The Earliest Beginnings of Hymnody

To praise God in public worship through songs or hymns in the widest meaning of the word (see HYMN) is a custom which the primitive Christians brought with them from the Synagogue. For that reason the ecclesiastical songs of the Christians and the Jews in the first centuries after Christ are essentially similar. They consisted mainly of the psalms and the canticles of the Old and New Testaments. The congregation (in contradistinction to the cantors) took part in the service, it seems, by intoning the responses or refrains, single acclamations, the Doxologies, the Alleluias, the Hosannas, the Trisagion, and particularly the Kyrie-Eleison, and so originated the Christian folk-song. Genuine hymns even in the broadest sense of the term were not yet to be met with. Even the four songs handed down to us through the "Constitutiones Apostolicae" which were intended as hymns in the morning, in the evening, before meals, and at candle lighting, cannot be considered hymns. They are rather prayers which, in spite of the lyric tone and rhythmic quality evident in some passages, must be considered as songs in prose, similar to the Prefaces of the Mass, and which are mainly composed of extracts from the Scripture.

The first of these four interesting songs is the Morning Hymn (hymnos heoinos is its heading in the Codex Alexandrinus of the fifth century in London; and proseuche heothine in the seventh book of the "Constitutiones Apostolicae"; we call it the "Hymnus Angelicus"): Doxa en hypsistois theo (Gloria in excelsis Deo). The first part of this song of praise was written before 150 A.D., and Saint Athanasius, after translating it into Latin, inserted the whole in the Western Liturgy (see Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, LXXXII, iv. 43 sqq.). The Evening Hymn: Aineite, paides, Kyrion, aineite to onoma Kyriou is the same as the "Gloria in excelsis" in a shorter form and with the first verse of Psalm cxii as introduction. The Hymn of Grace at meals begins: Eulogetos ei, Kyrie, ho trephon me ek neotetos mou, ho didous trophen pase sarki. These words show plainly their origin in the Holy Scriptures, and from them can be seen to what extend, if at all, they are ruled by rhythm and meter. The fourth song, the celebrated "Candle-light Hymn" beginning Phos hilaron which St. Basil describes as old in his day, is more rhythmical than the others. It is usually divided into twelve verses; these verses vary between five, six, eight, nine, ten and eleven syllables. This at most is the very beginning of what is termed a hymn in metrical language. The fact that in the fifth and later centuries these songs and prayers were called "hymns" is another instance of the error committed in determining the origin of hymnody by deductions from passages in ancient writers where the expression hymnos or hymnus occurs.

The earliest safe historical data we find in endeavouring to trace the origin belong to the fourth century. The writing of Christian hymns intended to be sung in Christian congregations was first undertaken to counteract the activity of the heretics. The Gnostics Bar-Daisan, or Bardesanes, and his son Harmonius had incorporated their erroneous doctrine in beautiful hymns, and, as St. Ephraem the Syrian says, "clothed the pest of depravation in the garment of musical beauty". As these hymns became very popular an antidote was needed. This induced St. Ephraem (d. 378) to write Syrian hymns. His success inspired St. Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 397) [to compose] Latin hymns, although the productions of his forerunner in Latin hymnody, St. Hilary of Poitiers (d. 366), had been unsuccessful because they failed to please the popular taste. Thus the earliest known founders of hymnody in the East and West appear at the same period. Even before them Clement of Alexandria (d. about 215) had composed a sublime "song of praise to Christ the Redeemer" which begins with Stomion polon adaon, and at the end of the third century we had the glorious song of the virgins Anothen, parthenoi, bons egersinekros echos of St. Methodius (d. about 311). But the latter song from the Symposion of the Bishop of Olympus is to be classed rather under Christian dramatic than lyric verse, while the song added to the Paidagogos of Clement is probably not by him, but is of an earlier date. Thus, to conclude from known facts, the writing of hymns proper begins towards the middle of the fourth century in the East and soon afterwards appears in the West. There are many points of contact s between the two hymnodies; just as a certain influence was exerted by the Syrians on the Greeks and by both together on the Armenians in respect to the content and form of hymns, in like manner the East, particularly the half-Semitic, half-Greek Syrian Church influenced the development of Western Latin hymnody. But as to the extend of this influence, there is still much uncertainty and opinions consequently differ greatly. Most likely this influence is often over-estimated. At all events the East and West followed separate paths in hymnody from the very beginning, and in spite of their common characteristics the outward form of the hymns was very different.

