A Historical Overview of Musical Worship & Culture in Sardinia 437
same century, can be found in Sant’Antioco.8 They are well known early evi-
dence of Christianity in Sardinia. After Constantine and Licinius promulgated
the so-called “Edict of Milan” in 313, Sardinians were officially allowed to prac-
tice Christianity. Episcopal sees and baptisteries, documented since the fourth
century, attest to the presence of a vibrant liturgical life, certainly with songs.9
2 Early Sardinian Songs and Worship
Eusebius of Vercelli (283–371), who was Sardinian, according to Saint Jerome
(347–419/420), was among the pioneers of the hymnody in the Latin Church.10
A medieval hymn to Saint Eusebius, which is emulous of the Ambrosian hym-
nodia and was composed in iambic acataletic dimeter tetrastiches, also evokes
its Sardinian origins (Hic natus de Sardinia).11 The proper father of Latin li-
turgical hymns, Ambrose of Milan (339/340–397), stated that the community
founded by the Sardinian clergyman “resounded day and night with hymns
(hymnis dies ac noctes personant) .” 12
In the first part of the sixth century, the Sardinian Symmachus (r. 498–514)
ascended the papal throne and introduced the Gloria in excelsis to the Roman
8 Roberto Coroneo, “Sarcofagi marmorei del III–IV secolo d’importazione ostiense in
Sardegna,” in La cristianizzazione in Italia fra Tardoantico e Altomedioevo: atti del IX con-
gresso nazionale di archeologia cristiana, Agrigento, 20–25 novembre 2004, eds Rosa Maria
Bonacasa Carra and Emma Vitale (Palermo, 2007), pp. 1355–1356; Maria Cristina Cannas,
“Le lastre marmoree di Sant’Antioco con figure romane,” in Ricerche sulla scultura medi-
evale in Sardegna, ed. Roberto Coroneo (Cagliari, 2004–2009), vol. 2, p. 91, fig. 13.
9 Mastino, Storia della Sardegna antica, p. 478.
10 “De viris illustribus, XCVI,” in Girolamo. Gli uomini illustri, ed. Aldo Ceresa-Gastaldo
(Florence, 1988), p. 200.
11 Vercelli, Biblioteca del Capitolo, Calendar-Psalter-Hymnal, CXCIII, fourteenth century,
fol. 65r, col. 1 (“Ad Nocturnum”); Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi XXII, 96–97, no. 156; Ulysse
Chevalier, Repertorium Hymnologicum. Catalogue des chants, hymnes, proses, séquences,
tropes en usage dans l’Église latine depuis les origins jusqu’à nos jours, 6 vols (Louvain,
1892–1921), no. 7815. See also Giampaolo Mele, “Hic natus de Sardinia. Nota storica e codi-
cologica sull’innografia eusebiana,” in La Sardegna paleocristiana tra Eusebio e Gregorio
Magno: atti del convegno nazionale di studi, Cagliari, 10–12 ottobre 1996, eds Attilio Mastino,
Giovanna Sotgiu, and Natalino Spaccapelo (Cagliari: Pontificia Facoltà teologica della
Sardegna, 1999), pp. 314–315, 318–321.
12 This passage is from epistle LXIII to the church of Vercelli. See Jacques-Paul Migne, ed.,
Patrologiæ Cursus Completus [...]. Series Latina (Paris, 1844–1855), no. 16, col. 1211B; Mele,
“Hic natus de Sardinia,” p. 310, n. 5.