Obrazy na stronie
PDF
ePub

Next I come to the Dominican Martyr JEROME SAVONAROLA (1452— 1498), who bears good testimony to symbolism in his work de Sacrificio Missæ.

I quote ANTONY MARGALETTA, a converted Jew, who embraced the Catholic faith at Wasserburg, in Bavaria, in 1522, and died in 1541, for his treatise on the Ceremonies of Palm Sunday.

[ocr errors]

We proceed to S. THOMAS A VILLA NOVA, Archbishop of Valentia, who lived from 1488 to 1555. In so late and so practical a writer, we cannot expect to find many traces of the symbolical spirit which belonged to the earlier ages of the Church. But still there are some, while it is remarkable that, so far as I am acquainted with them, in the writings of S. Charles Borromeo, nearly his contemporary, there are none to be discovered. What is understood," he asks, "by a corner wall, but the duplicity of an impious mind? For there is always a double wall at an angle." Again, "By the twelve gates3 be understood the twelve Apostles and Patriarchs, who therefore are called gates, because by their teaching they open the door unto life eternal." Again, "A tower is the glory of the blessed." Once more, "As a column, which stands upright, is the more strengthened by an imposed weight, so it behoved the lofty and upright of the minds of the Apostles not to yield to, but to struggle with, adversities."

MALDONATUS (1514-1580) is an excellent witness from his hitherto MS. work de Ceremoniis Ecclesiæ.

TO STEPHEN DURANTUS, at the same period, I need only refer.

The Explanation of the Mass by NICOLAS DE THOU, Bishop of Chartres, is full of symbolical teaching (1528-1598).

[ocr errors]

I shall next quote LANCELOT ANDREWES, Bishop of Winchester (1555 -1626), not only for the general symbolical spirit of his writings, but for one remarkable passage: For,5 indeed, solutum est Templum hoc, this Temple of His Body; the Spirit from the Flesh, the Flesh from the Blood was loosed quite. The roof of it, His Head, loosed with Thorns: the Foundations, His Feet, with Nails: the side aisles, as it were, His Hands both, likewise." I may remark by the way, that so early an use, and by such an author, of the phrase, side aisles, is curious. may also produce as witnesses,

I

AUGUSTINE DE FERRARA, a Jesuit of Seville, in his Origin and Progress of the Rites and Ceremonies of Mass, published in 1649.

FRANCOIS DE HARLAI, Archbishop of Rheims, in the work composed by him for the use of his diocese, and entitled La manière de bien entendre la Messe de paroisse (1651). His explanations are admirable.

J. B. THIERS, in his works on bells, porches, and roodlofts (16361703).

GABRIEL DE HENAO, Doctor of Salamanca (1613—1704), in his work in three volumes, folio, de Sacrificio Missa.

And JOSEPH PIERRE DB HOUTRE, in his Spirit of the Ceremonial of Aix, in the Celebration of Corpus Christi, which was published in 1736. I thus close the Catena which I have been enabled to bring forward.

1 Ed. Milan, 1760. 4 Tom. I. 579 E.

2 Tom. II. 905, B.

3 Tom. II. 409 D.

5 Ed. Anglo-Cath. Vol. II. 355.

My aim has been to render it as short as possible; and I only fear lest while, on the one hand, it may have been tedious to the Society, on the other it may not have done justice to the various authors whom I have cited.

THE HYMNAL NOTED.

WE have been more than once asked, why, with so many already existing translations of the Breviary Hymns, we have found it necessary to attempt one more in the work of which we have now issued two parts? In the following paper we purpose to reply, as briefly as we can, to this very reasonable question.

And, first, we will say, that we do not bring forward a new version, because we think all that have hitherto been published unworthy of the original. Still less, because we hope to make so decided an improvement on all as, by means of superior excellence, to make ours the standard version. If we really believed either of these things, we might justly be charged with the most insufferable arrogance.

Notwithstanding, a new version was necessary, and that on the following grounds:

1. We profess to give the only hymns which we believe the English Church, without the act of a general Synod, to have a right to, those namely of the older English office books, and principally that of Sarum. Now, to say nothing of the many translations afloat from the Paris Breviary with which we, as English Churchmen, can have nothing to do, except as matter of curiosity, the hymns that have been translated into English are from the modern Roman Breviary. But the hymns contained in this are--it can never be too often repeated—a mere revision of the older compositions, common for the most part both to Rome and to Sarum, made by the literati of the court of Urban VIII. These men bound themselves down to those classical chains, which the Church had deliberately flung away, and sacrificed beauty, piety, fervour, poetry, to cramp the grand old hymns into the rules of prosody. With much against which we should protest most warmly in Mr. Trench's "Sacred Latin Poetry," we are rejoiced that he has, in sufficiently vivid language, shown " how well nigh the whole grace and beauty and even vigour of the composition has disappeared in the process" of reformation. In fact, the hymns of the modern Roman Breviary, are, emphatically, spoilt.

The translations then of the Roman are not translations of Sarum hymns. Very few of the latter have appeared in English. And the occasional wide difference between the two may be judged of by the fact, that we can point to a modern collection in which the Tibi Christe Splendor Patris of the Sarum, and the Te Splendor et Virtus Patris of the Roman Breviary, are actually given as two different hymns, though the latter is, in reality, merely a rifaccimento of the former.

