“Sing Unto the Lord a New Song”: Musical Innovation at the Boundaries of Schism

Abstract

This study examines the theological and liturgical significance of the biblical injunction to “sing a new song,” tracing its deployment across eras of Christian history as both a symbol of renewal and a tool of doctrinal contestation. Focusing on key moments of schism—the early Church’s response to Gnostic and Arian hymnody and Ambrose’s adoption of Eastern antiphonal singing, the article explores how musical form, meter, and performance practice became markers of orthodoxy and heresy long before Reformation-era musical reforms. Drawing on patristic commentary, heresiographical sources, and hymnological analysis, the study highlights how the popular style in various guises was alternately condemned and reclaimed. This suggests that Christian music has consistently evolved through interaction with popular and heterodox forms and that the “new song” in its exegetical form has functioned as a recurring strategy of theological self-definition. Ultimately, the paper argues that disputes over musical style mirror broader tensions between innovation and authority and that the history of hymnody offers a unique lens into the formation of Christian identity.

1. Introduction

1 O sing unto the Lord a new song: sing unto the Lord, all the earth. 2 Sing unto the Lord, bless his name; shew forth his salvation from day to day. 3 Declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders among all people.	1 Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him. 2 Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music; 3 make music to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing, 4 with trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn—shout for joy before the Lord, the King.
Psalm 96	Psalm 98

The call to “sing a new song” (here quoted from the King James version) appears in six psalms and in Isaiah.1 In some, it is linked to temple instruments or dedication rites; in others, it is a general summons to praise God and evangelize the nations. From an ecumenical musical perspective, the question arises: what has a “new song” historically entailed? Can its acoustic or aesthetic properties be defined? How is “new song” distinguished from the “old”? These questions are asked in light of the poetic and musical policing that surfaced during theological schisms throughout Christian history. While Frere asserts that the Christian Church was founded singing and that either actual quotations from early Christian hymns or at least allusions to them may be found within the Paulist and Pastoral Epistles (Frere 1909, p. ix), such song was contested early on. As I shall argue, musical style often marked theological shifts within the Church: “new song,” in its theologically, musical charged sense, repeatedly accompanied religious splits, excommunications, indoctrination, and proselytizing. Given the blurred boundaries between textual, poetic, metrical, and pre-notation musical cultures in canonized and popular liturgy—hymns, psalms, chants, and canticles—this survey highlights moments of conflict where “new song” was deployed by both sides of a divide, showing how music amplified schisms and liturgical traditions.

Within Christian commentary on the psalms’ call for a new song, few discuss the song’s poetic or musical qualities. Most opt for allegorical exegesis reading it as a call for continual renewal in worship. Post-Nicene fathers such as Jerome and Augustine saw the psalmist’s “new song” as prefiguring the Church, the ever-new revelation of the New Testament. Jerome (d. 420) wrote that “the story of the Son of God crucified is the new song that had never been heard of before. A new event should have a new song” (Jerome 1964, p. 197). Augustine (d. 430) argued into this the notion of the senses: “the lust of the flesh singeth the old song: the love of God singeth the new” (Augustine 1888b, p. 470). In his commentary on Psalm 149, however, Augustine also linked the new song to the battle of the Christian community against its dissenters: one who separates from the Church is not singing the new song, “for he hath followed old strife, not new charity” (Augustine 1888b, p. 1348). Thus, for him, the “new song” is Nicene Christianity, while any rival song is not Christian. Eusebius of Caesarea, who ended his Church History with the Council of Nicaea (325), likewise exploited “new song” as a symbol of Nicene triumph.2 This Nicene framing provides the backbone of the present paper, which organizes the musical history examined into pre- and post-Nicene developments.

The proto-musical events surrounding the formalization of Nicene dogma anticipate later disputes yet receive close to no attention as such. This is contrasted by the onset and ripples created by the Reformation, where the musical element is clearly present and openly discussed. The gap may be explained if we accept that the Nicene Church succeeded, over several centuries of dispute, in stamping out non-Christian musical practices and imposing its musical ideals on Christianized lands. Pagan and Jewish musical remnants of ritual, along with secular and pleasurable music were effectively reduced to the status of scholarly insignificant until the Renaissance (Faulkner 1996, p. 77). Because the exegesis of “new song” prevails throughout Church history, however, as background to my exploration of musical schism in the early Church I harness musical commentaries surrounding Church schisms of the second millennium. This provides a starting point for discussion of events in which the music of the Church was shaped. The next section thus takes an historical leap forward, to better appreciate the subject matter. A survey of musical exegesis of the 1500–1800s will assist in conceptualizing the music of the first four centuries analyzed in relation to “new song”.

2. “New Song”: An Evolving Structure

Like early Church fathers, early Reformers understood the “new song” allegorically as the New Testament over the Old, though they claimed their own song was truer. Luther, noted for his musical ability and educated in a notated polyphonic culture, gave the phrase a literal musical meaning. Attuned to contemporary styles, he sought advice from Saxon Kapellmeisters Johann Walter and Konrad Rupff, adopting “the Eighth Tone to the Epistle and the Sixth Tone to the Gospel” for his 1526 German Mass (Bacon 1883, p. xviii). More radically, Luther redefined agency: the “old song” was passively experienced by Christian worshipers, while the “new song” required active participation, hence the license for language adaptation. In his thinking, “those who do not partake in music-making ascribe to the ‘dull and joyless Old Testament.’”3

Luther’s new song was so distinctive that it was interpreted as a call to arms. Heinrich Heine in 1834, though historically imprecise, reflected his generation’s view of Luther’s Ein feste Burg: “The hymn which he composed on his way to Worms … is a regular war-song. The old cathedral trembled when it heard these novel sounds … That hymn, the Marseillaise of the Reformation, has preserved to this day its potent spell over German hearts.”4 For Heine, the hymn distilled doctrine, educated believers, and functioned as a weapon of theological war.

