The Divine Office Part 21

Violent attack leads to violent defence. Both are generally born of ignorance, a partizan spirit, and exaggeration. Pious Catholic defenders write that the Roman Breviary has hymns far superior to the cla.s.sic lyrics of ancient Rome; that they have an inimitable style; that they are far superior to Horatian poetry; that there is nothing to compare with their style and beauty in pagan cla.s.sics, Indeed, zeal has led some holy men to censure Pope Leo X., Clement VII., and. Urban VIII. for their attempts to correct these compositions, which they hold to have been perfect.

Truth seems to hold the place of the golden mean between the bitter critics and the over zealous defenders of our Breviary hymns. The following propositions, drawn from Father Barnard's _Cours De Liturgie Romaine_, may be taken as a fair and accurate statement of the views of scholars, views which may be safely held by all students of this portion of liturgy.

_First Proposition_:--Many of the hymns of the Roman Breviary have not the elegance of the Odes of Horace, of the hymns of Santeuil and of Coffin.

Proof:-(1) The holy Fathers had outlined in a rough sketch rather than perfected their hymns (Pope Urban VIII., Bull Quamvis, 17th June, 1644).

(2) Speaking of the new Hymnal of Ferreri, Pope Clement VIII. says that the new work could only add to the splendour of worship and help to the common interest, implying that the new hymns helped religion by their accuracy and grace of correct poetic forms.

(3) Pimont, the author of a cla.s.sic work on the Breviary Hymns, in a number of comments, notes the crudities of the Breviary hymns, even in their revised forms. Thus, in the hymn for Prime, he notes apparent ruggedness. He pa.s.ses similar comments on the hymns a.s.signed to the little hours.

(4) Bacquez states that all the hymns do not join beauty of expression to the merit of the thought expressed, and that a certain number lack style and good prosody.

These opinions should not be extended to all, nor even to very many of the Breviary hymns. All serious critics agree about the beauty of such hymns as the _Aeterne rerum Conditor_, the _Somno refectis artubus, Splendor Aeternae gloriae, Verb.u.m supernum prodiens_, and a good number of others.

The greater part of the Breviary Hymns are composed according to the rules of prosody, and their form is lyric, the popular form of Latin song, which preceded in Italy the prosodical system borrowed from the Greeks, and used by the cla.s.sic pagan poets. The critics of the Renaissance period are very loud and very wrathful over the form of these hymns. Some of them accuse St. Ambrose, Prudentius and Gregory the Great of gross ignorance of the rules of Latin verse and, what to the critics was worse, ignorance of the ways of pagan cla.s.sical models. But, was the rhymed, tonic accented lyric, which was to be sung by all sorts and conditions of men, in public, such an outrageous literary sin? Was it ignorance or prudence that guided the early hymn writers in their adoption of popular poetic form? It is not certain by any means that the early hymn writers wished to copy or adopt the cla.s.sic forms of the Augustinian age. Nor is it clear that such men of genius as St. Ambrose, Prudentius, St. Gregory the Great, were ignorant of the rules and models of the best Latin poets. It seems that they did not wish to follow them.

They wilfully and designedly adopted the popular lyric forms, so that they might give to their flocks in popular and easily remembered forms, prayers and formulas of faith.

_Second Proposition_:-The Breviary hymns have the princ.i.p.al elements of poetic beauty.

Briefly, these elements are sublimity of thought, beauty of sentiment, aptness of expression, unction of form. In these matters the Breviary hymns are not inferior to the cla.s.sic poetry of paganism, nor to the much-belauded beauties of the Gallican Breviary hymns (_vide_ Bacquez, _Le Saint Office_, notes vi. and viii. in finem).

The composition of the hymns is in perfect harmony with the end for which they are intended, that is, liturgical prayer, chanted prayer.

Their phrases do not display the vain and superfluous literary glitter of the much-lauded Gallican hymns, but their accents go out from the sanctuary and live in the hearts of the people. Their language is, like the thought and expression of the psalms, the word of a soul praying to G.o.d and adoring Him in fervour, in simplicity, and in faith. Of the piety and expression of the French hymns, Foinard, an ardent apostle of the French liturgical novelties, wrote: "Il ne parait pas que ce soit l'onction qui domine dans les nouveaux Breviaries; on y a la verite, travaille beaucoup pour l'esprit; mais il semole qu' on n'y a pas travaille autant pour le coeur." Letourneux, the fierce Jansenist, wrote to the Breviary-poet, Santeuil, his co-worker: "Vous faites fumer l'encens; mais c'est un feu estranger qui brule dans l'ensenoir. La vanite fait en vous ce que la charite devrait faire." And the Catholic De Maistre, so famed for his fair-minded criticisms, wrote of the new hymn-makers' works: "They make a certain noise in the ear, but they never breathe prayer, because their writers were all alone (_i.e._, unaided by the grace and guidance of the Holy Spirit) when they composed them." Of the Roman Breviary hymns he wrote: "They always pray and excite the soul to prayer." "Train your hearts to attention, and hear all their prayers. You will in them see the true religion, as clearly as you see the sunbeams."

