Give to thy faithful,
In thee confiding,
Thy sevenfold gift.
Give the reward of virtue;
Give the death of safety;
Give eternal joy.
This very singular construction of clauses is apparent to the eye at once. Let it be remembered that Robert uses it nowhere else, and that the most of Hermann’s writings are gone. This chance for the “higher criticism” is therefore taken from us. If it could be shown, however, that this was a method employed by the monk of Reichenau in his prose works, the case might be regarded as absolutely proven, in so far as it demonstrates that the bulk of the presumptive evidence is in his favor.
But here we are at fault. We can only add probability to probability and leave all absolute demonstration alone. Pez has preserved not merely Egon’s account of Hermann’s life, but he has edited Hermann’s treatises on the astrolabe (Thes. Anecdot. Tom., III., pt. 2, p. 94) from a MS. codex in the monastery of St. Peter at Salzburg. His musical treatise is reprinted by Gerbert. (Scriptores Eccl. de Musica, vol. ii., p. 124.) The didactic poem reciting the combat of the Sheep and the Flax—always recognized as the production of Hermann—is in Migne’s Patrologia and also in Du Meril’s Poesies Populaires. Unfortunately none of these writings are of a sort to help us. We cannot by their assistance make any headway in critical analysis.
It is noticeable that J. A. Fabricius in his great work on the Middle Age and later Latin writers, allows Hermann to be the author of the Veni Sancte, following the testimony of Egon and Metzler. And it is more than noticeable that Du Meril—himself a Frenchman—should also apparently concede the hymn to this German.[9]
I have made an exhaustive search for everything bearing upon the life and writings of Hermannus Contractus. I have pursued him and Robert through the Quellen of German history; through the writings and compilations of Canisius and Despont and Urstitius and Martene and Mabillon and D’Achery and Pertz and the Monumenta Germaniae Historica of the “Society for Opening the Sources of German History.” In these and in the encyclopaedias of La Rousse and Ersch-Gruber and the great Patrologia of Migne, I have investigated every by-path and blind alley. It is abundantly clear that he was the most distinguished man of his region, and, likely, of his period. Usserman and Possevin have devoted attention to him. (Prodromus Germ. Sacr. Tom. I., p. 145 sqq., De Apparatu.) His didactic poem on the “Eight Principal Vices” is in Haupt’s Zeitschrift, vol. xiii. His lives of Conrad and of Henry III. have not been preserved. That he was a very voluminous writer is also evident. After giving the names of some of his sequences Metzler adds that there were cetera mille alia—a thousand more. So also speaks Trithemius; and indeed this testimony is universal.