sights and sounds—was moved by the sound of a mill-wheel to
compose his “sequence” on the Holy Spirit, “Sancti Spiritus
adsit nobis gratia” (“Present with us ever be the Holy Spirit’s
grace”); and that, when finished, he sent it as a present to
“the emperor Charles,” who in return sent him back, “by the
same messenger,” the hymn “Veni Creator,” which (says Ekkehard)
the same “Spirit had inspired him to write” (“Sibi idem
Spiritus inspiraverat”). If this story is to be credited—and,
from its circumstantial and almost dramatic character, it has an
air of truth—the author of “Veni Creator” was not Charlemagne,
but his grandson the emperor Charles the Bald. Notker himself
long survived that emperor, and died in 912.
The invention of “sequences” by Notker may be regarded as the beginning of the later medieval epoch of Latin hymnody. In the eucharistic service, in which (as has been stated) hymns were not generally used, it had been the practice, except at certain seasons, to sing “laud,” or “Alleluia,” Sequences. between the epistle and the gospel, and to fill up what would otherwise have been a long pause, by extending the cadence upon the two final vowels of the “Alleluia” into a protracted strain of music. It occurred to Notker that, while preserving the spirit of that part of the service, the monotony of the interval might be relieved by introducing at that point a chant of praise specially composed for the purpose. With that view he produced the peculiar species of rhythmical composition which obtained the name of “sequentia” (probably from following after the close of the “Alleluia”), and also that of “prosa,” because its structure was originally irregular and unmetrical, resembling in this respect the Greek “troparia,” and the “Te Deum,” “Benedicite” and canticles. That it was in some measure suggested by the forms of the later Greek hymnody seems probable, both from the intercourse (at that time frequent) between the Eastern and Western churches, and from the application by Ekkehard, in his biography and elsewhere (e.g. in Lyndwood’s Provinciale), of some technical terms, borrowed from the Greek terminology, to works of Notker and his school and to books containing them.
Dr Neale, in a learned dissertation prefixed to his collection of sequences from medieval Missals, and enlarged in a Latin letter to H. A. Daniel (printed in the fifth volume of Daniel’s Thesaurus hymnologicus), investigated the laws of caesura and modulation which are discoverable in these works. Those first brought into use were sent by their author to Pope Nicholas I., who authorized their use, and that of others composed after the same model by other brethren of St Gall, in all churches of the West.
Although the sequences of Notker and his school, which then rapidly passed into most German, French and British Missals, were not metrical, the art of “assonance” was much practised in them. Many of those in the Sarum and French Missals have every verse, and even every clause or division of a verse, ending with the same vowel “a”—perhaps with some reference to the terminal letter of “Alleluia.” Artifices such as these naturally led the way to the adaptation of the same kind of composition to regular metre and fully developed rhyme. Neale’s full and large collection, and the second volume of Daniel’s Thesaurus, contain numerous examples, both of the “proses,” properly so called, of the Notkerian type, and of those of the later school, which (from the religious house to which its chief writer belonged) has been called “Victorine.” Most Missals appear to have contained some of both kinds. In the majority of those from which Neale’s specimens are taken, the metrical kind largely prevailed; but in some (e.g. those of Sarum and Liége) the greater number were Notkerian.
Of the sequence on the Holy Ghost, sent by Notker (according to Ekkehard) to Charles the Bald, Neale says that it “was in use all over Europe, even in those countries, like Italy and Spain, which usually rejected sequences”; and that, “in the Missal of Palencia, the priest was ordered to hold a white dove in his hands, while intoning the first syllables, and then to let it go.” Another of the most remarkable of Notker’s sequences, beginning “Media in vita” (“In the midst of life we are in death”), is said to have been suggested to him while observing some workmen engaged in the construction of a bridge over a torrent near his monastery. Catherine Winkworth (Christian Singers of Germany, 1869) states that this was long used as a battle-song, until the custom was forbidden, on account of its being supposed to exercise a magical influence. A translation of it (“Mitten wir im Leben sind”) is one of Luther’s funeral hymns; and all but the opening sentence of that part of the burial service of the Church of England which is directed to be “said or sung” at the grave, “while the corpse is made ready to be laid into the earth,” is taken from it.
