Nor was the interest confined to him. Everywhere in the Christian schools choristers were trained. Jerome speaks of hymn-singing or chants in the schools, where the little ones sing of Pharaoh’s disaster in the Red Sea and the triumph of the just.[1313] Claudianus Mamertus trained a choir for his brother, the Bishop of Vienne[1314] (_instructas docuit sonare classes_). Antiphonal singing (i.e. the older practice of the alternate singing of psalms) is often mentioned. Sidonius speaks of the monks and priests who chant psalms with alternating sweetness,[1315] and we have seen how Caesarius, when he became bishop, made his congregation sing in this way. In the clerical training singing came to be very important. It was forbidden by Gregory to take orders without it. Columban complains of the harsh discipline which accompanied it.[1316] The beginnings of hymn-singing in this period have a particular interest for Gaul because they are connected with Hilary of Poitiers. We have Jerome’s statement ‘Hilarius in hymnorum carmine Gallos indociles vocat’,[1317] which seems to mean more than the remark he makes elsewhere[1318] that among the works of Hilary was _Liber hymnorum et mysteriorum_. For it suggests that Hilary tried to introduce hymn-singing into Gaul and did not meet with great success. This is supported by the definite statement of Isidore of Seville ‘Hymnorum carmine (Hilarius) floruit _primus_’.[1319] With Ambrose, Hilary shares the distinction of being a pioneer in this department. So important was their work that the Fourth Council of Toledo (633) in its Thirteenth Canon referred to their hymns (‘quos beatissimi doctores Hilarius atque Ambrosius ediderunt’). These hymns were regarded as having a sort of direct spiritual influence which effected the routing of a personal devil[1320]—a conception which appears throughout the Middle Ages and in _Faust_. But they had their value for literature as well. Apart from the beauty of some of Ambrose’s hymns, the metres which they popularized formed a point from which the development of specifically modern metres can be traced. The influence of these hymns which the mass of the people, unprejudiced by an elaborate training in classical metres, daily heard and sang, must have been enormous in forming a public opinion on the technique of poetry. For there are few things that grip the popular imagination more than tunes of this kind. Bulaeus[1321] states that Nicetius, Bishop of Lyons in the latter half of the sixth century, was the first to introduce hymn-singing into the church at Lyons. He refers to the epitaph which we find in the Bollandist records:[1322] Psallere praecepit, normamque tenere canendi _primus_ et alterutrum tendere voce chorum.