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SALVETE FLORES
Meter: 8.8.8.8 Appears in 5 hymnals Composer and/or Arranger: John Bacchus Dykes Tune Key: C Major Incipit: 32344 35532 34436 Used With Text: Sweet Flowerets of the Martyr Band
SALVETE FLORES
The Mighty Frame Of Glorious Grace
Author: Isaac Watts Meter: 8.8.8.8 Appears in 44 hymnals Lyrics: 1 The mighty frame of glorious grace,
That brightest monument of praise
That e’er the God of love designed,
Employs and fills my laboring mind.
2 Begin, my soul, the heav’nly song,
A burden for an angel’s tongue:
When Gabriel sounds these awful things,
He tunes and summons all his strings.
3 Proclaim inimitable love:
Jesus, the Lord of worlds above,
Puts off the beams of bright array,
And veils the God in mortal clay!
4 What black reproach defiled His name,
When with our sins He took our shame!
He whom adoring angels blessed
Is made the impious rebel’s jest.
5 He that distributes crowns and thrones
Hangs on a tree, and bleeds, and groans!
The Prince of Life resigns His breath,
The King of Glory bows to death!
6 But see the wonders of His power,
He triumphs in His dying hour;
And while by Satan’s rage He fell,
He dashed the rising hopes of hell.
7 Thus were the hosts of death subdued,
And sin was drowned in Jesus’ blood;
Thus He arose, and reigns above,
And conquers sinners by His love.
8 Who shall fulfill this boundless song?
The theme surmounts an angel’s tongue:
How low, how vain are mortal airs,
When Gabriel’s nobler harp despairs! Used With Tune: SALVETE FLORES Text Sources: Hymns and Spiritual Songs Book 1, 1707
The Mighty Frame Of Glorious Grace
Sweet Flowerets of the Martyr Band
Author: Aurelius Prudentius; Henry W. Baker Meter: 8.8.8.8 Appears in 5 hymnals Lyrics: 1. Sweet flowerets of the martyr band,
So early plucked by cruel hand;
Like rosebuds by a tempest torn,
As breaks the light of summer morn.
2. First victims offered for the Lord,
Ye little knew your high reward,
As, at the very altar, gay
With palms and crowns ye seemed to play.
3. Ah! what availed King Herod’s wrath?
He could not stay your Savior’s path;
The Child he sought alone went free;
That Child is King eternally.
4. O Lord, the virgin born, to Thee
Praise, honor, might and glory be,
Whom with the Father we adore
And Holy Ghost forevermore. Used With Tune: SALVETE FLORES Text Sources: Translation in Hymns Ancient and Modern, 1875
Sweet Flowerets of the Martyr Band
Long Did Both Kings and Prophets Wait
Author: Paul B. Henkel Meter: 8.8.8.8 Appears in 4 hymnals Lyrics: 1 Long did both kings and prophets wait
To see the Lord of glory great
Appear, to answer that great end,
To prove the fallen sinner’s friend.
2 Of Him the prophets long foretold,
The fathers wished him to behold;
Him all the nations did desire
And angels wished Him to admire.
3 Their prophecies are now fulfilled;
The glorious mystery revealed:
The Child is born, the Son is giv’n,
The Prince of life is come from Heav’n.
4 His name is Jesus Christ the Lord,
The great and everlasting Word:
He came to execute the plan,
To save the fallen race of man.
5 He is the Lord from Heaven come,
Our human nature to assume,
Our sins to bear, His blood to shed,
And bruise and crush the serpent’s head.
6 He left His glorious throne above,
And comes with pity, grace, and love:
He comes to call the sons of men,
And turn them to their God again.
7 We praise Thee, O Thou King of peace!
Who art our life and righteousness;
Thou virgin’s Son, Thou David’s Star:
No creature can Thy love declare.
8 All such are truly dead in sin,
Who feel themselves not moved within,
To join with Christians here on earth,
To show and praise the Savior’s birth.
