It is evident that the fourth century was one of innovation in thecustom of congregational singing as the Ambrosian hymn was more widelydiffused. Our knowledge of what actually took place is very incomplete,based first upon the writing of Ambrose and his contemporaries and laterupon the hints derived from monastic usage. That morning and eveningservices of prayer and praise were common is well known. That the singingof the new fourth century hymns was an integral part of such servicesis largely assumed. Prudentius wrote hymns for the evening ceremony of thelucernare or lighting of the candles, a Christian practice adopted from theGreek church, to which many references are found. The fact that thehymns of Prudentius were in existence long before they appeared in therecords of formal worship points to early Christian usage, however dimlyperceived.
The writings of men familiar with Roman civilization and trained inclassical culture would naturally be presumed to retain the flavor of a non-Christianliterature. Christianity had already appropriated from the paganphilosophers those teachings which were congenial to its own. Ambrosereveals both in his poetic and prose writings his acquaintance with classical8thought and literary models. Prudentius mingles the classical and theChristian. Fortunatus was inspired by classical poetry to a Christian expressionof beauty in form and content. But in every case, these characteristicsare marginal. The core of their hymns is the scriptural narrative.Not only is the subject matter faithfully reproduced but the actual text issometimes embedded in the verse. The result is a rare objectivity and alack of embellishment especially in the works of Ambrose which becamethe preferred standard for later writers.[12]
O Redemptor Sume Carmen Pdf 14
The argument for influence from vernacular verse upon the sequenceis equally weak. Prior to the ninth century vernacular lyrics in the Germanic44tongues are so rare as to be valueless in this discussion. Celtic lyricsfrom the seventh and eighth centuries are also rare. It is possible that theywere known to Celtic teachers on the continent but too much should notbe assumed from this possibility or from the fact that the oldest form ofCeltic lyric exhibits rhythmic parallelism.[31] French, Spanish and earlyEnglish vernacular lyrics appear too late to be significant in the problemof origins. In any case, the question hinges upon metrical technique whichcan be adequately explained without recourse to vernacular lyrics, which,insofar as they do exist, may be regarded as themselves imitations of earlierLatin forms.
The Processional book as a bearer of hymns will be treated in thefollowing chapter. It remains here, to mention the Books of Hours ormedieval Primers which also contained their quota of hymns. The Horaemay be defined as a series of devotions, at first additional to the SevenHours of the daily office but in the twelfth century elaborated in a separatebook. Specifically the additions consisted of the penitential psalms, theOffice of the Dead, the Cursus of All Saints, that of the Holy Cross, andthat of the Blessed Virgin. Even before its separation from the CanonicalHours, the Cursus of the Blessed Virgin had assumed an importancewhich gave to the new collection its characteristic title of Horae or Hoursof the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the fourteenth century the single volumecame to be known in England as Primarius Liber or Primarium fromwhich the more familiar name Prymer or Primer is derived.[13] Its popularitymay be judged by the fact that 265 printed editions were laterknown in England and 1582 on the continent.[14] Hymns are interspersedthroughout the Horae. In the York Hours there are eighteen hymns andsequences of varied periods of which thirteen are centered in devotion tothe Virgin.[15] In other words, the hymns which were chosen for thesebooks of popular devotion are representative of later medieval favoritesin hymnody, indicating to what extent the older hymns were knownand loved and to what extent later poems had been accepted by lay folk aswell as clergy. The Horae are primarily valuable as a source for the laterMarian hymns upon the themes of the Joys and of the Sorrows of theVirgin. The appearance of the beloved Stabat mater dolorosa, withoutdoubt the finest expression of the poetry of sorrow, bears witness to thediscriminative process by which the Horae were compiled. It seems remarkablethat the liturgists of the later period, in which the Latin hymnwas beginning to show signs of deterioration, were able to skirt as successfullyas they did, the limits of trashy sentimentality and worse poetrywhich were passing current under the name of hymnody.
Once the typical hymns and sequences of the later period have beenreviewed, it remains to trace the influences operating from the contemporaryenvironment upon their evolution. The problem of possible influenceof an ultimately oriental origin has already arisen in connection withearlier hymns. It has been considered in the relation of Byzantine cultureto the origin of the sequence, and also in the form of Arabian influenceupon the Mozarabic hymnody. In both fields the evidence is tenuous andespecially in the latter where the imprint of Arabian cultural forms wouldseem to be most probable. In the centuries which produced the troubadours,the problem takes the form of a possible indirect influence fromArabian origins through the Provençal singers upon the evolution of thesequence.[16] It is true that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries boasted atleast four hundred troubadours whose poetry is extant. The names ofothers are known but not their poems. As the popularity of their songsis unquestioned, an appreciable affect upon religious lyrics might be presumed.Granted that the influence of Arabian poetry may be demonstratedupon the metrical aspects of troubadour lyrics, it must still bedemonstrated that the impact of the latter was felt upon the Latin hymn.Future studies may throw light upon these problems of medieval literaturewhere obscurity now prevails. Metrical similarities undoubtedly existbetween Arabian and Latin verse, as already illustrated in the field oflate Mozarabic hymns. Perhaps the most convincing evidence, aside fromthese, is found in processional hymns, the subject of a later chapter.
The French liturgical scholar, Leon Gautier, whose contributions tothe study of medieval hymnology have already been mentioned, was thefirst to identify the processional hymn as a trope or liturgical interpolation.In a study of the St. Gall processional hymns he observed that theywere classified by the name versus which in itself points to a separatehymnic category. Other earlier hymns used in processions were therecalled versus. Gautier discovered that musical notation always appearedwith the versus, an indication that these hymns were invariably chantedand he noted that the versus, in the manner of the hymn O redemptor,sume carmen, cited above, was without exception, accompanied by a refrain.[22] 2ff7e9595c
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