In very recent times the Latin hymns have been coming more to their own again and such distinguished critics as Prof. Henry Morley, and Prof. George Saintsbury, have not hesitated to express their critical appreciation of these hymns as great { 197} literature. Prof. Saintsbury says in his volume of the Thirteenth Century literature: [Footnote 20]
[Footnote 20: The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory, Volume II. of Periods of European Literature, Edited by George Saintsbury, New York, Scribners, 1899.]
{ opp197} [Illustration] ST. FRANCIS PROPHESIES THE DEATH OF CELANO (GIOTTO, UPPER CH., ASSISI)
"It will be more convenient to postpone to a later chapter of this volume a consideration of the exact way in which Latin sacred poetry affected the prosody of the vernacular; but it is well here to point out that almost all the finest and most famous examples of the medieval hymns, with perhaps the sole exception of the Veni Sancte Spiritus, date from the Twelfth and Thirteenth centuries. Ours (that is, from this period) are the stately rhythms of Adam of St. Victor, and the softer ones of St. Bernard the Greater. It was at this time that Jacopone da Todi, in the intervals of his eccentric vernacular exercises, was inspired to write the Stabat Mater. From this time comes that glorious descant of Bernard of Morlaix, in which, the more its famous and very elegant English paraphrase is read beside it (Jerusalem the Golden), the more does the greatness and the beauty of the original appear.
"And from this time comes the greatest of all hymns, and one of the greatest of all poems, the Dies Irae. There have been attempts--more than one of them--to make out that the Dies Irae is no such wonderful thing after all; attempts which are, perhaps, the extreme examples of that cheap and despicable paradox which thinks to escape the charge of blind docility by the affectation of heterodox independence. The judgment of the greatest (and not always of the most pious) men of letters of modern times may confirm those who are uncomfortable without authority in a different opinion. Fortunately there is not likely ever to be lack of those who, authority or no authority, in youth and in age, after much reading or without much, in all time of their tribulation and in all time of their wealth, will hold these wonderful triplets, be they Thomas of Celano's or another's, as nearly or quite the most perfect wedding of sound to sense that they know."