Before the time of the Reformation, the multiplication of sequences (often as unedifying in matter as unpoetical in style) had done much to degrade the common conception of hymnody. In some parts of France, Portugal, Sardinia and Bohemia, their use in the vernacular language had been allowed. In Germany also there were vernacular sequences as early as the 12th century, specimens of which may be seen in the third chapter of C. Winkworth's _Christian Singers of Germany_. Scoffing parodies upon sequences are said to have been among the means used in Scotland to discredit the old church services. After the 15th century they were discouraged at Rome. They retained for a time some of their old popularity among German Protestants, and were only gradually relinquished in France. A new "prose," in honour of St Maxentia, is among the compositions of Jean Baptiste Santeul; and Dr Daniel's second volume closes with one written in 1855 upon the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Roman revision of hymns. The taste of the Renaissance was offended by all deviations from classical prosody and Latinity. Pope Leo X. directed the whole body of the hymns in use at Rome to be reformed; and the _Hymni novi ecclesiastici juxta veram metri et Latinitatis normam_, prepared by Zacharie Ferreri (1479-1530), a Benedictine of Monte Cassino, afterwards a Carthusian and bishop of Guardia, to whom Leo had committed that task, appeared at Rome in 1525, with the sanction of a later pope, Clement VII. The next step was to revise the whole Roman Breviary. That undertaking, after passing through several stages under different popes (particularly Pius V. and Clement VIII.), was at last brought to a conclusion by Urban VIII., in 1631. From this revised Breviary a large number of medieval hymns, both of the earlier and the later periods, were excluded; and in their places many new hymns, including some by Pope Urban himself, and some by Cardinal Bellarmine and another cardinal (Silvius Antonianus) were introduced. The hymns of the primitive epoch, from Hilary to Gregory the Great, for the most part retained their places (especially in the offices for every day of the week); and there remained altogether from seventy to eighty of earlier date than the 11th century. Those, however, which were so retained were freely altered, and by no means generally improved. The revisers appointed by Pope Urban (three learned Jesuits--Strada, Gallucci and Petrucci) professed to have made "as few changes as possible" in the works of Ambrose, Gregory, Prudentius, Sedulius, Fortunatus and other "poets of great name." But some changes, even in those works, were made with considerable boldness; and the pope, in the "constitution" by which his new book was promulgated, boasted that, "with the exception of a very small number ('perpaucis'), which were either prose or merely rhythmical, all the hymns had been made