Hymn in honour of *Columba (virgin and martyr of Sens, S01862) composed in Latin in Hispania, possibly in the 7th c.
E04660
Literary - Poems
Liturgical texts
Hymnodia Hispanica, Hymn 103
IN SANCTAE COLVMBAE
(1) Nardus Columbe floruit,
ligustra fraglant ortuli,
fulcite letam floribus,
stipate malis uirginem.
5 (2) Hec regis abta amplexibus
et osculis gratissima
Xristo fidem, quam sponderat,
cruoris arra consecrat
(3) Ignes gemellos seculi
10 strabit, subegit, depulit:
flammam petulcam barbari
focosque admotos sibi,
(4) Quum in lupanar posita
intrantis ad se luridam
15 libidinem conpescuit,
seseque flammis exuit
(5) Sic liberata ab ignibus,
locis retracta scenicis,
mucrone stricto plectitur,
nuptura celo adsciscitur.
(6) Cui uox ab astris intonat,
"ueni, Columba", personat,
tu, uocibus nostris fabens
ac nos polorum compotes.
Presta, pater.
'ON SAINT COLUMBA
(1) The nard of Columba flourished, the flowers of the garden smell pleasantly. Support the joyous virgin with flowers and compass her about with apples [cf. Song of Songs 2:5].
(2) Worthy of the embraces of the king and most agreeable to kiss, she hallowed her faithful promise to Christ with the pledge of blood.
(3) She quenched, overcame, and removed the double fire of the world: the lustful flame of a barbarian and the blaze that approached her:
(4) While she was placed in the brothel, she repressed the lurid lust of those coming to her, and that way she escaped from the flames.
(5) Freed from this fire, she was taken from the theatre [i.e. from the brothel adjoining an amphitheatre], she was struck by a sharp sword, and was accepted as a bride into heaven.
(6) To you the voice from the stars sings: "Come, Columba [i.e. the dove of Song of Songs 2:10]", please hear our voices and let us have our share of heavens.
Hear us, o Father.' [the beginning of the last strophe with the doxology]
Text: Castro Sánchez 2010, 383-384.
Translation and summary: M. Szada.
Service for the saint
Chant and religious singing
Non Liturgical ActivityPrayer/supplication/invocation
Composing and translating saint-related texts
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesWomen
Source
This hymn in honour of Columba is written in trimetric dimeter. The fact that it is in a good quantitative metre could suggest that it was composed in the 7th c., and the feast of Columba was certainly present in the Spanish liturgy at the end of the 7th c., because there is a prayer for her feast day in the Orationale Visigothicum (see E05172; the manuscript is from the 7th/8th c.).The placing of Columba in a brothel, the voice from heaven saying: Veni, Columba, and her death by the sword closely echo the narrative of the Martyrdom of Columba (BHL 1892; E06285) included in the Spanish Passionary (the ms. is from the 9th c.). It is likely that the author of the hymn knew this Martyrdom.
The attribution of the hymn to Bishop Maximus of Zaragoza (the 6th/7th c.), which sometimes appears in scholarship (Blume 1897, 148; Fear 2011, 113, n. 25; Castro Sánchez 2014, 283, n. a), cannot be supported by any evidence.
Two manuscripts conserve the text of the hymn: Psalmi Cantica et Hymni, Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, ms. 10001 from the 9th/11th c.; and Officia Toletana, London, British Library Add. 30844 from the 10th c.
Josef Pérez de Urbell’s method of dating hymns:
The method is based on two preliminary assumptions:
a) that the bulk of the Hispanic liturgy was composed in the seventh century, the ‘golden age’ of the Hispanic church, and that important intellectual figures of this period (Braulio of Zaragoza, Isidore of Seville, Eugenius of Toledo, and others) participated in its creation;
b) that the liturgy was, nevertheless, still developing and changing in the period after the Arab invasion, and therefore, many texts which we find in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries liturgical manuscripts might be of more recent date. Some hymns can be dated with some confidence to the period after 711, for instance if they mention ‘hagaric oppression’ or if they are in honour of saints whose cult appears to have been imported into Hispania after the seventh century (since they do not feature in earlier literary and epigraphic evidence, nor are attested in the oldest liturgical book from Hispania, the Orationale Visigothicum).
It is more difficult to identify the hymns which are certainly from before 711. Pérez de Urbell, firstly and reasonably, attributed to this group hymns with what appear to be reliable attributions to authors from the seventh century (like Braulio of Zaragoza or Quiricius of Barcelona), and those which are stylistically close to the poetry of Eugenius of Toledo from the seventh century.
Pérez de Urbell then compared the two groups of hymns – those probably earlier than 711, and those probably later – and noticed the following:
a) late hymns contain barbarisms and solecisms, while early ones are written in correct Latin;
b) late hymns are composed in rhythmic metres, while early ones are in correct classical quantitative metres; authors of the eighth and ninth century who attempted to write in quantitative metres always made mistakes; also from the eighth century onwards we have no more poetic inscriptions in quantitative metres;
c) some rhythmical poetry could nevertheless be early;
d) although both early and late hymns sometimes have rhymes, perfect rhymes occur only in late hymns.
In the absence of any certain indications for dating, Pérez de Urbell assumed that a hymn is early if at least two requirements were met: the Latin is ‘correct’ and there are no perfect rhymes. He also considered early every hymn composed in a quantitative metre.
Bibliography
Editions:Blume, C., Hymnodia Gothica. Die Mozarabischen Hymnen des alt-spanischen Ritus (Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevii 27; Leipzig: O.R. Reisland, 1897).
Castro Sánchez, J., Hymnodia hispanica (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 167; Turnhout: Brepols, 2010).
Castro Sánchez, J., Hymnodia hispánica (Corpus Christianorum in Translation 19; Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). Spanish translation.
Further reading:
Fábrega Grau, Á., Pasionario hispánico, (Madrid, Barcelona: Atenas A.G., 1953).
Fear, A., Lives of the Visigothic Fathers (Translated Texts for Historians 26; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011).
Pérez de Urbel, J., "Origen de los himnos mozárabes," Bulletin Hispanique 28 (1926), 5-21, 113-139, 209-245, 305-320.
Marta Szada
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S01862 | Columba, virgin and martyr of Sens | Columba | Certain |
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