V. MEDIEVAL POPULAR HYMNODY
Although the hymns whose origin we have been tracing were used in enriching the services of the Roman Church, and for guiding the meditations and devotions of the clerical spiritually-minded readers, we get hints of a people’s hymnody used privately and in public processions, usually in the common speech of the region. It was the age of the Troubadours, a time of universal song. It is unthinkable that a people in whose lives religion was a commanding influence should have no songs of their own about it.
But among the Albigenses and Waldenses and other pietistic sects in remoter regions there must have been a hymnody all their own. They had no clergy, no connection with the Romish Church—were in utter opposition to its forms and organization. Hence their natural impulse for worship and praise compelled the creation of hymns of their own. They were spontaneous utterances expressing their spiritual life in a native vocabulary all could understand and appropriate.
Although this people’s hymnody has perished, because it was produced and used by the populace and contemptuously ignored or denounced by the clerical custodians of the literature of their day, or by those of succeeding generations, the hymns were widely sung in the homes, on the streets, at popular religious festivals, and even in the remoter village churches where the clerical choirs were wanting.
It was these popular religious songs, rather than the more stately hymns read and chanted by clerical and monastic choirs, that kept alive the vital spark of religious feeling and devotion to Christ. If most of the doves of song hovered over the head of the Madonna during this long period, it was because she was the mother of Jesus. It was as the representative of all motherhood that she brought home the true manhood of our Lord.
That this popular hymnody of the medieval period has failed to survive is no proof of its worthlessness. It is no condemnation of the sermons of Chrysostom, of Peter the Hermit, of Martin Luther, or of a thousand sermons preached every Sunday that they perish with the breath that gave them utterance. They served a good purpose in their brief hour. That hundreds of Watts’ hymns, and thousands by Charles Wesley, are no longer sung, does not establish their uselessness, but only that their spiritual as well as verbal idiom is not adapted to the needs of our day.
Chapter XI
LUTHER AND THE GERMAN HYMN
I. PRE-REFORMATION VERNACULAR HYMNS
While there has been a traceable logical progress in the development of the Christian hymn, as in that of material creation, the generative relations are not always clear. The link between Greek and Latin hymnody may be found in Hilary of Poitiers in the fourth century, but thereafter for five centuries they developed side by side along independent lines.
The same may be said regarding the Latin and German hymns, Luther furnishing the connection. But his connection is not so apparent with the clerical Latin hymn as with the general impulse toward the vernacular hymn.