The Medieval Latin Hymn

by Ruth Ellis Messenger

In the legislation cited above, Charlemagne had followed his father’s example which favored a training in Gregorian music under Roman teachers, as developed in the schools of Rome.[4] Pippin’s interest had resulted in the establishment of a musical center of great repute at Metz[5] which also possessed a cathedral school representative of the finest institutions which flourished at this time side by side with monastic centers of learning.

Charlemagne was presented with a copy of the Benedictine Rule with choir rules, office and festival hymns, by Theodomar, Abbot of Monte Cassino, sometime between 787 and 797.[6] It became his chosen duty to promulgate the Rule, to require its observance everywhere within his realms and further to extend the influence of the Order in general. Consequently, monastic centers of music arose, for example, at St. Gall where the hymnody of the offices was fostered and gradually made available for the bishoprics as well. Louis the Pious, (814-840), and Charles the Bald, (843-877), in their turn continued the patronage of the Benedictine Order. Already fortified by the efforts of Charlemagne, the Benedictines entered a period of religious and cultural influence which was later merged into the age of the universities. Linked directly with the program for monastic reform, the impulse to write new hymns and the encouragement to finer musical performance together created the annual cycles of this period in which the older hymns were retained and supplemented by the new.

The writers and literary leaders of the Carolingian period were by virtue of their clerical profession actively engaged in liturgical studies. Alcuin compiled the missal which established the Gregorian Sacramentary in Frankish realms and constituted a recension acceptable to the Roman Church.[7] A significant innovation for hymnology was the decorative procession.[8] Alcuin was also influential through his devotional works which supplemented the public worship of the mass and offices. Paulus Diaconus and Angilbert were second to Alcuin in promoting liturgical studies. The works of the great writers were accompanied by numerous writings of lesser importance which bear witness, as will be evident below, to the increasing practice of hymn-singing. The influence of the Roman Rite, largely barren of hymns, was at the same period, in contact with the influence of Benedictine precedent in hymn singing which in the end prevailed.

The Latin poetry associated with the Carolingian era has been edited and published in a monumental form under the title Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini.[9] The collection, produced in the spirit of a classical revival by a circle of court poets, includes secular as well as religious verse.

Carolingian culture not only in the specific field of literature but in the broader sense afforded a medium for the spread of Celtic, Byzantine and Germanic genius. The Celtic portion of the poetry in the early monastic cycles has already been described in connection with the Old Hymnal. Prior to the eighth century, a transfer of Celtic scholarship to the continent began to take place. The missionaries, Columbanus, Gall, Foilan, Disibod and others, came first, during the seventh and eighth centuries. Refugees, fleeing before the Norse invasions of the late eighth and ninth centuries, followed. Wanderers and pilgrims crossed the Channel, among them peregrini who left their homeland to live in new countries as a means of spiritual satisfaction and reward. Scholars came also who hoped for a more sympathetic reception for their teachings among the continentals.[10] On the whole, Celtic immigrants found a welcome. Charlemagne himself favored them.[11] Celtic teachers were proficient in orthography, grammar, Greek, scriptural and liturgical subjects and the arts.[12] They brought with them manuscripts, the influence of which was felt, not only in their subject matter but in musical notation and characteristic scripts.[13] The Bangor Antiphonary, the hymns of which have already been considered, came to the continent at this time. Among the famous teachers of music was Marcellus[14] who, at St. Gall, instructed Notker, Tutilo, Waltram and Hartmann, a fraternity devoted to finer ecclesiastical music and hymnody.

The role of Byzantine influence cannot be ignored in any account of the cultural and historical background of ninth century literature. One should recall that the Carolingian period was an era of general European intercourse which could not fail to have an effect upon society. The foreign relations of the Frankish Empire necessitated much traveling, visiting and correspondence. Warlike as well as peaceful movement, commercial or cultural, increased the interchange of ideas. There was an overlapping of boundary lines, too, which amalgated populations. The infiltration of Byzantine influence might be conceived as a by-product of European intercourse.

Insofar as hymnology is concerned, musical contacts between the Byzantine and Frankish realms were frequent. As early as Pippin’s reign, Byzantine musicians appeared at the Frankish court with a gift of an organ from the Emperor Constantinus Copronymus.[15] Many refugee monks who fled to the west during the iconoclastic controversy remained there even after its close in 787, enjoying monastic hospitality and imperial favor. Charlemagne permitted them to use the Greek language in worship and was so much impressed by the music employed in chanting the psalms that he caused it to be adopted for the Latin version also.[16] The paramount influence of Byzantine music upon liturgical practice in the west will be considered more fully in connection with the sequence.

Verifiable traces of Byzantine influence had already appeared with the activities of Gregory the Great and are entirely comprehensible, so far as he is concerned, in view of his residence at Constantinople, 579-585, as papal envoy of Pelagius II.[17] The importation of litanies into the west illustrates this type of influence. When Charlemagne received the Sacramentary from Pope Hadrian I, it was labelled “Gregorian.” But in the interval between the lives of Gregory and Charlemagne, popes of eastern origin, ruling at the end of the seventh and the beginning of the eighth century were responsible for western practice.[18] The influence of the Eastern upon the Western Church seems to have been cumulative, with Charlemagne in his day acting as the agent for its diffusion throughout the Frankish Church.

In matters concerning the church and its worship the Greeks were an acquisition not only as musicians but as scholars and as experts in the fine arts. Their scholarship was in demand in New Testament studies. Illustrations of Greek and of oriental inspiration in general are numerous in architecture, painting, sculpture, ivories, work in precious metals and the decoration of manuscripts.[19] Perhaps it was a natural desire to emulate the splendor and ornament of eastern rites which led Charlemagne to favor Greek elements in western observance at the expense of the Gallican.

In the midst of Gallic, Celtic, Italian, Byzantine and oriental influences mingled in Carolingian culture, the presence of native genius is strongly felt. Charlemagne has been criticized for his devotion to classical rather than Germanic culture. Sacred poetry as produced in the Carolingian literary circles, was written in Latin and clothed in classical garb. It could hardly have been otherwise since Latin was demanded by the Church and the vernacular languages of western Europe were then in their early infancy. But in spite of the studied artificiality of this verse, a note is sometimes heard in harmony with the poetry of later centuries which emanates from Germanic sources.