Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1968, Blaðsíða 20

Certainly, to begin with, the bishops were (as in Norway) foreigners.
But in 1056 an Icelander became bishop there, consecrated by the Arch-
bishop of Bremen, after having studied in Germany and visited the
Pope. In the beginning he had some difficulty in holding his own
against the rest of the clergy but eventually he managed. Also his suc-
cessors were Roman Catholics, installed by the archbishops, - after
1104 in Lund, and finally, of course, after 1153, in Nidaros.
And now Sweden. After the Danish Archbishopric had been establ-
ished with its See in Lund, the Roman Catholic Church naturally from
there extended its missionary activity northwards to Sweden, which about
the middle of the 12th century became christianized, with an Arch-
bishop’s See in Uppsala (1164). The Swedish Church had its main con-
nections abroad towards the south: with Denmark and Germany.
As will appear in due course, the sequences testify the different forms
of Christianity and ecclesiastical aspects of the Northern Lands as stated
above.
A Sequence is a song of praise, a kind of hymn, to God (Christ, the
Holy Ghost) or the Virgin or other saints. It differs from our modern
congregational hymns or psalms - apart from the language which is
Latin — in the following respects: (1) The verses have in most cases dif-
ferent metres, and in all cases different melodies. (2) Every verse,
except sometimes the first and last, and sporadically one or two in the
middle, is di vided into two halves which have identical metre and
melody. This characteristic is occasionally wanting in some of the oldest
specimens.
On the Mass days on which a sequence was sung, it was laid into the
liturgy after the song piece “Graduale”, and before the following read-
ing from the Gospel (this reading being also called “sequentia”).
Several theories have been set forth as to how the anthem with which
we are dealing originated and got the name of sequentia, of which the
following is now held to be the most probable.
A “Versus Alleluiaticus” ending with “Alleluia” is often tied to the
song piece “Graduale”. And the last vowel a in this word is generally
sung on a long train — “sequentia” - of tones. Words were composed to
these tones: and out of these tones and words the sequence has blos-
somed, so that the sequence melodies were no longer borrowed from
the ending of the Alleluia-melody, but became original compositions.
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