Yet Reformers’ music was not uniform and quickly split into separate musical traditions. Luther emphasized congregational chorale singing in the vernacular; it is commonly agreed upon that he wrote the words and possibly composed the tunes to some of them himself. John Calvin, less musically inclined, stressed that the “new song” must be “not common,” aligning more closely with patristic commentary.5 However Huldrych Zwingli, the most accomplished musician of the three, restricted both instrumental and vocal music, even removing organs—by then a permanent fixture of Christian liturgy—from Zurich churches; in his musical theology, prayer’s vehicle was silence.6 Thus Luther and Zwingli created a “new song” relative to Catholic tradition, paralleling their theological reforms, while Calvin provided a more neutral musical expression of reformed Christianity.

The Counter-Reformation’s response, too, was neither homogenous nor free from intra-Catholic policing. Beyond the well-known reforms of the Council of Trent—where music famously became entangled, even mythologized in the story of Palestrina7—other developments unfolded within the Catholic fold. The Psalm commentary of the Jesuit Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621) reflects this. His interpretation of the “new song” was less about asserting supremacy over Protestant music/dogma than about Jesuit missionary philosophy, which incorporated local traditions in worship across the New World and Asia.8 Bellarmine rejected the canticles of Moses or Deborah as “old,” tied to the pre-exilic Temple. Since the exile, the old song could not be sung in a strange land (Psalm 136); with Christendom, however, all humanity might sing the new song “befitting men who have been regenerated.” This new song was global, adaptable to local customs, and could even draw on pagan traditions, provided it produced “a beautiful canticle, elegantly composed” (Bellarmine 1866, p. 387).

With advances in notation and musical education, debates over the “new song” became increasingly musical rather than exegetical and addressed new schisms such as modernism. They also become increasingly denominational. Matthew Henry (1662–1717), an English non-conformist clergyman, emphasized that the “new song” was a New Testament song, but contrasted it with the “old song,” musically repetitive and lacking surprise. Echoing Calvin, Henry argued that music promising the unexpected would never fall out of style: “A new song is a song that shall be ever new, and shall never wax old nor vanish away; it is an everlasting song, that shall never be antiquated or out of date” (M. Henry 1706). Yet his call for continual novelty is highly challenging in the world of ritual, which thrives on predictability; it was also a burden for church musicians. Henry’s polemic included, moreover, a demand for more religious musical tolerance. As he was up against the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, whose adherents he assumed were more intent on contemporary, and secular, musical fashions, this may have been a concern in his conception of “new song.”9 As I shall stress, popular style was exploited by both dissenters and defenders of orthodoxy.

English hymnodist Isaac Watts (1674–1748) offered another turn: in his paraphrase of psalm 96, the “new song” became “the choicest psalm of praise” sung to “bless Jehovah’s name.”10 Here quality and style were emphasized, pointing back to Old Testament music even if Temple song was difficult to reconstruct. Denominational polemics also shaped interpretation. The Puritan William Tong (1662–1727) accused Catholics of promoting a false “seventh note,” using a musical metaphor to condemn “the greatest Feuds and Divisions, that ever infested the Christian World” and Papist persecutions (Tong 1693, p. 1). By contrast, Anglican John Mason Neale (1818–1866) of the Oxford Movement equated the “new song” with the Catholic Church and advocated the incorporation of more Catholic ritual into Anglicanism.11

In all these texts, liturgical music is consistently tied to ecclesial identity, often perceived as a “war song” of defiance or defense. In his schism study (1690), Matthew Henry listed various “schismatical practices,” including censoring prayers as mere “noise.”12 This link between excommunication and sound shows how “new song” functioned as a marker of inclusion and exclusion. Moreover, many of these examples involve abandoning the learned style or taste in order to win over the masses. Whether or not these “recent” writers were aware of them, the Ante-Nicene precedents that are the focus of this article demonstrate a recurring pattern that stretches from antiquity through the Reformation, Pius X’s Motu proprio, Vatican II, and down to the present.

3. Methodological Notes and Aim

It is crucial to admit a methodological difficulty related to reliance on textual sources of pre-notation musical traditions and antiquity at large. McKinnon warns that the British and American translations of music-related patristic sources frequently render liturgical and musical terms loosely, anachronistically, and even inaccurately. In his preface he mentions the Greek synonyms for the idea of harmony, for example, and discusses his own choices for the names of ancient musical instruments (McKinnon 1987, pp. ix–x). Faulkner also discusses harmony on a theological level, i.e., Christian adoption and rejection of pagan philosophers’ system of harmonia (Faulkner 1996, pp. 30–47). The issue of cultural and lexical translation is indeed both multifaceted and fundamental.

On a purely lexical level, given the vague distinction among the classical cognates of “song,” “hymn,” “psalm,” “ode,” “chant”—and even “music,” “melody,” and “meter” in these spheres—great caution must be applied. However, already in the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament, “psalm,” “hymn,” and “song” overlap.13 A psalm might be understood to be read, sung or recited in phrases like dicere psalmum, as the context suggests, although this may also involve obsolete rhythmic patterns; a psalm might imply instrumental accompaniment yet resemble the modern concept of recitation. References to dance also appear via metrical identifiers. Shifting languages and cultures thus easily blurs these categories, with crucial meaning often lost in translation. This sort of translation-related ambiguity is present in the discussion of Arius’ Sotadean meter/strain and its dance connotation (p. 10) and in the description of Ambrose’s night vigils, see n. 51.

