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>"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_. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Otfried Lieberknecht, Schoeneberger Str. 11, D-12163 Berlin phone & fax: ++49 30 8516675, E-mail: [log in to unmask] Homepage for Dante Studies: http://members.aol.com/lieberk/welcome.html Listowner Italian-Studies: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/italian-studies/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%