Day of wrath! that day of burning,
All the world to ashes turning,
Sung by prophets far discerning.
Latin ecclesiastical poetry reached its high water mark in that awful hymn. The solitaire of its sphere and time in the novelty of its rhythmic triplets, it stood a wonder to the church and hierarchy accustomed to the slow spondees of the ancient chant. There could be such a thing as a trochaic hymn!—and majestic, too!
It was a discovery that did not stale. The compelling grandeur of the poem placed it distinct and alone, and the very difficulty of staffing it for vocal and instrumental use gave it a zest, and helped to keep it unique through the ages.
Latin hymnody and hymnography, appealing to the popular ear and heart, had gradually substituted accent for quantity in verse; for the common people could never be moved by a Christian song in the prosody of the classics. The religion of the cross, with the song-preaching of its propagandists, created medieval Latin and made it 91 / 63 a secondary classic—mother of four anthem languages of Western and Southern Europe. Its golden age was the 12th and 13th centuries. The new and more flexible school of speech and music in hymn and tune had perfected rhythmic beauty and brought in the winsome assonance of rhyme.
The “Dies Irae” was born, it is believed, about the year 1255. Its authorship has been debated, but competent testimony assures us that the original draft of the great poem was found in a box among the effects of Thomas di Celano after his death. Thomas—surnamed Thomas of Celano from his birthplace, the town of Celano in the province of Aquila, Southern Italy—was the pupil, friend and co-laborer of St. Francis of Assisi, and wrote his memoirs. He is supposed to have died near the end of the 13th century. That he wrote the sublime judgment song there is now practically no question.
The label on the discovered manuscript would suggest that the writer did not consider it either a hymn or a poem. Like the inspired prophets he had meditated—and while he was musing the fire burned. The only title he wrote over it was “Prosa de mortuis,” Prosa (or prosa oratio)—from prorsus, “straight forward”—appears here in the truly conventional sense it was beginning to bear, but not yet as the antipode of “poetry.” The modest author, unconscious of the magnitude of his work, called it simply “Plain speech concerning the dead."*
* “Proses” were original passages introduced into ecclesiastical chants in the 10th century. During and after the 11th century they were called “Sequences” (i.e. following the “Gospel” in the liturgy), and were in metrical form, having a prayerful tone. “Sequentia pro defunctis” was the later title of the “Dies Irae.”