To this century or later we must assign the Martyr Dei qui unicum, which (as Invicte Martyr unicum) still holds its place in the Roman Breviary; and the Jesu Redemptor omnium, which is similarly honored.
Odo of Cluny (879-943) is the first of the three poets who have adorned that famous monastic house. He was dedicated before his birth to St. Martin, by his father, a courtier of the Duke of Aquitaine, and became a monk at Tours in fulfilment of this vow. He got such education as the times furnished, going to Paris for the sake of finding the best schools. He then joined the congregation of three monasteries recently founded by Bernon, who was abbot of them all. At the death of Bernon he became the second abbot of Cluny, and it speaks ill for either Bernon or the age that he found his work to be that of a monastic reformer even in a young monastery. He was the most considerable figure in the French Church of his time, and his advice and mediation were sought on all sides. As his name was a very usual one, a long series of books he did not write has been fathered on him, what he really left being a collection of addresses to his monks (Collationes), some sermons, and a few hymns, about four in all. Of these Dr. Neale has translated the Lauda, mater ecclesiae, lauda Christi, and Mr. Chambers the Aeterni Patris unice. They commemorate Mary Magdalene, identifying her, of course, with Mary of Bethany, as Church tradition does.
Fulbert of Chartres (950-1028) was to France, in the second half of this century of disorder and transition, what Odo was in the first. He also was from Aquitaine, and possibly of a noble family, although he seems to contradict his biographers on that point when he says,
“non opibus nec sanguine fretus
Conscendi cathedram, pauper, de sorde levatus.”
He studied at Rheims under the great scholar Gerbert, afterward Pope Sylvester II.—“a pope,” as Dr. Döllinger says, “who was held in great honor as the most learned scholar and the most enlightened spirit of his time,” but afterward was regarded as an expert in the black art, and even as having sold himself to Satan. From him Fulbert at least learned no black arts. Transferred in 968 to Chartres as chancellor of the cathedral, with charge of its school, he made the place a centre of attraction to students from three nations. His scholars called him “the Frankish Socrates,” and frequent is the reference in writers of the next generation to the delightful fellowship they had with this bright-minded and devout master, who taught the science of both natural and divine things, entering into right human relations with each of them, and pointing them to that knowledge which is life eternal. Even after Robert II. elevated him to the bishopric of Chartres, in 1007, he found time to take part in the work of teaching, which he so much loved. He died in 1028.
His letters are his chief monument, and they give us an unattractive picture of his age. One of them denounces bishops who have become soldiers as unworthy of the name. Others tell of the murder, in the very porch of the cathedral, of a priest he had made the sub-dean of the cathedral at Sens. The friends of a rival candidate killed him, with the alleged connivance of the bishop of Sens! In yet another he takes to task Constance, the shrew whom a just Providence awarded to Robert II. as his last wife. His sermons are less notable, and much given to Mariolatry. His hymns are few in number, but one of them, the Chorus novae Hirusalem, is a Whitsunday hymn of much beauty, yet it has not commended itself to the compilers of the Roman Breviary. Mone remarks that it unites classic metre with rhyme, which is true also of his hymn in commemoration of Martin of Tours, Inter patres monachalis.
The fifth abbot of Cluny, Odilo (962-1048), was a dear friend of Fulbert’s, and lamented his death. He continued the work of monastic reform begun by Odo, which made Cluny the centre of monastic energy and life in this age. Especially was the severity of the restored rule of Benedict, as practised at Cluny, opposed to the laxer order established by the Irish monks in Germany. So absorbed was he in this work that he refused to be made Archbishop of Lyons. Fulbert called him “the archangel of the monks.” He also wrote hymns, but there are none that we can attach with certainty to his name.
The same is true of Salvus, abbot of a cloister in the Christian kingdom of Navarre. Heriger, abbot of Lobbes (940-1009), a Flemish Benedictine and hagiologist, of great renown as an educator and a scholar, has left one hymn, Ave per quam, and two antiphons, in honor of the Apostle Thomas. Theodoric of Monte Casino wrote a hymn in honor of St. Maurus.
To the eleventh century we owe the beginnings of many things—rag paper, Gothic architecture, our modern musical notation, the crusades, the troubadours, the peace of God, the Norman rule in England. It is the century of Hildebrand, of Peter Damiani, of Anselm of Canterbury, of the great struggle to establish the celibacy of the clergy and to abolish lay patronage in the Church. It is not rich in hymn-writers, but it has some minor names and anonymous hymns worthy of notice.