A History of Carols – Part 2

I found a nice second hand book on Christmas Traditions from 1931 at the Guide Dogs for the Blind biggest book sale, and as Christmas approaches, thought it might be interesting to share it with my readers.  Instead of my regular blog, I'm taking time off and posting some extracts from this here.

A History of Carols – Part 2

By William Mauir Ald

Toward the close of his all too brief apostolate two scenes in our Lord's career, Bethlehem and Calvary, engaged his deepest attention. Before the vision of the Cross came to him on Mount Alverno, leaving upon his body the stigmata of the crucified Redeemer, he had planned to observe to the very life the memories of the Holy Nativity. The place chosen was Greccio, not far from Assisi, in the year 1223. Mrs. Oliphant writes:

“In this village, when the eve of the Nativity approached, Francis instructed a certain grave and worthy man, called Giovanni, to prepare an ox and an ass, along with a manger and all the common fittings of a stable, for his use, in the church. When the solemn night arrived, Francis and his brethren arranged all these things into a visible representation of the occurrences of the night at Bethlehem. The manger was filled with hay, the animals were led into their places; the scene was prepared as we see it now through all the churches of Southern Italy-a reproduction, as far as the people know how, in startling realistic detail, of the surroundings of the first Christmas.” [Francis of Assisi, p. 223.]

This dramatic vigil in the forest chapel lingered like a gracious memory among the Sons of Francis. They had learned much from their master; they were to learn still more; but this event brought home to their hearts in an unforgettable manner the human side of the Birth in Bethlehem.

For them Greccio marked the renascence of Christmas. Henceforth it will have a meaning for all Christendom that it never had before, especially after the writings of St. Bonaventura have spread far and wide the Franciscan Gospel. No longer will it seem natural or proper to speak "of the Divine Child as one speaks of a dogma, or of the Mother either as a dogma, or as a moral example."

Theological rhetoric will give way for lyric poetry in which the "pious imagination will form pictures of the Mother's affection and the Child's lovableness." In other words, Greccio, or rather the heart of the Blessed Francis, is the cradle of the Christmas Carol, for out of the new appreciation of the Nativity which he there engendered this type of song sprang.

Something of the kind had appeared once before, as Yrjo Hirn reminds us. Ephraim Syrus, the fourth-century Eastern poet, in his Hymni de nativitate Christi in carne, had "expressed a purely personal and almost dramatically vivid conception of the Holy Mother's loving play with her Child" ; but in the succeeding centuries they were entirely forgotten. Incarnation poetry followed the lead of St. Ambrose whose type of Christmas song, rhetorically splendid and abstractly theological, held sway in the Church till Francis originated, or reinstituted, the cult of the Holy Manger.

Then a warm breath as of spring passed over Europe and the carol-"the folk-tune, the secular song adapted to a sacred theme"-sprang up everywhere. The first Franciscan of genius who lifted up his lyric voice in order to bring Christmas a little nearer home to the people was the Italian Jacopone da Todi (1228-1306).

Noble by birth, and educated to the legal profession, in early middle life he sharply and finally turned his back upon fame and fortune. Shocked out of his worldly, pleasure loving and religiously indifferent life, by the tragic death of his beautiful and saintly wife, he wheeled completely round and in the path of poverty and renunciation set his face steadfastly toward God. In the most assured way to achieve success, particularly when old habits are to be broken up and new ones formed, he swung into the spiritual life with a violent ardour, behaving often in a manner that laid him open to the charge of madness.

Mad he must have seemed to some of his contemporaries, as certainly he would appear to many moderns who so "easily confuse enthusiasm with insanity: especially that reckless enthusiasm which sacrifices dignity to ideal ends." But it is the soul of the man that commands attention. To see and understand this with sympathy is to pass beyond his eccentricities and feel strangely stirred by a man "drunken with the love and compassion of Christ," crazed with devotion to his Lord and Master, whose santa pazia flowered in sanctity and service and also in noble poetry, warranting the remark: "S' e pazzo, e pazzo come allodola" (If he is mad he is mad as the lark).

