Another name associated with the rise of sacred Latin poetry is that of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. It will ever be to the glory of this fourth-century Father that Augustine ascribed to him his conversion, and sought baptism at his hands. His illustrious convert tells, in the ninth book of his “Confessions,” how the bishop defended the churches of Milan against the intrusion of Arian modes of worship, in spite of the efforts put forth by Justina, mother of the Emperor Valentinian, to obtain one of the basilicas for the use of the party she favoured. Alarmed by a report that he might be removed by force, the devout people of the city surrounded the bishop day and night, ready to die with him rather than allow him to be apprehended. He, on his part, to stimulate their zeal and sustain their courage, supplied them with hymns to sing in honour of the Trinity. “Then,” writes Augustine, “it was first instituted that, after the manner of the Eastern churches, hymns and psalms should be sung, lest the people should wax faint through the tediousness of sorrow; and from that day to this the custom is retained, divers (yea, almost all Thy) congregations throughout other parts of the world following herein.” Well nigh a hundred hymns have at one time or another passed under the title Ambrosian, but the number of authenticated pieces is pitiably small, not exceeding four. In that small group the _Te Deum laudamus_, at one time ascribed to the Bishop of Milan, does not find a place. For, as in the case of the _Gloria in Excelsis Deo_, the _Dies Iræ_, and the _Veni, Sancte Spiritus_, the question who wrote the _Te Deum_ has not received a final answer, if, indeed, it ever will. Of this, however, we may be well assured, that in the time of Jerome of the fifth century, hymns were in general use throughout the Western as in the Eastern Church. Writing to Marcellus, that most scholarly and erudite among the Fathers of the Latin Church assured his correspondent “You could not go into the field but you might hear the ploughman at his _Hallelujah_, the mower at his hymns, and the vine-dresser singing David’s Psalms.” From the days of Hilary and of Ambrose, of Augustine and of Jerome, onwards through the patristic period of Church history, and all down the medieval centuries, there never failed to be a goodly succession of hymn-writers. To mention these, however briefly, would necessitate a violation of the limits of this essay. We refrain from attempting even an enumeration all the more readily, because an opportunity of giving brief biographical notices of the more outstanding contributors to the treasures of sacred Latin poetry will occur in the following pages when specimens of their masterpieces are submitted to the reader. A few sentences may be added bearing upon the hymns contained in the service-books of the Church of Rome, and upon the relation of Latin hymnody to the Churches of the Reformation.