§ 88.2. Church Music (§ [59, 4], [5]).—After Gregory’s ordinance church music continued to be restricted to the clergy. Charlemagne indeed insisted, but unsuccessfully, that all the people should take part in singing the Gloria and the Sanctus. In the 7th-9th cent. a number of Latin hymn-writers flourished, of whom the most distinguished were Bede, Paul Warnefrid, Theodulf of Orleans, Alcuin, Rabanus Maurus, and Walafrid Strabo. The beautiful Pentecost hymn Veni creator Spiritus is ascribed to Charlemagne. The old classical form and colouring were more and more lost, but all the more the essentially Christian and Germanic character of simplicity and spirituality became prominent. Toward the end of our period the composition of Latin hymns obtained a new and fruitful impetus from the adoption of the so-called Sequences or Proses in the Mass. Under the long series of notes, hitherto without words attached, which were appended to the Alleluia to express inarticulate jubilation, hence called jubilationes, were now placed appropriate rhythmical words in Latin prose, which, however, soon assumed the form of metre, rhyme and strophes. The first famous writer of Sequences was the monk Notker Balbulus of St. Gall, who died in A.D. 912. Connected in form with the Latin Sequences were the more recently introduced Old Frankish Lais (Celtic=verse, song) and the Old German Leiche (=melody, song), to simple airs that had been used for popular songs. The only one which the church allowed to the people, and that only in services outside of the church, in processions, rogations and pilgrimages, in going to the church, at translations of relics, funerals, consecrations of churches, popular religious festivals, etc., was the singing or rather reciting of the Kyrie eleison from the great Litany. The fondness of the Germans for singing and composing hymns led, in the second half of the 9th century, to the attaching to these words short rhyming sacred verses in their mother tongue, and this in such a manner that the Kyrie eleison always formed the refrain of a strophe, so that they were called Leisons. This was the beginning of German church music. Of the Leisons only one hymn to St. Peter in the Old High-German dialect has come down to our day.—The Gregorian Music, Cantus firmus or choralis, won a most complete victory over the Ambrosian (§ [59, 5]). In A.D. 754 Pepin at the request of Stephen II. ordered that in France only the Roman singing should be allowed, and Charlemagne secured for it complete and exclusive ascendency in all the West by violently extirpating the already very degenerate Ambrosian music, by establishing the celebrated singing schools of Metz, Soissons, Orleans, Paris, Lyons, etc., at the head of which he placed teachers brought from Rome, and by introducing instruction in singing in all the higher and lower schools. The first Organ came to France in A.D. 757 as a present to Pepin the Short from the Greek emperor Constantinus Copronymus; the second to Aachen with an embassy from the emperor Michael I. in Charlemagne’s time. From that time they became more common.They were still as instruments very imperfect. They had only from 9 to 12 notes, and the keys were so stiff that they had to be beaten down with the fist.[246]—Continuation, § [104, 10], [11].
§ 88.3. The Sacrifice of the Mass.—As the idea of sacrifice gained place there sprang up in addition to the masses for the souls of the departed (§ [58, 3]) private masses for various other purposes, for the success of some undertaking, for the recovery of a sick person, for good weather and a good harvest, etc. To some extent the multiplication of masses was limited by the ordinance that celebration should be made at the same altar and by the same priest only once in the day. From the wish to secure that as many masses as possible should be said for their souls after death, churches and monasteries were formed into fraternities with a stipulated obligation to celebrate a certain number of masses for each deceased member of the fraternity in all the churches and monasteries belonging thereto. Fraternities of this kind, into which as a special favour princes and nobles were received, were called Confederacies for the Dead.
§ 88.4. The Worship of Saints (§ [57]).—This practice found a very ready response from the Germans. It afforded some compensation for the abandoned worship of their ancestors. But over all other saints towered the mother of God, the meek and gentle queen of heaven. In her the old German reverence for woman found its ideal and full satisfaction. In respect of Image Worship (§ [57, 4]) the Germans lagged behind, partly from the scarcity of images, partly from national aversion to them. The Frankish church of the Carolingian age protested formally against them (§ [92, 1]). But all the greater was the zeal shown in the Worship of Relics (§ [57, 5]) in which the worshipper had the saint concretely and bodily. The relics of the West were innumerable. Rome was an inexhaustible storehouse; and from the successive missionaries, from the deserts and solitudes, from the monasteries and bishops’ seats, there went forth crowds of new saints whose bones were venerated with enthusiasm. The gaining of a new relic for a church or monastery was regarded as a piece of good fortune for the whole land, and amid thousands assembled from far and near the translation was carried out, accompanied with liberal gifts of money. The Frankish monastery of Centula could show in the 9th century an immensely long list of the relics which it possessed, from the grave of the Innocents, the milk of the Holy Virgin, the beard of Peter, his cloak, the Oratorium of Paul, and even from the wood of the three tabernacles that Peter wished to build on Tabor. The custom of making Pilgrimages (§ [57, 6]) also found great favour among the travel-loving Germans, especially among the Anglo-Saxons. The places most frequented by pilgrims were the tomb of the chief Apostles at Rome, then the tomb of Martin of Tours, and, toward the end of our period, that of St. James of Compostella, Jacobus Apostolus the elder, the supposed founder of the Spanish church, whose bones were discovered there by Alfonso the Chaste. The immoralities consequent upon pilgrimages, about which even the ancient church complained, were also only too apparent in this later age. On account of them Boniface urges that his countrywomen should be forbidden to go on pilgrimages, since this only served to supply the cities of Gaul and Italy with prostitutes. The idea of Guardian Angels (§ [57, 3]) was eagerly adopted by the Germans. They were specially drawn to the warlike Archangel Michael, the conqueror of the great dragon (Dan. xii. 1; Jude 9; Rev. xii. 7 ff.).—Continuation, § [104, 8].
