Should it please the reader to explore the Church’s rich repository of Latin poetry, I shall gladly introduce you. Surely, it is a noble study which you undertake, and I hope to direct your desire to profitably see its fulfillment. Our holy Mother, the Church, possesses an inexhaustible library of sacred verses for our ædification in the Truth, and this Quadragesimal season affords us a worthy opportunity for familiarizing ourselves with its texts.
Over the next few articles, I shall introduce you – or reintroduce you, should you already be acquainted with it – to the hymn Audi, benigne Conditor, which the Roman Church chants in her Vesperal Offices throughout the first four weeks of Lent. It is a beautiful composition, traditionally ascribed to Saint Gregory the Great, whose dies natalis – his birthday into his heavenly life – we commemorate this day. Through a brief study of it, I shall – eodem sancto adiuvante – extend to you some good counsel for reading Latin verse, which shall no doubt equip you well for studying other compositions of a similar poetic style.
First, in the study of any poem, you must know a little bit about its form. Audi, benigne Conditor, as with many of the Roman Church’s hymns, is written in a metre known as iambic dimeter. You may be unfamiliar with the signification of the term iambic dimeter, so let me explain. A line of iambic dimeter in Latin poetry consists of eight syllables, which are divided into two measures of four syllables each. Allow me to illustrate this with the first stanza of our hymn:
Audi, benigne Conditor,
Nostras preces cum fletibus,
In hoc sacro ieiunio
Fusas quadragenario.
As you may see, each line possesses eight syllables. That is clear enough. The term iambic dimeter, however, may be confusing to you, for if you know iambic dimeter in English, you would object that this hymn exceeds its numerical limit. The term dimeter, as you well know, signifies two measures only, as in English poetry we admit of no distinction between measures and feet. Thus, the lines of Thomas Hardy’s poem The Robin, written in iambic dimeter, possesses a restraint unparalleled to Saint Gregory’s composition. Consider the first stanza of his poem:
When up aloft
I fly and fly,
I see in pools
The shining sky,
And a happy bird
Am I, am I!
Clearly, there is a difference between what iambic dimeter signifies in English and what it signifies in Latin. The principal distinction is that, whereas English reckons measures and feet as synonymous terms, Latin does not. (Here, I shall be somewhat imprecise with the language I employ, with the hope of explaining this point more clearly.) In Latin poetry, iambic measures consist of two feet, and each foot has two syllables.
To illustrate with the first measure of the second line of Audi, benigne Conditor – Nostras preces – here we see two feet. The first foot, Nostras, has two syllables, and the second, preces, has two as well. Then, in adding the second measure from that line – cum fletibus – we see two more feet, the division of which falling within the word fletibus. Thus, in all, each line of iambic dimeter in Latin consists of eight syllables, with four feets spread across two measures. If it is helpful for you, you may make a mental association of Latin’s iambic dimeter with English’s iambic tetrameter, for they are equally octosyllabic. The opening line of Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress may serve as a memorable reference point: Had we but world enough and time.
There is something else you should know about the form of Gregory’s hymn, especially as it pertains to scanning his iambic dimeter. (Scanning is the proper term for enumerating measures within Latin poetry. There are other metres for composing verse, and they follow different rules for the measuring of their lines.) When we read, for instance, Marvell’s words, Had we but world enough and time, you may have noticed that the principal accent of each foot falls on its second syllable. Thus, we observe that the syllables we, world, -nough, and time receive the stress of our pronunciation, whereas Had, but, e-, and and do not. We consequently conclude that this is a line of iambic metre, because we observe a movement between alternating unstressed and stressed syllables.
Latin poetry, however, approaches iambic metre differently. Let us examine the second line of Gregory’s hymn once more – Nostras preces cum fletibus. Where, may I ask, does the principal accent of each foot fall? In searching, we shall find that it falls on the syllables Nostr-, pre-, cum, and fle-, that is, the first, third, fifth, and sixth of the line. Accentually, then, we see a major difference between Marvell’s iambic metre and Gregory’s. Moreover, we may say that Gregory’s line of iambic dimeter has more in common with Shakespeare’s trochaic tetrameter. Take, for instance, the well-known couplet from the English Bard’s Macbeth: Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Here, the stress of each foot falls on its first syllable, so that there is a steady movement between alternating stressed and unstressed syllables: the definition of trochaic metre.
