The transition from Latin to vernacular languages took place as soon as the latter were sufficiently developed to produce Christian verse. The Gospels were rendered into Germanic rhymed verse in the ninth century by Otfried the Frank who inserted a hymn of ten stanzas as a poetic version of the opening of St. John’s Gospel. It is written in seven-syllable couplets with four or six to a stanza.[8] Otfried is said to have been influenced by Rabanus Maurus and with good reason since the latter was a recognized leader in mediating Latin patristic and other writings to the Germanic world of his day.
Otfried was the first of many medieval poets whose religious lyrics in the vernacular, often revealing the inspiration of the Latin hymn, have been preserved. Their verse appears in Wackernagel’s great collection in which he has edited 1448 specimens from the time of Otfried to that of Hans Sachs.[9]
Celtic churchmen were pioneers among medieval Latin hymnists, their earliest contribution dating from the sixth century. Religious lyrics in the Celtic tongue must have been produced and recorded before the Danish invasions although the destruction of these manuscripts delayed the compiling of new vernacular collections until the eleventh century. The hymn Hymnum dicat turba fratrum, written in trochaic tetrameter, and preserved in the Bangor Antiphonary, to which reference has been made in [Chapter One], apparently influenced the metrical system of Celtic poetry. The metrical pattern used by Otfried, a quatrain of seven-syllable lines with rhymed couplets, is commonly found.[10] Latin influence is at least tentatively acknowledged by scholars in the rhyme and stanza structure of Celtic poetry prior to the eleventh century.[11]
After the creation of the Latin sequence, vernacular poetry is overwhelmingly affected by this new type of hymn. Germanic poets followed the leadership of Notker. The Victorine school, rejecting the strophic system and rhythmic model of the Germans, built the couplet and rhyme, already existing in hymns, into a characteristic structure which proved to be easily transferable to vernacular uses. It has been asserted that the lyric poetry of the Middle Ages, in German, French, Provençal and English was reborn in this conquest of the vernacular by the Latin sequence.[12] At the same time, the possible influence of the vernacular over the Latin must not be ignored. There is a resemblance, for instance, between the narrative elements of sequences written in honor of saints and the ballads of secular poetry.[13] Whatever the conflicting currents may have been in the period of origins, the smooth-flowing stream of the vernacular religious lyric with its many tributaries, refreshed the spirit of medieval man and recalled to memory his religious heritage.
The vitality of this new religious poetry which flourishes in the later centuries, in which the Latin hymn suffered so marked a deterioration, suggests that the future of the hymn, like other media of Latin literature, was to be realized in a new linguistic environment. It was not the verity but the language that was destined to change.
In order to appreciate the variety and interest of that vernacular lyric poetry which arose within the sphere of influence of the Latin hymn, illustrations may be culled from many parts of Europe. Mary-Verse in Meistergesang is the title chosen by Sister Mary Schroeder for her study of one aspect of the German lyric.[14] A very large proportion, perhaps two-thirds of the songs are religious in content, showing to a degree, their dependence upon hymnal poetry, while nearly one-fourth of them are devoted to the praise of the Virgin. Occasionally, a Latin sequence has been freely translated, paraphrased or elaborated.
The Swedish vernacular is represented by the patriotic poem of Bishop Thomas of Strängnäs, who, in the fourteenth century, wrote in praise of the national hero, Engelbrekt. Metrical and stanza form are both of the hymnal type.[15]
The Romance languages afford myriad examples of the sequence form. St. Martial, near Limoges, already cited as a center in the production of the sequence, and Paris, the home of the Victorine school, are both places of origin for vernacular lyrics. A close connection has been traced between the sequence and the French romantic lyric, especially the lai, a connection amply illustrated and tabulated for the convenience of the student.[16] More familiar, perhaps, than the lais are the appealing lines of François Villon, “Dame des cieulx, regente terrienne,” which possesses all the charm of the Marian lyric at its best.
About the year 1270, Alfonso X of Castile made a collection of 400 poems in the Galician-Portuguese dialect, the Cántigas de Santa María around which a considerable literature has grown up. All are devotional in subject matter. Alfonso X was a literary patron. Ramon Lull (c. 1315) was himself a poet who wrote in the Catalan tongue although his mystical writings are better known than his poetry. His Hours of our Lady St. Mary was modeled upon the hymn and set to a hymn tune.[17]
The Italian poets of religious verse flourished as writers both in the vernacular and in Latin. St. Francis of Assisi, (1181-1226), whose Cantico di fratre sole[18] is known and loved by countless persons in our own day, was among the earliest poets of the Laudi spirituali. The origin of the laudi has been traced in part to the ejaculations of the flagellants of northern Italy where bands of these penitents were commonly seen in the thirteenth century. A century earlier, religious societies of singers, the laudisti, were in existence in Venice and Florence. Arezzo knew such a group as early as 1068.[19] Included among the known writers of laudi are Jacopone da Todi, (1230-1306), and Bianco da Siena, (c. 1307), both classified today as writers of hymns.