Even musical resource compilations, for all their care regarding musical terminology, can be misleading, including choices and omissions which reveal an unexpected parti pris. A fascinating example of this is found in the quotations from the Protrepticus of Clement of Alexandria (1919, ca. 150–215), provided in both Strunk’s Source Readings in Music History (Strunk 1965) and McKinnon’s Music in Early Christian Literature (McKinnon 1987). Strunk quotes the Loeb translation by Butterworth, and McKinnon quotes Strunk; but their English truncates what, in the original Greek, was Clement’s description of “the song, the new, the Levitical” (τὸ ᾆσμα τὸ καινόν, τὸ Λευιτικόν), as “an eternal strain (νόμος) of new harmony (ἁρμονίας) which bears God’s name.” Wilson’s ANF translation (1869) leaves the Levite component in place (“the new, the Levitical song”), Butterworth (1919) oddly replaces it with Moses (“This is the new song, the song of Moses”). McKinnon not only evades the discrepancy by supplying ellipses but also capitalizes “New Song” (“the eternal strain of the new harmony which bears God’s name, the New Song,” McKinnon 1987, p. 29)14 thereby inserting into Clement precisely the Christian concept this paper is exploring. We will return to discuss Clement in more detail later.

A similar issue arises with the word “hymn,” and especially its contested popular roots. Found in every major religion, the Greek term has varied translations and in English may intersect with chant or psalm (or localized ancient forms, such as Syriac madrashe [metered hymns] or later Byzantine kontakia). Augustine defines “hymn” as made up of three components: (1) praise (2) of God (3) in song (Augustine 1888b, p. 334). Joseph Swain, who in his hymn entry sees the Reformation as catalyst for the shift in Catholic reception of hymnody (Swain 2016, p. 92), enlarges the definitions of hymn as including most or all of the following: textually centered on sacred but non-scriptural strophic poetry, with patterned, memorable melodies, popular roots, and frequent origins outside official liturgy before entering ritual. This broad definition suits early Christian phenomena where, given the lack of musical notation,15 meter was often the only distinguishing feature. The popular cultural roots crop up in almost all the case studies visited in this paper.

Swain notes two further points: hymns, arising from popular culture, were often deemed unworthy of the liturgy; and despite their musical similarity, Calvinists permitted only metrical psalms while banning hymns. He thus calls hymnody “a Lutheran evangelization system” that spread to Reformed, Anglican, and eventually Catholic traditions with Vatican II.16 Enlarging from the focus of hymnody, however, “unworthy” elements incorporated into ecclesiastical culture were always a primary tool of evangelization. Byzantine rites granted hymns an honored liturgical place long before their acceptance in the West, yet the cultural underlying current may be further explored to show how metric and musical systems have consistently marked theological identity, inclusion, and exclusion—from the second century Gnostics to the rise in Western hymnography, and on to Vatican II musical reforms.

4. “New Song”

4.1. Ante-Nicene

The second to fourth centuries provide fertile ground for examining the Church’s policing of “new song” against heresy, often with blurred lines between accusers and defendants. Leaders of both camps harnessed song in their theological combat—what Laura Lieber calls “hymnic brawls.”17 Religious leaders and authors, some straddling orthodoxy and heresy, may be grouped as dissenters or defenders depending on their stance toward Gnosticism, Platonism, or later Arianism, as perceived not only through their teachings but also by their methods of communicating them. This survey points to such mechanisms as improvisation, adoption of popular metrical styles (versus populares), encouragement of congregational participation, female leadership, and the role of hymns and devotional song at large. The main dissenting figures are Montanus’s circle and especially Arius, whose musical “newness” was forbidden by the Catholic Church along with his excommunication. Yet their Nicene opponents employed the same tools, as seen in the hymns of Ephrem and Ambrose.

The earliest heretical “songs”—hymns, psalms, chants, or verses—to be mentioned here appear in the works of Valentinus (ca. 100–160) and Bardaiṣan (154–222).18 As with many excommunicated writers, their works survive mainly in fragments quoted by heresiographers for refutation. Montanist tenets are poorly recorded and contradictorily understood theologically, but for this study Valentinus, Bardaiṣan, and Montanus may be grouped as innovators whose musical newness drew on Gnostic or pagan traditions, anticipating the greater musical schism of Arius.

4.1.1. Versus Populares, Audience, and Improvisation: Valentinus, Bardaiṣan, Montanus

Valentinus, an influential second-century teacher later branded a heretic, wrote in several genres; his teachings had a wide geographic distribution and enjoyed noticeable longevity (Smith 2020, pp. 9–10).19 His best-known work was a psalm book, now lost except for one text preserved by Hippolytus in the Refutatio Omnium Haeresium. Hippolytus calls the poem titled Harvest/Summer a psalm (ψαλμός), suggesting it was sung (McGowan 1997, p. 160).20 Tertullian contrasted Valentinus’s verses with David’s psalms, denouncing him as “apostate, heretic and Platonist.”21 Such attacks, echoed by Origen, show Valentinian psalms were widely known in North Africa, Egypt, and Rome into the fourth century (Smith 2020, p. 10). Whether or not Valentinus was truly Gnostic (Markschies 1992, p. 8), polemics reveal how his literary style was open to suspicion. His prose hymn Harvest/Summer displays metrical features called Versus populares, i.e., prose with metrical cadences that imitate classical meters (hexameter, trimeter) but without strict adherence (Markschies 1992, p. 390). This classification supports Markscheis’ broader thesis that Valentinus deliberately employed accessible, popular verse forms to make his teaching memorable, while still sounding elevated and poetic; as pedagogical mechanism, this is an accusation to be hurled at all who employ it in hymns. As McGowan claims using historical hindsight, “Valentinus was avoiding formality, crafting a work capable of popular use, which is perhaps reminiscent of the strategy later employed by Arius” (McGowan 1997, p. 159).

Other forms of Versus populares may be listed before Arius, however they seem rare in religious context. For example, hymns with “mouse-tails” (cauda muris) cadences, such as the anonymous and undated early Christian hymn De Moribus Christianum and Oxyrhynchus papyri (P. Oxy 15 and 1795),22 or Fescennini (jests in improvised verse) by Annianus, contemporary of Valentinius which survived into Christian times.23 Higham considers mouse-tails to combine tragic intensity with vulgarity and stresses its compatibility with song (Higham 1936, p. 300, cited in Markschies 1992, p. 200; McGowan 1997, p. 159). In this vein the lure for religious purposes is apparent.