How is it then, you may ask, that we reckon Shakespeare’s verse as trochaic, while we reckon Gregory’s as iambic? The distinction lies herein: Latin verse is scanned, not accentually, but quantitatively. With English verse, we assess the quality of metre by the placement of accents within a line, and so we read Had wé but wórld enóugh and tíme as iambic tetrameter, while we read Fíre búrn and cáuldron búbble as trochaic tetrameter (with accents noted for your convenience).
With Latin verse, however – and especially earlier verse, before the medieval transition from quantitative to accentual verse – we assess the quality of metre by the placement of long and short syllables within a line. What do I mean by this? If you have ever had the pleasure of studying Latin and its pronunciation, you may remember the concept of macrons. (The Latin name for this Greek term is apices, and you may remember Our Lord’s words from the Holy Gospel according to Saint Matthew, in which he says, Amen quippe dico vobis, donec transeat cælum et terra, iota unum aut unus apex non præteribit a lege, donec omnia fiant. Apices, I shall say briefly, are worth knowing.) Macrons, as you may recall, float above certain vowels within words, indicating to the reader that a particular syllable is held for a longer length of time than the other syllables in the word. Thus, for instance, Dominus, the Latin word for the Lord, has no long syllables, bearing no macrons of any of its three syllables. Here, the word is in its nominative case, and by nature of the Latin language bears its accent on its first syllable, Do-.
Let us take the same word, however, in its genitive form, Dominī, meaning of the Lord. Here, the word now has one long syllable, its last, bearing no macrons still on its first two syllables. Still it bears its accent on the first syllable, the root not having changed from its form in the nominative case. Thus, if one were to ask you where the accent fell on in the word Dominī, you would correctly respond and say its first syllable, but if one were to ask you where its longest syllable fell, you would respond and say its last.
To make a brief but informative digression, I shall tell you a little bit about the word Dominus. Dominus is, in the history of Latin Poetry, a rather special word. It is a word which, properly-speaking, cannot fit into iambic dimeter, being irregularly-shaped for the confines of the metre, and irregularly-timed for the duration of the line. Accentually, the word can fit just fine at the end of the line, but quantitatively, it has no place. Thus, you rarely find it in the iambic verses of early authors, but as later authors began to exchange quantity for accents, you will start to find the word appear in their compositions. Thus, you will find in the doxology of Memento, salutis Auctor, a traditional hymn for the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, the line – Gloria tibi, Domine. (The aforementioned hymn is a troubled one quantitatively, to say the least).
The word Conditor, however, which Gregory deploys in the first line of the hymn we are presently studying, features quite prominently in iambic dimeter, fitting snugly into the sixth, seventh, and eighth syllables of verses across many hymns, as in Saint Ambrose’s Aeterne rerum Conditor, as well as in Gregory’s own Immense caeli Conditor and Telluris ingens Conditor. This, in short, shall suffice to explain why Gregory chooses Conditor, and not a quantitatively-unfit word like Domine.
Thus, having established that the form of Gregory’s iambic dimeter is scanned quantitatively, not accentually, how should we scan the line? Allow me to represent the first stanza once more, this time with macrons to designate which syllables are long and which syllables are short:
Audī, benigne Conditor,
Nostrās precēs cum flētibus,
In hōc sacrō ieiūniō
Fūsās quadrāgēnārio.
As you see above, some lines have many macrons, while others have few. I shall explain the reason for this diversity in the next article, when we study the first stanza of Gregory’s hymn with a greater depth. For your appreciation and enjoyment, however, I shall leave you with this recording of Audi, benigne Conditor sung according to its Gregorian chant. This is a hymn not only worth studying, but also worth singing!
A blessed dies natalis of good Saint Gregory to you all.