9 Let all who dwell with hosts on high!
Engage His praise to magnify;
With all the efforts they can raise,
Thus join to sing the Savior’s praise. Used With Tune: SALVETE FLORES
Long Did Both Kings and Prophets Wait
Sweet Flowerets of the Martyr Band
Author: Aurelius Prudentius; Henry W. Baker Hymnal: The Cyber Hymnal #6413 Meter: 8.8.8.8 Lyrics: 1. Sweet flowerets of the martyr band,
So early plucked by cruel hand;
Like rosebuds by a tempest torn,
As breaks the light of summer morn.
2. First victims offered for the Lord,
Ye little knew your high reward,
As, at the very altar, gay
With palms and crowns ye seemed to play.
3. Ah! what availed King Herod’s wrath?
He could not stay your Savior’s path;
The Child he sought alone went free;
That Child is King eternally.
4. O Lord, the virgin born, to Thee
Praise, honor, might and glory be,
Whom with the Father we adore
And Holy Ghost forevermore. Languages: English Tune Title: SALVETE FLORES
Sweet Flowerets of the Martyr Band
Long Did Both Kings and Prophets Wait
Author: Paul B. Henkel Hymnal: The Cyber Hymnal #8336 Meter: 8.8.8.8 Lyrics: 1 Long did both kings and prophets wait
To see the Lord of glory great
Appear, to answer that great end,
To prove the fallen sinner’s friend.
2 Of Him the prophets long foretold,
The fathers wished him to behold;
Him all the nations did desire
And angels wished Him to admire.
3 Their prophecies are now fulfilled;
The glorious mystery revealed:
The Child is born, the Son is giv’n,
The Prince of life is come from Heav’n.
4 His name is Jesus Christ the Lord,
The great and everlasting Word:
He came to execute the plan,
To save the fallen race of man.
5 He is the Lord from Heaven come,
Our human nature to assume,
Our sins to bear, His blood to shed,
And bruise and crush the serpent’s head.
6 He left His glorious throne above,
And comes with pity, grace, and love:
He comes to call the sons of men,
And turn them to their God again.
7 We praise Thee, O Thou King of peace!
Who art our life and righteousness;
Thou virgin’s Son, Thou David’s Star:
No creature can Thy love declare.
8 All such are truly dead in sin,
Who feel themselves not moved within,
To join with Christians here on earth,
To show and praise the Savior’s birth.
9 Let all who dwell with hosts on high!
Engage His praise to magnify;
With all the efforts they can raise,
Thus join to sing the Savior’s praise. Languages: English Tune Title: SALVETE FLORES
Long Did Both Kings and Prophets Wait
The Mighty Frame Of Glorious Grace
Author: Isaac Watts Hymnal: The Cyber Hymnal #8701 Meter: 8.8.8.8 Lyrics: 1 The mighty frame of glorious grace,
That brightest monument of praise
That e’er the God of love designed,
Employs and fills my laboring mind.
2 Begin, my soul, the heav’nly song,
A burden for an angel’s tongue:
When Gabriel sounds these awful things,
He tunes and summons all his strings.
3 Proclaim inimitable love:
Jesus, the Lord of worlds above,
Puts off the beams of bright array,
And veils the God in mortal clay!
4 What black reproach defiled His name,
When with our sins He took our shame!
He whom adoring angels blessed
Is made the impious rebel’s jest.
5 He that distributes crowns and thrones
Hangs on a tree, and bleeds, and groans!
The Prince of Life resigns His breath,
The King of Glory bows to death!
6 But see the wonders of His power,
He triumphs in His dying hour;
And while by Satan’s rage He fell,
He dashed the rising hopes of hell.
7 Thus were the hosts of death subdued,
And sin was drowned in Jesus’ blood;
Thus He arose, and reigns above,
And conquers sinners by His love.
