The Latin Hymn-writers and Their Hymns

by Samuel Willoughby Duffield

Anastasius began to carry out his share of this unpleasant business by appointing a council to meet at Heraclea, in Thrace, on July 15th, 515, and asking for commissioners to be sent from Rome. The venerable fox knew perfectly well that he had not allowed time enough for the proper instruction of these delegates, nor for them to make the long journey. But Pope Hormisdas appointed them, and they proceeded to the imperial court, utterly indifferent as to the time of the council, and without any apologies for their delay which history deigns to record. They went, indeed, in a very haughty spirit, and did not even commence their expedition before August 12th.

When they reached the Emperor they asked, or rather demanded, that he should assent to the letter of Pope Leo, who was the first to claim this submission from the East. They insisted, furthermore, that this heterodox monarch should accept the definitions of the famous Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451, which relate to the nature and personality of Christ. The schism between East and West had now lasted for thirty-one years, and a certain Acacius, Bishop of Constantinople, who had been a most persistent opponent of the demands of Leo the Great, was still a thorn in the Roman pontiff’s side.

But Anastasius received the ambassadors with just as proud a spirit as they had shown to him. He would neither yield to Leo nor to Chalcedon, nor would he anathematize Acacius. Ennodius and his companions returned to Rome without accomplishing their mission, and the Emperor sent letters after them by Theopompus and Severianus, principal men of his court. When these reached Rome they were badly received by Hormisdas, and found that nothing would answer except the excommunication of Acacius. With this ultimatum they got back, somewhat crestfallen; and poor Acacius (who was not half so bad as his papal foe) was once more threatened with banishment to eternal fires.

Anastasius, however, was not at all inclined to hand over his bishop to the mercies of Hormisdas. He stoutly refused and continued to refuse throughout the ensuing correspondence. About two hundred monks and archimandrites (heads of monasteries) sent from Syria a letter to the Pope which was directed against the patriarch of Antioch, Severus by name, and which gave in their own allegiance to the Western Church. Nevertheless, the Emperor still maintained the cause of Acacius, although he must have seen that the Pope was as determined as ever to carry his point and that there was now a great deal which was working in favor of the papal plans. When the Syrians addressed their letter to the “Most holy and blessed Hormisdas, Patriarch of the whole earth, holding the see of Peter the prince of the apostles,” it spoke volumes for what the Pope had been able to effect by his agents and representations in the East. But the Emperor would not yield the point and act upon the conciliatory policy of the heretical Theodoric of Italy, which was that they might settle religious matters in their own fashion, provided they honored absolutely his temporal sway.

A second embassy was set on foot consisting of Ennodius and Peregrinus, Bishop of Misenum. By these ambassadors letters were sent renewing the old conditions and avowing that nothing would be satisfactory short of the complete banishment of that pestilent wretch Acacius. This was too much for the Emperor to bear. He angrily dismissed the legates, shipping them off in an old and leaky vessel, and giving a special order to Demetrius and Heliodorus to see that they did not set foot in his dominions after they had once sailed for home. Behind the flying ambassadors followed a document which expressed the royal mind with force and vigor. After comparing the conduct of the Pope very unfavorably with that of Jesus Christ, the Emperor proceeds to say: “We shall give you no further trouble, it being in vain for us to pray or entreat you, since you are obstinately determined not to hearken to our prayers and entreaties. We can bear to be despised and affronted, but we will not be commanded.”

This was dated July 11th, 517, and reveals an unexpected dignity in the old Emperor, and it makes us glad to record that, while he lived, the Bishop of Constantinople was at least preserved in a salvable state.

But when Anastasius died, then Hormisdas began again upon Justin, his successor, and never stopped until Acacius was struck from the roll of bishops and until the East acknowledged the spiritual supremacy of the West. That the victory was of no long continuance or of any enormous value, does not prevent us from noticing that it gave to Magnus Felix Ennodius his permanent place in the Roman calendar, and did everything for his literary and ecclesiastical comfort. He was well rewarded for his devotion to the cause.

Anastasius reigned 491-518, and Hormisdas, who had once been married and had a son, who also became Pope, ruled in his sphere from 514 to 523. Thus he had nearly five years wherein to rejoice over his obstinate dead enemy. And Ennodius possessed his soul in peace and turned his attention once more to polite literature.

Of the writings which he has left to us, the principal are the life of Epiphanius; another of Antonius of Pannonia, a hermit at Lake Como and then a monk at Lerins; together with a Eucharisticum de Vita sua and the apology and panegyric mentioned above. Add to these nine books of letters, “weighed down with emptiness,” and various itineraries, declamations, and poetical pieces, and you have all he did. The letters are most unsatisfactory when we remember that he was the friend, and perhaps the relative, of men like Boethius, Faustus, Avienus, Caesar of Arles, Aurelian, and of bishops and other prelates without number, and lived in Italy under the great Theodoric. He is utterly lacking in contemporary portraits, and his accounts of his three journeys give us nothing valuable. All is stilted, unnatural, and dull. He was not much of a traveller at best. A trip into Burgundy, another across the Po to see his sister, and one from Rome by sea, make up the list of which he kept any trace in his writings. He is in no haste to detail the sayings and doings at Constantinople! But it should be said that these performances with the pen were previous to his elevation to the mitre. Afterward he doubtless composed only hymns and epigrams—the hymns being decent and the epigrams very much the reverse. The German scholar Teuffel looks upon his productions as an “important source of history” for some enigmatic reason of his own, but Simcox very justly scouts them; and the Romanist Berington asserts that he rises “with weariness” from their perusal. I must personally declare that they exhibit neither skill, taste, nor information. They are jejune and empty to a marvellous degree; and for complication of sentences and unclassical phraseology, they are equal to the stupidest books of a later day. And nothing worse than this can be said by any critic.

The Eucharisticum is an insincere sort of thanksgiving for his restoration to health, and very far behind the style of Augustine which it copies. It gives us a few particulars of his personal history, but it is prosaic and Pharisaic, and full of a mock humble glorification of the blessed Victor the Martyr, by whose intercession he is now convalescent.