In spite of the opposition of the Roman See, and the later effort of Charlemagne, in his zeal for the Gregorian system, to destroy all copies of the Ambrosian hymns and tunes, the “Ambrosiani” still keep a small place in the Roman Breviary.
Among the contemporaries of Ambrose, no hymnist stands out more conspicuously than the Spaniard, Prudentius (348-424). He also had been a lawyer and a man of affairs. He had more literary gifts than Ambrose, and his poems show more personality, more charm, more unaffected sincerity. Bentley calls him “the Horace and Virgil of the Christians.” A single stanza may illustrate his spirit and style:
“The bird, the messenger of day,
Cries the approaching light;
And thus doth Christ, who calleth us,
Our minds to life excite.”
Mention should be made of Fortunatus (530-609). He was, like the later Marot of psalm-version fame, “the fashionable poet of the day,” a precursor of the troubadours. Later in life he became religious, a priest, an almoner of a monastery, and finally Bishop of Poitiers. He wrote a processional to be used at the reception of a piece of the true cross presented by Queen Rhadegunda. The hymn “Vexilla regis prodeunt” has come down the ages. Dr. Neale calls it “one of the grandest in the treasury of the Latin church.” We make room for the first and last stanzas of Dr. Neale’s translation:
“The royal banners forward go;
The cross shines forth in mystic glow;
Where he in flesh, our flesh who made,