st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

144 ST -
JOHN OK DAMASCUS.
for a time in the Roman
though made unfashionable
literary world by the preference shown to the Greek,
had probably never died out, nor ceased to enshrine
the songs of the people. 1 Hence, its use in church
hymnody would be a revival rather than a novelty,
and would appeal with genial force to the national
sentiment.
In the Greek Church, as the metres borrowed by
Virgil and Horace were indigenous, they had, as
might be expected, a longer struggle for existence.
St. Gregory of Nazianzus, for example, wrote in the
ordinary classical metres and his iambics have much
;
of the Attic grace and spirit in them. But even
against the iambic metre, as framed on strict rules,
there were objections ever growing in strength. Its
use brought back the associations of the Attic stage.
The increasing power of accent over quantity made
it more and more inconvenient to conform to its
proper laws. On the other hand, the Greek language,
in this its
period of decadence, had not, for various
reasons, the resource which its sister tongue pos
sessed and developed so freely that of rhyme. And
hence, as a matter of fact, by the beginning of the
eighth century, the use of verse had in the great
1
See on this subject the introduction to Trench s "Sacred
Latin Poetry,"
and also that to Kynaston s "Miscellaneous
Poems." The lines in this metre were scanned by accent, as is
the case in modern languages, without regard to the quantity of
the syllables. The following stanza will give a good idea of the
Saturnian metre :
Go fetch my sword, Excalibar,
Now by my faye that grim baron
Go saddle me my steed,
Shall rue this ruthful deed.