§ 88.5. Times and Places for Public Worship.—The beginning of the church year was changed from Easter to Christmas. All Saints’ Day (§ [57, 1]), originally a Roman local festival, was made a universal ordinance by Gregory IV. who, in A.D. 835, fixed its date at 1st Nov. The abundance of relics and the multitude of masses that were said made it necessary to increase the number of altars in the churches beyond what Charlemagne had enjoined. Afterwards they were usually limited to three. The high altar stood out by itself in the middle of the choir recess. The side altars leant on pillars or on the chief altar. A relic shrine generally from the 8th century formed the back of the altar. No trace of a chancel is found, not even of a confessional chair. In churches which had the right of baptizing (§ [84, 2]) there were as a rule separate baptistries. In place of these, after the right of baptizing was conferred on all churches, the baptismal font was introduced, either on the left side of the main entrance or at the point where the transepts crossed the nave. This change required the substitution of sprinkling for immersion. Clocks and towers became always more common. The latter, at first separate from the buildings, were from Charlemagne’s time attached to the church edifice. The baptism of bells, their consecration with water, oil and chrism, with the bestowing on them of some saint’s name, was forbidden by Charlemagne, but it was nevertheless continued, and is common to this day in the Roman Catholic church.
§ 88.6. Most attention was paid to ecclesiastical architecture and painting, south of the Alps during the Ostro-gothic period, north of the Alps during the Carolingian period. The Anglo-Saxons, however, in their island home also developed a taste for art. During the 9th century it received special attention in the German monasteries of St. Gall and Fulda. The monk Tutilo of St. Gall, d. A.D. 912, was pre-eminently distinguished both as a master in architecture, painting and sculpture, and in poetry and scholarship. The old Roman basilica style still maintained the front rank in church building. Yet at Ravenna, the Byzantium of Italy, during the Gothic domination there were several beautiful churches in the Byzantine cupola style. Einhard received from Charlemagne the rank of a court architect. Of all the churches built in Charlemagne’s time the most important was the cathedral of Aachen. It was built in the cupola style after the pattern of the cathedral church of Ravenna. Intended as a royal chapel, it was connected by a pillared passage with the palace. It was therefore also of only moderate dimensions. Its being appropriated as the coronation church led subsequently to its enlargement by the addition to it in A.D. 1355 of a large choir in the Gothic style. The church afforded abundant scope for the use of the art of the statuary. Costly shrines for relics were required, crucifixes, lamps, ciboria, incense vessels, etc., on which might be lavished all the refinements of artistic skill. The church books had artistically carved covers. Church doors, episcopal thrones, reading desks, baptismal fonts, afforded room for practice in relievo work. Among the various kinds of pictorial representations miniature painting was most diligently practised upon copies of the church books.—Continuation, § [104, 12], [14].
§ 89. National Customs, Social Life and Church Discipline.
The remains of Christian popular poetry of this period afford a convincing proof of the powerful and profound manner in which the truths of Christianity (§ [75, 1]) had been grasped by the German races. The great mass of the people indeed had adopted the new faith in a purely historical fashion. Only gradually did it make its way into the inner spiritual life, and meanwhile out of the not fully conquered paganism there grew up a rich crop of superstitions in connection with the Christian life. It must be confessed that the state of morality among the Germans had fallen very low as compared with that which prevailed before Germany’s conversion to Christianity. A sadder contrast is scarcely conceivable than that presented by a comparison of the description in Tacitus of the old German customs and discipline and the account of Gregory of Tours of colossal criminality and brutish sensuality in the Merovingian Age. But never more than here does the fallacy: Post hoc ergo propter hoc, require to be guarded against. The moral deterioration of the German peoples was carried out independently of their contemporaneous, merely external, Christianization. The cause of it lies only in the overturning of the foundations of German life by the migration of the peoples. Severed from their original home, the most powerful guardian of ancestral customs, and set down as conquerors in the midst of rich countries with morally base surroundings, which had a poisonous effect upon them, with that eagerness and tenacity which characterize children of nature, they seized upon the seductive treasures and enjoyments, and their unfettered passion broke through all restraints of discipline and morality. The clearest proof of this view lies in the fact that the moral decay appeared in so remarkable a degree only among such peoples as settled in the corrupt Roman world and became amalgamated with it, most conspicuously among the Franks in Gaul and the Longobards in Italy, whereas among the Anglo-Saxons and the inhabitants of Germany the moral development was more normal.
