Et a justis expectatus
Jam festinat exoratus,
Ad salvandum praeperatus.
Apparebit nec tardabit,
Veniet et demonstrabit
Gloriam, quam praestolantur,
Qui pro fide tribulantur.
If nothing whatever had been known as to the date of the two poems, we should have pronounced this an expansion of the Dies irae, dies illa by a later poet, who had two objects in view: the first, to sharpen to the conscience of his readers the warnings of the impending judgment; the second, to complete the poem by bringing the joys of the judgment more prominently into view. And with all respect for Edelestand du Méril’s judgment, we would like to have more light on the date of his manuscript.
A manuscript still preserved at Liege in Belgium contains the letters of Guido of Basoches, which is either Bas-oha, a village near that city, or, as Mone thinks, a place near Châteaudun in France. Among these letters are given a number of hymns, which he sends to his correspondents. They show some power of versification, but nothing more, and are defaced by conceits and puns. Thus he puts the name of Stephen through the six cases of the Latin grammar in as many verses of a hymn.
There are five writers of this century, each of whom is credited with a single hymn. Rudolph of Radegg, a schoolmaster of Einsiedeln, wrote a hymn in honor of St. Meinrad, which begins Nunc devota silva tota. To Thomas Becket is ascribed the Gaude Virgo, Mater Christi, Quia.... It is said to be his in a manuscript of the fifteenth century. To another Englishman, Bertier, is ascribed the only Latin hymn in the collections which relates directly to the Crusades, Juxta Threnos Jeremiae. It first appears in the chronicle of Roger of Hoveden, with the statement that Bertier wrote it in 1188. Last is Aelred (1104-66), who seems to have been a lowland Scotchman by birth, and to have shared the education of Henry, son of King David of Scotland. King David wished to make him a bishop, but he preferred the life of a monk. He made his way to the Cistercian monastery at Rievaulx in Yorkshire (not Revesby in Lincolnshire, as some say), and there spent his days, becoming abbot in 1146. That he was a most lovable man we must infer from his sermons to his monks. He is one of the few preachers in Dr. Neale’s Mediaeval Preachers and Preaching (London, 1856), of whom we wish for more. His epitaph likens him, among others, to Bernard of Clairvaux, and the comparison is apposite. He was an English Bernard, with less personal force and grasp of intellect, but with the same gentleness and friendliness. His one hymn is the Pax concordat universa, which is found in his works, but not in any of the collections. The theme is congenial.