Ambrosian hymns

Ambrose in the fourth century wrote hymns in a severe style, clothing Christian ideas in classical phraseology, and yet appealing to popular tastes. He had found a new form and created a new school of hymnody. St. Hilary of Poitiers (died 367), who is mentioned by St. Isidore of Seville as the first to compose Latin hymns, and Ambrose, styled by Dreves "the Father of Church-song", are linked together as pioneers of Western hymnody. Isidore, who died in 636, testifies to the spread of the custom from Milan throughout the whole of the West, and refers to the hymns as Ambrosian.

In uncritical ages, hymns, whether metrical or merely accentual, following the material form of those of St. Ambrose, were generally ascribed to him and were called "Ambrosiani". As now used, the term implies no attribution of authorship, but rather a poetical form or a liturgical use. To St. Ambrose himself scholarship gives fourteen hymns certainly, three very probably, and one probably.

Early hymns

The first actually to compose hymns was St. Hilary, who had spent in Asia Minor some years of exile from his see, and had thus become acquainted with the Syrian and Greek hymns of the Eastern Church. His Liber Hymnorum has not survived. Daniel, in his Thesaurus Hymnologicus mistakenly attributed seven hymns to Hilary, two of which were considered by hymnologists generally to have had good reason for the ascription, until Blume showed the error underlying the ascription. The two hymns have the metric and strophic cast peculiar to the authenticated hymns of St. Ambrose and to the hymns which were afterwards composed on the model.