stowed on him by some of the old ecclesiastical writers, however, is only proof of the dearth of good poetry in the church. Prudentius was a Spaniard, born in 348. In his youth, he applied himself to the study of eloquence. He afterwards became an advocate, and having passed through several offices of honor and trust, both civil and military, he finally renounced secular employments, and devoted his last days to the writing of verses, in which he sung the praises of Christ, and the martyrs, and vigorously combatted heretics and pagans; but either he was not born for a poet, or age had effectually extinguished his imagination and fire, before he sought the society of the muses. His productions, in truth, exhibit a very moderate share of poetic genius, and retain strong traces of the degenerate taste of the day. His versification is negligent, prosaic, and often harsh; he is not sufficiently attentive to quantity, and in his general style, he gives evidence that he had not made the models of classical antiquity his study. But, however inferior may be his merit as a poet, his productions contain frequent allusions to the opinions and usages of Christians of his time, which render them not without value as sources of history. There have been several editions of his works. A beautiful edition, printed at Rome, in 1788, in two quarto volumes, contains, besides his larger poems, twenty-six hymns, part of them designed for daily use, and part on the Crowns of the Martyrs, especially those of his own nation. These hymns vary in length, from one hundred to eleven hundred verses. Though apparently not designed for church service, portions of them were from time to time introduced into the Breviaries, particularly the Spanish. They are written in different metres, partly lyric, and partly heroic.* The humanity of the poet appears in some sentiments he has incidentally thrown out, as that the number of the impious who will be suffered finally to perish are few,† and the damned * We find nothing of Prudentius in the volume first named at the head of our article. Bishop Mant has three hymns, the originals of which were taken wholly, or in part, from him, though, as he does not appear to have looked beyond the Breviaries, he was not probably aware of the source whence they were derived. We have given four stanzas of one of them in the former part of the present article. † Idem tamen benignus Patitur perire in ævum. Cathemer. VI. v. 93. find occasional respite from their pains, being allowed one holyday each year, or night rather, that on which Christ left the region of Hades.* The sentiments of the Fathers touching the state of the dead, indeed, were, as it is well known, various. Even Augustine believed that souls in hell had, at times, some relaxation of their sufferings. Origen contrived finally to save even the devil; and there is not an opinion so extravagant, that an advocate for it may not be found among the old Fathers of the church. At the close of the poem, called "Namartigenia," or Birth of Sin, we find a somewhat singular prayer of Prudentius, which has given offence to some as savoring of impiety. It certainly savors of modesty, but we see nothing impious in it. He prays, that when he shall die, he may see no fierce and truculent devil, terrible by his menacing looks and voice, who shall immure his soul in dark caverns, till he shall exact to the uttermost farthing the debt due for the sins of his whole life. He aspires not to a seat among the happy. It is sufficient for him, he says, if he behold the face of no infernal demon, and the fires of insatiate Gehenna devour not his soul, plunged into its lowest furnaces. He consents, he says, since a corrupt nature requires it, that the dismal fires of Avernus shall receive him, only, says he, let their heat be moderated, let them not glow with too intense an ardor. Let others have their temples adorned with glorious crowns, and dwell in regions of purest light, only let it be my punishment to be gently burned.t It does not appear whether Prudentius expected these fires to be temporary, or such as were afterwards known under the name of fires of purgatory, or whether what he meant to say was, that he should be satisfied to be moderately scorched * Sunt et Spiritibus sæpe nocentibus * Marcent Suppliciis tartara mitibus, Umbrarum populus, liber ab ignibus, Cathem. V. 133, et seqq. It has puzzled commentators sadly to determine, whether the spirits here referred to are spirits of the damned, or those only in purgatory. † Hamart. v. 591, et seqq. through eternity. In either case, the prayer is a very humble one, though as we said, we see no impiety in it. But in truth, Prudentius, by his own confession, had, in his youth, led a very wicked life.* Many Pagan notions and customs had crept into the church. before the time of Prudentius, as his poems abundantly show; but we cannot stop to point them out. The treatment of mar tyrs, and various opinions and usages in regard to the dead, to which we find frequent allusion in his works, too, would furnishi interesting topics of remark; but we must hasten to a conclusion. Prudentius had numerous imitators, whose names have long ago sunk into obscurity, if, indeed, they can be said ever to have emerged from it; and in the destruction of their works, the world has probably sustained but trifling loss.t * See Procem. Opp. in which he has given a short account of his life. In the notice above taken of the writers of ancient hymns, we have mentioned most of the Poetical Fathers, as they may be called. There are a few others, however, who may be entitled to notice. In the fourth century, we have the two Apollinarii, father and son, who, when the Emperor Julian, A. D. 362, prohibited Christians from reading the classical books of the ancients, undertook to furnish what were called Christian classics; the one translating the Pentateuch into heroic verse, in imitation of Homer, and forming the rest of the Old Testament into Comedies, Tragedies, and Odes, in imitation of Pindar, Euripides, and Menander; and the other, taking the New Testament, which he transformed, Gospels, Epistles, and all, into Dialogues, after the manner of Plato. Damasus, too, Bishop of Rome, about the same time, was the author of some worthless