The mixture between popular and learned style indeed recurs in the later and more heated disputes, notably in Arius’ Thalia and the counter-hymnody of Ephrem and Ambrose. Other than through questions of prose vs. poem, second-century popular style, Greek or Latin, was closely tied to the accentual rather than the quantitative metrical style. This fits a laborer’s bodily motions such as spinning, milling, or rowing, as well as dance and pagan worship in general. This fits into the Patristic association of loose meter with sea-shanties and bawdy songs to be soon explored. Because church fathers sought to distance Christianity from pagan (and Jewish) practices, their preference for the learned style in religious verse is clear.

This is not the case, however, when examining what is known of the hymns of Bardaisan (Brock n.d.) of Edessa (Bardesanes, ܒܪܕܝܨܢ) the earliest known Syriac Christian author, who likewise cast many teachings in verse. His syncretistic thought, blending Greek philosophy with Iranian and Gnostic cosmology, survives mainly through hostile sources, and most notably within the hymns written by his opponent of the next century, Ephrem the Syrian (306–373). So little of Bardaisan has survived or is agreed as being his that we must rely on the repeated references to Bardaisan in Ephrem’s hymns.

One of Ephrem’s greatest claims against Bardaiṣan is that he was secretive and deceitful: the first of the Madrashe against Heresies (Hymni contra Haereses, ܠܘܩܒܠ ܝܘ̈ܠܦܢܐ ܛܥ̈ܝܐ) is dedicated to this subject. When Ephrem mentions that Bardaisan’s melodies/hymns/songs were performed in caves (verse 17), he echoes the metaphor employed earlier of an adulterous woman sinning in an inner room (verse 11). Ephrem’s attack on Bardaisan’s “unsheathed tongue” (verse 9) and his rational style of speaking in public as opposed to in private (opening to verse 11), connects to the allegations that Bardaisan’s hymns charmed “simple-minded” people (verse 15), namely, the youth who “long for sweetness”: “through the harmony of his hymns he excited youth to excess” (verse 17).24 Unlike Valentinus, then, Bardaisan’s verse was criticized not for popular rhythm but for its “deceptive” intent and its target audience.

Ephrem referenced other heretics besides Bardaisan.25 In the hymn quoted, Bardaisan is repeatedly juxtaposed with the later Marcion and Mani (vv. 9–12); in verse 16, Mani’s madrashe are explicitly invoked. Ephrem battled the more contemporary Arians in other hymns as well, yet he did so while utilizing Bardaisan’s melodic corpus (see Discussion, Section 4.2.1). Ephrem clearly had the same goal of attracting a loyal audience of believers; the fact that he reused his century-old opponent’s melodies despite his harsh criticism proves they were both popular and effective as charmers. This highlights the accusation of effeminacy raised by Ephrem against Bardaisan as a seducer, but in the context of the dogmatic seduction achieved via hymns that are more melodic and less rhythm or meter related (as in the case of Valentinus).

Performance practice also distinguished dissenting “new song.” A movement which called itself the “New Prophecy” centered in a “New Jerusalem” in Phrygia, appeared ca. 165, focused on the ecstatic living prophecy of its leaders. The movement was quickly denounced as the “heresy of the Phrygians” or “Cataphrygian” by its opponents (Tabbernee 1997, p. 17), who rejected the claims of prophecy. Cyril of Jerusalem considered it the third great heresy after Simon (following Marcion and the Gnostics) around 347-48.26 The so-called sect grew enough it came to be called Montanism after its founder Montanus, although prophecy was no longer being practiced among the Montanists when Cyril discussed their heresy. The movement nevertheless still represented a “new song” that the official Church wished to eradicate.

The importance of non-Biblical psalmody within Montanism as a musical component of the charismatic gift is not directly stated, yet it is apparent through a combination of sources, including the comparison with the Marcion heresy. The elusive character of Montanist practice is enhanced by modern scholarship’s stalemate about movement’s theological boundaries, trapped between its identification as both Gnostic and anti-Gnostic, as a peculiar form of Jewish Christianity, and as a preserver of primitive “charismatic” Christian ministry (Tabbernee 1997, p. 23). It is one of many in Christian history to embrace an active presence of the Holy Spirit. Tertullian provides a glimpse into the competition between early Christian sects through a “psalm” challenge, so to speak, he poses to the Gnostic Marcion: “So let Marcion display the gifts of his god … Let him produce a psalm, a vision, a prayer” (McKinnon 1987, p. 44; PL 2:490–91). This stands in clear dialogue with Paul’s earlier chastising of the Corinthians: “What then, brethren? When you come together each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation...” (1 Corinthians 14:26–27). Both Paul and Tertullian place “psalm” at the head of their list. Improvised psalm singing is thus to be considered one of the important gifts of revelation, alongside prophetic visions; it appears separate from fescennini versus due to its pious focus, although both are improvised around a table.

The fact that the movement was led by a Phrygian convert (and presumably a pagan ex-priest, hinted to be both a eunuch and “filled with lasciviousness”), soon eclipsed by his female disciples Priscilla and Maximilla, adds a gendered aspect to the debate, which soon morphed into snide remarks about Montanus’s sanity and virility27. However, the movement’s prime marker is performativity, as shown by Apollinaris of Hierapolis’s account (quoted by Eusebius): the prophets and prophetesses were “carried away in spirit, and wrought up into a certain kind of frenzy and irregular ecstasy, raving, and speaking, and uttering strange things” (Eusebius of Caesarea 2004, p. 171). This description, however, comes from a hostile writer. Tertullian, a heresiographer who grew sympathetic to Montanism, described the gifts of revelation experienced by a “sister” prompted by church rituals. Her ecstatic visions and conversation with angels and even the Lord are considered “experiences in the Spirit,” not madness (McKinnon 1987, p. 45; PL 2:659–60). Though not designated glossolalia at the time,28 such spontaneous prophecy was a well-known phenomenon in pagan culture, as well as in the Old and New Testament; it was perceived as either authentic or hoax, depending on denomination. The line between recitation, prophecy, and ecstatic raving is apt to be blurred; the element of Montanist worship that incorporated speaking in tongues was not unique or inherently heretical in this respect.

