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The Church's Earliest Hymns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 September 2024

Roland Potter O.P.
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Extract

The Hebrew Psalter became and has been for centuries I the great hymn-book of the Church. The wonder of this A book of ‘Praises’ has, very rightly, been made manifest through its long history. Very closely akin are the Canticles in St Luke's Gospel. These represent a genre of their own: we might say New Testament ideas in Old Testament dress. Thus the Magnificat of our Lady is modelled on the Canticle of Anna (I Sam. 2, I-IO) and recalls the Song of Miriam (Exod. 15, 1-21), the Benedictus echoes the language of psalms and prophecies, and the Nunc Dimittis is redolent of passages in Isaiah.

Alongside the more hebraic traditions of prayer and praise we can discern the beginnings of more specifically Christian, and indeed Christological, hymns.

Type
Research Article
Information
Life of the Spirit , Volume 6 , Issue 72 , June 1952 , pp. 505 - 510
Copyright
Copyright © Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers. 1952

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References

1 ‘carmenque Christo quasi Deo dicere secum invicem’ (Ep. x, 96 (97).

2 I owe this to a former pupil, Fr L. Boyle, o.P.

3 It appears partially in traces of a similar hymn in Heb. 1, 3, and 1 Peter 22-4.

4 Thus treated by L. Cerfaux in Le Christ dans la Théologie de Saint Paul, p 283-298. (Lectio Divina 6.)