The movement represented by the laudisti spread to France, German-speaking lands, the Low Countries and Poland. Everywhere the vernacular was used with popular unison melodies. As we approach the Renaissance, Florence is still conspicuous for her authors of the religious vernacular lyric, among them Lorenzo di Medici and Savonarola, (1452-1498), better known as the Florentine preacher whose passionate denunciations of the evils of his day brought him into conflict with the Church and resulted in his execution. His Laude al crucifisso has been translated in part by Jane F. Wilde as a hymn, “Jesus, refuge of the weary.”
The English religious lyrics of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries may be read with enjoyment in the collections of Carleton Brown whose appraisement of this poetry was the fruit of great learning and a sympathetic discernment of human values.[20] Here the Latin hymn may be found as it was translated, adapted and imitated in English verse. The Latin sequence, as it increased in popularity, was taken over by English poets with great success. Some of these writers who appropriated the Latin models, like William Herebert, Jacob Ryman and John Lydgate, are known to us by name while others are anonymous. Their poetic themes are varied but Marian verse appears in many forms: hymns, laments, and rhymed petition. Incidentally, a knowledge of the Latin original must be presupposed on the part of the English laity of this period. Chaucer wrote for the layman who must have understood his use of the sequence Angelus ad Virginem in the “Miller’s Tale” and the sequence Alma redemptoris mater in the “Prioress’ Tale.”
English macaronic verse best reveals the Latin hymn. Over and over again, Latin quotations are used, sometimes embedded in the text, sometimes added as refrains, an understanding of which is always vital to the appreciation of the poem.
The carol, although extraneous to true hymnody, because of its non-liturgical character and usage, was related to Latin origins; to some extent, to the cantio and the conductus. A form of vernacular lyric, the carol often shares the macaronic features which were common in the blended phraseology of the European languages with Latin in this popular type of late medieval verse. It is relevant here as a religious lyric which bears the unmistakable mark of the hymnic inheritance. Whatever is true of the English carol is equally true of the carol in other lands. To-day these lyrics are of great interest and of increasing usage in the Christian Church at large. Their musical and poetic aspects are both subjects of enthusiastic research. Many persons in our modern society who have never studied the classical languages are able to sing the Latin words and phrases they contain, with understanding, as did their medieval predecessors.
II. Influence and Survival of Latin Hymns since the Middle Ages
The writing of Latin hymns by no means died out with the medieval era in the sixteenth century. The great prestige of Latin studies fostered by the Renaissance alone would have been sufficient to perpetuate the practice. The Church, too, was engaged in a movement to standardize and improve the Latinity of the breviary hymns which resulted in the Trentine cycle as we know it today. A concurrent movement toward uniformity of rites appreciably reduced the number of breviaries and the variety of their hymns, but those breviaries which maintained an independent existence had their own complete cycles. Such were the Cluniac Breviary of 1686 and the Paris Breviary of 1736 for which new hymns were written and sung side by side with those of medieval origin. Among post-Renaissance poets represented in these collections were the Frenchmen Jean-Baptiste de Santuil and his brothers Claude and Baptiste. Freshly inspired by classical studies, the new hymn writers repudiated medieval ruggedness and stylistic neglect in favor of the smooth and finished Latinity affected by contemporary poets. From the substantial body of verse produced in these centuries, Adeste fideles, “O come, all ye faithful,” has proved a favorite. Sometimes classified as a hymn, sometimes as a carol, it originated in the English colony at Douay about the year 1740, from the pen of John Francis Wade.[21]
The continuity of the Roman Use, however, was not disturbed. The Roman Breviary had acquired its cycle of hymns in the processes of evolution which have been traced in the preceding chapters. Trentine revisions under the guidance of Pope Urban VIII, (1623-1644), made with the highest motives but often deplored by later scholars, transformed the medieval originals into products of the Renaissance. The Trentine Breviary contains many of the finest medieval hymns which, although they have suffered alterations, have carried the traditional heritage into modern times.[22]
By virtue of its prestige and its world-wide circulation, the Roman Breviary has been the vehicle by which the Latin hymn has penetrated into the modern vernacular languages in translations. It is a subject of frequent comment that the full treasury of hymns has not been drawn upon by the Catholic Church since the hymns of the Roman Breviary have monopolized the field. The historical reason for this is clear and also for the fact that in the Roman Missal only five sequences, each of recognized superiority, have been retained.
The restriction of Latin hymns in Roman Catholic liturgical usage to a relatively small number allows certain exceptions. The Benedictine and other religious orders use their own cycle of breviary hymns and present-day Catholic hymnals in popular use often contain translations of hymns and sequences additional to those of the Roman Breviary and Missal.
Protestant Churches are not limited in their selection of Latin hymns for translation, making their choices from the entire medieval store. The revival of Latin hymns in a translated form, which marked the Oxford Movement in the Anglican Church in the mid-nineteenth century, drew upon the Sarum Breviary as one native to English soil and therefore appropriate to the English Church. That these hymns were largely represented in the Roman Breviary, was well-known but the earlier and unrevised texts were preferred. In his function as a translator, John Mason Neale was preeminently a leader in the task of making known to the adherents of the Church of England their heritage of hymns.