Whose are gates, the cross adorning;
Whose keys are to Peter given;
Whose glad throng are saints in heaven;
Whose are walls of living splendor;
Whose a royal, true Defender!”
These pilgrims, every now and then, break in with some snatch of melody from this fine old anthem. And yet there are doubtless those who never have gone back to see for themselves whence all this beauty has been taken. But the Hymn of Hildebert would well repay them if they did.
It is the composition of a man who was the Admirable Crichton of his time—Hildebert of Lavardin, a student under Berenger and Hugo of Cluny. This is the same poet who, with Wichard of Lyons, is mentioned by Bernard of Cluny in his preface to the Hora Novissima. He says there, that even these eminent versifiers had never dared to attempt the measure of his own three thousand lines. And we have abundant other testimony that Hildebert was an accomplished orator, a successful controversialist, a brilliant rhetorician, a poet of ten thousand lines, and the author of this majestic and beautiful composition. He was born in the year 1057 (or 1055) at Lavardin, near Vendôme, in France, was first head-master of a school, then an archdeacon, then instructor in theology and Bishop of Le Mans (1097), and finally (1125), Archbishop of Tours, from which he derives his name of “Turonensis.” He was of humble origin and not connected with the celebrated family of Lavardia, except through the accident of his birthplace being in their vicinity.
Perhaps—if we follow one scurrilous old biographer—we may fancy the holy Hildebert to have been very little of a saint in his early days. Baronius indeed lends color to the assertion (made originally by Godfrey, the Dean of Le Mans) that the vices which Hildebert afterward attacked were matters of personal experience with himself. A certain coarse assault was undoubtedly made upon him; but envy and malignity went even to greater lengths then than now—and they are not noticeably moderate or truthful at present. He was a “wise and gentle prelate,” says Trench, “although not wanting in courage to dare, and fortitude to endure, when the cause of truth required it.” Neander’s estimate of his character (The Life of St. Bernard) is also kind. I doubt, therefore, whether any such statements can be maintained. But we all know too well what that age was, for us to be over-enthusiastic in the defence of our favorites. And still it can truly be said that Hildebert established his innocence there and then. He finally died in 1134, and his works, with those of Marbod, were collected and published in Paris by the Benedictines, at the comparatively recent date of 1708. His hymn, Oratio devotissima ad tres Personas Sanctissimae Trinitatis, first appeared in the Appendix to Archbishop Ussher’s De Symbolis (1660), and again was published by the Norman Jacques Hommey in 1684.
The poem is, as Chancellor Benedict has well said, almost epic in its completeness. And I can do no better than to summarize it in his own words—for he linked his name to it by a translation which he published in 1867: “Its beginning [is] the knowledge of God—Fides orthodoxa—the true creed, as to the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity, exhibiting their attributes as the foundation of the Christian character; its middle, the weakness, the trials, and the temptations of the Christian life, in its progress to perfect trust and confidence in God and assurance of His final grace; its end, the joys and glories of the heavenly home of the blessed.” It has been greatly neglected, as any one will find who looks for it outside of the most recent collections of sacred Latin poetry. Why this has been so, except because the praise of Mary and of the saints was more congenial to collectors than a lofty and pure spiritual fervor, it is not easy to discern. Hugo of St. Victor—Hildebert’s contemporary—does actually quote six lines, but calls the author quidam, or, as we would say, “somebody,” in referring to these half dozen verses extracted to give point to his own discourse. Yet Hildebert was in his day a most important personage, not below the persecution of a king of England, and not above a quarrel with a king of France. But he and the king were reconciled at last, and with honor.
That Professor Longfellow is not indebted to Trench’s text for his little quotations, is shown by a curious fact. The Sacred Latin Poetry of Archbishop (then Dean) Trench was first published in 1849, and the “Golden Legend” appeared in Boston in 1851—the time seeming to indicate that the poet had been reading in the small book of the prelate. But Professor March has very acutely noticed that the Church of England, in the person of its editor, did a great deal of expurgation, and that the lines