The “Golden Sequence,” “Veni, sancte Spiritus” (“Holy Spirit, Lord of Light”), is an early example of the transition of sequences from a simply rhythmical to a metrical form. Archbishop Trench, who esteemed it “the loveliest of all the hymns in the whole circle of Latin sacred poetry,” inclined to give credit to a tradition which ascribes its authorship to Robert II., king of France, son of Hugh Capet. Others have assigned to it a later date—some attributing it to Pope Innocent III., and some to Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury. Many translations, in German, English and other languages, attest its merit. Berengarius of Tours, St Bernard of Clairvaux and Abelard, in the 11th century and early in the 12th, followed in the same track; and the art of the Victorine school was carried to its greatest perfection by Adam of St Victor (who died between 1173 and 1194)—“the most fertile, and” (in the concurrent judgment of Archbishop Trench and Neale) “the greatest of the Latin hymnographers of the Middle Ages.” The archbishop’s selection contains many excellent specimens of his works.
But the two most widely celebrated of all this class of
compositions—works which have exercised the talents of the
greatest musical composers, and of innumerable
translators in almost all languages—are the “Dies
Irae” (“That day of wrath, that dreadful day”), by Thomas
Dies Irae.
Stabat Mater.
Aquinas.
of Celano, the companion and biographer of St Francis of Assisi,
and the “Stabat Mater dolorosa” (“By the cross
sad vigil keeping”) of Jacopone, or Jacobus de
Benedictis, a Franciscan humorist and reformer,
who was persecuted by Pope Boniface VIII. for his satires on
the prelacy of the time, and died in 1306. Besides these, the 13th
century produced the famous sequence “Lauda Sion salvatorem”
(“Sion, lift thy voice and sing”), and the four other well-known
sacramental hymns of St Thomas Aquinas, viz. “Pange lingua
gloriosi corporis mysterium” (“Sing, my tongue,
the Saviour’s glory”), “Verbum supernum prodiens”
(“The Word, descending from above”—not to be confounded
with the Ambrosian hymn from which it borrowed the first
line), “Sacris solemniis juncta sint gaudia” (“Let us with
hearts renewed our grateful homage pay”), and “Adoro Te
devote, latens Deitas” (“O Godhead hid, devoutly I adore
Thee”)—a group of remarkable compositions, written by him
for the then new festival of Corpus Christi, of which he induced
Pope Urban IV. (1261–1265) to decree the observance. In
these (of which all but “Adoro Te devote” passed rapidly into
breviaries and missals) the doctrine of transubstantiation is
set forth with a wonderful degree of scholastic precision; and
they exercised, probably, a not unimportant influence upon the
general reception of that dogma. They are undoubtedly works
of genius, powerful in thought, feeling and expression.
These and other medieval hymn-writers of the 12th and 13th centuries may be described, generally, as poet-schoolmen. Their tone is contemplative, didactic, theological; they are especially fertile and ingenious in the field of mystical interpretation. Two great monasteries Medieval hymns. in the East had, in the 8th and 9th centuries, been the principal centres of Greek hymnology; and, in the West, three monasteries—St Gall, near Constance (which was long the especial seat of German religious literature), Cluny in Burgundy and St Victor, near Paris—obtained a similar distinction. St Gall produced, besides Notker, several distinguished sequence writers, probably his pupils—Hartmann, Hermann and Gottschalk—to the last of whom Neale ascribes the “Alleluiatic Sequence” (“Cantemus cuncti melodum nunc Alleluia”), well known in England through his translation, “The strain upraise of joy and praise.” The chief poets of Cluny were two of its abbots, Odo and Peter the Venerable (1122–1156), and one of Peter’s monks, Bernard of Morlaix, who wrote the remarkable poem on “Contempt of the World” in about 3000 long rolling “leonine-dactylic” verses, from parts of which Neale’s popular hymns, “Jerusalem
