§ 133. HYMNS AND SACKED POETRY. 861
in Limoges. No. XL. contains sequences taken from English MSS., such as the missals of Salisbury, York, Canterbury, and Winchester, and is edited by H. M. Bannister, 1902. Among the more curious parts is No. XXVII. , pp. 287, containing the religious poems of the Mozarabic, or Gothic liturgy. If Dreves adds a printed edition of the mediaeval Latin poetry found in Mone, Daniel, and other standard collections, his col lection will supersede all the collections of his predecessors.
The mediaeval sermon is, at best, the object of curious search by an occasional student. It is otherwise with some of the mediaeval hymns. They shine in the cluster of the great hymns of all the ages. They have entered into the worship of all the churches of the West and continue to exercise a sanctifying mission. They are not adapted to the adherents of one confession or age alone, but to Christian believers of every age.
The Latin sacred poems of the Middle Ages, of which thousands have been preserved, were written, for the most part, in the shadow of cloistral walls, notably St. Gall, St. Martial in Limoges, Cluny, Clairvaux, and St. Victor near Paris. Few of them passed into public use in the church service, or were rendered by the voice. They served the pur pose of devotional reading. The rhyme is universal after 1150.
These poems include liturgical proses, hymns, sequences, tropes, psalteries, and rhymed prayers to the rosary, called rosaria. The psalteries, psalteria rhythmica, in imitation of the Psalms, are divided into one hundred and fifty parts, and are addressed to the Trinity, to Jesus and to Mary, the larger number of them to Mary.1 Sequence, a word first applied to a melody, came also to be used for a sacred poem. Notker of St. Gall was the first to adapt such poems to sequences or melodies.2 The tropes were verses interpolated into the offices of the liturgy, and were joined on to the G-loria, the Hosanna, and other parts. They started in France and were most popular there and in England.3
1 In No. XXXV., 254-270, Dreves gives two psalteries, ascribed to Anselm.
2 Anal. Hymn., XL VII. 11 sq.
8 Blume has collected hundreds of tropes in Anal. Hymn. They ex tended from two or three to as many as fifty lines. Gautier was the first to call the attention of modern students to this forgotten form of med. poetry.
862 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
The authorship of the Latin mediaeval poetry belongs chiefly to France and Germany. England produced only a limited number of religious poems, and no one of the first rank. The best is Archbishop Peckham's (d. 1292) rhymed office to the Trinity, from which three hymns were taken.1 One verse of the poem runs : -
Adesto, sancta trinitas Come near, O holy Trinity,
Par splendor, una deltas, In splender equal, in deity one;
Qui exstas rerum omnium Of all things that exist
Sine fine principium. The beginning, and without end.
The number of mediaeval hymns in German is also large. The custom of blending German and Latin lines in the same hymn was also very common, especially in the next period. The number of Saxon hymns, that is hymns produced in England, was very limited.2
Although the liturgical service was chanted by the priests, singing was also in vogue among the people, especially in Northern Italy and in Germany. The Flagellants sang. Gerhoh of Reichersberg (d. 1169) said that all the people poured forth praises to the Saviour in hymns.3 At the battle of Tusculum, 1168, the army sang,
Christ der du geboren bist.
St. Bernard, when he left Germany, spoke of missing the German songs of his companions. At popular religious services the people also to some extent joined in song. The songs were called Leisen and Berthold of Regensburg was accustomed, at the close of his sermons, to call upon the congregation to sing.4 He complained of heretics drawing away children by their songs. Honorius of Autun gives directions for the people to join in the singing, such as the
1 They are found in prose renderings in the Primer of Saruin of about 1400 (ed. by Maskell, Man. ritnalia, Vol. III.). Daniel gives all three, I. 276, etc. Dreves gives the adesto and the festi laudes, No. IV., 14, and calls the former, "a hymn in the strict sense of the word." See No. XXIII., 5, 6, where Dreves pronounces Peckham as, beyond dispute, their author.
2 Two addressed to Mary and one to God are given by Morris, Old Engl. Horn., II. 255 sqq.
3 Hauck, IV. 60. * Linsenmayer, Deutsche Predigt, pp. 70, 132,