Ambrosian Hymns - Early Hymns

Early Hymns

The first actually to compose hymns was St. Hilary, who had spent in Asia Minor some years of exile from his see, and had thus become acquainted with the Syrian and Greek hymns of the Eastern Church. His Liber Hymnorum has not survived. Daniel, in his Thesaurus Hymnologicus mistakenly attributed seven hymns to Hilary, two of which were considered by hymnologists generally to have had good reason for the ascription, until Blume showed the error underlying the ascription. The two hymns have the metric and strophic cast peculiar to the authenticated hymns of St. Ambrose and to the hymns which were afterwards composed on the model.

Like St. Hilary, St. Ambrose was also a "Hammer of the Arians". Answering their complaints on this head, he says:

"Assuredly I do not deny it ... All strive to confess their faith and know how to declare in verse the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost."

And St. Augustine speaks of the occasion when the hymns were introduced by Ambrose to be sung "according to the fashion of the East".