With sweetness fills the breast;
But sweeter far Thy face to see,
And in Thy presence rest.
It is a very difficult task to translate these old Latin hymns; much is lost by the translation. It is not an easy matter to construct a bridge between the great glow of St. Bernard’s mysticism and the powerful, yet cold faith of the seventeenth century. If “Jesu dulcis memoria” was not written by St. Bernard, it must have been written by one of his devout pupils. We are here at the very fountain-head of Christian poetry, so closely related to the Song of Solomon, i. e., it presents the relation of the faithful to Christ—the love of the bride to the bridegroom. From this circle came the great hymn “O Sacred Head, now wounded,” translated and perfected by Paul Gerhardt.
No wonder that the schools and cathedrals clung so tenaciously to the old Latin hymnody. It exerted great influence. Too bad, indeed, that we have permitted this Latin song to become extinct. Perhaps our taste in things religious would not have declined so low, and religious song would not have come to be despised so generally, had our good leaders realized that there are better things than American jazz.
MEDIAEVAL GERMAN HYMNS
Along with this Latin-clerical church song there existed in the Germanic mediaeval Church a religious popular poetry or congregational song. Under the hierarchic autocracy of the Gregorian song it had gone so far that the active participation of the congregation in public worship was reduced to a joining only in the response Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy upon us), repeated one hundred or more times at any one church service. But in the sad tones of this Kyrie Eleison, this cry for compassion from a people spiritually oppressed and enslaved, there emerged in the Germanic mediaeval Church the first attempts at congregational song in the vernacular. At the close of the ninth century they began to supply the tune of the mechanically repeated Kyrie Eleison with religious verses in the language of the people. Every verse of these songs ended with the refrain Kyrie Eleison. Thus arose the first German church hymns called Kirleison or Leisen, as they had grown out of and ended with the Kyrie Eleison.
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when significant religious awakenings and the Crusades (1096-1273) stirred up great enthusiasm among the people, these German hymns took on new life and gained great favor among the people. These religious songs of the people were used more and more freely both in public worship and at other religious and secular festive occasions. Some of these mediaeval German hymns or Leisen are: Also heilig ist der Tag; Mitten wir im Leben sind; Christ ist erstanden; Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist. One of the best of these Leisen is,
Christ ist erstanden
Von der Marter Banden,