“I remember,” continues Abaelard, “that you asked me for an explanation. ‘We know,’ you said, ‘that the Latin, and especially the French Church, have in psalms, and also in hymns, followed more a custom than an authority.’” This was quite true; and the remark is eminently characteristic of Heloise, whose scholarship was admirable, and whose disposition was of a sort to crave for and cling to a stronger nature. He then quotes for her the decree of the fourth Council of Toledo (A.D. 633), by which Hilary of Poitiers and Ambrose of Milan are established as the great fathers of Christian song in the Western Church, and by which the praise of God in hymns is sanctioned and commended.
To much the same effect are the words of Augustine of Hippo, centuries earlier. His beloved mother, Monica, had died, and nothing appeared to comfort him so much as one of these same holy songs. “Then I slept, and woke up again and found my grief not a little softened; and as I was alone in my bed, I remembered those true verses of thy Ambrose. For thou art the
“‘Maker of all, the Lord
And Ruler of the height,
Who, robing day in light, hast poured
Soft slumbers o’er the night,
That to our limbs the power
Of toil may be renewed,
And hearts be raised that sink and cower,
And sorrows be subdued.’”