Another fine hymn often heard in English churches is of a slightly later date. "Corde natus ex Parentis" ("Of the Father's love begotten") is a cento from a larger hymn by the Spanish poet Prudentius (_c._ 348-413). Prudentius did not write for liturgical purposes, and it was several centuries before "Corde natus" was adopted into the cycle of Latin hymns. Its elaborate rhetoric is very unlike the severity of "Veni, redemptor gentium," but again the note is purely theological; the Incarnation as a world-event is its theme. It sings the Birth of Him who is "Corde natus ex Parentis Ante mundi exordium, Alpha et O cognominatus, Ipse fons et clausula Omnium quae sunt, fuerunt, Quaeque post futura sunt Saeculorum saeculis."[10]{3} Other early hymns are "A solis ortus cardine" ("From east to west, from shore to shore"), by a certain Coelius Sedulius (d. _c._ 450), still sung by the Roman Church at Lauds on Christmas Day, and "Jesu, redemptor omnium" (sixth century), the office hymn at Christmas Vespers. Like the poems of Ambrose and Prudentius, they are in classical metres, unrhymed, and based upon quantity, not accent, and they have the same general character, doctrinal rather than humanly tender. In the ninth and tenth centuries arose a new form of hymnody, the Prose or Sequence sung after the Gradual (the anthem between the Epistle and Gospel at Mass). The earliest writer of sequences was Notker, a monk of the abbey of St. Gall, near |33| the Lake of Constance. Among those that are probably his work is the Christmas "Natus ante saecula Dei filius." The most famous Nativity sequence, however, is the "Laetabundus, exsultet fidelis chorus" of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153), once sung all over Europe, and especially popular in England and France. Here are its opening verses:-- "Laetabundus, Exsultet fidelis chorus; Alleluia! Regem regum Intactae profudit thorus; Res miranda! Angelus consilii Natus est de Virgine, Sol de stella! Sol occasum nesciens, Stella semper rutilans, Semper clara."[11]{4} The "Laetabundus" is in rhymed stanzas; in this it differs from most early proses. The writing of rhymed sequences, however, became common through the example of the Parisian monk, Adam of St. Victor, in the second half of the twelfth century. He adopted an entirely new style of versification and music, derived from popular songs; and he and his successors in |34| the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries wrote various proses for the Christmas festival.