8 Who shall fulfill this boundless song?
The theme surmounts an angel’s tongue:
How low, how vain are mortal airs,
When Gabriel’s nobler harp despairs! Languages: English Tune Title: SALVETE FLORES
The Mighty Frame Of Glorious Grace
John Bacchus Dykes
1823 - 1876 Composer of "SALVETE FLORES" in The Cyber Hymnal As a young child John Bacchus Dykes (b. Kingston-upon-Hull' England, 1823; d. Ticehurst, Sussex, England, 1876) took violin and piano lessons. At the age of ten he became the organist of St. John's in Hull, where his grandfather was vicar. After receiving a classics degree from St. Catherine College, Cambridge, England, he was ordained in the Church of England in 1847. In 1849 he became the precentor and choir director at Durham Cathedral, where he introduced reforms in the choir by insisting on consistent attendance, increasing rehearsals, and initiating music festivals. He served the parish of St. Oswald in Durham from 1862 until the year of his death. To the chagrin of his bishop, Dykes favored the high church practices associated with the Oxford Movement (choir robes, incense, and the like). A number of his three hundred hymn tunes are still respected as durable examples of Victorian hymnody. Most of his tunes were first published in Chope's Congregational Hymn and Tune Book (1857) and in early editions of the famous British hymnal, Hymns Ancient and Modern.
Bert Polman
John Bacchus Dykes
Isaac Watts
1674 - 1748 Author of "The Mighty Frame Of Glorious Grace" in The Cyber Hymnal Isaac Watts was the son of a schoolmaster, and was born in Southampton, July 17, 1674. He is said to have shown remarkable precocity in childhood, beginning the study of Latin, in his fourth year, and writing respectable verses at the age of seven. At the age of sixteen, he went to London to study in the Academy of the Rev. Thomas Rowe, an Independent minister. In 1698, he became assistant minister of the Independent Church, Berry St., London. In 1702, he became pastor. In 1712, he accepted an invitation to visit Sir Thomas Abney, at his residence of Abney Park, and at Sir Thomas' pressing request, made it his home for the remainder of his life. It was a residence most favourable for his health, and for the prosecution of his literary labours. He did not retire from ministerial duties, but preached as often as his delicate health would permit.
The number of Watts' publications is very large. His collected works, first published in 1720, embrace sermons, treatises, poems and hymns. His "Horae Lyricae" was published in December, 1705. His "Hymns" appeared in July, 1707. The first hymn he is said to have composed for religious worship, is "Behold the glories of the Lamb," written at the age of twenty. It is as a writer of psalms and hymns that he is everywhere known. Some of his hymns were written to be sung after his sermons, giving expression to the meaning of the text upon which he had preached. Montgomery calls Watts "the greatest name among hymn-writers," and the honour can hardly be disputed. His published hymns number more than eight hundred.
Watts died November 25, 1748, and was buried at Bunhill Fields. A monumental statue was erected in Southampton, his native place, and there is also a monument to his memory in the South Choir of Westminster Abbey. "Happy," says the great contemporary champion of Anglican orthodoxy, "will be that reader whose mind is disposed, by his verses or his prose, to imitate him in all but his non-conformity, to copy his benevolence to men, and his reverence to God." ("Memorials of Westminster Abbey," p. 325.)
--Annotations of the Hymnal, Charles Hutchins, M.A., 1872.
=================================
Watts, Isaac, D.D. The father of Dr. Watts was a respected Nonconformist, and at the birth of the child, and during its infancy, twice suffered imprisonment for his religious convictions. In his later years he kept a flourishing boarding school at Southampton. Isaac, the eldest of his nine children, was born in that town July 17, 1674. His taste for verse showed itself in early childhood. He was taught Greek, Latin, and Hebrew by Mr. Pinhorn, rector of All Saints, and headmaster of the Grammar School, in Southampton. The splendid promise of the boy induced a physician of the town and other friends to offer him an education at one of the Universities for eventual ordination in the Church of England: but this he refused; and entered a Nonconformist Academy at Stoke Newington in 1690, under the care of Mr. Thomas Rowe, the pastor of the Independent congregation at Girdlers' Hall. Of this congregation he became a member in 1693.