Very little authentic writing or evidence is left, given the intense persecution of the sect, with not only texts but even relics being burned. Only four genuine prophecies are uncontested, so further evidence of the sect is collected through epigraphical scholarship. Despite this paucity, an interesting link between such prophetic practices and song is found in Tabbernee’s discussion of a tombstone epitaph for “a prophetess, Nanas daughter of Hermogenes,” which he considers strong evidence for the deceased’s Montanist identity. The epitaph mentions Nanas’s “prayers, intercessions, hymns, and adulations,” specifies that her prayers “continued throughout the night and day,” and claims she had “Angelic visitations and speech” in great measure (Tabbernee 1997, p. 421). According to Montanist belief, the voice of the prophetess was the voice of the Spirit/Paraclete and the prophecy was the process of interpreting the full meaning of what Christ had intended by his teachings. The prayers and hymns mentioned in the epitaph clearly fell on a continuum of this prophecy. Hence I include the Montanist “new prophecy” into my category of “new song,” with the emphasis on improvisatory performativity, more directly than I did Bardaisan’s musical world as described by Ephrem.

This must be contextualized carefully, however. While Tertullian wrote his Adversus Valentinianos as a Montanist (Tertullian n.d.), after writing most of his heresy refutations, in his earlier Apologeticum he describes the agape feast (Campbell 2022). and its sung component: “After the washing of hands and the lighting of lamps, each is urged to come into the middle and sing to God, either from the sacred scriptures or from his own invention. In this way is the manner of his drinking tested. Similarly, the banquet is brought to a close with prayer” (McKinnon 1987, p. 43; PL 1:474–7). This passage shows that improvised prayer-song was common among all Christians, not only Gnostics or Phrygians, and that prayer was linked to the table and wine; the custom was not foreign to the Judeo-Christian culture of benediction at a family table. With the spread of Montanism, however, such improvised prayer-song seems to have shifted into what was perceived as a threat. Interestingly, the agape and convivium would later connect to Arius’s Thalia, verses also supposedly intended for banquet recitation, to soon be discussed.

Montanism was condemned chiefly for claiming prophecy outside the apostolic circle, not for its female leadership or performance practices. In most Western communities, women were not a part of any worship service; but in the East, such as in Edessa under Ephrem, Constantinople under Romanos the Melodist, and in the Eastern influenced Milan under Ambrose, women led or participated in singing the psalms. The female agency of Montanist improvised prophecy was likely one step too far, not only from the domestic sphere (table), but into regulated ritual. Montanism thus threatened the young Church because spontaneous public displays undermined the authority of the established Gospels as well as the order of worship.29 Tertullian’s note that prophecy was prompted by church services suggests that the visions were seen as challenging the established order controlled by the clergy. The legacy endured: Matthew Henry, writing in the 18th century, used a sonic metaphor when he mentioned Montanist “song” was castigated as mere “noise” by the church (note 12).

The church excommunicated Montanus and his circle in 177 AD, which perhaps includes the first recorded instance of policing vocal or proto-musical practice for doctrinal reasons. This set a precedent for later sanctions. By the fourth century, a web of thinkers including Tertullian, Arnobius, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Augustine conducted heated polemics over musical purity—excluding instrumental music, for example—in what is understood as attempts to expel pagan styles and remnants of Jewish practice (McKinnon 1987, pp. 1–11; Faulkner 1996, p. 54). But the most developed case of Ante-Nicene song warfare arose in the Arian controversy, where issues of meter, audience, and performance became central, and continued well past Nicaea.

4.1.2. Meter, Audience, and Theatricality: Arius

Arius (ca. 256–336), the Alexandrian priest whose teaching on Christ’s subordination to the Father sparked the controversy carrying his name, leading to his expulsion from the Church and branding as a heretic, fully exemplifies “new song” as theological propaganda. Arius’s verses, known as Thalia, became a flashpoint in hymnological polemic. Regardless of modern reassessments of his influence, for centuries Arius was synonymous with censored Christian song.30

The Arian theology drew on the Alexandrian Catechetical school of Clement and Origen. Both thinkers, never sainted, are hard to firmly situate within the binary opposition of Gnosticim/Orthodoxy, although they are mostly accepted into the fold, in a begetter/begotten relationship (Buell 2020, p. 12 and p. 6). Perhaps inspiring Arius, Clement penned a collection of didactic hymns, which are among the first to be written in Hellenic style (Wellesz 1949, pp. 122–23; Gordley 2011, pp. 373, 375).31 His conception of the Christian new song included intimate knowledge of the Greek culture and pagan myths which he harnessed in his proselytization. In his theological writings, Clement names Orpheus the Thracian, Amphion the Theban, Arion the Methymnian, and Eunomus the Locrian among others: While their music tames wild animals, Christ’s New Song tames the “wild beasts” of humanity, turning irrational passions into gentleness.

Clement’s conception of “new song” also contains a clear indictment against secular and pagan elements. When he declared the New Song to be Christ (“He has now assumed the name Christ, consecrated of old, and worthy of power, he has been called by me the New Song”), he linked music with faith; Christianity is song (Clement Protrepticus I, IX; PG 8:62–63; ANF02, 174). This explains why he warned Christians not to indulge in “impious playing” that mimicked secular form (Clement Paedagogus III: XI, PG 8:247; ANF02, 290). Moreover, his allegory of Christ’s “new song” tempering Dorian with Lydian harmony suggests his expectation of a new Christian one, creating not only a symbolic but also modal distance from the contemporary pagan musical frameworks.

Origen, by contrast, had much less discussion of musical topics, but his conception of the relationship between pagan and Christian song allowed for inclusion: in Against Celsus he argued that Christians sing not to pagan gods but to God and His Son, with the heavenly hosts themselves forming a chorus.32 For him, pagan music could be repurposed within a superior theological system. It seems that Arius indirectly blended the ideas of Clement and Origen in the New Song he forged, which came to represent one of the most prominent heresies of Christendom.

