HYmns have I sung in Arius’s derision,
Barking Sabellian dog I have not favored,
Simon the swine, whose covetous base vision
Mine never favored.
S. W. D.
Besides this we have the Cantemus omni die concenentes variae, which furnishes a remarkable combination of sustained rhyme with a free use of alliteration; and two hymns in honor of Michael the Archangel, of which the first is an abecedary, and has the same structural peculiarity. Besides these there are other hymns in the Leabhur Jomann, or “Book of Hymns,” in honor of St. Brigid (often confounded with the St. Birgitta of Sweden) and other Irish saints—some in Latin and some in Irish. They have been edited for the Irish Archaeological Society by Dr. J. H. Todd (Dublin, 1855-69).
To the eighth century, the age of the Iconoclasts, of John of Damascus and of Beda, we trace but few anonymous hymns. As we have said, the Urbs beata Hirusalem (with the Angulare fundamentum) may belong here, and so may some in the Mozarabic Breviary. But as only the manuscripts we have named and the “Psalter of the Queen of Sweden”—so called because it once was the property of Queen Christine—go back to this time, we can only guess which of the hymns marked as “very old” in manuscripts of the eleventh and later centuries date back to this. Niebuhr found in a tenth-century manuscript the pilgrim hymn O Roma nobilis, orbis et domina, and published it in the Rheinisches Museum (1829), and traced its accentual form of verse back to the old folk-songs of Rome, such as the Roman soldiers may well have sung at the triumph of Camillus, and certainly did so behind the golden triumphal chariots of Caesar and Aurelian.
To this century some ascribe the hymn for martyrs, Sanctorum meritis inclyta gaudia, which holds its place in a recast in the Roman Breviary, and has occupied the attention of at least four English translators. In the history of theology it is memorable as giving Gottschalk a point by its use of the phrase trina deitas, to which Archbishop Hincmar strongly objected.
Of the less notable hymn-writers of this century three belong to the group of literary men whom Charles the Great gathered at his court or employed in his administration. That Charles himself was a poet in any sense we have no evidence, much less that he wrote the Veni, Creator Spiritus. His biographer, Eginhard, tells us that although he spoke Latin fluently—his native language, of course, being German—he never fully acquired the art of writing, although he kept a tablet under his pillow for the sake of practising. He was a keen lover of learning and a generous patron of education. In one of his trips to Italy he encountered at Parma an Englishman, chief of the Cathedral school at York, and then on his way to Rome to obtain the pallium for Archbishop Eanbald. Charles offered him sufficient inducement to remove to the Continent, and for fourteen years (782-96) Alcuin of York (735-804) was Charles’s minister of education and head of the palace school, in which both the king and his children studied. He was rewarded with various abbacies, and in 796 he retired to one of them—that of St. Martin at Tours—withdrawing from the not very admirable court of his patron to spend his eight last years in study and devotion. He was succeeded by an Irishman named Clemens, who brought over the Irish preference for Greek philosophy, especially that of Plato, to Alcuin’s keen annoyance. In the collections there are some half-dozen hymns ascribed to Alcuin, none of which have made any marked impression. He was an honest, plodding, unimaginative Englishman, such as still writes Latin verses at Eton or Harrow, invitâ Minervâ, and as a matter of duty, not of necessity.
More notable for personal qualities was the Lombard, Paul Warnefried (730-96), better known as Paul the Deacon (Paulus Diaconus), who had witnessed the overthrow of the Lombard kingdom by Charles in 774, and then withdrew to Monte Casino, where he became a Benedictine monk. He attracted Charles’s attention in 781 by a poetical petition in behalf of his brother Arichis, who had been carried beyond the Alps as a prisoner; and the king invited him to his court. He returned to Monte Casino in 787. His most important work, the De Gestis Longobardorum Libri Sex, is marked by a lively and patriotic interest in the legends, habits, and fortunes of his own people. He has preserved for us much early Teutonic lore, such as the poetical explanation of the origin of the name “Lombard,” which Kingsley has worked into a poem in Hypatia. A Frank he never became, and the rough soldiers of Charles’s court proposed to cut off his hands and put out his eyes by way of resenting this. “God forbid,” replied Charles, “that I should thus treat so excellent a poet and a historian.” There are but two hymns which bear Paul Warnefried’s name: one in commemoration of John the Baptist, and the other on the miracles of Benedict of Nursia. The former, which frequently is divided into three parts for different services on St. John’s day, is a hymn of much merit, and still holds its place in the Roman Breviary. Its widest fame is in connection with the history of music, as from its first verse we derive the ordinary names of our musical notes. The verse runs,