Leaving the Academy at the age of twenty, he spent two years at home; and it was then that the bulk of the Hymns and Spiritual Songs (published 1707-9) were written, and sung from manuscripts in the Southampton Chapel. The hymn "Behold the glories of the Lamb" is said to have been the first he composed, and written as an attempt to raise the standard of praise. In answer to requests, others succeeded. The hymn "There is a land of pure delight" is said to have been suggested by the view across Southampton Water. The next six years of Watts's life were again spent at Stoke Newington, in the post of tutor to the son of an eminent Puritan, Sir John Hartopp; and to the intense study of these years must be traced the accumulation of the theological and philosophical materials which he published subsequently, and also the life-long enfeeblement of his constitution.
Watts preached his first sermon when he was twenty-four years old. In the next three years he preached frequently; and in 1702 was ordained pastor of the eminent Independent congregation in Mark Lane, over which Caryl and Dr. John Owen had presided, and which numbered Mrs. Bendish, Cromwell's granddaughter, Charles Fleetwood, Charles Desborough, Sir John Hartopp, Lady Haversham, and other distinguished Independents among its members. In this year he removed to the house of Mr. Hollis in the Minories. His health began to fail in the following year, and Mr. Samuel Price was appointed as his assistant in the ministry. In 1712 a fever shattered his constitution, and Mr. Price was then appointed co-pastor of the congregation which had in the meantime removed to a new chapel in Bury Street. It was at this period that he became the guest of Sir Thomas Abney, under whose roof, and after his death (1722) that of his widow, he remained for the rest of his suffering life; residing for the longer portion of these thirty-six years principally at the beautiful country seat of Theobalds in Herts, and for the last thirteen years at Stoke Newington. His degree of D.D. was bestowed on him in 1728, unsolicited, by the University of Edinburgh. His infirmities increased on him up to the peaceful close of his sufferings, Nov. 25, 1748. He was buried in the Puritan restingplace at Bunhill Fields, but a monument was erected to him in Westminster Abbey.
His learning and piety, gentleness and largeness of heart have earned him the title of the Melanchthon of his day. Among his friends, churchmen like Bishop Gibson are ranked with Nonconformists such as Doddridge. His theological as well as philosophical fame was considerable. His Speculations on the Human Nature of the Logos, as a contribution to the great controversy on the Holy Trinity, brought on him a charge of Arian opinions. His work on The Improvement of the Mind, published in 1741, is eulogised by Johnson. His Logic was still a valued textbook at Oxford within living memory. The World to Come, published in 1745, was once a favourite devotional work, parts of it being translated into several languages. His Catechisms, Scripture History (1732), as well as The Divine and Moral Songs (1715), were the most popular text-books for religious education fifty years ago. The Hymns and Spiritual Songs were published in 1707-9, though written earlier. The Horae Lyricae, which contains hymns interspersed among the poems, appeared in 1706-9. Some hymns were also appended at the close of the several Sermons preached in London, published in 1721-24. The Psalms were published in 1719. The earliest life of Watts is that by his friend Dr. Gibbons. Johnson has included him in his Lives of the Poets; and Southey has echoed Johnson's warm eulogy. The most interesting modern life is Isaac Watts: his Life and Writings, by E. Paxton Hood. [Rev. H. Leigh Bennett, M.A.]
A large mass of Dr. Watts's hymns and paraphrases of the Psalms have no personal history beyond the date of their publication. These we have grouped together here and shall preface the list with the books from which they are taken.
