The Latin Hymn-writers and Their Hymns

by Samuel Willoughby Duffield

When our Lord and His disciples “had sung an hymn” they left the place where they had observed the passover, and went out to the Mount of Olives. This hymn was the “Great Hallel,” consisting of Psalms 113 to 118 inclusive. The 113th and 114th were sung previous to the feast; the others, after it. We thus know, with singular accuracy, what was the first hymn of praise in the Christian Church. The essence of this “Hallel” is the essence of all true psalmody—trust and thanksgiving and praise.

It may be said, and with truth, that the Magnificat of Mary, the Nunc Dimittis of old Simeon, and, above all, that the Gloria in Excelsis Deo of the angels at Bethlehem, antedate this hymn of our Lord and His apostles. It may also be said, and with the same truth, that these furnished to the early Christians their earliest expressions of praise. But it appears that the Last Supper, with its pathetic union of Jewish and Christian ideas, was also the place at which the Psalms of David and the spiritual songs of primitive Christianity were united. The thought that this reveals is larger than these limits will permit us to discuss. It is in brief that as Jesus Christ came, “not to destroy, but to fulfil,” He designed to show to His Church that gratitude, love, trust, and adoration were to be combined in all future psalmody. The t’hillim of the Jew were to become the hymni of the Christian.

The noticeable fact remains that the early Church only caught the simplest and most fervent forms of this worship. Their pure veneration of the Lord led Pliny to write (Ep. 10:97) that they “sung alternately among themselves a hymn to Christ as God”—carmen Christo quasi Deo, dicere secum invicem. It is this loving devotion which charms us as we read those verses which have been preserved. For the most part the subjects are limited. We could naturally expect that, being largely drawn from Jewish sources, they would express gratitude and adoration—and this is correct. Chrysostom declared that the early Christians sung at prayers in the morning, at their work, and very usually at their meals. Jerome, writing to Marcellus, says—and we quote Cave’s translation for its quaintness—“You could not go into the field but you might hear the Ploughman at his Hallelujahs, the Mower at his Hymns, and the Vine-dresser singing David’s Psalms.” In fact, Christian song was a notable feature of primitive Christianity.

The language of these hymns was either Syriac or Greek. By degrees the Greek obtained the precedence; and as the Latin hymns did not arise until Hilary of Poitiers (fourth century), the period between the Ascension and that era belongs to the Greek language rather more than to any other. We also know from the New Testament writers some very important facts, which may properly be classified at this point.

1. There were three terms for the sacred song. It might be a psalm, or a hymn, or a spiritual song, as we discover from Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16.

2. From 1 Corinthians 14:23-33, it seems plain that the composition, as well as the singing of these hymns and songs, might be the result of sudden emotion or inspiration. In any case, there is no doubt (for Tertullian decisively states it) that the “extempore,” or, more strictly, “private” authorship of such psalmody was not uncommon. The council of Laodicea (circa A.D. 360) interdicted private persons from this privilege. Even in Paul’s time it would appear to have produced an effect akin to the “spirituals” of our own freedmen—much of it being exquisite in its simple devotion, while a certain share offended good taste, and hindered the propriety and solemnity of worship.

3. The alternation of prayer with praise was never better illustrated than when Paul and Silas (Acts 16:25) sent up their midnight anthems from that “inner prison,” while their feet were “made fast in the stocks.” This alternation was—as the Fathers assure us—the order in public worship also.

4. We have received in the very pages of the New Testament some of these earliest hymns. To say nothing, at present, of those great leading chants which bear the names of the angels, and of Mary, and of Zacharias, and of Simeon—and to pass over all those of Jewish origin—we have still left us such a strain as that in Acts 4:24-30. Here we have an impulse which expresses itself in reply to Peter and John by sacred song.

Ephesians 5:14 has also been considered to be such a fragment:

“Awake, O thou that sleepest!