"So the strong Lion of Judah, shattering the gates of dreadful death, rises the third day; at His Father's roaring voice, He carries aloft His spoils to the bosom of the supernal mother.[1]
"After three days the whale gives back from his belly's narrow house Jonas the fugitive, type of the true Jonas. The grape of Cyprus[2] blooms again, opens and grows apace. The synagogue's flower withers, while flourishes the Church.[3]
"Death and life fought together: truly Christ arose, and with Him many witnesses of glory. A new morn, a glad morn shall wipe away the tears of evening: life overcame destruction; it is a time of joy.
"Jesu victor, Jesu life, Jesu life's beaten way, thou whose death quelled death, bid us to the paschal board in trust. O Bread of life, O living Wave, O true and fruitful Vine, do thou feed us, do thou cleanse us, that thy grace may save us from the second death. Amen."
From the time of that old third-century hymn ascribed to Clement of Alexandria,[4] hymns to Christ had been filled with symbolism, the symbolism of loving personification of His attributes, as well as with the more formal symbolism of His Old Testament prefigurements. Adam's symbolism is of both kinds. It has feeling even when dogmatic,[5] and throbs with devotion as its theme approaches the Gospel Christ. Prevailing modes of thought and feeling may prescribe topics for verse which a succeeding age will find curiously unpoetic. Yet if the later time have a sympathetic understanding for the past, it will recognize how fervid and how songful was that bygone verse—the verse of Adam's hymns, for instance. In one for Christmas Day, beginning:
"Potestate, non natura,
Fit Creator creatura,"[6]
- ↑ The allusion here is to the statement of mediaeval Bestiaries that the lion cub, when born, lies lifeless for three days, till awakened by his father's roar. The supernal mother is the Church triumphant.
- ↑ The body of Christ, i.e. the Church.
- ↑ A topic everywhere represented in church windows and cathedral sculpture.
- ↑ Printed at the end of his Paedagogus; see Taylor, Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages, pp. 253-255, where it is translated.
- ↑ Although the dogmas of Christianity were formulated by reason, they were cradled in love and hate. Nowadays, in a time when dogmas are apt to be thought useless clogs to the spirit, it is well for the historically-minded to remember the power of emotional devotion which they have inspired in other times.
- ↑ Gautier, Œuvres d'Adam (1st ed., vol. i. p. 11); Gautier (3rd ed., p. 269) doubts whether this hymn is Adam's. But for the purpose of illustrating the symbolism of the twelfth-century hymn, the question of authorship is not important.