(l) Horae Lyricae. Poems chiefly of the Lyric kind. In Three Books Sacred: i.To Devotion and Piety; ii. To Virtue, Honour, and Friendship; iii. To the Memory of the Dead. By I. Watts, 1706. Second edition, 1709. (2) Hymns and Spiritual Songs. In Three Books: i. Collected from the Scriptures; ii. Composed on Divine Subjects; iii. Prepared for the Lord's Supper. By I. Watts, 1707. This contained in Bk i. 78 hymns; Bk. ii. 110; Bk. iii. 22, and 12 doxologies. In the 2nd edition published in 1709, Bk. i. was increased to 150; Bk. ii. to 170; Bk. iii. to 25 and 15 doxologies. (3) Divine and Moral Songs for the Use of Children. By I. Watts, London, 1715. (4) The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, And apply'd to the Christian State and Worship. By I. Watts. London: Printed by J. Clark, at the Bible and Crown in the Poultry, &c, 1719. (5) Sermons with hymns appended thereto, vol. i., 1721; ii., 1723; iii. 1727. In the 5th ed. of the Sermons the three volumes, in duodecimo, were reduced to two, in octavo. (6) Reliquiae Juveniles: Miscellaneous Thoughts in Prose and Verse, on Natural, Moral, and Divine Subjects; Written chiefly in Younger Years. By I. Watts, D.D., London, 1734. (7) Remnants of Time. London, 1736.
454 Hymns and Versions of the Psalms, in addition to the centos are all in common use at the present time.
--Excerpts from John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
==================================
Watts, I. , p. 1241, ii. Nearly 100 hymns, additional to those already annotated, are given in some minor hymn-books.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, Appendix, Part II (1907)
=================
Watts, I. , p. 1236, i. At the time of the publication of this Dictionary in 1892, every copy of the 1707 edition of Watts's Hymns and Spiritual Songs was supposed to have perished, and all notes thereon were based upon references which were found in magazines and old collections of hymns and versions of the Psalms. Recently three copies have been recovered, and by a careful examination of one of these we have been able to give some of the results in the revision of pp. 1-1597, and the rest we now subjoin.
i. Hymns in the 1709 ed. of Hymns and Spiritual Songs which previously appeared in the 1707 edition of the same book, but are not so noted in the 1st ed. of this Dictionary:—
On pp. 1237, L-1239, ii., Nos. 18, 33, 42, 43, 47, 48, 60, 56, 58, 59, 63, 75, 82, 83, 84, 85, 93, 96, 99, 102, 104, 105, 113, 115, 116, 123, 124, 134, 137, 139, 146, 147, 148, 149, 162, 166, 174, 180, 181, 182, 188, 190, 192, 193, 194, 195, 197, 200, 202.
ii. Versions of the Psalms in his Psalms of David, 1719, which previously appeared in his Hymns and Spiritual Songs, 1707:—
On pp. 1239, U.-1241, i., Nos. 241, 288, 304, 313, 314, 317, 410, 441.
iii. Additional not noted in the revision:—
1. My soul, how lovely is the place; p. 1240, ii. 332. This version of Ps. lxiv. first appeared in the 1707 edition of Hymns & Spiritual Songs, as "Ye saints, how lovely is the place."
2. Shine, mighty God, on Britain shine; p. 1055, ii. In the 1707 edition of Hymns & Spiritual Songs, Bk. i., No. 35, and again in his Psalms of David, 1719.
3. Sing to the Lord with [cheerful] joyful voice, p. 1059, ii. This version of Ps. c. is No. 43 in the Hymns & Spiritual Songs, 1707, Bk. i., from which it passed into the Ps. of David, 1719.
A careful collation of the earliest editions of Watts's Horae Lyricae shows that Nos. 1, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, p. 1237, i., are in the 1706 ed., and that the rest were added in 1709. Of the remaining hymns, Nos. 91 appeared in his Sermons, vol. ii., 1723, and No. 196 in Sermons, vol. i., 1721. No. 199 was added after Watts's death. It must be noted also that the original title of what is usually known as Divine and Moral Songs was Divine Songs only.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, New Supplement (1907)
===========
See also in:
Hymn Writers of the Church
Isaac Watts
Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
348 - 410 Person Name: Aurelius Prudentius Author of "Sweet Flowerets of the Martyr Band" in The Cyber Hymnal Marcus Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, "The Christian Pindar" was born in northern Spain, a magistrate whose religious convictions came late in life. His subsequent sacred poems were literary and personal, not, like those of St. Ambrose, designed for singing. Selections from them soon entered the Mozarabic rite, however, and have since remained exquisite treasures of the Western churches. His Cathemerinon liber, Peristephanon, and Psychomachia were among the most widely read books of the Middle Ages. A concordance to his works was published by the Medieval Academy of America in 1932. There is a considerable literature on his works.
