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OVERVIEW OF CHRISTIAN POETRY Poetic forms have been used by Christians since the recorded history of the faith begins. The earliest Christian poetry, in fact, appears in the New Testament . Canticle s such as the '' Magnificat '' and '' Nunc Dimittis '', which appear in the Gospel Of Luke , take the Biblical Poetry of the Psalm s of the Hebrew Bible as their models. Many Biblical scholars also believe that St Paul Of Tarsus quotes bits of early Christian Hymn s in his Epistle s. Passages such as Philippians 2:5-11 (following) are thought by many Biblical scholars to represent early Christian hymns that were being quoted by the Apostle: Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Within the world of continued to include allusions to pagan Deities and standard classical figures and Allusion s continued to appear in his verse. Other Christian poems of the late Roman Empire , such as the '' Psychomachia '' of Prudentius , cut back on allusions to Greek Mythology , but continue the use of inherited classical forms. Other early Christian poets were more innovative. The hymnodist Venantius Fortunatus wrote a number of important poems that are still used in the Liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church , such as the '' Vexilla Regis '' ("The Royal Standard") and ''Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis'' ("Sing, O my tongue, of the glorious struggle"). From a literary and linguistic viewpoint, these hymns represent important innovations; they turn away from Greek Prosody and instead seem to have been based on the rhythmic marching songs of Roman armies. A related issue concerned the literary quality of Christian write so badly? Some Christian writers such as Tertullian flatly rejected classical standards of rhetoric; "what has Athens to do with Jerusalem ?" he asked. The cultural prestige of classical literary standards was not so easy for other Christians to overcome. St Jerome , trained in the classical Latin rhetoric of Cicero , observed that dismay over the quality of existing Latin Bible translations was a major motivating factor that induced him to produce the Vulgate , which went on to become the standard Latin Bible, and remains the official Bible translation of the Roman Catholic Church . A fuller appreciation of the formal literary virtues of Biblical poetry remained unavailable for European Christians until 1754 , when Robert Lowth (later made a Bishop in the Church Of England ), kinder to the Hebrew Language than His Own , published ''Praelectiones Academicae de Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum'', which identified Parallelism as the chief rhetorical device within Hebrew poetry. In many European Vernacular Literature s, Christian poetry appears among the earliest monuments of those literatures, and Biblical Paraphrase s in verse often precede Bible Translation s. In Old English Poetry , the '' Dream Of The Rood '', a meditation on Christ's crucifixion which adapts Germanic heroic imagery and applies it to Jesus, is one of the earliest extant monuments of Old English literature. Dante Alighieri 's '' The Divine Comedy '' represents one of the earliest monuments of Italian vernacular literature. Much Old Irish Poetry was the work of Irish Monk s and is on religious themes. This story is repeated in most European languages. Modern Christian poetry especially suffers from a difficulty of definition. The writings of a Christian poet are not necessarily classified as Christian poetry. The themes of poetry are necessarily hard to pin down, and what some see as a Christian theme or viewpoint may not be seen by others. A number of modern writers are widely considered to have Christian themes in much of their poetry, including William Blake , G.K. Chesterton and T.S. Eliot . EXAMPLES OF CHRISTIAN POETS The following list is chronological by birth year.
EXAMPLES OF CHRISTIAN POEMS
SEE ALSO REFERENCES
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