It was a time of great intellectual activity in Western Europe. The universities took their rise now, although not known by that name till the next century. In the national literatures of France and Germany it was the springtime of a new age—the age of the troubadours and the trouvères, of the Minnesingers, and the popular romances. In Latin hymnology no century was more fertile in great things than this.
Of the anonymous hymns traced to this century there are several of great beauty. The hymn on the Apostles, Exultet coelum laudibus, holds its place in the Roman Breviary in a much diluted revision. It shows a close study of Scripture and great command of terse expression. The Easter hymn, Finita jam sunt praelia, generally is given with a double Alleluia prefixed. Daniel refers it to this century; Neale to the next. It is known to English readers by the versions of Rev. Francis Pott (“The strife is o’er, the victory won!”) and of Dr. Neale (“Finished is the battle now”), both of great merit. Exactly the same difference of authorities we find as to the date of the O filii et filiae, another Easter hymn of great beauty and still more honored by the preferences of the translators, but ignored by the collectors, Professor March excepted. The Passion hymn, Patris Sapientia, veritas divina, has been bandied about among many supposed authors, two popes of the fourteenth century included. It is in the “Goliardic” metre we find in Anselm of Lucca, which was widely used in the satirical poetry of this century. It therefore probably belongs here, and may be the work of the “Egidius Episcopus” specified in one copy of the hymn. A third Easter hymn, the Surrexit Christe hodie, may be as old as this century, as there is a German hymn of this century which borrows from it, Christus ist erstanden. In its Latin, indeed, lies the germ of many later Easter hymns, including that of Charles Wesley, “Christ the Lord is risen to-day.” It is itself the simplest and truest expansion of the Easter morning greeting of the early Christian Church, when its members, as they met each other on the street on that Sunday, substituted “Christ is risen!” for the usual “Peace be with you!” That was the word of confession by which the Church’s Easter joy in the triumph of good over evil, light over darkness, the spiritual springtide over spiritual winter, was proclaimed to a joyless and despairing world.
To this century also belongs the Advent sequence, Veni, veni Emmanuel! So Dr. Neale thinks, but Professor Daniel hesitates. It undoubtedly is based on the eight “Greater Antiphons,” which were sung at the Vesper service on the eight days preceding Christmas (O Sapientia, etc.), of which a metrical version by Lord Nelson and others is in the Hymnal of the Episcopal Church. At least as old as this century is the very beautiful sequence on the life of Christ, In sapientia disponens omnia, which Mone found in a MS. of this century, and Trend (Lyra Mystica) and Crippen have translated. The two halves of the sequence differ in a marked way in their metrical structure.
Of the lesser hymn-writers of the century, Marbod is the most productive. Like Fulbert and Odilo, he might as well be credited to the last century as to this. He was the son of a fur dealer at Angers, named Robert, became Bishop of Rennes, and died a monk at St. Aubin in 1123. He had the fighting qualities of the Angevins, whose churches are full of the tombs not of saints, but of armed warriors, Michelet says. He took such an active and aggressive part in a dispute over the election of a bishop of Angers that the other party made him their prisoner and carried him out of the mélée. But it was his eminence as a Latin poet for which his age most valued him. When he died the monks of St. Aubin announced the fact in a circular letter, and Ulger, Bishop of Angers, anticipated the extravagance of Dryden’s epigram on Milton in his praises of his friend:
“Cessit ei Cicero, cessit Maro
Junctus Homero.”
Beaugendre in 1708 collected his poems and published them along with those of his contemporary, Hildebert of Tours. They are mostly versified legends of the saints, with a long poem, De Gemmis, interesting and curious as showing the “mystical” associations of the mediaeval mind with precious stones. From this Mone gives the interpretation of the precious stones in the heavenly Jerusalem, beginning Cives coelestis patriae. More hymn like in character is the Deus-Homo rex coelorum, which Chancellor Benedict has translated from Trench’s anthology:
Deus-Homo, Rex coelorum,
Miserere Miserorum;
Ad peccandum proni sumus,