_Fourth Proposition_:--The characteristic of the Roman Breviary hymns is to express with lively sentiments and with unction the n.o.ble ideas and beautiful sentiments of the supernatural order, in a simple manner, without prosodical pretension, yet having ever a true rhythm which sometimes vies with better compositions.

The characteristic mentioned in this proposition, which comes as a corollary from the three preceding propositions, is one which is clearly noted in our Breviary hymns. For by their very position in the Breviary, side by side with the Psalms, Scripture extracts and words of the Fathers, the Church shows her esteem and her use of these lyrics of prayer and praise. Again, the Church's mind is shown by her retention of her hymns in her liturgy, notwithstanding the many efforts made to subst.i.tute a new hymnal. Up to the sixteenth century these Breviary hymns were universally esteemed. They were admired by St. Augustine.

They are quoted and praised by St. Thomas in his Summa. Deays the Carthusian {1402-1471} wrote a beautiful commentary on them. Amongst all priests, secular and regular, the hymns were venerated and loved.

Although there were many men of genius in every age and in every part of the Christian Church, the hymns escaped until the renaissance under Leo X. (1475-1521).

The lovers of everything cla.s.sic and pagan were pained and exasperated at the venerable simplicity, the lack of prosody, the vagueness and crudity of the wording of the liturgical hymns. In 1531, Wimpheling, a priest of the diocese of Spire, produced a work, _Himni de tempore et de sanctis_ ... _secundum legem carminis diligenter emendati_. Leo X., yielding to his own taste and the wishes of the learned innovators who were ardent students of pagan antiquity, commissioned Ferreri to compose a new hymnal for liturgical use. His book was allowed for liturgical use, but was not prescribed. It omitted all the old hymns sanctioned by the Church for centuries, and sung with fervour by thousands down the ages. "There are found in the work of Ferreri," wrote Dom Gueranger, "all the images and all the allusions to pagan beliefs and usages which we find in Horace. Sometimes, it is only fair to say, his hymns are beautiful and simple ... but they follow generally and too servilely the pagan models ... but they are the work of strong and clear inspiration, which under the mask of cla.s.sic diction shows itself in every part."

(_Inst. Liturg._ t. I., p. 370.) During the reign of Pope Paul III. new hymnals were issued, but the Breviary hymns were not removed. St. Pius V. in his reform of the Breviary did not touch the Breviary hymns.

Clement VIII. in his reform added new hymns but did not remove nor retouch the old ones. This work remained for Pope Urban VIII.

(1623-1644).

Urban VIII., Maffeo Barberini, was a poet of no mean rank. Before his election to the papacy, he was a recognised lover of cla.s.sical literature and an adept in following cla.s.sic themes and cla.s.sic forms.

Our Breviaries contain some few of his compositions and they show correctness of form, poetic merit, and piety. They are the hymns, _Martinae celebri, Tu natale solum_ (January 20); _Nullis te genitor, Regali solio fortis_ (April 13). His great desire was the correction of the Breviary hymns. This work of correction was not beyond the personal power of the Pope himself, if we judge him by his hymns. His views are expressed in the Bull _Divinam Psalmodiam_, issued to promulgate the corrected hymns. It found a place in all copies of the Roman Breviary in the last century. To carry out the corrections outlined by the Pope, four Jesuits were appointed, and whether the result of the corrections is the Pope's or the Jesuits' is a highly and hotly disputed point.

First of all, the task set to the Jesuits was a very difficult one, and one demanding much prudence as well as learning. It may seem to us that to begin the correction, mutilation and reconstruction of the works and words of men so great in church history and liturgy as Prudentius, Sedulius, St. Ambrose, St. Paulinus, was a work of rashness, a sort of sacrilege, attempting to remodel the glowing piety of their poems to the pattern of Horace's verse. But the Jesuits had got their commands and they were bound to obey. They were chosen on account of their cla.s.sical scholarship, which was kept sharp by their daily teaching in college, and they were specially bound by a vow of loyal obedience to Papal orders. "It is only fair to give them the credit that out of respect for the wishes of Urban VIII, they treated these ancient compositions with extreme reserve and, while they made some impressions clearer, they maintained the primitive unction in a large number of pa.s.sages" (Baudot, _op. cit._, p. 185).

They corrected more than nine hundred false quant.i.ties found scattered through the Breviary, 58 in the psalter per hebdomadam, 359 in the proper de Tempore, 283 in the proper of Saints, and 252 in the common of Saints. They changed the opening words of more than thirty hymns. Some hymns were untouched--e.g., the three hymns of the Blessed Sacrament, the _Ave Maris Stella_, which is rhythmic prose, not verse, and the hymn of the Angels, which was sufficiently perfect. The metre of three hymns, _Tibi Christe splendor Patris_, and the _Urbs Jerusalem_ and _Angularis fundamentum_ were changed.

