Young—Officium Past ovum. 
363 
<mirabilia> fecit. Miro modo cum; de uirginis utero ut 
homo processerat, sed ut Deus imperitat. Puer natus est 
nobis. Gloria Patri, amen. Cuius potentissimus. Puer. 1 
The dramatic nature of the opening sentences of this trope 
long ago attracted attention, and the most distinguished inves¬ 
tigator of this branch of liturgical composition has seen in 
this dialogue the very beginnings of mediaeval drama: 
Le plus ancien trope connu, le fameux Ho die cantandus , 
nous apparait dans les plus anciens tropaires sous une forme 
yisiblement dram)atique: Interrogatio. Quis est iste puert 
—Biesponsio. Hie enim est , etc. (Test le primier germe 
d ? un futur theatre; e’ est Y embryon qu’ il faut presque 
etudier au microscope. 2 3 f 
To this sanguine observation from an investigator of tropes, a 
more recent investigator, approaching the subject from the 
point of view of drama, opposes the following terse statement: 
It <LHodie cantandus est> is an example of some half a 
dozen dialogued Introit tropes which might have, but did 
not, become the starting-point for further dramatic evolu¬ 
tion. 8 
Although this latter statement of the case must have brought 
conviction generally to students of the drama, it may have left in 
the minds of some the impression that a study of a larger range 
of texts might reveal a more fruitful development of this 
promising dramatic germ. Hence, although my own observa¬ 
tions only confirm a statement that Was already authoritative, 
I offer a certain variety of texts drawn from what is, probably, 
a somewhat exhaustive collection, to illustrate the limited de¬ 
velopment of Ho die Cantandus . 4 * * * 
i Followed immediately by the rubric Alio modo, which indicates the 
beginning of a new trope. In the text above, the liturgical Introit is 
printed in italics. 
2 L. Gautier, Les Tropes, Paris , 1886. p. 218. See also Rassegna 
Gregoriana, Vol. V (1906). col. 532; Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi, 
Vol. XLIX Leipzig, 1906, p. 7. 
3 Chambers, Vol. II, p. 9. Cf. Creizenach, Vol. I, p. 57. 
4 My observations are based upon texts taken from twenty-three 
manuscripts. Gautier pp. 63-64, mentions some ten manuscripts, and 
in Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi, Vol, xlix, p. 8, nineteen are referred 
to. To the manuscripts mentioned by Gautier and by the editors of 
Analecta Hymnica one may add: Munich, Staatsbibl., Cod. lat. 14083, 