Like Clement, Arius wrote hymns; if Origen did as well (he refers to hymns’ didactic function repeatedly), none have survived. Like Clement, who used Hellenic forms for Christian poems, Arius’s songs were fashioned in a way to appeal to what opponents would consider religiously feeble. Thus Philostorgius, sympathetic to Arius, may have originally used the terms ᾄσματά (songs) and ἐπιμὐλια (songs sung while grinding), rather than Thalia; yet since we read Philostorgius through Photius’ epitome, it is also jaded with the criticism sealing the report: “Arius, after his secession from the church, composed several songs to be sung by sailors, and by millers, and by travelers along the high road, and others of the same kind, which he adapted to certain tunes, as he thought suitable in each separate case, and thus by degrees seduced the minds of the unlearned by the attractiveness of his songs to the adoption of his own impiety.”33 To opponents, this suggested proselytizing among the uneducated; as mentioned regarding versus populares, a sailor’s or miller’s song may have distinct rhythmic characteristics, which, according to Philostorgius/Photius were then clothed in appropriate melody.

Athanasius, however, in the first of his orations against the Arians, stressed the poems’ circulation among the impious, sung “over their cups, amid cheers and jokes. … For what beseemed him more, when he would dance forth against the Saviour, than to throw his wretched words of irreligion into dissolute and loose metres?” (Athanasius 1891, PG 26:20, NPNF 2/4:307–308). He accused Arius of composing Thalia in the “loose metres” (μέλεσι; more often translated “strains”) of Sotades34—insinuating a combination of cultural and musical deviation. Titling the work Thalia (θαλία: good cheer, abundance, feast)35 linked it to a drinking function, and mention of the syncopated, off-beat Sotadean meter/strain added an association with mimes and bawdy theater. This echoed earlier attacks on Montanus and Valentinus as well as charges against second-wave Arian leader Eunomius of Cyzicus (d. 393) and Constantinople Nicene bishop Gregory of Nazianzen (329–390) but was far more severe.36

Named after the Maroneian/Alexandrian poet Sotades (3rd c. BCE), the Sotadean is found at the bottom of the list of Quintilian’s metrical genres in terms of baseness; in its simplest form, Sapsford defines the Sotadean as a maneuver on hexameter verse (associated with epic, hymns, and prophetic utterances) where the sentence is reordered in reverse, creating its rhythmic and semantic opposite (Sapsford 2022, pp. 3–4, 200–3). Most ecclesiographers, however, gloss over the man Sotades’ cultural identification as mimographer and kinaidos (catamite, lewd fellow, public dancer).37 By the time of Arius, the mimic/kinaidic verse-form is the Sotadean, often accompanied by the kinaidic dance which insinuates a blurred male/female agency. Athanasius inserts a melodic or inflection-related objection to Arius’ verses when he claims the Thalia (and its “flippancy”) is “effeminate in tune (μέλος) and nature,”38 yet he escalates to an ad hominem attack on Arius’ “effeminate soul.”39 This is very close to accusing Arius of homosexuality, similar to the allegation that Montanus was a castrated Cybele priest—although Athanasius does not go that far. He does, however, mention Salome, the wanton daughter of Herodias, and her dance, which is a severe indictment as well.

Other writers of Athanasius’s era reinforced this association. In his Homily on Isaiah 45:6–7, Chrysostom likened Arian worship to that of mimes and dancers,40 while Theodoret, in his Ecclesiastical History, described a male dancer (kinaidos?) performing on an Alexandrian altar as representative of heretical corruption.41 Although West does not make the connection to accusations of theatrical practices, drawing on Athanasius’s linkage of Arius and Salome he offers a compelling description of Arian verse performance: “Sotadeans needed the tapping foot or the snapping fingers to point the rhythm. This is presumably how we must imagine the recitations of Arius” (West 1982, pp. 104–5). Imagining the verses being recited by a leader, rather than by laymen—millers, fishermen, etc.—he generalizes that “there is some temptation to compare him (Arius) to a modern vicar who attempts to broaden the appeal of his message by singing it to the accompaniment of a beat group.” I believe the Church’s reaction to the Thalia strengthens this argument, though I am wary about such a contemporary reimagining of ancient practices. All chroniclers portray the Arian heresy spread to vulgar or lay audiences using metric/rhythmic-theatro-musical forces; it is indisputable that the first ecumenical council banned Arius’ writings, including the hymns, together with the cult’s excommunication.

As Nicoll notes, “records of theatrical Arianism are of prime importance. They indicate clearly how a certain section of the Church endeavored to rival the mimes, and, as it were, to beat them on their own ground” (Nicoll [1931] 1963, p. 140). Arian “new song” was attacked not only on theological grounds but also for its style, audience, and performance—its memorable character and theatricality made it a threatening rival to orthodox liturgy. It seems, moreover, moving into the post-Nicene period and looking forward to the Reformation, that orthodoxy turned to combat Arian doctrine using the enemy’s own weapons—newly written and highly engaging hymns of their own, such as those by Ephrem the Syrian (2015; 306–373) and Ambrose of Milan (ca. 340–397).

