Early Christian Hymns were published in 1908 after many years of research and translation by Danial Joseph Donahoe. The book contains translations of the most notable and best religious songs of the Latin Church from the early and middle ages. Some of these poems and hymns are more than a thousand years old. The book has texts by philosophers and monks such as St. Hilary, St. Damasus, St. Ambrose, Prudentius, Sedelius, Elpis, Fortunatus, St. Gregory the Great, Eugenius, Paul the Deacon, St. Paulinus of Aquileia, Theodulphus, Rabanus Maurus, Pierre Abelard and others including a large collection of hymns by unknown Christian writers.
Latin poems shaped themselves into an English form
The hymns can be enjoyed for their beauty, both in poetry and religious feeling, no matter what religious branch the reader belongs to. From the introduction:
The attempt to turn these glorious songs of the Church into something fairly representative of the thought and feeling of the original has been a labor of love during the past four years. The translator has always been an ardent lover of the Latin hymns, but the idea of making English versions of them came about as if by accident. While reading the Veni Sancte Spiritus, the “golden sequence,” as it has been called, one Sun day afternoon in April, 1904, the words and melody of the hymn shaped themselves, as it were, into an English form, without any apparent effort, a form which seemed to give an adequate representation of the original both in thought and feeling.
Download Early Christian Hymns here as a free PDF e-book (293 pages/3 MB):
