Ad vesperas Deus creator omnium Deus qui certis legibus (Mozarabic) Deus qui claro lumine Sator princepsque temporum
Ad completorium Christe qui lux es et dies (Mozarabic) Christe precamur adnue
Proprii de tempore Intende qui regis Illuminans altissimus Dei fide qua vivimus Meridie orandum es Sic ter quaternis trahitur Hic est dies verus Dei Iam surgit hora tertia Iam sexta sensim volvitur Ter hora trina volvitur Ad cenam agni providi Aurora lucis rutilat
De communi martyrum Aeterna Christi munera
CHAPTER THREE
The Ninth Century Revival: Hymns
I. Background of Carolingian Culture
To explain fully the origin of a great literary movement must always be difficult, for the subtle influences affecting its beginnings elude a scientific analysis of facts. One observes the revival of Latin hymnology between 750 and 900 A.D. with amazement. The voices of Ambrose, his contemporaries and his immediate imitators had been silenced for centuries. Venantius Fortunatus had stood forth, a solitary survival of the old Latin poetic genius or, perhaps more accurately, a solitary herald of the new medieval awakening. Then a flowering of religious poetry spread over western Europe, not to be withered by new barbarian invasions but to be the permanent possession of the Christian Church.
In this period the older cycles of office hymns were revised and expanded and fresh cycles created in such numbers as to justify the new terminology of the Later Hymnal or Ninth Century Hymnal. The sequence arose in the formal worship of the mass, affording a new inspirational to clerical poets and resulting in a body of sacred verse of increasing influence. The processional hymn and its related forms appeared in response to the new impulse toward a hymnic accompaniment to ceremonial acts. In effect, the hymn during the period under consideration, was well established in every aspect of formal worship.
In the background of the age which created this literature must be sought the trends and motivation which make intelligible the voices of its interpreters. Accordingly, in the years from 750 to 900 A.D. when the Carolingian rulers, Pippin, Charlemagne, Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald were guiding the destinies of the Franks, the various influences affecting public worship must be surveyed. The most important were the liturgical reforms undertaken or sponsored by the Carolingian rulers; their promotion of ecclesiastical music and singing; their interest in the reform and expansion of the Benedictine Order; the literary activity of members of the Carolingian court circles who devoted themselves to liturgical studies or poetic expression; the part played by Celtic culture; the infiltration of Byzantine ideas and arts and the rise of Germanic genius.
The introduction and permanent establishment of the Roman liturgy in Frankish realms form the background of public worship in the Carolingian era. When Pippin ascended the throne in 752, the Gallican Rite prevailed. When the reign of Charles the Bald came to a close in 877, the Roman Rite was supreme.[1] Charlemagne received the Gregorian Sacramentary from Pope Hadrian I.[2] Stimulated by his desire to unify the Germanic peoples under papal as well as imperial authority, he brought about by royal edicts or capitularies a widespread reform in the western continental church. Those features of his program which affected hymnology include requirements that priests must be educated, that monks observe their monastic rule, that the singing of the psalms and the gloria be improved, that schools of singing and grammar be founded in monastic and diocesan centers, that both regular and secular clergy be urged to acquire knowledge and skill in singing, that the Roman Chant be ordained, that a singing school be established at Aix-la-Chapelle, that the clergy read and sing well.[3] Charlemagne’s successors, Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald continued his reforming policy.