Walafrid Strabo, (809-c. 849), was like Rabanus of Germanic origin and like him a member of the regular clergy. At Reichenau he received his early education and at Fulda his theological training under Rabanus. Walafrid was drawn into the courtly circle of Louis the Pious whose son Charles he tutored and whose wife Judith became his literary patron. His life was one of scholarship, prosperity and contentment almost to the end of his career. Louis had appointed him Abbot of Reichenau, a place dear to him from boyhood. From these happy surroundings and from his garden which he immortalized in careful and loving description, he was ousted during the civil conflict following the death of the emperor. At the end he was restored to Reichenau and there he died. His hymns like those of Theodulphus and Rabanus, although few in number, were written in the spirit of the classical revival. Some were intended for festivals and others which will be described in connection with processional hymnody, were written to honor royal patrons.
In reviewing the basic hymns of the Later Hymnal (see [Appendix]), one finds only two of Mozarabic origin whereas nine were duplicated in the Old Hymnal in Spain and Gaul. The new cycles in areas under Frankish influence appear to diverge from the Mozarabic as they become more diversified. At the same time, Mozarabic sources reveal a parallel evolution of the hymnal in the Iberian peninsula. The existing manuscripts were collated and edited in 1897 by Blume in volume twenty-seven of the Analecta Hymnica under the title Hymnodia Gotica, comprising 312 hymns of which 210 were identified by him as Mozarabic in origin.
The hymns of Spain, first assembled under the auspices of Gothic churchmen as recounted in [Chapter Two], continued to increase with the encouragement and participation of Mozarabic liturgists, scholars and prelates. The generation that supported Isidore of Seville was succeeded two hundred years later by the group associated with Eulogius, Archbishop of Cordova (d. 859), who fostered the old traditions under Moslem control.[31] In spite of a ruling power alien in every aspect of culture, Christian hymnology held its own. After the Moorish invasions, it is estimated that between thirty and forty hymns were written, several of which contain references to the yoke of the oppressor and petitions for its removal.[32] When the movement toward the expulsion of the Moors had been successfully initiated and the Roman Rite introduced (1089) the Mozarabic hymnals were comparable to the finest of the continental cycles. In certain instances the contacts between Spain and Gaul were close and direct even under the rule of the Moslems. Theodulphus of Orleans combined the Gothic and Carolingian trends. Alcuin was indebted to Mozarabic sources in his reform of the Frankish rites.[33] Hymns of Mozarabic origin appeared in other parts of western Europe and vice versa.
(See [Illustrative Hymns, X.] Deus immensa trinitas, “O glorious immensity.”)
The possible influence of Arabian music and poetry upon the Christian hymn has been a tempting idea and one most elusive of pursuit. Studies of medieval Spanish music and musical instruments have failed to demonstrate that the ecclesiastical chant in Spain was thereby affected. Such novelties as it may have possessed have been traced to influences similar to those which had long before affected the Ambrosian chant and been transmitted to the west. As for the tentative assumption that Arabian lyric poetry influenced contemporary hymn writers in Spain, the evidence narrows to the mono-rhyme or repeated end-rhyme common to Arabian poetry and to several Mozarabic hymns.[34] The whole subject of the Arabian impact, highly controversial as it is, appears to be concerned with influences, which when scrutinized, are observed to spring from cultures prior both to Christianity and to Islam.
The Mozarabic Hymnal in its fully developed version possessed an unusually large number of hymns honoring local saints. This feature must be referred to the history of the Roman persecution in the Iberian peninsula where the complete destruction of the Church was intended and martyrdom was the rule. Again the Hymnal is unique in its hymns for public occasions either of mourning and intercession in time of war, pestilence, drought and flood or of joy, in festivals of the consecration of bishops, the coronation of kings and thanksgiving for full harvests.
III. Characteristics
For the most part the hymn writers of the later hymn cycles are anonymous, like their predecessors in this field. Anonymity is then the first characteristic to be noted concerning the hymnal in this period, which makes it necessary to survey the whole as an objective achievement of the age, not of a few individuals.
Next to the anonymity of its authorship, possibly the most conspicuous feature of the new hymnal is the enlargement of each of its general divisions, the Common and the Proper of the Season and the Common and the Proper of Saints. The old hymn cycle, it will be recalled, comprised thirty-four hymns as listed by Blume. The later cycle in its nucleus numbers thirty-seven hymns of which seven are repeated from the old cycle. In ten representative tenth century hymnals, the hymns number from about fifty to about one hundred, many of them common to several lists.[35]
Not only is the total number of hymns increased but festival hymns are multiplied, the ecclesiastical year as it was later known being fully established in hymnology. Advent, Nativity, Epiphany, Lent, the Passion, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost and Trinity have their own groups of hymns. The various feasts of the Virgin and that of All Saints are honored. Among the Apostles, Sts. Peter, John and Andrew are praised; of other biblical saints, Sts. John the Baptist, Stephen, Paul; of the angels, St. Michael; of martyrs, the Innocents and St. Laurence; of local saints, Sts. Martin of Tours, Gall, Germanus, Martial, and a number of others. So stands the record of manuscripts of the tenth century when hymnal gains had been consolidated. The process went steadily onward as Latin hymns for the offices continued to be written to the end of the Middle Ages. A few have been added since the sixteenth century but, with certain exceptions, the great body of office hymns of the medieval church was permanently established by 1100, the date which Mearns selected as a boundary line. The same sources enriched the present-day Roman breviary which by a paradox of history, has preserved to modern times the representative hymns to which the Roman liturgy of that early period was so inhospitable.