The Jesuits have been censured very bitterly for their work of correction. Perhaps they merited some censure, but surely they did not merit the censures heaped on them by hostile critics like Thiers, Henri Valois, and the Franciscan, Cavalli. They answered their critics splendidly and triumphantly by the works of Father Arevalo, S.J. But the wordy war lasts to the present day. Students who wish to see the unrevised and the revised hymnal of Urban VIII. may consult Daniel's _Thesaurus hymnologicus_ for examples. Other examples are given in Monsignor Battifol's work, and others in Dom Baudot's. If the reader read in the Breviary, the hymn _Te lucis ante terminum_, he may note a difference in that, the revised form, and this, the unrevised:--

Te lucis ante terminum, Rerum Creator poscimus, Ut solita clementia Sis praesul ad custodiam.

Praesta pater omnipotens Per Jesum Christum Dominum Qui tec.u.m in perpetuum regnat c.u.m Sancto Spiritu

Again, see Lauds for Pa.s.sion Sunday, _l.u.s.tra s.e.x_, second verse, unrevised reads:--

Hic acetum fel arundo Sputa clavi lancea Mite corpus perforator Sanguis unda profluit Terra, pontus, astra, mundus Quo lavantur flumine.

_Iste Confessor_, unrevised reads:--

Iste confessor domini sacratus Festa plebs cujus celebrat per orbem Hodie laetus meruit secreta Scandere coeli.

Qui Pius, prudens humilis judicus, Sobrius, castus fuit et quietus Vita dum praesens vegetavit ejus Corporis artus.

The imitation of Breviary hymns has for centuries formed a notable part of sacred Latin poetry. A great amount of Latin poetry dealing with sacred themes finds no place in Missal or Breviary. Every nation has ancient Latin hymns, generally modelled on the then existing liturgical models; and these hymns are found in national hymnals and in works dealing with Christian antiquities, but they find no place in modern liturgy. Thus the Latin poetry of the ancient Irish Church is formed for private and not choral use. The oldest purely rhythmical Latin hymn is that of St. Sechnall (1448), "Audite omnes amantes Deum, sancta merita."

But neither it, nor any other of the old Latin hymns by Irish writers, finds place in the Breviary. Collections of Latin hymns by Irish writers of early Christian Ireland are to be found in Todd's _Book of Hymns of the Ancient Irish Church_ (Dublin, 1885-1891); the _Irish Liber Hymnorum_ (London, 1898), the _Antiphonary of Bangor_ (Warren's Edition, London, 1893).

One of the most difficult works for a scholar to attempt and to carry out to his satisfaction is the translation of prose or poetry into another language. The work of translating the Latin of the Roman Breviary into English was attempted and completed years ago. The work was great and creditable, but not renowned as a feat of translation. The hymns of the Breviary have been translated by several authors in every country of Christendom, and with different degrees of success. The study of the Breviary hymns is a highly interesting one, and when it is supported by the different efforts of different translators, it yields new delights, and new beauties are discovered in verses which are sometimes said too rapidly for earnest thought and attention. In the list of books given in the bibliography below, there are given the names of books of translated hymns. Any one of them is of great interest.

NOTE B.

PARTICULAR EXAMEN ON THE RECITATION OF THE DIVINE OFFICE.

I. How preparation for saying the Hours is to be made:--

(a) Have we before commencing to recite the Breviary made a fervent act of faith in the presence of G.o.d and in the sovereign majesty of Him to Whom we are going to speak?

Have we endeavoured to purify our hearts by an act of contrition, in order that we may escape the terrible reproach which G.o.d addresses to the sinner--"to the sinner G.o.d hath said, 'Why dost thou declare my justices and take away covenant in thy mouth?'" (Psalm 49, v.16)?

Have we taken particular care to clear off from our souls everything which can distract us, and above all others these things to which we are attracted and to which our minds may return during our prayer?

"Ante debes facere quod ait propheta: scopebam spiritum meum donec incalescat spiritus tuus ex devota meditatione et affectum et desiderium concipiat" (D. Gerhard Zutp. de spir. Ascen.). "Studeat oratione devota et recollectione animi interna divinum praevenire officium" (St. Bona. spec, di., p.2, c.7).

Have we recollected ourselves and remained silent for a time, particularly when pa.s.sing from study or from a secular business, in order to banish vain or worldly thoughts, and to make ourselves ready to receive the Holy Ghost?

Have we united ourselves to Jesus Christ, Who is the perfect praise of G.o.d, the Father? Have we united ourselves in spirit to the Church, in whose name we are going to praise G.o.d? "In unione orationum ac meritorum Christi Jesu gratiam ad officium debite persolvendum petat" (St.

Bona. _ibid_.)

Have we begged the Holy Ghost by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and the saints, whose offices we read, that we may be allowed to join our praises to those which they give G.o.d?

Have we always formed intentions general and particular, not forgetting to form intentions embracing the intentions of Christ and His Church?

Have we adopted some pious thought prior to our reading, so that distractions may be excluded and fervour fostered during our recitation?

Have we chosen suitable time and place to pray?

Have we taken pains to mark the places in the Breviary and looked over the rubrics? Has not negligence in these matters caused innumerable distractions?

II. Dispositions which we should have in saying the Office:--

Let us find out with what dispositions we recite the Divine Office, and if we say it in the manner in which the Church wishes it to be said, digne, attente, ac devote. (Orat. rec. ante offic.).