hymnus

hymnus, i, m., = ὕμνος,

• a song of praise, a hymn: hymnus cantus est cum laude Dei, Aug. Enarr. in Psa. 148, 17; Ambros. Expos. Psa. 118, prol. § 3; Lucil. ap. Non. 330, 9; Prud. Cath. 37 praef.; 4, 75: divinorum scriptor hymnorum, Lact. 4, 8, 14; Vulg. Psa. 60 tit.; id. Matt. 26, 30.

hymnus, ī, m. (ὕμνος), ein Lobgesang auf die Gottheit, eine Hymne, Sen fr. 88. Beda de art. metr. 256, 29 K. Prud. cath. 4, 75 u.a. Eccl.: divinorum scriptor hymnorum, Psalmist, Lact. 4, 8, 14: hymnos cantare coeperunt, Augustin. de civ. dei 22, 8, 8. p. 573, 9 D.² – ➳ Nbf. hymnum, ī, n., Gloss. IV, 298, 23. Ps. Cypr. app. carm. 5 lemm. p. 305 H.

hymnus [LL < ὕμνος] , hymn, song of praise; b (dist. by office); c (dist. by incipit); d (secular). librum ~orum diverso metro sive rhythmo Bede HE V 24 p. 359; 7‥ ymnus, loob WW; imnum, carmen Domini GlC Interp. Nom.; Graecum nomen est ymnus et Latine interpretari potest laus carminis Alcuin Ep. 308 p. 472; ~us per H scribendum est Id. Orth. 2338; ymnum [gl.: lofsang] canamus Domino AS Hymns 87; ymnus, ‥ laus; inde hic ymnista, ‥ laudator, et ymnizo ‥ et ymnio, ‥ ambo pro laudare; inde ymnicus ‥ et hic ymnisista, ‥ qui facit ymnos Osb. Glouc. Deriv. 630; humnus de apostolis Petre et Paulo (Vers.) M. Rievaulx 37; lectiones, ymni, psalmi et alia que in Dei laudem recitantur Gros. Const. 269; ~us, laus Dei cum cantico Bacon Gram. Gk. 67; in impno Rolle IA 174 (v. hyperlyricus b); hympni amorosi familiariter ‥ Christo inspirante eruperunt Ib. 254; himnus W. Say Lib. Reg. Cap. 98 (v. elevatio 1a); ympnus CathA (v. hymnulus).  b ~is matutinalibus Bede HE V 9 p. 297 (v. explere 3a); ympni, tam nocturnales quam diurnales Elmh. Cant. 97 (v. diurnalis d); primus ~us pro medio noctis est iste ‘Medie noctis tempus est’; secundus ad gallicantum ‘Eterne rerum conditor’ [etc.] Ib. 97.  c ~us ‘Deus creator omnium’ RegulC 60 (v. dominicalis 3a); finita ‘Gloria’, incipiat prior ~um ‘Te Deum laudamus’ Ælf. Regul. Mon. 189; ymnus ‘Christe, qui lux es et dies’ ‥ ymnus ‘Primo dierum’ Lanfr. Const. 90; ymnus ‘Te lucis’ Ib. 104; inchoet ‥ infans ymnum ‘Dei fide qua vivimus’ Ib. 106; ymnus ‘Inventor rutili’ Ib. 118; incipiat abbas ymnum ‘Veni, creator Spiritus’ Ib. 171; dum cantaretur ymnus ‘Ad cenam Agni providi’ Found. Waltham 26; ympnum trium puerorum, viz. ‘Benedicite omnia opera’, decantans (Jud. Dei.) GAS 427 (cf. Dan. iii 57); cum pro more ‥ himnum diceret ‘Gloria Patri’ W. Malm. GP III 115 p. 250; ~us ‥ ‘Gloria in excelsis’ Mir. J. Bev. A 299; ~us ‥ ‘Sanctus, sanctus’ Gir. GE II 20 (v. angelicus a); cantetur sollemniter ~us ille ‘Veni, creator Spiritus’ L. Somercote 30; quidam clerici ‥ cecinerunt ympnum ‘Ave maris stella’ Knighton I 103; ~um angelicum ‘Te Deum ‥’ G. Hen. V 16 (v. decantare 2a).  d ? 1312 de condigna morte cujus [sc. Petri] est hic hympnus editus (De Morte P. de Gaveston) Pol. Songs 260.

hymnus, ī, m. (ὕμνος), hymne, chant religieux : Aug. Civ. 22, 8, 8 ; divinorum scriptor hymnorum Lact. Inst. 4, 8, 14, le psalmiste.

