiquity, and we are apt to associate the idea of age with it, just as we look [{824}] toward the present as youthful and new. But we must remember that antiquity really belongs to the present as the result of time, and that the past was the youth. So when we go back into these past ages of the church we must regard them as her youth, and instead of quarrelling with the follies and wantonness inseparable from immaturity, endeavour to do our best to help on the great consummation of her mission in the world, knowing well that although the hey-day of her youth is past, she has not yet attained her full maturity; and in times of despair, when schism is rife, when the sons of her bosom desert her, when men harden themselves against her love and forsake her, ever bear in mind the promise of her great head and founder, "Upon this rock I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."