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vi PREFACE BY THE GENERAL EDITOR

In two things I have departed from Mr Walpole's intention. The first is in regard to textual criticism. I have explained in the section on the Text what resolution he had come to, and why it seemed to me unsatisfactory. The second point concerns the contents. Mr Walpole designed to give in an appendix, without note or comment, a number of Latin hymns which did not come into the definition which governed his choice of the 127 here presented. A good many of them were pieces of Prudentius, like O sola magnarum urbium and Quicumque Christum quaeritis, which were not, so far as we know, used as hymns in ancient days. Others were wellknown hymns like Exultet caelum laudibus, and Alleluia dulce carmen, about which it seemed to be necessary to explain why they were not in the body of the book. Mr Walpole had not made a final selection of those hymns. There are also many hymns, particularly in the Irish and Spanish books, which both for antiquity, and for intrinsic value, would be equally entitled to a place in such an appendix, if not in the main collection. It was difficult to know where and why to stop. I determined therefore to do without the appendix. Readers who wish for those hymns can easily find them elsewhere; and to give the bare text of them apart from notes seemed to me of doubtful utility.

A. J. M.

MICHAELMAS 1922.

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INTRODUCTION

Originally the following Corpus Hymnorum was not intended to be a selection, but was to include all those hymns and just those hymns that, to the best of my judgment, were not only written but also sung in church before about the year of our Lord 600; this judgment being based on such ancient documents as have come within my ken in the course of an investigation carried on for more than twenty years. The hymns must have been actually sung: otherwise they would have been nothing more than sacred poems. And having been written at that early period they could fairly be called patristic, and so appear in a series of Patristic Texts. This has proved to be a good working rule, but certain considerations have made it impossible to keep strictly to the letter of it in every case.

For in the first place not all hymns can by the utmost stretch of charity be said to be good enough to claim. admission within a limited space. This may be a truism, but its practical result is for our purpose important. Thus, while it would have been undesirable to leave out Ennodius altogether, it has been deemed sufficient to give, by way of a specimen, only one of his laboured and unpoetical hymns, the one given as 32 below, Iam Christus ascendit polum. In like manner only Squalent arua soli puluere multo has been here printed (hymn 127) without its fellow Obduxere polum nubila caeli, although both are almost certainly by the same hymnist, and ancient, being indeed attributed by Bede to the father of church song himself, St Ambrose. There is even a third, a war hymn, of Mozarabic origin like these two, Saeuus

bella serit barbarus horrens, which as being probably written by the same poet has a like claim to admission.

In the next place it is by no means always easy to date, even approximately, a hymn of which the writer is no longer known to us by name. It would be quite impossible to date it exactly. Authorities differ widely with regard to these hymns. Let me illustrate this point by a few examples. The advent hymn Christi caterua clamitat (which I would put in the IXth century) was assigned by Mone to the Vth, by Daniel to the XIVth century. It is not included in this collection. On the other hand Grates tibi Iesu nouas, number 12 of my collection, which Daniel rightly gave to its author Ambrose, Mone unaccountably ascribed to a humanist of the XVth century. Christe cunctorum dominator alme Daniel places in the XIIth century, though it is contained in more than one MS of the Xth; as are also Aures ad nostras deitatis preces; O sator rerum, reparator aeui; Signum crucis mirabile; Verbi patris principium; all which Daniel assigns to the XIVth century. In a field where such experienced hymnologists have gone wrong, it is not likely that I should always have gone right.

Then again, we may be able to say more or less definitely when a sacred poem, by a writer whose name we know, was written, but not when it was sung in church for the first time and so became a hymn. Thus whereas we can without hesitation give within a year or two the time at which Ambrose wrote his hymns and when these were set to music and sung, or the date at which the Vexilla regis prodeunt of Fortunatus, and his other passion hymns, were composed and first chanted, we are unfortunately not able to date the incorporation of such poems of Prudentius, Sedulius and others, as were taken into the service books of the early Latin Church.

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