SOMASCHI
140
SONG
Somaschi, name of a charitable religious congre-
gation of regular clerics, founded in the sixteenth
century by St. Jerome Emiliani with the mother-
house at Somasca (Venice), whence the name. For
all particulars on development and history of the
order see Jerome Emiliani, Saint. Following are
the latest statistics, obtained from F. Gius. Landini
of the Somaschi at the Curia Generalitia at Rome.
The order counts in three provinces (Rome, Lom-
bardy, and Liguria) 16 houses, all but one (in Bellin-
zona, Switzerland) in Italy, and about ISO members,
of whom 100 are priests, 50 clerics, and 30 lay
brothers. At Rome they have thi-ee houses: San
Girolamo dcUa Cai-ita, residence of the general and
one of the three novitiates (the other two being in
Genoa and Somasca) ; Santa Maria in Aquiro with a
parish and orphanage; San Alessio on the Aventine
for blind boys. The congregation manages three
colleges with classical and technical studies at Spello,
Como, Nervi, and finally, including those already
mentioned, three orphanages and five parishes.
LiVARIUS Oliger.
Somerset, Thomas, confessor, b. about 1530; d. in the Tower of London, 27 May, 1587; second son of Hcnrv, second Earl of Worcester. He was com- mitted to the Fleet, 10 June, 1562, "for translating an oratyon out of Frenche, made by the Cardi- nall of Lorraine", Charles de Guise, Archbishop of Reims, "and putting the same without authority in prynte". On 27 June, 1562, he was summoned before the Lords of the Council at Greenwich, who expected "an humble submission, for wante whereof, and for that he seamed to go about to justifye his cause, he was returned to the Flete, there to-remaine untill he" should "have better considered of himself". After an imprisonment of close on twenty years he was re- leased on bail, 28 Feb., 1581-82, to attend to legal business in Monmouthshire. On 2 May, 1582, he was too ill to travel, and was permitted to remain at liberty till he should recover. By 22 October, 1585, he was in the Tower on a charge of high treason. Being pos- sessed of properties in Gloucestershire and Monmouth- shire, he paid the costs of his imprisonment, and his name therefore is not to be found in the Tower Bills.
Catholic Record Society's Publications, I (London, 1905, etc.), 49; Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council (London, 1890-1907), VII, 108; XIII, 336, 407; Calendar Stale Papers Domestic lSSl-90 (London, 1865), 249, 278, 305; Collins, Peerage, I (London, 1779), 201
John B. Wainewright.
Sommervogel, Carlos. See Society of Jesus.
Sonderbund. See Switzerland.
Song, Religious (or Sacred), is the general desig- nation given to tlie numerous poetical and musical creations which have come into existence in the course of time and are used in connexion with pubhc Divine worship, but which are not included in the official liturgy on account of their more free and subjective character. It has its origin in the desire on the part of the faithful, a desire ever encouraged but always guided and controlled by the Church, to participate actively in the public religious ceremonies of the Church. While the psalms were sung in traditional fashion during the eai-ly Eucharistic celebrations at the public meetings, and the love-feasts, or agapse, of the e:irly Christians, there soon sprang up the cus- tom of improvising songs, participated in by the whole assembly, which, though religious in burden, by their spontaneity and freedom stood in contrast to the psalms and other lyric [larls of the Holy Scripture in use at the Eucharistic celebration. These creations in course of time lost their spiritual character, dignity, and fervour as the institution which g.ave them birth and of which they formed an important part degene- rated iu character, departed from its original purpose,
and became an occasion for pleasure and dissipation.
The songs thus originated continued in use long after
the institution had lost official sanction, and have be-
come known in history by the name of the institution
which gave rise to them.
As Christianity spread, there was an ever greater in- crease of spontaneous creations of this kind originat- ing in the desire on the part of their authors to get nearer to the people and to convey to them by this means instruction as well as edification. As early as the fourth century there had come into use so many chants, hymns, and songs, in various parts of the Christian world, and abuses and aberrations had be- come .so general, that the Council of Laodicea (360- 381) forbade the singing of any text not taken from Holy Scripture. The hymns by St. Hilary and St. Ambrose of Milan (especially the latter) — which now form a part of the htm'gy — had for theh- original pur- pose the instruction of the people by having them sing in striking metrical form and to vigorous melo- dies the fundamental truths of religion. The se- quences and tropes which came into existence with such exuberance in the early Middle Ages, while popu- lar in form, sprang directly from the liturgy and al- ways partook of its character. In those regions where the liturgical language remained at the same time the tongue of the people, at least in a modified form, par- ticipation in the official chant of the Church on the part of all was general for many centuries, and in con- sequence the influence of the spirit of the hturgy and its music prevented the early development of a more subjective religious poetry and music than was to be the case in later times in other regions. This is probably the reason why in Italy, Spain, and the other Latin countries the religious song in the vernacular has never taken root.
While this was also true of France, for a consider- able time, we find there an early and rapid growth of songs of every kind, bearing a strong national char- acter. Every important event in the domestic and religious life of the people soon found expression in song. The festivals of the Church inspired them and became by these means in tm'n impressed upon the popular imagination. One of these characteristically French songs is the tioel, or Christmas song, which had great vogue in the eleventh century, a vogue which reached its height in the seventeenth century and has survived in a certain form, even to our day. The noel, the words of which were often paraphrases of hturgical texts, set to melodies naive and pastoral in character, was popular in every section of the king- dom and sung in every dialect in use. Processions, pilgrimages, and especially the mystery and miracle plays gave rise to many forms of songs. The trou- badours in the south and trouveres in the north ex- erted great influence on the development and propa- gation not only of secular but of religious songs as well. Among the many forms in use was the complaint, a song in narrative form of which the "Story of the Resurrection" (O filii et filia;) is a prominent type. The pastorale was another form which flourished from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, sometimes having religious texts and then again voicing secular sentiments. With the sixteenth century began the custom of substituting secular airs in use at the time for the melodies to which the sacred texts of the noels, complaints, etc., had thus far been sung; they were not only modelled on the Gregorian chant but had a distinctively niave simple character. This substitu- tion sometimes involved even the partial taking over of the profane text as well. This was the beginning of the decadence which finally, in some places, reached the point where chansons de galanterie, or love songs, were completely transformed into canliques, or re- ligious songs, by merely substituting the name of the Blessed Virgin or that of .lesus Christ, for the name of the beloved one mentioned in the original. The mod-