4.2. Post-Nicene, Counter-Arian Song

The excommunication of Arius and the banning of his Thalia in 325 catalyzed a transformation in Christian liturgical life. Accounts by Athanasius, Socrates, Sozomen, Chrysostom, and Theodoret—written from the vantage point of the Nicene victory—show that the struggle for Christian identity was waged as fiercely in song as in conciliar decrees. With the battle of the basilicas in 385/6 Milan, and after Theodosius expelled Arians from Constantinople’s churches (386), hymnology became a primary arena of physical contestation, intertwined with urban identity formation. Socrates and Sozomen describe rival choirs—Arian and Homoousian—singing antiphonally in the streets of Constantinople. Arian refrains such as “Where are those you say that the three are one power?” provoked Nicene counter-hymns organized by Chrysostom, with clashes turning violent and requiring imperial intervention.42

In this atmosphere, hymnody was not merely devotional or pedagogical but also combative. From Nicaea through Ephesus (431) and beyond, figures such as Ephrem the Syrian and Ambrose of Milan advanced the “new song” as doctrinal weapon and communal identity marker. Ephrem composed anti-heretical hymns in Syriac, adapting local forms and even reworking the heretic Bardaisan’s melodies in contrafactum as discussed; Ambrose’s antiphonal hymns in Milan fortified his community during the battle of the basilicas of 385/6, importing the Eastern style of hymnody and laying the foundations for Byzantine and Western chant alike.

4.2.1. Ephrem: Hymns of Faith Led by Women

Ephrem (d. 373), writing in Edessa at a time of pro-Arian imperial policy, produced hundreds of madrashe (metrical hymns with refrains), of which the most explicitly combative against Arianism are found in the Hymns of Faith (madrashe d-‘al haymanuta, ܠܘܩܒܠ ܝܘ̈ܠܦܢܐ ܛܥ̈ܝܐ). He was raised in a district on the border with Sasanid Persia that was culturally separated from the Greco-Roman rhetorical and philosophical traditions (Wickes 2015, pp. 3–5); his distinct style drew comparisons with Jewish exegesis.43 He opposed both Arian inflexible rationalism and Bardaisan’s allegorism (Murray 1975, p. 3), yet like them recognized hymns as pedagogical and polemical. Ephrem even reused Bardaisan’s tunes to Nicene texts. Of twelve melodies named in the Hymns of Faith, one—“Bardaisan’s herd”—serves for a subset of seventeen hymns, while other melodies appear to be original.44

Unlike Bardaisan or Arius, Ephrem was a choral director.45 His renowned choir of virgins, immortalized in his second Eastertide hymn,46 suggests the importance of female-voiced leadership in the Edessan worship, continuing the Montanist female agency, and relates to the question of theatrical gendered performativity as raised by Arian chant’s opponents. The choir’s lead is more than merely performative, since responsorial and antiphonal techniques, native to Syriac chant, likely involved congregational responses, even if the refrains we see in Ephrem’s texts were later additions.47 Socrates credits Syriac practice with spreading antiphonal singing to other churches;48 the refrains could have also been borrowed from older hymns. The cantorial lead in women’s voices would have been quite limited even in the Eastern church nonetheless but in this case carried pedagogic force.

Ephrem’s unique allegories often employed musical imagery: for example, he likens the created world and the two Testaments to lyres (kennare, ܟܢܪܐ) upon which the same divine musician plays (HVir 28–30). The lyre is also one of Ephrem’s favorite metaphors for himself (HF 21–23).49 More generally, though, he makes the connection between lyre and controversy. Hymn 23 is directed at the lyre (“speak, lyre”) and demands of it, “cleanse yourself from controversy! … fix the strings that have become tangled through debating. Collect the songs that have wandered off in discussions.” The refrain echoes the psalmists’ call for new song: “The earth sings glory to you.…” (Ephrem the Syrian, in Wickes 2015, pp. 163–64).

Ephrem’s corpus combined original texts, imagery, melodies; during his lifetime he controlled performance as well, offering a striking counterpoint to Arian theatricality. The Council of Laodicea (363–364), distant from Edessa, banned congregational singing and Phrygian baptism. More than fear of Ephrem’s practices, this may reflect anxiety over the still circulating Arian Thalia and, indirectly, Montanist spontaneous hymnology. Ephrem’s carefully structured hymns, however, escaped such censure, providing Nicene theology with a controlled, participatory vehicle that corrected Bardaisan’s influence while engaging the laity.

4.2.2. Ambrose: Eastern Import of Arian Legacy

The Nicene exploitation of popular musical forces comes further to light through Ambrose of Milan. While not properly the first Western hymnographer (Hilary of Poitiers preceded him, having learned the style during exile in Phrygia), Ambrose deserves the title Malleus Arianorum as well, most importantly because, unlike Hilary, some of his hymns survive, and “Ambrosiani” as a form name spread westward.50 As if still occupied with the accusations hurled at Arian hymns by Athanasius, Ambrosian hymns are lauded as “severely elegant, chaste, perspicuous, clothing Christian ideals in classical phraseology, and yet appealing to popular tastes” (H. Henry 1907). Ambrose’s contribution in the discussion of “new song” is multifaceted, however, because his name is attached to a liturgical style with both metric and melodic implications.

Ambrose wrote his hymns in iambic dimeter: this marked a shift from quantitative to accentual verse in Latin poetry, a style more accessible to congregations. Early twentieth-century scholars praised Ambrose’s meter: It is “scrupulously correct and the diction, lucid and simple, is elevated and grave” (Kaniecka 1928, p. 125); “with its regular succession of accented and unaccented syllables, from which arises the so-called alternating rhythm which marks the human step and pulse … [it] is, therefore, the most natural and popular rhythm” (Blume 1910). Ambrose, like Arius, turned to his era’s versus populares to bolster communal identity in time of spiritual distress. The testimonies suggest that hymn singing brought a change of heart to the guards of the basilica, effectively “winning” the battle for control (see further below).

In terms of melody, Ambrosian chant is one of only two repertories transmitted in pitch-accurate notation. Ambrose’s role in its creation is no better established than Gregory’s in Gregorian chant, yet Ambrosian chant is the only system besides Gregorian to survive, superseding all other Western traditions.51 The breadth of the “Ambrosian” musical world—including the Milanese rite, chant melodies, and hymns—suggests that its survival owes much to Ambrose’s formative role in defending his community against Arian aggression. Ambrose was bishop in a Catholic city but the Roman Empress Justina and her teenaged son, Emperor Valentinian II, were Arian sympathizers. When in 385/6 Ambrose refused to hand over a cathedral for Arian worship, imperial forces effectively put a siege on the cathedral and all believers in it. Like in a mythological precedent, Catholic chronologies of the events portray the victory from a musical perspective: the troops were calmed and won over by Ambrose’s leading his community in hymns.