This then is our first reason, that no translation has yet appeared of

our own hymns, and it is with our own hymns that we are concerned. We might add, that several which occur in the Sarum, such as Crux fidelis, terras cœlis, and Collaudemus Magdalenæ, are not, and never were, in the Roman Breviary.

2. But, it will truly be said, many of the eformed and unreformed hymns are so nearly the same, that in them, at least, former translations might in great measure be adopted. We come then to the second reason which forbids this: the excessive rarity of translations made in the metre of the original; a point, to us, of clearly absolute necessity. We open Mr. Caswall's Lyra Catholica, and, out of the first fifty hymns, one only is in the metre of the original. We take a very fair collection of "Hymns for the Service of the Church," bearing our own publisher's name, and here we find the same average. Some of these are the wildest deviations from the original metre, e.g., Trochaics for Iambics,

and

"En clara vox redarguit,

Obscura quæque personans :
Procul fugentur somnia :
Ab alto IESUS promicat."

"Hark! an awful voice is sounding :
CHRIST is nigh, it seems to say:
Cast away the dreams of darkness,
O ye children of the day!"

"O qui tuo, Dux Martyrum,
Præfers coronam nomine, &c."

"Rightful Prince of Martyrs thou,
Bind the Crown about thy brow, &c."

We do not mean to say that all the departures from the original metre are of this very violent nature. The change of long to common

[blocks in formation]

And there is yet another change, of which we must say a little more, because it might escape the notice of those who are insufficiently versed in the subject.

Every one knows that the usual metre for the hymns of the Church was Iambic dimeter (the Long Metre of our "Selections"). But we believe that we shall surprise some of our readers when we tell them, that by far the greater part of medieval compositions in this metre were written in rhyme, assonant or consonant. This was neglected by the Roman revisers, but it was the rule of the mediaval Church, c. g.,

"Qui condolens interitu
Mortis perire sæculum,
Salvasti mundum languidum

Donans reis remedium,"

is very good rhyme, but the Roman revision does not retain it ;—

"Qui dæmonis ne fraudibus

Periret orbis impetu,

Amoris actus, languidi

Mundi medela factus es."

Now, we have further to remark that all long metre hymns, whether in Latin or English, are divisible into two classes: those which rhyme co-ordinately and those which rhyme alternately. Of the first sort are such as,-

"Deus, tuorum militum

Sors et corona, præmium,
Laudes canentes Martyris
Absolve nexu criminis."

Of the second sort, which is far less common, such as,

"Lauda, Mater Ecclesia,

Lauda Christi clementiam ;
Qui septem purgat vitia,
Per septiformem gratiam."

Now the whole flow, sequence, modulation, and cæsura of these two kinds of long metre is so utterly different, that we can never allow, in a translation meant to be sung to the melody of the original, that one should be substituted for the other. Therefore we could not avail ourselves of such a translation as this :

"Jam lucis orto sidere,

Deum precemur supplices,
Ut in diurnis actibus

Nos servet a nocentibus."

"Now doth the sun ascend the sky,

And wake creation with his ray;

Keep us from sin, O LORD Most High,
In all the actions of the day."

And still less of the following, where the first and third lines of the English do not rhyme; (a very slovenly and idle thing, by the way :)—

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

It is very easy to say that these little niceties are so much trifling. The only answer is, Study the hymns for two or three years, (very few people study them at all,) and it will appear how much force they have. An ill-formed student from Homerton or Glasgow may sneer at the "little niceties" of Greek particles; but that does not detract from their immense importance. So, in like manner, an unpractised ear may not at once see the wide difference between co-ordinate and alternate rhymes, in Latin Iambic Dimeter; nay, may hardly catch the assonances at all. The writer remembers with shame that when, some ten years ago, he first turned his attention to the subject of Latin hymns, he quarrelled with that of S. Peter Damiani, de gloria et gaudiis Paradisi, which he now sees to be of rhythm perfect beyond description, because of its assonances; and that such verses as the following, the intense melody of which he now perceives, jarred painfully on his

ear:

"Hiems horrens, æstas torrens, illic nunquam sæviunt;

Flos perpetuus rosarum ver agit perpetuum;
Candent lilia, rubescit crocus, sudat balsamum."

But we proceed to a third reason which renders many of the existing translations inapplicable to our use.

Every one who knows anything of Gregorian hymns, knows that their chief beauty consists in the rolls of sound which accompany the elongation of syllables. Now if a translation is published without reference to the melody, it is almost sure to offend grievously in this particular. For example:-the two first lines of the second verse of Exultent orbis gaudiis are these, in Mr. Caswall's translation:

"O ye who, throned in glory dread,

Shall judge the living and the dead ;—”

and the mere reader would think them, as they are, very good. But let us take them to the Christmas melody of the same hymn,

the dead,

ye who, thron'd in glo ry dread, Shall judge the liv-ing AND and we need not stay to point out the absurdity of the rhythm. So again take the same translation of the Vexilla Regis to the Sarum melody,―

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

We may mention a curious instance of this. At the late consecration of S. Ninian's, (where, by the way, the Gregorians, both hymns and psalms, were to be heard in great perfection,) a translation of the Sarum (and Aberdeen) Urbs beata Jerusalem, was the dedication hymn. The beginning of one of the verses ran thus:

« PoprzedniaDalej »