In this same manuscript, discovered by Gamurrini at Arezzo, are the remains of what professes to be Hilary’s collection of hymns. He has always had the fame of being the earliest Latin hymn writer. This was, indeed, a task which the circumstances of his life must have suggested to him. The conflict with Arianism forced him to become the pioneer of systematic theology in the Latin tongue; it also drove him into exile in the East, where he must have acquainted himself with the controversial use made of hymnody by the Arians. Thus it was natural that he should have introduced hymns also into the West. But if the De Trinitate had little success, the hymns were still more unfortunate. Jerome tells us that Hilary complained of finding the Gauls unteachable in sacred song Comm. in Ep. ad Gal. ii. pref.: Hilarius in hymnorum carmine Gallos indociles vocat. This may mean that Hilary actually used the words ‘stubborn Gauls’ in one of his hymns. There would be nothing extraordinary in this; the early efforts, and especially those of the Arians which Hilary imitated for a better purpose, often departed widely from the propriety of later compositions, as we shall see in one of those attributed to Hilary himself.; and there is no reason to suppose that he had any wide or permanent success in introducing hymns into public worship It is true that the Fourth Council of Toledo (a.d. 633) in its 13th canon couples Hilary with Ambrose as the writer of hymns in actual use. But these canons are verbose productions, and this may be a mere literary flourish, natural enough in countrymen and contemporaries of Isidore of Seville, who knew, no doubt from Jerome’s Viri Illustres, that Hilary was the first Latin hymn writer.. If Hilary must have the credit of originality in this respect, the honour of turning his suggestion to account belongs to Ambrose, whose fame in more respects than one is built upon foundations laid by the other. And if but a scanty remnant of the verse of Ambrose, popular as it was, survives, we cannot be surprised that not a line remains which can safely be attributed to Hilary, though authorities who deserve respect have pronounced in favour of more than one of the five hymns which we must consider.