Column: Illuminations
An Easter Trinity
by Anthony Esolen
We Christians believe in a communion that makes many another monotheistic system seem cold and distant, even desolate. In the order of human causes, were it not for the fiery Athanasius, we might be bowing before the lonely god of Omar, as Chesterton put it; or the more philosophical among us might be joining the gentle soul of Plotinus, seeking a mystical flight of the alone to the Alone. But we believe that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; which is another way of saying that God is love. The divine Persons are really Persons, not personifications; they are not aspects of God, or modes or portions of his being. They are three, and they are One.
(Ye Sons and Daughters),
by Jean Tisserand,
1494.
I'm not enough of a theologian to turn the first leaf of this mystery. I'm wary of the good St. Patrick's shamrock, which might have served to illustrate the truth to a rude Irishman, but might not do for even ruder Americans now. I do know that our forefathers in the faith intuited that everything would fall apart if we got wrong either the person of Christ or the nature of the Trinity. Lose or muddle the Trinity, lose or muddle the divinity of Christ, and soon you will be peddling dilute deistic nostrums according to the taste of the day, your faith having decayed into humanitarianism, preached in an inoffensive little old white building with a spire, next door to a strip joint or an abortuary.
Trinitarian Musical Form
That's why the earliest Christian poets ended their hymns with a doxology, a "glory-word" to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I suspect it's also why they invented the rhyming triplet. Anyone can rhyme one line with another; but it's a fine thing to rhyme three consecutive lines in one compact stanza, without padding, and without straying from the single unifying thought. It's even finer if you can use that most emphatic and difficult third line for a climax, or a surprise. How better, in a Christian hymn, to make manifest the unity, the glory, and the sheer unexpectedness of the Trinity? Or of Easter, which we celebrate in this and in every season?
Christian poets had long been using the triplet when Jean Tisserand gave us the Easter hymn O filii et filiae, which we know in Edward Caswall's translation as "Ye Sons and Daughters." Here is the first stanza, in Latin and in English:
O filii et filiae,
rex caelestis, rex gloriae,
morte surrexit hodie.Ye sons and daughters of the Lord,
the King of glory, King adored,
this day himself from death restored.
Don't be fooled by Tisserand's simplicity. It is the simplicity of a man with the one day of all days in mind. His first line is a call to young men and maidens—they of the clear and youthful voices, for song. His second line names the Lord, the heavenly King, the King of Glory. His third line tells us why we sing, rhyming internally on the word morte, death, emphatically placed, but immediately overcome, as the stanza ends on hodie: this day!
The common melody for "Ye Sons and Daughters," in all of its variations, reflects the Trinitarian form. We sing two lines that "rhyme" exactly, and then follow them with a third and climactic line that echoes the first two but that also stands alone; then we echo the whole stanza with an alleluia, in some versions followed in turn by three more alleluias, repeating but not exactly repeating the melodies of the first two lines and then the third. We could label them thus: A A A*, followed by alleluias a / a*a**a. It's quite haunting, as every small feature of that Easter morning seems worthy of its own small and perfect stanza, and its own overflowing alleluias. Thus we sing for joy even before the disciples know that there's reason for joy.
Everything Is Precious
Anthony Esolen is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Thales College and the author of over 30 books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House) and, with his wife Debra, publishes the web magazine Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com). He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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