THE GOLDEN AGE OF LATIN HYMNODY

During the Middle Ages, when evil days had fallen upon the Church, there was very little to inspire sacred song. All over Europe the Gregorian chants, sung in Latin, had crowded out congregational singing. The barbarian languages were considered too crude for use in worship, and much less were they regarded as worthy of being moulded into Christian hymns. Religious poetry was almost invariably written in Latin.

However, in the midst of the spiritual decay and worldly depravity that characterized the age there were noble souls whose lives shone like bright stars in the surrounding darkness. Their sacred poetry, a great deal of which was written for private devotion, bears witness of their deep love for the Saviour.

The beautiful Palm Sunday hymn, “All glory, laud, and honor,” was composed by Bishop Theodulph of Orleans in a prison cell, probably in the year 821. The immortal Veni, Creator Spiritus also dates from the same period, being usually ascribed to Rhabanus Maurus, archbishop of Mainz, who died in the year 856.

The religious fervor inspired by the Crusades, which began in the year 1098, resulted in the production during the twelfth century of Latin poetry of singular lyrical beauty. This may be regarded as the golden age of Latin hymnody.

It was during this period that the most touching of all Good Friday hymns, “O sacred Head, now wounded,” was written. It is ascribed to Bernard of Clairvaux, preacher of the Second Crusade, and one of the most brilliant of Latin hymn-writers.

Although composed in the twelfth century, the hymn did not achieve unusual fame until five centuries later, when it was rendered into German by the greatest of all Lutheran hymnists, Paul Gerhardt. Lauxmann has well said: “Bernard’s original is powerful and searching, but Gerhardt’s hymn is still more powerful and profound, as re-drawn from the deeper spring of evangelical Lutheran, Scriptural knowledge and fervency of faith.”

Gerhardt’s version in turn was translated into English by James W. Alexander of Princeton, a Presbyterian. Thus, as Dr. Philip Schaff puts it: “This classic hymn has shown in three tongues—Latin, German and English—and in three confessions—Roman, Lutheran and Reformed—with equal effect the dying love of our Saviour and our boundless indebtedness to Him.”

Yet another Lutheran, none other than John Sebastian Bach, “high priest of church music,” has contributed to the fame of the hymn by giving the gripping tune to which it is sung its present form. Strangely enough, this remarkable minor melody was originally a rather frivolous German folksong, and was adapted by Hans Leo Hassler in 1601 to the hymn, “Herzlich thut mich verlangen.” It was Bach, however, who moulded the tune into the “Passion Chorale,” one of the world’s masterpieces of sacred music.

Many touching stories have been recorded concerning this famous hymn. In 1798, when Christian Schwartz, the great Lutheran missionary to India, lay dying, his Indian pupils gathered around his bed and sang in their own Malabar tongue the last verses of the hymn, Schwartz himself joining in the singing till his voice was silenced in death.

Of Bernard of Clairvaux, the writer of the hymn, volumes might be written. Luther paid him an eloquent tribute, when he said: “If there has ever been a pious monk who feared God it was St. Bernard, whom alone I hold in much higher esteem than all other monks and priests throughout the globe.”

Probably no preacher ever exerted a more profound influence over the age in which he lived than did this Cistercian monk. It was the death of his mother, when he was twenty years old, that seemed to have