*hymnus, i. m.
讚詩。

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Hymnus

(ὕμνος). In general, an invocation of the gods, especially in the form of an ode sung by a choir, to the accompaniment of the cithara, while they stood round the altar. For the so-called Homeric Hymns (to Aphrodité, Hermes, Demeter, etc.), see the article Homerus. For wedding hymns, see epithalamium. For the Orphic Hymns, see Orpheus. Many of the Pindaric odes, written in lyric measures, are to be classed as ὕμνοι. (Cf. Aristoph. Eq. 530.) Famous among Greek hymns is the noble hymn to Zeus by the Stoic Cleanthes (q.v.). See musica.

In Latin, examples of hymns in the older sense are the songs of the Salii (carmina Saliaria), sung by the priests of Mars (see Salii); the hymn of the Arval Brethren (see Fratres Arvales); the hymns composed by Horace (carmen saeculare) for the Ludi Saeculares in B.C. 17, and sung in honour of Diana and Apollo (see Ludi Saeculares); and some of later date, like the poem called Laus Herculis, in 137 hexameters, by an anonymous author (see Bährens in the Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie, etc., 105, 52. 503); the Hymnus Claudii ad Lunam (Poet. Lat. Min., ed. Bährens, iii. 163); and the parodic hymn to Pan (id. iii. 170).

The early Christian hymns in Greek and Latin are interesting. Of those in Greek, only a comparatively few are written in the classic metres— e. g. those by Clemens Alexandrinus (about A.D. 220), Englished by Dr. Dexter in his “Shepherd of Early Youth;” Gregory of Nanzianzus (A.D. 360), Synesius (A.D. 400), and Sophronius (A.D. 629). Others, and especially those used by the Eastern Church, are strongly Oriental in style, due to the constant study of the Jewish Psalter. No authors of Latin hymns are mentioned earlier than A.D. 325, the date of the Council of Nice. Soon after, however, two great hymnologists—St. Hilary and St. Ambrose—appear, both in the fourth century, followed by Prudentius (A.D. 350-410), whose poems in 1860 reached a sixty-third edition; Sedulius of the same period; Venantius Fortunatus (A.D. 530- 609), and Gregory the Great (A.D. 540-604). Some of the most magnificent of the Latin hymns are of unknown authorship. Such are the famous Veni, Creator Spiritus, popularly ascribed to Charlemagne, but really of earlier date; the hymn beginning Verbum Dei, Deo Natum; and, above all, the sublime Dies Irae, the despair of translators, which is often attributed to Thomas of Celano, but on no sure authority (Mohnike, Hymnologische Forschungen, i. pp. 1-24).

The Latin hymns are interesting from a linguistic and metrical standpoint, as usually reverting to the older and more natural accentual system of prosody instead of preserving the artificial and unpopular distinctions of syllabic quantity. Among the common people, in their folk-songs (e. g. the songs of the soldiers in their barracks and during the triumphs, the chants, spells, and nursery songs), the accentual system still survived, and, as in the Instructiones of Commodianus, written in the third century A.D., the popular system sometimes made its way even into written literature. It was natural that the Christian hymns, being composed not for the learned and fastidious, but for the common people—for provincials and non-Romans—should avail themselves of the far freer range allowed by the loose laws of accent. Thus St. Augustine, even in the title of one of his psalms (Psalmus contra Partem Donati), shows his desire to escape from the rigid restrictions of the Augustan prosody—in other words, to write a canticum and not a carmen. In the later hymns, many metrical ingenuities are introduced, such as the so-called leonine and other rhymes (see Leonini Versus), of which a good account will be found in the introduction and notes to Archbishop Trench's Sacred Latin Poetry (London, 1874).

For the Greek Christian hymns, see Christ and Paranika's Anthologia Graeca Carminum Christianorum (1871); Chatfield's Hymns of the Eastern Greek Christian Poets (1876)—the former giving the original text and the latter the English reading; and Petra, Hymnographie de l'Église-Grecque (1867); Analecta Sacra Inedita (Paris, 1876). On the Latin hymns, see the work of Trench already cited; Cardinal Newman's Carmina Ecclesiae (1876); Du Méril, Poésies Populaires Latines (1843); Mone, Hymni Latini, 3 vols. (1853-55); and Duffield (1888).

There is a dictionary of Hymnology by Julian (1888). On the versification of the Christian hymns (usually trochaic and iambic metres with a special preference for the iambic dimeter, with rhyme and frequent alliteration), see Schuch, De Poësis Latinae Rhythmis et Rimis (1851); Hümer, Der iamb. Dimeter bei den christl.-lat. Hymnendichtern der vorkaroling. Zeit (Vienna, 1876); id. Die ältesten lat.-christl. Rhythmen (Vienna, 1879); and the article rhyme.