§ 89.1. Superstition.—A powerful impulse was given to superstition on the one hand by the church, according to the educational method recommended by Gregory the Great (§ [75, 3]), refusing recklessly to root out every element of paganism and rather endeavouring to give Christian applications to heathen institutions and views and to fill pagan forms with Christian contents, and on the other hand, by the representatives of the church not regarding belief in the existence of heathen deities as a delusion but counting the gods and goddesses as demons. The popular belief therefore saw in them a set of dethroned deities who in certain realms of nature maintain their ancient sway, whom therefore they dare not venture altogether to disoblige. The fanciful poetic view of nature prevailing among the Germans contributed also to this result, with its love of the mysterious and supernatural, its fondness for subtle enquiries and intellectual investigations. Thus, in the worship of the saints as well as in the church’s belief in angels and devils, new rich worlds opened themselves up before the Christianized Germans, which the popular belief soon improved upon. The pious man is exposed on all sides to the vexations of demons, but he is also on all sides surrounded by the protecting care of saints and angels. The popular belief made a great deal of the devil, but the relation of men to the prince of darkness and his attendant spirits seemed much too earnest and real to be as yet the subject of the humour which characterized the devil legends of the later Middle Ages, in which the cheated, “stupid” devil is represented as at last possessed only of impotent rage and sneaking off in disgrace.
§ 89.2. Popular Education.—The idea of a general system of education for the people was already present to the mind of Charlemagne. Yet as we may suppose only beginnings were made toward its realization. Bishop Theodulf of Orleans was specially active in founding schools for the people in all the villages and country towns of his diocese. The religious instruction of the youth was restricted as a rule to the teaching of the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed. Whatever grown up man or woman did not know these two was at Charles’ command to be subjected to flogging and fasting and to be made to learn them besides. As evidence of the extent of a religious consciousness among the people may be adduced the German forms of adjuration, belief, confession and prayer, of the 8th and 9th centuries which are still preserved. Further means of advancing the religious education of the people were afforded by the attempts to make the biblical and patristic books accessible to the people by translations in their own language. Among the Germans the monastery of St. Gall was famous for its zeal in originating a national literature. Among the Anglo-Saxons this effort was made and carried out by Alfred the Great, who died in A.D. 901 (§ [90, 10]).
§ 89.3. Christian Popular Poetry.—It makes its first appearance at the end of the 7th century and continued far down into the 9th century. It flourished chiefly in England and Germany. Under the name of the Northumbrian Cædmon, who died in A.D. 680, there has been preserved a whole series of biblical poems of no small poetic merit, which range over the whole of the Old and New Testament history. The most important Anglo-Saxon poet after him was his countryman Cynewulf living about a century later. His poems are less homely and simple, but more elaborate than those of Cædmon, and as full of poetic enthusiasm as these. He too paints for us in his “Christ” the picture of the Redeemer as that of a manly victorious prince among his true “champions and earls” with such clear-cut features that “whoever once beholds them will never again forget them.”His poetically wrought up legends bear more of the Romish stamp with traces of saint worship and the doctrine of merit.[247] Still higher than these two Anglo-Saxon productions stands the German-Saxon epic the Heliand, of the time of Louis of France, a song of the Messiah worthy of its august subject, truly national, perfect in form, simple, lively and majestic in style, transposing into German blood and life a genuine deep Christianity. In poetic value scarcely less significant is the “Krist” of Otfried, a monk of Weissenberg about A.D. 860. Near to his heart as well as to that of the Anglo-Saxon singers lay the thought: thaz wir Kriste sungun in unsere Zungun. It is, however, no longer popular but artistic poetry, in which the old German letter rhyme or alliteration gives place to the softer and more delicate final rhyme. To this class belongs also the so-called Wessobrunner Prayer, of which the first poetical half is probably a fragment of a larger hymn of the creation, and a poem in High German on the end of the world and the last judgment, known by the name of Muspilli, extant only as a fragment which is, however, almost unsurpassable in dignity and grandeur of description.