The Meter of Christian Hymnody

By degrees Christian hymnody became more opposed in outward form to the ancient pagan verse. Nor was this a disadvantage. Christian verse was intended specially for the congregation, for the people, who in those days tooka much more active and important part in the Liturgy than is now the case. Christian hymnody is therefore originally and essentially a poetry of the people. The popular and primitive principle of poetic forms is the rhythmical principle; the rise and fall of the verse is governed, not by quantity of syllables--which only the learned recognize--but by the natural accent of the word. To this principle of rhythm or accentual principle the quantitative principle is directly opposed as the latter regards only to length of syllables without heeding the usual intonations of the word. The Kunst-Dichtung or artificial verse used the latter principle, but not with lasting success. For the essence of language and the natural tendency of the people favor the accentual principle. The Humanists and many of the learned for a long time regarded the rhythmical verse form with contempt; but this false prejudice has disappeared. The decisive verdict of the Krumbacher on Greek hymnody, which is of great importance for the right valuation of Christian hymnody, is as follows: "None could reach the heart of the people with tones that found no echo in their living speech. The danger that lurked here will not be under-estimated by the historian; for had there not been invented and received at the appointed time another artistic form of expression, the Greek nation would have lost forever the treasure of a true religious poetry. Thanks to this new form alone a sort of literature arose which in poetical feeling, variety, and depth may be placed beside the greatest productions of ancient poetry. This effective artistic form which awoke with a mighty cry the poetic genius of the Hellenes and lent to the lethargic tongues measures of ancient power is rhythmical verse" ("Gesch. der byzant. Lit.", Munich, 1897, p. 655). To a greater degree the above is true in regard to Latin hymnody, especially for the Middle Ages.

The Christian poets did not all immediately abandon the old classic quantitative meter for the accentual. Many even reverted to its use later particularly in the age of the Carlovingians. It is interesting, however, to note that such hymns found no real favour with the people and therefore were rarely incorporated in the Liturgy. Occasionally, indeed, their lack of rhythm was redeemed by excellent qualities; for instance, when they employed a very popular metrical form and took care that the natural word accent should correspond as far as possible with the accent required by the quantitative meter, i.e. the accented syllables of the word should occur in the long accented place of the verse scheme. The last case is therefore a compromise between the quantitative and the accentual or rhythmical principles. We have an example of all these excellent qualities in the hymns of

St. Ambrose. He observes the rules of quantity, but chooses a popular meter, the iambic dimeter, with its regular succession of accented and unaccented syllables, from which arises the so-called alternating rhythm which marks the human step and pulse and is, therefore, the most natural and popular rhythm. He usually avoids a conflict between the word accent and the verse accent; his quantitative hymns can therefore be read rhythmically. This is one of the reasons of the lasting popularity of the hymns of St. Ambrose. The meter he selected, a strophe consisting of four iambic dimeters, was so popular that a multitude of hymns were composed with the same verse scheme, and are called hymni Ambrosiani. Soon, however, many writers began to neglect the quantity of the syllables and their verses became in the fifth century purely rhythmical. The earliest known writer using such rhythmical iambics is Bishop Auspicius of Toul (d. about 470); hence, the purely rhythmical strophe is called the Auspician strophe. Both these iambic dimeters probably sprang from the versus saturnius, the favourite meter of the profane popular poetry of the Romans.

Next to this meter in popularity was the versus popularis or politikos, the name of which explains its character. Christian poetry adopted this meter also on account of its popularity. For instance, let us compare the following child-puzzle verse:

Réx erét, quí récte fáciet | quí non fáciet, nón erít

with the beginning of a hymn of St. Hilary of Poitiers:

Ádæ cárnis glóriósæ | ét cadúci córporís.

This versus popularis and the iambic dimeter are the two meters in which most of the early Christian hymns were written, both in Latin and in Greek. This proves that Christian hymnody strove for popularity even in its outward form. For a similar reason the quantitative principle was gradually abandoned by hymn writers in favour of the rhythmical. "It is certainly no mere chance", as has been very justly said in the "Byzantinische Zeitschrift" (XXII, 244), "that Christians were the first to break away from the learned game of long and short syllables intended for the eye alone; for they wished to reach the ear of the masses. These early Christians strove for and attained by means of the metrical system of their ecclesiastical poetry that which in German religious poetry was first achieved by Luther . . . . contact with the people, with their ear, and thus, with their heart." The further development of this rhythmical poetical form, especially in Latin, is thus briefly described by Meyer: "First, from the fifty century a slow groping struggle with the many essays, clumsy but still attractive in their ingenuousness. In the eleventh century begins the contrast of a finished art which in complete regularity creates the most various and beautiful forms, on the surviving examples of which the Romance poets and also, to some extent, the Germanic poets model their work even to-day" (Meyer, "Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur mittellateinischen Rhythmik", Berlin, 1905, 1, 2). The rhythmical principle, especially in its union with rhyme, gained a complete victory over the ancient classic prosody.

[Taken from Hymnody and Hymnology, the Catholic Enclopedia.]