A comprehensive, well-written and informed history of Christian poetry in Latin, with occasional digressions into mediaeval Latin poetry of other sorts (principally satirical or philosophic) when useful to shed light on the authors. It does assume in the reader a general acquaintance with the overall general shape of history in the west between about 400 and 1400; but given that it also gives the poetry it treats un translated this may not be an unreasonable assumption.

Althougj coverage includes the major Latin hymns from Ambrose and Fortunatus to the Stabat Mater it goes well beyond them to devotional poems as well as longer works which could never have been quarries for hymns.

Well worth reading for both literary historical and liturgiological reasons ( )