--The Hymnal 1940 Companion
=============
Prudentius, Aurelius Clemens , with the occasional prefix of Marcus (cf. Migne, vol. lix. p. 593, and Dressel, p. ii. n), is the name of the most prominent and most prolific author of sacred Latin poetry in its earliest days. Of the writer himself we know nothing, or next to nothing, beyond what he has himself told us in a short introduction in verse to his works. From that source we learn that he was a Spaniard, of good family evidently, and that he was born A.D. 348 somewhere in the north of Spain, either at Saragossa, Tarragona, or Calahorra, but at which is left uncertain, by his applying the same expression to all, which if applied only to one would have fixed his place of birth. After receiving a good education befitting his social status he applied himself for some years to practising as a pleader in the local courts of law, until he received promotion to a judgeship in two cities successively:—
"Bis legum moderanrine
Frenos nobilium reximus urbium
Jus civile bonis reddidimus, terruimus reos;"
and afterwards to a post of still higher authority:
"Tandem militiae gradu
Evectum pietas principis extulit."
Archbishop Trench considers this last to have been "a high military appointment at court," and such the poet's own words would seem to describe; but it may well be doubted whether a civilian and a lawyer would be eligible for such employment; in which case we may adopt the solution of the difficulty offered in the Prolegomena to our author's works (Migne, vol. lix. p. 601):—
"Evectus indeest ad superiorem rnilitia? gradum, nimirum militia? civil is, palatinae, aut praesidialis, non bellicae, castrensis, aut cohortalis; nam ii qui officiis jure consultorum praesidum, rectorum et similium funguntur, vulgo in cod. Theod. militare et ad superiores militias ascendere dicuntur."
It was after this lengthened experience at a comparatively early age of positions of trust and power that Prudentius, conscience-smitten on account of the follies and worldliness that had marked his youth and earlier manhood, determined to throw up all his secular employments, and devote the remainder of his life to advancing the interests of Christ's Church by the power of his pen rather than that of his purse and personal position. Accordingly we find that he retired in his 57th year into poverty and private life, and began that remarkable succession of sacred poems upon which his fame now entirely rests. We have no reason however to regard him as another St. Augustine, rescued from the "wretchedness of most unclean living" by this flight from the temptations and engrossing cares of official life into the calm seclusion of a wholly devotional leisure. He had probably rather learnt from sad experience the emptiness and vanity for an immortal soul of the surroundings of even the high places of this world. As he himself expresses it:—
"Numquid talia proderunt
Carnis post obitum vel bona, vel mala,
Cum jam, quicquid id est, quod fueram, mors aboleverit?"
and sought, at the cost of all that the world holds dear, those good things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. Beyond the fact of his retirement from the world in this way, and the fruits which it produced in the shape of his voluminous contributions to sacred poetry, we have no further information about our author. To judge from the amount he wrote, his life must have been extended many years after he began his new career, but how long his life was or where he died we are not told. Probably he died circa 413. His works are:—
(1) Liber Cathemerinon. "Christian Day, as we may call it" W. S. Lilly, "Chapters in European History," vol. i. p. 208).
(2) Liber Peristephanon. "Martyrs' Garlands" (id.).
(3) Apotheosis. A work on the Divine Nature, or the Deification of Human Nature in Christ.
(4) Hamartigenia. A treatise on the Origin of Sin, directed against the Marcionites.
(5) Psychomachia or "The Spiritual Combat"-—an allegorical work.
