>"Many other hymns are attributed to Raban, but without any clear
>justification.  Thus an uncertain tradition assigns to him the famous 'Veni,
>Creator Spiritus', the solemn hymn of consecration sung when pontiffs and
>kings are crowned, at the election of bishops and at the translation of holy
>relics.  If, however, it cannot be proved that this splendid hymn is the
>work of Raban, it is certain that it belongs to the ninth century, and is a
>fruit of the Carolingian Renaissance."
>
>No doubt we have members who have done specialised research on Rabanus, who
>can give us their expert opinion on the authorship question.

Dear Bill,

I am not really an expert for Hrabanus and have not even read the major
study of this problem of attribution, Heinrich Lausberg, _Der Hymnus 'Veni
creator spiritus'_, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1979 (= Abhandlungen der
Rheinisch-Westfa"lischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 64), 212 pp., but I
suppose that this is one of the many problems of attribution where even
experts are unlikely ever to reach conclusive answers. While Hraban's
figural poems on the cross have a rich and excellent manuscript tradition,
the collection of his carmina de diversis and hyms was preserved only in a
single codex Fuldensis, written in the 10th century, which was discovered
-- in already damaged and altered form -- and printed by Brower in 1617,
and of which after further damages only less than the first half (not
including, as I understand it, the hymns nor the hymn in question) has
survived (in Einsiedeln, not in in Fulda). As far as I know, _Veni creator_
is attributed to Hrabanus only by this formerly Fuldan witness, which is
not generally reliable because it contains or contained several later
additions and several pieces which are obvious misattributions, whereas
other medieval witnesses of _Veni creator_ don't seem to assign the text to
a specific author. The dubious textual grounds of this attribution, on the
one hand, and the mostly depreciative views, on the other, which modern
scholars have formed about Hraban's poetic gifts and literary skills, have
led a majority of scholars to doubt that Hraban could have composed what is
generally regarded as a masterpiece of hymnodic poetry. I myself have no
firm opinion, neither about the question of attribution nor about Hraban's
poetic gifts, although I don't really share the widespread depreciation of
the latter. Maybe the hymn is really too good to be from Hrabanus, but his
authentic writings are certainly still good enough for me, if not as poetry
in a modern sense, at least as a fascinating object of historical study. 

One of my primary interests in Hrabanus are his techniques of numerical
composition. Following the Ambrosian model, _Veni creator_ is written in
akatalectic iambic dimeters arranged as quatrains, but while Ambrosian
hymns usually have eight quatrains here we have seven, giving us 7 x 4 = 28
verses. The number seven very obviously yields its meaning in the light of
the Holy Spirit being addressed as "sevenfold in your gifts" (tu
septiformis munere v.9), according to the traditionol notion of the septem
dona spritus sancti, as they were found in Is 11,1ss.: sapientia,
intellectus, consilium, fortitudo, scientia, pietas, timor (used, btw, by
Hrabanus for figura XVI of his _Liber de laudibus sanctae crucis_, where
the seven gifts arranged as 3+1+3 flowers form the vertical and horizontal
bar of a flowering cross to represent the "flos" Christi of Is 11,1ss.).
But there is not, in addition to this summaric correspondence, also a
thematic arrangement of the seven quatrains in accordance with these seven
gifts, that is, it seems not possible to assign a specific gift to each
quatrain. Nor is there a thematic arrangement corresponding to the
traditional subdivision of the number seven into four and three or three
and four (refering to the fourfold creature and triune creator, or to
faith/trinity and works/cardinal virues). 

But there can be found a clear subdivision of the seven quatrains into six
and one, marked by the shift from addressing the Spirit exclusively
(Quatrains I-VI) to addressing the whole Trinity in the doxological closing
Quatrain VII. In the context of biblical number exegesis, subdivisions of
seven as 6+1 can often be suspected to be founded on the biblical Heptade
which had informed the exegetical understanding of this number even more
deeply than the notion of the seven gifts, that is, they can be suspected
to be related to the seven days of creation and their subdivision as six
days of creation proper and one day of rest. In a somewhat different way,
Hrabanus had divided his Commentary on Matthew into seven books devoted to
the life and passion of Christ, and an eight book devoted to His
resurrection, thus relating his work -- as he himself points out at the
beginning of book VIII (PL 107,1097) -- to the weekdays of the passion
(cruxifixion on the 6th day, rest on the seventh, resurrection on the
eight) in their relation to the days of creation and to the ages of the
world. In _Veni creator spiritus_, the focus is not on Christ and his
passion, but on the Spirit, highlighted as "creator" (and also creator of
the human "pectora": "quae tu creasti" v.4), and this thematic focus would
match very well with the numerical arrangement of the 6+1 quatrains as
referring to the 6+1 days (although there is no possibility to assign
specific days of creation or ages of the world to each quatrains of this
hymn). In addition, this thematic aspect would match also with the entire
number of 7 x 4 = 28 verses: there were various interpretations of the
number 28, subdividing it as 7 x 4 (with seven as a sabbatical number
signifying the observance of the Old Law, and four signifying the New
Tetament), or as 1+2+4+7+14=28 (according to the arithmetical understanding
of 28 as being, after 6, the second "numerus perfectus secundum partium
aggregationem", i.e. number equal to the sum of its possible divisors 1, 2,
4, 7 and 14, an understanding adopted by Hraban for the formal arrangement
of the 28 carmina figurata of his _Liber de laudibus sanctae crucis_). All
these interpretations of 28, current since patristic times and adopted by
Hrabanus elsewhere in his writings, inferred the meaning of the number
Seven (or Six) from the week of creation, and it seems to me that this is
also the case in the 6+1 = 7 quatrains = 28 verses of _Veni creator spiritus_.

This compositional structure, if I interpret it correctly, would fit in
very well with the compositional techniques applied by Hrabanus in his
other writings, but these techniques were fairly widespread in Carolingian
times and cannot serve as a watermark of Hraban's work exclusively, and so
they cannot help us to determin whether Hraban was or was rather not the
author of _Veni creator_.
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