This volume collects one hundred of the most important and beloved Late Antique and Medieval Latin hymns from Western Europe. Ranging from Ambrose in the late fourth century to Bonaventure in the thirteenth, the authors meditate on the ineffable, from Passion to Paradise, and cover a broad gamut of poetic forms and meters.

"This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it." --

Excerpt from A Study of Latin Hymns This volume is the result of a critical reading of over eight hundred Latin hymns, psalms, and canticles. The treatment of the subject is as nearly chronological as the nature of the material permits, thus making it a suitable compendium for a brief study of this minor but unique part of Latin literature. The notes and lists of hymns in the appendix are arranged for convenience of reference with titles or first lines in alphabetical order, the source - author, breviary or period - and a place where each hymn may be found. Great uncertainty prevails as to authorship and date of many of the hymns although approximation to a period is generally to be trusted. While the commentary is intelligible to a reader not familiar with the Latin, a sufficient number of hymns in the original are given to make it a collection representative of the principal styles and the important periods so that it may be used as a collateral text-book in the study of lyrics of the post-classic ages. The work is without doctrinal bias; its chief interest, however, lies in the fact that although pursued in a purely historical way, it reveals the value of the Christian hymns as human documents. In the expression of religious feeling, hymn-writers of periods and places remote from each other are bound by an indissoluble bond which as intimately unites our time and theirs. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.