This wild turbulent aspect of the man is, perhaps, the one best known. It is the one celebrated on his tomb, Stultus propter Christum, nova mundum arte delusit et caelum rapuit (A fool for Christ's sake, by a new artifice, cheated the world and took heaven by storm).

But Miss Evelyn Underhill's inspiring interpretation of his spiritual development, as disclosed in his poetry, shows another side. In her biography he appears not only as a poet of high quality, a most brilliant star in the Franciscan Constellation, but also one of the great mystics of the medieval Church. He waged his spiritual battle, none more earnestly, but eventually he rose above the dust and din of conflict, passed even beyond his Santa pazia, and knew at last that ineffable peace and nameless vision which attend the fruition of mystic contemplation:

The battle is over now,

The travail that drains the blood,

The spirit's struggle for good,-

Peace hath ended the war.

With his helmet on his brow,

Behold the spirit renewed,

With tempered armour endued,

Wound cannot hurt him nor scar,

He looks on the radiance afar,

Asks not for symbol or sign;

No tapers of sense may shine,

On those heights of Eternity.' °

[Evelyn Underhill, Jacopone da Todi, p. 489. Translation by Mrs. Theodore Beck.]

Yet by far the most beautiful and winsome side of the poet appears in his charming Christmas verse. Here, at least, the sanity of his saintliness shines forth, while his mysticism becomes no less apparent.

Many are familiar with the Stabat Mater dolorosa, attributed to Jacopone, and acclaimed the most poignant of all Latin Passion hymns; but it is not so well known that it possesses a jubilant Christmas pendant -Stabat Mater speciosa. Contrasting this joyous song with the sorrowful one Paul Sabatier writes: The sentiment is even more tender, and it is hard to explain its neglect except by an unjust caprice of fate."

These few lines from J. M. Neale's translation will indicate its spirit:

Full of beauty stood the Mother,

By the Manger, blest o'er other,

Where her little One she lays,

For her inmost soul's elation,

In its fervid jubilation,

Thrills with ecstasy of praise."

But like Dante, Jacopone found the common speech a more fluent medium of poetical expression. In the Italian tongue he wrote his ascetic, mystical and Christmas songs. Alluding to the Nativity poems Miss Underhill ranks them "among the most perfect creations of thirteenth-century feeling; expressing that assured faith, that tenderness and intimacy, that happy enjoyment of Christ, of which St. Francis, in such an incident as the setting up of the Crib at Greccio, had been the perfect interpreter."

She proceeds to note their characteristics: "the spirit of play, the accent of romance, a new delicate joy in the human aspect of the Incarnation, in the flowering Life of St. Francis, p. 286. N. B. Some songs hereafter cited, or alluded to, may be by Jacopone's followers and imitators; but in any case they and the master's are all illustrative of the new Franciscan appreciation of the Nativity of Christ for the renewing of Man's faded fields."

In these happy songs Jacopone is not extolling Lady Poverty, or the delicious transports of Love, but bending in adoring wonder over Dio fatto piccino (God made a little thing). In deep mystic mood he gazes into that magnum mysterium et admirabile sacramentum at Bethlehem till

The earth and all the skiey space

Break into flowery smiles-

and not only into smiles, but into the most ravishing harmonies, which he is sure we too might hear did we but listen. The Sacred Babe comes through the portal of birth, not trailing clouds of glory, but like a sweet and fragrant lily, transplanted, as it were, from the celestial paradise to the garden of humanity, there to bloom in unearthly beauty and release among men the subtle aroma of heaven:

Egli e lo giglio de l'umanitade,

de suavitate-

e de perfetto odore.

Odor divino da ciel n'ha recato,

da quel giardino la ove era piantato."

[Trans:` He is the flower-de-lute of humanity, of delicate and perfect fragrance. Divine sweetness from heaven he has brought, from that garden there where he was planted. (Le Laude, da Todi, seconda edizione riveduta e aggiornata, da S. Caramella, Bari, 1930, C., p. 243])