verses. Gregory of Nazianzen, who died A. D. 398, left a large number of poems, mostly the fruits of his old age. In one of them he gives an account of his own life. We have, too, Matronius, much praised by Jerome. Among the Poetical Fathers of the fifth century, some of whose effusions are extant, but are not of a nature to induce us greatly to regret those which are lost, we may mention Nonnus, an Egyptian, who made a poetic version of John's Gospel; Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, A. D. 409,- and Paulinus, of Besançon, a little later; Victorinus, of Marseilles; Synesius, of Cyrene, disciple of the celebrated Hypatia; Cœlius Sedulius, a Scotch poet; Hilary, of Arles; Prosper, of Aquitain; Dracontius, a Spanish priest, author of a heroic poem, on the Creation; Salvian, priest of Marseilles, who wrote a similar poem; Mamertus, of Vienna, asserted by some to be the author of the hymn, "Pange lingua gloriosi; " Apollinaris Sidonius, ishop of Clermont; and Gelasius, the first pope of the name. Besides these, we have Eudocia, a learned Athenian lady, wife of the Emperor Theodosius II. VOL. XXVIII. 3D S. VOL. X. NO. 1. 3 We have alluded to the use of doctrinal hymns, which, it seems, date far back in Christian antiquity. Another instance of their use occurs about the time of Prudentius. The story is related by the two historians, Socrates and Sozomen.* The Arians, of Constantinople, then a powerful party, undertook, they tell us, to perambulate the streets of the city by night, singing their responsive hymns much to the annoyance of orthodox ears, which could not endure to hear such expressions as the following: "Where are they who affirm that three are one power?" which frequently resounded through the nocturnal air. The annoyance was not all. The faithful, it was feared, might be drawn away by the seductions of heretical music. Chrysostom, (the Golden-mouthed,) then bishop of Constantinople, was alarmed; and not thinking it prudent in so dangerous a crisis, to rely exclusively on the charms of his eloquence, he resolved to combat the heretics with their own weapons. He consequently instituted musical processions, attended with great pomp and show, his choir traversing the streets, shouting their homoousian hymns in the ear of night, preceded by persons bearing aloft silver crosses, surmounted by lighted waxen tapers, which the Golden-mouthed had invented, the Empress Eudoxia defraying the expense. The result was such as might have been anticipated. Discord ensued. The hostile parties came into collision, and an affray took place in the streets, during which, several lives were lost, and the Empress's eunuch, Briso, who had acted in the capacity of singing-master to the orthodox choir, received a wound in his forehead. The Emperor, incensed in consequence, prohibited the Arians from singing their hymns any more in public, and peace was restored. The subject of hymns, it would seem, occasionally engaged the attention of councils. One instance of the kind we recollect not far from the time at which the events just related occurred, probably a little earlier. We refer to the Council of Laodicea; the time of which is uncertain, but which is now author of some poetical paraphrases of the Old Testament; and Proba Falconia, the reputed author of the "Centones Virgiliani," or Life of Christ, composed wholly of fragments of Virgil's Poems. A similar work, called "Centones Homerici," containing a life of Jesus Christ, wholly in Homeric expressions, passes under the name of Eudocia, but is spurious. * Socrates, L. VI. c. 28; Sozomen, L. VIII. c. 8. generally supposed by the learned, to have been holden a little after the middle, or between the middle and the close of the fourth century. This council, in its fifty-ninth canon, prohibits the use of private psalms in churches, as well as the reading of all uncanonical books of the Old and New Testaments. Some irregularities and extravagances must have given rise to a regulation of this sort. It would be construing the canon too rigorously, we think, to suppose with some, that it was intended to exclude the use of all psalms, except those taken from the Bible, and which were distinguished from private, as being derived from inspiration; for psalms or hymns "written by the brethren," were in use, as we have seen, from the first. It was probably meant to exclude those only which had not received some public sanction, as that of the congregation, or perhaps of the bishops, whose power and prerogatives were now rapidly increasing. Of this, we have evidence in the thirteenth canon of the same council, which ordains, that the "choice of bishops shall not be left wholly to the people," -a regulation which cleary shows, that the people had hitherto been accustomed to elect their bishops, as they had been, no doubt, to use their discretion in regard to the hymns. After this slight sketch, it will appear on how frail a foundation any collection purporting to give the hymns of the Primitive Church must rest. There are not half a dozen hymns, we will venture to say, in existence, certainly not in the Western Church, which can be traced back to the time of the Council of Nice, (A. D. 325,) or to within about half a century of that time. Some of the doxologies, or scraps of doxologies, and ascriptions, belong, no doubt, to an earlier period, though their original form has not in all instances been retained. Thus Philostorgius, an ecclesiastical historian, who wrote early in the fifth century, asserts, that the "Glory be to the Father, and to * If we except the hymns of Ephrem, the use of which has, we suppose, been confined wholly, or chiefly, to the Eastern Church, we might add another century, at the expiration of which, as soon after, we find Prudentius. His hymns, as we have said, were not designed for church service, though parts of some of them found their way into the Breviaries. Most of the Roman hymns are of far more recent origin than the time of Prudentius, or Gregory even, and very few of them, it is presumed, can now be traced to their authors. There are said to be many inedited hymns deposited in the Vatican Library, and in other places; but none of them probably are very ancient. See Hahn. Chrestom. Syriac. before referred to, Pref. p. 8. |