At length the adage of Buddha was fulfilled that “Hatred does not cease by hatred; hatred ceaseth by love.” This is an old rule. For in 1836 his romantic story secured an editor for the scholar’s works in the person of Monsieur Victor Cousin, who at that date, and again in 1849, republished them. They had been issued in 1616 by Francis d’Amboise at Paris, and the city of his fame and sorrow appropriately witnessed their reappearance. But even then there were no more verses, and the editors of the twelfth volume of the Histoire Litteraire de la France also regarded those productions as hopelessly lost. Yet they had been in Paris, and when the Patrologia of Migne reached “Tom. 178” they had been actually recovered. The story is of the same pattern as the author’s life—the man and his works had infinite vicissitudes.
When Belgium was occupied by the French, these ninety-three hymns, written for the abbey of the Paraclete between 1125 and 1134, were lying hid in codice quincunciali, whatever this may mean. The account seems to require a box of about five inches in height, rather than an ordinary codex or bound volume. This codex was brought to Paris and there remained during the days of Napoleon Bonaparte. When his Empire fell, the box and its contents returned to Belgium. They bore the seals of the Republic and of the Empire and they also had the stamp of the Royal Library of Brussels. They were indeed a catalogued part of that library’s treasures, but their value was unguessed. One day, after their return, a German student named Oehler, while rummaging through the codex found in it the libellus, or little book, which contained these three series of hymns. Like the “hymnarium” of Hilary they were known to have been in existence, and hence he immediately inferred their authorship. They embraced, to his delight, a complete collection for all the religious hours and for the principal festivals of the Church.
It is strikingly characteristic of the superficial nature of many studies in Latin hymnology, that Oehler apparently thought of nothing else that might be in the codex, but proceeded at once to publish eight of the recovered hymns. These, attracting the notice of Monsieur Cousin, he purchased a full transcript of the libellus at a “fair price” from the discoverer. It was, however, reserved for Émile Gachet, a Belgian, to “give a not unlucky day to paleography” in the course of which he lighted upon this same codex and found it still to contain the larger part of an epistle treating of Latin hymnology, addressed to Heloise, and announcing the hymns of which it was the preface. Thus the identification was perfect, and the introductions and the hymns are again joined with the other works of their authors. In 1838 a set of Planctus—“Lamentations”—had been found in the Vatican Library. They are moderate in merit, and these new pieces were therefore invaluable in determining Abelard’s rank as a poet. In the main, his hymns are didactic and cold. But there is at least one which has held its place anonymously in the service of the Church and upon this his reputation may safely rest. It was translated by Dr. Neale from the imperfect text of a Toledo breviary, and it can be found in Hymns, Ancient and Modern (No. 343), and in Mone (Lat. Hym. des Mittelalters, I., 382). In the Paraclete Breviary it is “xxviii., Ad Vesperas.”
O quanta, qualia sunt illa sabbata,
Quae semper celebrat superna curia!
Quae fessis requies, quae merces fortibus,
Cum erit omnia Deus in omnibus.
Vere Jherusalem illic est civitas
Cujus pax jugis est summa jucunditas,
Ubi non praevenit rem desiderium,