How can we reach the inner meaning of the Nativity feast, its significance for the faithful? Better, perhaps, by the way of |28| poetry than by the way of ritual, for it is poetry that reveals the emotions at the back of the outward observances, and we shall understand these better when the singers of Christmas have laid bare to us their hearts. We may therefore first give attention to the Christmas poetry of sundry ages and peoples, and then go on to consider the liturgical and popular ritual in which the Church has striven to express her joy at the Redeemer's birth. Ceremonial, of course, has always mimetic tendencies, and in a further chapter we shall see how these issued in genuine drama; how, in the miracle plays, the Christmas story was represented by the forms and voices of living men. |29| |30| |31| Part I--The Christian Feast CHAPTER II CHRISTMAS POETRY (I)[8]{1} Ancient Latin Hymns, their Dogmatic, Theological Character--Humanizing Influence of Franciscanism--Jacopone da Todi's Vernacular Verse--German Catholic Poetry--Mediaeval English Carols. [Illustration: MADONNA ENTHRONED WITH SAINTS AND ANGELS. PESELLINO (_Empoli Gallery_)] Christmas, as we have seen, had its beginning at the middle of the fourth century in Rome. The new feast was not long in finding a hymn-writer to embody in immortal Latin the emotions called forth by the memory of the Nativity. "Veni, redemptor gentium" is one of the earliest of Latin hymns--one of the few that have come down to us from the father of Church song, Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan (d. 397). Great as theologian and statesman, Ambrose was great also as a poet and systematizer of Church music. "Veni, redemptor gentium" is above all things stately and severe, in harmony with the austere character of the zealous foe of the Arian heretics, the champion of monasticism. It is the theological aspect alone of Christmas, the redemption of sinful man by the mystery of the Incarnation and the miracle of the Virgin Birth, that we find in St. Ambrose's terse and pregnant Latin; there is no feeling for the human pathos and poetry of the scene at Bethlehem-- "Veni, redemptor gentium, Ostende partum virginis; Miretur omne saeculum: Talis decet partus Deum. |32| Non ex virili semine, Sed mystico spiramine, Verbum Dei factum caro, Fructusque ventris floruit."[9]{2} * * * * *