Thy love illumine our night.”
The poetical and spiritual range of these lyrics is not extensive, of course, but it is a vast improvement on those “uncleanly imitations of Martial,” or such involved and heartless tricks of verse as he sometimes essays. But he became a saint, and that must suffice! His life has been written by Sirmond; and his times and life together have occupied the attention of Fertig (Passau, 1855). He died at Padua, as we are credibly informed, on July 17th (XVI. Kal. Aug.), 521, and this date is assigned to him in the Roman Catholic calendar of saints. His epitaph, according to Despont, who wrote in 1677, was still to be found in the church of St. Michael, and testimonies to his services are among the acts of the Fifth Synod of Rome, and are included in the public papers of Hormisdas.
When you break open the important historical facts with which he was identified, then like the toad from the stone, comes forth Ennodius. And like that toad, though “ugly and venomous,” he yet “wears a precious jewel in his head.”
CHAPTER VIII.
CAELIUS SEDULIUS AND HIS ALPHABET HYMN.
Latin hymnology gives a distinguished place to a hymn of twenty-three stanzas, each stanza containing four lines and beginning with a letter of the alphabet in regular order. Thus from A to Z all the letters appear except J, U, and W. Caterva is spelled Katerva, to answer for K. Y is represented by Ymnis, which is another form of Hymnis. And at last Zelum concludes the list. The author struggles with a difficulty when he takes Xeromyrrham to answer for X, but otherwise the ideas and versification are so excellent as to have made the hymn classic. The Roman Breviary uses two selections from it. One commences A solis ortus cardine, ad usque, and the other, Hostis Herodes impie. The general subject is the Nativity, but the poem soon proceeds to the Miracles of our Lord, and closes with an ascription of praise for His Resurrection.
There can be no doubt about the authorship. Old manuscript codices, and the tradition of the Church, assign it definitely to Caelius Sedulius—sometimes called Caius Caelius Sedulius—who flourished near the middle of the fifth century. But his personal history is much harder to come at, and the few facts which we possess only stimulate our curiosity to know more. And besides, he is so entangled with another Sedulius—also a poet, also a celebrated author, also a Scot, and also involved in much obscurity—that nearly every notice of his name contains more or less of error. This second Sedulius, however, wrote no hymn which has survived, and therefore needs no further mention. He is always named Sedulius Scotus, to distinguish him from our Sedulius, who is invariably called Caelius Sedulius. He flourished somewhere between 721 and 818, while the best ascertained date of his predecessor’s life appears to be 434.
Our sources of information regarding Sedulius are Isidore of Seville and Fortunatus of Poitiers. Jerome (Hieronymus) left a catalogue of authors from the time of St. Peter to his own day. This was continued by Gennadius, as Notker of St. Gall tells us, and then it was still further extended by Isidore. Neither Jerome nor Gennadius mention our poet; the first because he died in 420, before Sedulius had achieved distinction, and the second possibly for the same reason, as his death occurred about 496 at Marseilles. Isidore (who died 636) then undertook to supply the deficiencies of the catalogue and inserted a brief note respecting Sedulius.
Earlier than Isidore, however, is Fortunatus (530-609), who names our author as one of the five first Christian poets. Juvencus he dates at 330 A.D.; Sedulius flourished in the first half of the fifth century; Prudentius was converted in 405; Paulinus died in 458, and Arator was at his zenith in 560. This would seem to fix pretty closely the period to which Sedulius belongs.
References in the manuscripts are of no additional value. They tell us that he was a “Gentile layman,” or, in other words, a person not of Italian birth; that he learned philosophy in Italy; was converted and baptized by Macedonius, a presbyter; and that he wrote his theological works in Arcadia, or, as some say, Achaia. The Vatican “Codex of the Queen of Sweden” calls him a “verse-maker” and “teacher of the art of heroic metre.” Another codex adds that he also taught other varieties of metrical composition, and that all this happened in the days of the younger Theodosius, son of Arcadius, and of Valentinian, son of Constantine. Of his specific writings still another codex states that he “put forth in Achaia this book against error and composed in verse a commendation of the Christian faith.”
Some Sedulius, “notable for his writings,” appears to have found his way into Spain where, in the year 428, Isicius, a Palestine monk, who had become Bishop of Toledo, detained him for his good fellowship at Toledo. With him is said to have tarried a certain Bishop Oretanus, and the inference is that these three worthies held numerous symposia upon theology and literature. But the story is denied by Nicolaus Antonius, the historian of old Spanish scholarship.