Apart from the lyric, there are in the general field of Latin verse many resemblances to hymnic models. The lengthy narrative poems of the _Peristephanon_ in which Prudentius recounted the sufferings of the martyrs, St. Laurence, St. Vincent, St. Agnes, St. Eulalia and others, and celebrated their spiritual victories, have been called hymns. It has been argued that they were actually sung,[5] in full, upon the festival days of the saints in question although the praises of St. Vincent, for example, are expanded to 576 lines, other hymns varying from 66 to 1140 lines. It may have been possible in the more leisurely tempo of medieval life to render the martyr hymns of Prudentius in their entirety. A far more provocative suggestion makes them the starting point for the medieval saints’ legend of which illustrations exist in lengthy Latin poems and later, in vernacular verse. The contribution of hymns to the liturgical drama of the Church has been noted in connection with the sequence, _Victimae paschali laudes_. It is nowhere contended that the hymn created the drama but that the dramatic phraseology is often reminiscent of the hymn and that the role of the singers in the _schola cantorum_ and the choir, as actors in the liturgical play, becomes significant in connection with the hymnic origins of these productions within the church.[6] Finally, an interesting group of Latin poems having an interrelation with the hymn is illustrated by _O Roma nobilis_, a tenth century lyric praising the apostles and martyrs of the Eternal City (_A. H._ 51. 219).[7] The transition from Latin to vernacular languages took place as soon as the latter were sufficiently developed to produce Christian verse. The Gospels were rendered into Germanic rhymed verse in the ninth century by Otfried the Frank who inserted a hymn of ten stanzas as a poetic version of the opening of St. John’s Gospel. It is written in seven-syllable couplets with four or six to a stanza.[8] Otfried is said to have been influenced by Rabanus Maurus and with good reason since the latter was a recognized leader in mediating Latin patristic and other writings to the Germanic world of his day. Otfried was the first of many medieval poets whose religious lyrics in the vernacular, often revealing the inspiration of the Latin hymn, have been preserved. Their verse appears in Wackernagel’s great collection in which he has edited 1448 specimens from the time of Otfried to that of Hans Sachs.[9]