The Latin Hymn-writers and Their Hymns

by Samuel Willoughby Duffield

Its date is thus, to some extent, fixed for us. We cannot refer it to the days of Ambrose, and, since it is found in nearly all the twelfth to fourteenth-century breviaries, we are unable to attribute it to the period of the Renaissance. Its very verse would prevent this, if nothing else did. The word spiritalis is a barbarism—an altogether post-classical expression. The true usage is that in which the genitive case is employed, thus “spiritual delight” would be animi felicitas, not spiritalis (or spiritualis) felicitas. Perpetim is also a word which purists of the new classic revival would avoid if they could. So, too, there is a certain amount of stress to be put upon the scanning of Paraclitus—where the i is long, though Prudentius in the fifth century and Adam of St. Victor in the twelfth both make it short. It has therefore been said that the hymn was composed by a person who was skilled in the Greek language. This altogether depends on the question whether he pronounced the word by accent or by quantity. But still it is not to be denied that the prosody of the poet gives us reason to think that he did pronounce the word with the accent on the η. If this be so, it would follow that he was a man of rare and fine scholarship in comparison with the contemporaneous learning.

Another criticism is purely theological and aids in fixing the date by the history of doctrine itself. At the Council of Toledo A.D. 589, the word filioque was added to the Creed to indicate the faith of the Church in the procession of the Holy Spirit from both the Father and the Son. This hymn preserves this point of the orthodox belief with such care that there can be no doubt of its being subsequent in time to the date of that council.

In coming more particularly to the various authors who have been credited with its composition, it may be well to attend to each claim as it is put forward in some sort of chronologic order.

George Fabricius of Chemnitz (1564) was ready enough to ascribe it to Ambrose himself. The only ground for this conjecture is the structure of the verse. And this is no more a proof of authorship than that a hymn written in what we call “long metre” must be, because of that fact alone, the production of Isaac Watts. On the other hand, it is plain that the theological allusion and the doxology, when taken together, remove the hymn far enough away from the days of the great Bishop of Milan.

In later times of more critical scholarship the learned and accurate Professor Hermann Adalbert Daniel has devoted much study to the hymn, and has reached the conclusion that it belongs to that king whom the Germans are never tired of praising—Charles the Great (Karl der Grosse), by the French called Charlemagne. Led by his illustrious opinion the compilers and translators have, without another question, set it down for Charles’s work. So it has gone; the minor German collators, like Königsfeld and others, following peacefully in the rear of an original investigator. This was not true, however, of men who hunted for proof on their own account, as, for instance, Mone and Wackernagel. But it is distinctly true of the English scholars, among whom Archbishop Trench appears to carry the most prevalent influence. They usually assent without a murmur to this conjecture of Daniel indorsing Thomasius, who was, so far as can be discovered, the parent of the opinion. The only real exception is the Scotch hymnologist, Dr. H. M. MacGill, who doubts, but conforms to the opinion which is in vogue.

The grounds of this general confidence in Charles’s authorship it may be proper to mention here in brief. We know it is said that he was a patron of learning, a friend of scholars, and a devout believer in the orthodox theology. In the year 809 he took an active part in a synod at Aquisgranum which affirmed the doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeded from both the Father and the Son. There is, furthermore, a statement, quoted by Cardinal Thomasius from the Acta Sanctorum, which goes in the direction of a positive assertion. In the life of the Blessed Notker it is said that this hymn was composed by Carolus Magnus.

Now it has never been established that Charles was even a ready writer of prose, to say nothing of verse. Berington, following Einhard, Charles’s secretary, says in his History of the Literature of the Middle Ages (1814), that Charles was not a literary man. “He seems never to have acquired the easy practice of writing,” is his strong language (p. 102). The hymn, on the contrary, bears the evident marks of accustomed skill and practice in the art of verse as well as the accuracy of a mind trained in theologic discriminations. Moreover, if Maitland (he of the Dark Ages) is to be credited, then this life of the Blessed Notker, by Ekkehard Junior, is full of errors, of ignorance, and wilful design. It naturally celebrates whatever is likely to add to the credit of St. Gall. Hence we need not be astonished when it tells us that Notker composed the sequence, Spiritus Sancti adsit nobis gratia, and sent it to Charles the Great, receiving in return his composition the Veni, Creator Spiritus. Nor should we be surprised when this turns out (as it is now conceded to be) a mere legend without any historic basis. When Thomasius follows this story, and Daniel follows Thomasius, and Trench follows Daniel, and the compilers follow Trench, it really appears that but little independent judgment has been exercised on the subject.

Notker died in 912, and as Charles the Great was dead in 814, the absurd anachronism of the Ekkehard legend is clear to a glance. It should perhaps be added that Trench, although allowing Charles as author, believes the hymn to be possibly of earlier date.

Mone takes a new departure when he gives up the common opinion and announces that the hymn ought to be assigned to Gregory the Great (540-606). In his first volume he taxes Daniel with having been altogether too prompt to agree to the cardinal’s dictum. He finds no reason to give the hymn to Charles, but he regards the classical style of its composition to be very fitting to the culture and well-known powers of Gregory. He rejects the doxology Sit laus, etc., and considers, very justly, that the stanza Per te sciamus, etc., is the true conclusion of the hymn.

Wackernagel agrees with Mone. He thinks that the only way in which Charles could have secured the authorship would have been by getting the composition effected by the intervention of Alcuin. He therefore believes that Gregory was the poet of the Veni, Creator, and so publishes it in his exhaustive work upon the German church hymns. Professor March, always careful and scholarly in his assignments, adopts this opinion also.