Hymn singing was not, until then, a part of Milanese church culture. As the story has it, Ambrose imported Eastern communal hymnody while under siege. Augustine describes the import of hymns in this event, stating Ambrose instituted this practice “lest the people should languish in cheerless monotony.”52 Paulinus lists antiphons, hymns, and vigils,53 and several original Ambrosian hymns in iambic dimeter may have been sung. Ambrose as poet-composer thus combined stylistic, metrical, and melodic novelties to guide his community in chanting Trinitarian theology; like Ephrem, this constitutes control on performance level. Like Luther, this is a war song.

Ambrose was aware of his redefining of liturgical boundaries or the creation of a “new song” within Milanese tradition: In his sermon Against Auxentius on the giving up the Basilicas, delivered on Palm Sunday 386, Ambrose claims his hymns are both novel and effective. His opponents declare “that the people have been led astray by the strains of my [Ambrose’s] hymns”—and he retorts: “I certainly do not deny it.” The parallel to Athanasius’s line of accusation (although not volume) against Arian hymns is unmistakable. It is difficult to tell if Ambrose is referring to the adoption of the Eastern hymn at large, his text’s melody, chosen meter, inspiration, or even claims bordering on “prophecy,” as carminibus—here translated as “strains,” but also possibly just “song”—covers a wide lexical field. In any case, he believes his hymns are superior: they are of “a lofty strain, and there is nothing more powerful than it. For what has more power than the confession of the Trinity which is daily celebrated by the mouth of the whole people?” (Ambrose 1888, p. 436).

Arian heresy and defiance shaped not only the face of Trinitarian theology but the face of hymnody. Hymnody was effectively adopted, during the fourth century, from the heretics to the orthodox, and from the East to the West, through acceptance of a metrical and musical style identified with theological challenge and counterattack. The cementing of an Ambrosian liturgical identity based on the mythologized history of physical siege within the cathedral seems fundamental. It justified “new song” imported from the East and the adoption of popular metrical schemes; it developed an especially proud legacy of the Ambrosian system as the leader in the victory over Arian heresy, at a point where Arianism was close to losing favor at imperial level. This may explain why the Ambrosian rite (the chant system, not its hymnody) is the only to have survived the campaigns to eradicate non-Gregorian chant traditions. In respect to this study’s title, it is also a small irony that in the “Great Schism” between East and West in the eleventh century, Ambrosian chant was considered “East” and banned by Stephen IX in 1058.

5. Summary and Conclusions

The power of song as a theological marker could be further explored by turning to study Byzantine developments, such as the kontakia of Romanos the Melodist (d. ca 550 in Constantinople). A melodos, that is, a writer–composer–singer, his “new song” as antiphonal hymnal practice grew into sung stories set in simple language and popular meters/tunes (Koder 2008, pp. 286–87; Arentzen 2017, pp. 8–17; Gador-Whyte 2020, pp. 89–106). Lieber even claims Romanos to have created “miniature staged dramas” (Lieber 2023, p. 122). Due to scope limitations, I stop here with the invitation to explore the Byzantine “new song” Romanos promoted, exemplifying the power of communal hymnody with an emphasis on dramatic enactment, in dialogue with what has been presented within Montanist and Arian performativity.

The current study traced the relationship between Christian dogma and “new song” largely through a Nicene lens and stops there to review Christian “new song” using this perspective. Acknowledging the methodological difficulty of disentangling textual, melodic, performative, and theological elements in pre-notation musical practices, the evidence provided shows that music in its general sense was consistently harnessed as both attack and defense, as a marker of identity and an instrument of exclusion. Yet as the study began with an exegetical survey starting with the Reformation, it is demonstrable that the same dynamics of the early Christian centuries continued through the Middle Ages and into modernity. This is visible in debates over instrumentation and accompaniment, for example. The organ, once associated with ancient Roman festivals, became the sole sanctioned instrument by the 13th century,54 challenged not only by reformation figures such as Zwingli but also by twentieth century preference for guitar and piano.

Across centuries, factions have contested whether new musical elements—meter, modality, instrumentation, agency, or performance—constitute renewal or impurity; this included repeated infiltration from the world of theater or secular entertainment. Criticism of meter and performativity, including tangential pagan and theatrical elements of sexual implications, were replaced by disputes over voicing, orchestration, and harmony, but the underlying tension remained: the boundary between true and false “new song.” The Reformation explicitly revived these questions, with Reformers simplifying music for lay participation and the Counter-Reformation policing polyphony. Jesuit adaptations of Catholic liturgy to local traditions in the New World, and later clerical responses to opera and dance styles,55 echo the same anxieties once raised against Arian hymns. From Arius’s Thalia to Berlioz’s 1835 critique of church fugues as “orgies” (Berlioz et al. 2015, p. 174), clerics, theologians and musicians have repeatedly drawn and redrawn the line between sacred renewal and secular intrusion.

The musical ripples of Vatican II are still rocking the Catholic world, demanding a renewal of song on a deep level. This includes not only active congregational participation in the vernacular, but the admittance of women as musical leaders. Additionally, it includes adopting popular music and instrumentation. These changes align with the cultural shift seen in western countries and the United States in particular, with the rise in the Feminist movement, Black liberation movement, and youth culture, with their joint musical child, to a certain extent, being the Rock ‘n Roll revolution and the spread of folk music. As Silverberg puts it, after the high point of ecclesiastical Catholic control of its liturgy in Pius X’s Motu proprio (1903), Catholics around the world embrace the musical freedom the open door of Vatican II permits (Silverberg 2004, p. 62). This is another form of “new song” created through an encounter with heresy—in this case, Modernism—of both kinds: first barricading and then ceding to popular demand, in the greatest musical reform era in the Catholic world yet.