^^ Cum recordor moritums Quid post mortem aim futuras, Terror terret me vcnturuB, Qnem expecto non securui. Terret dies me terroria, Dies irsa ac furoris, Dies lactus ac moeroris, Dies ultrix peccatoris. Dies ina, dies iUa.**)
" Every line weeps. Under every word and syllable a living heart throbs and pulsates. The very rhythm, or that alternate elevation and depression of the voice which prosodists call the arsis and the thesis, one might almost fancy were synchronous with the contrac- tion and the dilatation of the heart. It is more than dramatic. The horror and the dread are real; are actual, not acted" (A. Coles). ** Dim* schauerliche Ge- dicht,^* says Fred, von Meyer, ^^arm an Bildem, gam Gtffihl, sckldfft wie ein Hammer mit drei gtheimmniss- vollen Reimlddngen an die BrusV ("This awful poem, poor in images, all feeling, beats the breast like a hammer with three mysterious rh^nne - strokes"). " The Dies Ira,'^ to quote from V. Cousin (Lectures on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, p. 177), "recited only, produces the most terrible effect. In those fear- ful words every blow tells, so to speak; each word contains a distinct sentiment, an idea at once profound and determinate. The intellect advances at each step, and the heart rushes on in its turn." No wonder that literary men and secular poets have been captivated by the Dies Ira, as well as men in full religious sym- pathy with its solemn thoughts and feelings. Gdthe introduces it with thrilling effect in the cathedral scene of Faust to stir up the conscience of poor Mar- garet, who is seized with horror at the thought of the sonnding trump, the trembling graves, and the fiery torment. Dr. Johnson could never repeat the stanza ending, Tantus labor non sit cassus, without bursting into a flood of tears. The earl of Roscommon, *^not more learned than good," in the moment in which he expired, uttered with the most fervent devotion two lines of his own version :
" My God, my Father, and my Friend, Do not forsake me in my end T*
Sir Walter Scott also happily reproduced some stanzas of the Dies IrtK for his "Lay of the Last Minstrel," and was heard repeating them on his dying bed, when
the strength of his body aiiid mind vaa fkiE^ Dies Ira has also given rise to sooke of tibt gs musical compositions of Falestrma, Ihrnnte, fs^i lese, Haydn, Vogler, Winter, Cberubini, Gottfrigd % ber, Keukomm, and especially o^ JtlozAvt, in ks&KK Requiem, during the composition of which k M (1791).
IIL The Authorship of the IHeM Trm casaeekv tainly fixed. The writer evidentfj- wms m about his own Came. It is nowr, however, |H«ttT fat- ally assigned to the Franciscan monk Thomas s Qim (a little town in Abruzzo alteriore, in ItjJjXtfattif rapher of his intimate friend St. Francis of Asn^ Acta Sanctorum, OcL, torn. ii). He was wapemi the Franciscan convents of Colo^poe, MMjaiet,'Wtm, and Speyer, and died after A.D. 1255. Tlie <diHt» timony in &vor of this view is taJcen from Bts^A- mieus Albizzi of Pisa (f 1401), in his Laba- casfam- tatum of 1885, where he says: "prater 7%mm^ mandato apostoUco scr^mt semume pcGto I'^mimpk mam beaU Frandsci, et pbobam de ]foBTCis,«a
CAIYTATUR IN MI8SA, ' DiBS Ih^S,' elc DICUTI >•
cisse," This proves only that at ttiat time tk Us Ira was part of the Missal, and was belwred bf la to be the work of Thomas. Locas Wadding, ia Kill' nals of the Franciscan order (1650), defends ttii :» dition, and Mohnike, Rambach, Daniel, Koch, Mk Mono, Wackemagel, Coles, and other moden vtia on the subject, adopt it as the mo^ probaUe i ' ' The rivalry of monastic orders has interfiBred vihii question of authorship, and Dominicans and F tines have disputed the dainis of the Fiaa But there is no more or mach less evidenee tg ar of the other names which have been suggateis Gregory the Great, 8t Bernard, Booavait&ia, li- thsBUS a Aquasparta, Latmus Frangipam, Felix Hia meriin (Malleolus, of Zorich, 1389-1450), etc ft i certainly not older than Thomas a Celano, bat ncAc of a later date. The extraordinary religkn fcw which characterized the early history of the fmes- can order may be considered an armament d islad probability for the authorship of Thomas a Gdoft If this be true, and if Jacopone is the anthor of ^ Stabat MaUr (as asserted by L. Wadding), tha « are indebted to the Franciscan order for the nmti^ lime as well as for the most pathetic hymn of thdlifii Church. Mone {Laiei$usche Hymnen des MiSdatm, 1863, i, 408) has suggested the idea that the /Met Jv arose, not, as heretofore supposed, simply froa tfeB> dividual contemplation of a monk in his lonely ceB.la was inspired by older judgment hymns in pobGe m. and was composed vrith an original view to the pdtfk service m missa Defunctorum. In one of them, «tick he found in a MS. at Reichenan from the lith orlSi century, the passage occurs :
*^ Laarimosa dies iUa^ Qt4a resurpens ex /aviOa Homo reux judiemdfts, Justus autem oorooaiidaB.**
The closing suspirium :
^^ Pf e Jeso, Domlne, Dona eis requiem,**
is likewise found in older hymns and Missals. Um conjectures that the anthor otDiesJra himself sppni- ed these lines from older sources to his poem, aKx they did not fit in his triple rh3rme. Daniel (tarn, i, 181, and v, 110) and Wackemagel (Das deuttde Cf- cheidied von der dUesten Zek, etc i, 138) are ditpai to adopt this view. But it seems much mon pnU> ble that the original poem closed with Gers e met fms, and that the remaining six lines, with Iteit diflfSsrent versification, and the change from the iMIi the third person (Autc and e»),weTe added from as sli- er funeral service already in use by the complsn d mediieval Missals, and not by the author. Tbea « have a perfectly uniform production, which pnbsl^ emanated from a subjective state of mind witbotf i^