[4]See Sir Alexander Croke’s History of Rhyming Verse. Oxford, 1828; Ferdinand Wolf’s standard treatise, Ueber die Lais, Sequenzen und Leiche. Heidelberg, 1841; August Fuchs’s Die Romanischen Sprachen in ihrem Verhältnisse zum Lateinischen, Halle, 1849; W. Corssen’s Ueber die Aussprache, Vokalismus und Betonung der Lateinischen Sprache. Leipzig, 1868. Also Niebuhr’s article, Ueber das Alter des Lieds Lydia bella puella, in the third volume of the Rheinisches Museum, Bonn, 1829; and Mr. S. V. Cole’s paper on “The Development of Form in the Latin Hymns,” in the Andover Review for October, 1888.
[5]This is a passage not discernible in the Psalms. Justin Martyr says that the Jews expunged it. Tertullian (Contra Marcion, III.) mentions it—and in two other places. Daniel, Thesaurus, I.: 162, has a learned note on the subject.
[6]The same story, but not so well related, is in the life by Paul of Monte Cassino and is repeated in Bede (Hist. Angl. Lib. II. cap. 1). John’s Latin is a trifle cumbrous, but this is the literal translation of it.
[7]Recently there has been a most admirable summary of these matters prepared by the Rev. Samuel M. Jackson for the fourteenth chapter of Dr. Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church.
[8]The full inquiry can be pursued through Dan. V., 66 and II., 181; Neale, Sequentiae, p. 58; Du Meril, Poesies Populaires, p. 380, in Pearson’s Sarum Sequences, and in Kehrein.
[9]Poesies Populaires: Anterieures au Douxieme Siècle, p. 380. The language is worth quoting as it stands. He is speaking of Hermann. “Il avail fait, en outre, un grand nombre d’hymnes et de proses qui sauf le Veni, Sancte Spiritus que lui attribue Ego, semblent toutes perdues.”
[10]His Varia de Corrupto Statu Ecclesiae Poemata was reprinted in 1754, but even this is very scarce. There was an earlier publication of his of the same nature, Carmina Vetusta (1548), but whether it contained Bernard, I cannot say. Flacius was an unwearied searcher of the libraries of Europe for material to use on the Lutheran side of the great controversy.
The poem was then reprinted at least six times: “by David Chytraeus at Bremen, 1597; at Rostock, 1610; at Leipzig, 1626; by Eilhard Lubinus, at Lunenburg, 1640; in Wachler’s New Theological Annals, December, 1820; and in G. Ch. F. Mohnike’s Studien (Stralsund, 1824) I., 18.” Yet it had become so scarce that when I made my version of Dr. Trench’s cento, I could not find a complete copy in America. Since then I have received a copy of the edition of 1640 from a friend. Also the Boston Public Library has secured a copy of the Varia Poemata, which was once Theodore Parker’s, and bears the inscription, “A rare and curious book. T. P.”
The English translations are: (1) Dr. Trench has rendered a few lines in the metre of the original. (2) Dr. John M. Neale’s “Rhythm of Bernard of Morlaix” (1858). (3) Judge Noyes in the “Seven Great Hymns of the Latin Church.” (4) Dr. Abraham Coles. (5) “The Heavenly Land, from the De Contemptu Mundi of Bernard of Morlaix, rendered into corresponding English Verse,” by S. W. Duffield (1867). (6) A privately printed translation by “O. A. M.,” of Cherry Valley, N. Y. (Albany, 1867). (7) Gerard Moultrie in Lyra Mystica (1869). (8) Rev. Jackson Mason (London, 1880). Besides this, an English clergyman has perpetrated the folly of rendering Dr. Neale’s paraphrase into Horatian Latin verse, which would puzzle Bernard himself to recognize as derived from him.
[11]Custodia Pennensis habet locum Celani, de quo fuit frater Thomas, qui mandato apostolico scripsit sermone polito legendam primam beati Francisci et prosam de mortuis, quae decantatur in missa, scilicet “Dies irae, dies illa,” etc., fecisse dicitur.