The siege in the basilica at Milan had an important bearing on the whole future of the Christian Church. Augustine tells us how his mother Monica had followed him to Milan, and how when there “she hastened the more eagerly to the church and hung upon the lips of Ambrose.” (Aug. Conf., B. vi.) “That man,” he continues, “she loved as an angel of God because she knew that by him I had been brought to that doubtful state of faith I now was in.” She evidently anticipated that so eloquent a preacher would complete the work that he had been permitted to begin. As for Augustine himself, he felt “shut out both from his ear and speech by multitudes of busy people whose weaknesses he served.”
How finely, by the way, this very expression illustrates the greatness of Ambrose’s character and the unselfishness of his life! We get also a picture of the man as a student—one whose voice would become worn by any extended public speaking, and who therefore read to himself in his private studies in a manner unusual apparently in that age—namely, as we do now, without opening his lips or articulating the words. The effect of Justina’s persecution is also given most graphically. (Aug. Conf., B. ix.) For Augustine, having first told us how these heavenly voices fell upon his ear, says that his mother “bore a chief part of those anxieties and watchings” and “lived for prayer.” At this date, he emphatically declares, “it was first instituted that after the manner of the Eastern churches, hymns and psalms should be sung lest the people should wax faint through the tediousness of sorrow; and from that day to this the custom is retained, divers (yea, almost all) congregations throughout other parts of the world following herein.” It is he, moreover, who tells us that the two martyrs’ bodies were transferred to that Ambrosian church erected in 387, and where afterward were placed the bones of its great founder; which was spared by Barbarossa in 1162, and which, as the church of San Ambrogio, still occupies its old site in Milan. Thus we have the most important of contemporary testimony to some of these troublous scenes.
Of the Ambrosian hymns themselves a great deal may be said. It is better to confine one’s self rather, therefore, to results than to the long processes which have led thither. But it is impossible to agree with Dr. Neale and Archbishop Trench, who say of them that “there is a certain coldness in them—an aloofness of the author from his subject.” This is one of those bits of critical misapprehension which lead us to doubt the infallibility of even so admirable a judgment as that of the warden of Sackville College. The truth is that Dr. Neale admired gorgeousness and the splendor of ritual. He praises the Pange lingua of Aquinas altogether too much and he praises Ambrose altogether too little. A simple and reverent spirit cannot be said to experience, as he does, a “feeling of disappointment” before this which he calls “an altar of unhewn stone.” This single phrase exposes the delusion. “Unhewn stone” is not to Dr. Neale’s nor to Archbishop Trench’s churchly taste, while it is precisely upon such an altar as that (Ex. 20:25) that God was ready to let His flame descend. The latest judgment—that of Mr. Simcox—(Latin Literature, vol. ii., 405) is decidedly preferable: “They all have the character of deep, spontaneous feeling, flowing in a clear, rhythmical current, and show a more genuine literary feeling than the prose works.” To any one who is at all familiar with the Ambrosian hymns this will at once commend itself as the better criticism.
We may pause a moment to inquire about the chants which bear his name, but we shall have slight enough information. Four tunes are traditional: the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixed Lydian. What these were and how they were sung, we do not accurately know. We do know, however, that Ambrose employed but four notes (the tetrachord) where we have subdivided the various tones into the octave. The Germans do not profess to tell us anything more definite than this.
The actual hymns are to be reckoned up in several ways. First comes the mass of Ambrosiani, including hymns of Gregory the Great and of other and much later authors. Many have been foisted into this category because they were found in old breviaries and manuscripts. Then from these we may separate the presumed originals—of which a large proportion are now known to belong to other writers. These misapprehensions are due to such compilers as Fabricius, Cassander, Clichtove, and Thomasius, who were not invariably correct and who perpetuated their designations through later works. Still a third class are the possible originals, selected by the judicious but not always accurate zeal of the Benedictines of St. Maur when they edited the collected works of the great bishop. And last of all can be placed the probable originals—those hymns which are authenticated by Augustine and by St. Caelestin (A.D. 430), together with those in structure closely resembling them.
For our own purposes a fifth class can even yet be formed from the last named group—the undoubted originals, which will comprise only those attested by contemporary authority.
The list would stand then in the order of authenticity, about as follows:
I.
Attested by St Augustine. Deus Creator omnium, Aeterne rerum conditor, Jam surgit hora tertia, Qua Referred to directly by St. Caelestin. Veni Redemptor gentium.
These are the undoubted hymns and the only hymns to be safely assigned to Ambrose.