He preserved this calmness and sweetness of temper to the farthest limit of his days. Not long before he died he said to his faithful friend, Berthold of Constance, “Do not, I say, do not ask me about this; but rather attend to what I will tell you, for in you I do not a little confide. I shall die doubtless in a very short time. I shall not live. I shall not get well.” He added that he was so “seized with an ineffable desire and delight toward that intransitory world and that eternal and immortal life,” that all things of this passing existence seemed empty and vain and dropped like motes (flocci) from him, in the breath of that heavenly air.
And then he proceeded to detail a vision in which he fancied himself reading and rereading the Hortensius of Cicero. His mind was clear; his hopes for religion and for education were high; but all was now over and he must depart. Therefore he quietly and pathetically ends by saying, “Taedet quidem me vivere”—indeed it is wearisome to me to live. And thus, on September 24th, 1054, he ceased from earth—in his forty-second year, and having carried the story of the world down to the end of his own career.
But his works follow him. I do most firmly believe him—and not Robert the Second—to have been the author of the Veni Sancte Spiritus.
The first person to attribute this hymn to the King of France is Durand, (Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, Lib. IV.) His book treats of ceremonial observances and is among the rarest of printed volumes. The splendid copy upon vellum in the Astor Library is not only beautiful in itself, but it is extremely valuable as the third specimen of typography in existence. Only two works—one of them the Bible and another the Psalter of Mainz—had been previously printed from movable types. I have personally verified the reference and its English rendering is as follows:
“Notker, Abbot of St. Gall, in Germany, first composed sequences with notes of his own in the Alleluia. And Nicholaus the Pope [Nicholas II., 1059-1061] granted that they should be sung at masses. But Hermannus Contractus, a German, inventor of the astrolabe, composed these sequences: Rex omnipotens and Sancti Spiritus and Ave Maria and the antiphons Alma redemptoris mater and Simon Barjona. Peter, Bishop of Compostella, made the Salve regina. And the King of France, Robert by name, composed the sequence, Veni Sancte Spiritus and the hymn Chorus novae Hierusalem.”
It is hard to crowd into a paragraph more errors than are in this. Notker was not Abbot of St. Gall. Innocent III. was very severe upon Udalric of St. Gall, because such a spiritual and able man had lived and died unhonored among them; a simple monk whose labors and death received no special attention in their religious year.
Nor did Hermann write the Sancti Spiritus adsit; for this, on the best of testimony, was Notker’s. It was so sung at Rome under Innocent III.; and Ekkehard the Younger, in his history of Notker, pointedly claims it for him.
It is very doubtful whether Hermann invented the astrolabe for measuring the distances of stars. His two treatises are upon its use, and he is evidently very familiar with it. But it was first made serviceable in navigation by the Portuguese—if we are to believe Evelyn (in his Navigation)—and the study of astronomy was greatly cultivated by the Arabic schools in Spain and elsewhere about this period. J. A. Fabricius indeed mentions that the astrolabe was “commonly employed in the days of Ptolemy.”
The Ave Maria is supposed by Koch to belong to the thirteenth century and some have ascribed it to Adam of St. Victor. It is, perhaps, by Heribert of Eichstettin (died 1042). Hermann wrote the Ave praeclara maris stella, which might have been mistaken for this other.
The Salve regina is assigned by Durand to Peter of Compostella. Gerbert names several possible authors, but evidently follows the leadership of Durand. (De Cantu, etc., II., 27.) And yet Trithemius, with every really critical scholar, credits it to Hermann. It is exhaustively considered by Wegelin and definitely conceded to him. (Thes. Rerum Suevicarum, II., p. 120 ff.)