The Latin Hymn-writers and Their Hymns

by Samuel Willoughby Duffield

Prudentius himself tells us nothing about his family, beyond what we derive by inference. The deeper that we plunge into this labyrinth of guesses the further we are from being settled in opinion. The exhaustive—and, let us add, the exhausting—editor of the latest edition finally calls a halt in the middle of his complicated Latin sentences and avows himself utterly at a loss about the truth. There is then some comfort left to us in cutting and untying these knots; for whatever view we may advance has found distinguished and earnest championship already! On the whole, Teoli appears a reliable leader, and him we have mostly followed, as later authors, such as Professors Fiske and Teuffel, seem to have done before us.

Let us say, then, that he was born in 348, Philippus and Salia being consuls, at Calahorra, which lies up the Ebro and to the northwest of Saragossa. To-day Calahorra is a small place of a few thousand inhabitants, but it furnishes two other notable facts to history in addition to its claim to be the birthplace of Prudentius. It was this little fighting town which resisted Afranius, whom Pompey sent to take it in 78 B.C., and it was then that the citizens ate their wives and children sooner than surrender. Besides this somewhat doubtful glory it produced Quinctilian; while Tudela, which is between it and Saragossa, gave a name to the learned Jew, Benjamin of Tudela, whose ideas about the Tower of Babel have become as classic as Prudentius’s hymns or as the Maid of Saragossa herself. It may be added that paganism was very early abandoned in all this region.

The parents of Prudentius gave him a good education. He possessed, says Teoli, ingenium acre, disertum, ferax—talent that was keen, eloquent, and fruitful. But at the rhetoricians’ schools, which he attended about the age of seventeen, he found little that was commendable in manners or morals. It would appear that he gave the rein to his vices and that his life was not very rapidly turned into the ways of Christianity.

He was at first called to the bar and made judge in two towns of considerable size, which may perhaps have been Toledo and Cordova. About the year 400 he is supposed to have gone to Rome and to have been favorably received by Honorius the Emperor, who then promoted him to some sort of honorable office in his native country. At fifty-seven years of age, as he himself tells us, he began to cultivate literature. He had retired from active life, much as Chaucer did in later days. From this period onward he lived in quiet; he “fled fro’ the presse and dwelt in soothfastnesse,” like the father of English verse. He gave himself to sacred things—to hymns in honor of God and of the saints, and to poems against paganism and in favor of Christian duty.

His poems have Greek titles. First comes the Psychomachia (the Battles of the Soul)—in hexameter—treating of the conflict in a Christian soul between virtue and vice. The contrasts are arranged somewhat like those of Plutarch between the Greek and Roman leaders, only, of course, the antithesis is decidedly against the vices. Here stand Faith opposed to Idolatry, and Chastity facing Impurity, and Patience resisting Anger, and Humility contrasted with Pride, and Sobriety pre-eminent over Excess, and Liberality vanquishing Covetousness, and Concord healing the wounds caused by Dissension. There are nine hundred and fifteen lines in the poem.

The Peristephanon (Concerning Crowns) has twelve hymns in honor of various martyrs. Mr. Simcox notes that these are almost idyllic in form, and that there is much made of the white dove which flies from the burning pile about St. Eulalia and of the violets which the girls should bring to the tombs of the virgin martyrs. It may be interesting to name the martyrs thus celebrated. There were two from Calahorra; then Laurentius and Eulalia; eighteen who suffered at Saragossa; Vincentius, and finally Fructuosus and Quirinus, bishops both.

Then comes a poem on the Baptistery at Calahorra (translated in Blackwood, vol. ix., p. 192), with a description of the deaths of Cassian, Romanus, Hippolytus, Peter and Paul the apostles, Cyprian and Agnes. These poems, it should be said, are various in metre and some are quite long.

The Cathemerinon (a Book of Hours) is the real mine whence the most of the hymns which were composed by Prudentius are taken. In this we have hymns for cock-crowing and morning; before and after food; at the lighting of the lamp; and before retiring to rest. With these are joined others for the use of those who are fasting, and at the conclusion of the fast; for all hours and at the burial of the dead; the work ending with hymns for Christmas and Epiphany.

The Apotheosis consists of poems relating to the errors of all the heretics that can be named—Patripassians, Arians, Sabellians, Manichaeans, Docetae, etc. The value of this to ecclesiastical history is easily perceived. It has more than a thousand hexameters and it treats additionally of the nature of the soul and of sin and of the resurrection.

The Hamartigenia (the Origin of Evil) takes up original sin as against Marcion; and the Dittochaeon (which possibly means Double Food) is the abridgment of Old and New Testaments. This last is a sort of religious picture gallery ranging from Adam to the Apocalypse in hexametrical epigrams. There is reason to doubt whether it be what Prudentius originally composed. If he followed his usual vein of abundant verse, there is no question but that these half a hundred epigrams would be more popular than his very extensive poetical treatment of such subjects.