(6) Libri contra Symmachum. A controversial work against the restoration in the Senate House at Rome of the altar of Victory which Gratian had removed. Symmachus had petitioned Valentinian II. for its restoration in 384, but the influence of St. Ambrose had prevailed against him at that time. In 392 the altar was restored, but removed again by Theodosius in 394. After the death of the latter the attempt to restore it was renewed by Arcadius and Honorius, and it was at that time that Prudentius wrote his first book. The second (for there are two) was written in 405. Fague considers that the first may date in 395.
(7) The Dittochseon = the double food or double Testament, is a wordy collection of 49 sets of four verses each, on Old and New Testament scenes.
Of these different works the most important are the first two, and it is from them that the Liturgical hymns enumerated below have been chiefly compiled. The general character of Prudentius's writings it is not easy fairly to estimate, and to judge by the wholesale laudation he obtains from some of his critics, and the equally unsparing censure of others, his judges have so found it. In venturing upon any opinion upon such a subject, the reader must bear in mind the peculiar position in which the period at which he was writing found the poet. The poetry of classical Rome in all its exact beauty of form had long passed its meridian, and was being replaced by a style which was yet in its infancy, but which burst forth into new life and beauty in the hands of the Mediaeval hymnologists.
Prudentius wrote before rhyming Latin verse was thought of, but after attention had ceased to be given to quantities. Under such circumstances it were vain to look for very finished work from him, and such certainly we do not find. But amidst a good deal of what one must confess is tasteless verbiage or clumsy rhetorical ornament-—however varied the metres he employs, numbering some 17—-there are also passages to be found, not unfrequently, of dramatic vigour and noble expression, which may well hold their own with the more musical utterances of a later date. He writes as a man intensely in earnest, and we may gather much from his writings concerning the points of conduct which were deemed the most important in Christian living at a time when a great portion of mankind were still the victims or slaves of a morality which, heathen at the best, was lowered and corrupted the more as the universality of its influence was more and more successfully challenged by the spread of the Gospel of Christ. If, there¬fore, we can scarcely go as far in our author's praise as Barth—-much given to lavish commendation—-who describes him as "Poeta eximius eruditissimus et sanctissimus scriptor; nemo divinius de rebus Christianis unquam scripsit"; or as Bentley—-not given to praise--who calls him the "Horace and Virgil of the Christians," we shall be as loath, considering under what circumstances he wrote, to carp at his style as not being formed on the best ancient models but as confessedly impure; feeling with Archbishop Trench that it is his merit that "whether consciously or unconsciously, he acted on the principle that the new life claimed new forms in which to manifest itself; that he did not shrink from helping forward that great transformation of the Latin language, which it needed to undergo, now
that it should be the vehicle of truths which, were all together novel to it." (Sacred Latin Poetry, 1874, p. 121.)
The reader will find so exhaustive an account of the various writings of Prudentius in the account given of him and them in Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography, and Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, that it is only necessary in this work to refer very briefly to them as above. The poems have been constantly reprinted and re-edited, till the editor who produced the best edition we have of them, Albert Dressel (Leipsic, 1860), is able to say that his is the sixty-third.
The use made of Prudentius's poems in the ancient Breviaries and Hymnaries was very extensive. In the form of centos stanzas and lines wore compiled and used as hymns; and it is mainly from these centos, and not from the original poems, that the translations into English were made. Daniel, i., Nos. 103-115, gives 13 genuine hymns as having been in use for "Morning," "Christmas," "Epiphany," "Lent," "Easter," "Transfiguration," "Burial," &c, in the older Breviaries. ….Many more which were used in like manner have been translated into English. When to these are added the hymns and those which have not been translated into English, we realise the position and power of Prudentius in the hymnody of the Church. [Rev. Digby S. Wrangham, M.A.]
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
==============
Prudentius, A. C, p. 915, ii. Two somewhat full versions of Prudentius are: (1) The Cathemerinon and other Poems of Aurelius Prudentius Clemens in English Verse, Lond., Rivington, 1845; and (2) Translations from Prudentius. By Francis St. John Thackeray, M.A.. F.S.A. Lond., Bell & Sons, 1890.
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology, Appendix, Part II (1907)
Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
