(b Dacia, early 4th century; d Remesiana [now Bela Palanka, Serbia], after 414). Bishop and ecclesiastical writer. Virtually all that is known of Niceta comes from a letter and two laudatory poems of his friend Paulinus of Nola (d 435). He was born during the second quarter of the 4th century and in about 371 was appointed bishop of Remesiana, where he spent the remainder of his life except for a number of brief visits to Italy. The last contemporary reference to him comes from a letter of Pope Innocent I written in 414. All Niceta's surviving works were falsely attributed to various authors until restored to him in the 1905 edition of A.E. Burn.
Among the works are a pair of sermons of great importance for our understanding of early Christian music: De vigiliis and the variously named De utilitate hymnorum or De bono psalmodiae. Before Burn's edition they were transmitted in a grossly defective version and attributed to the 6th-century Nicetius of Trier. (The second of the two appeared thus in GerbertS, i, 9–14.) De vigiliis defends the type of vigil that became popular in the second half of the 4th century, first in the Eastern Christian centres and subsequently in the West. The vigil, held in the early morning hours before the Saturday and Sunday celebration of the Eucharist, was characterized by the prolonged singing of psalms interspersed with prayers.
At the close of De vigiliis Niceta promised a sermon devoted exclusively to the psalmody of the vigils; the result is a remarkable document that warmly endorses ecclesiastical song and summarizes the entire orthodox position on the subject. Niceta first defends singing aloud in church against those who thought it appropriate only ‘to make melody in their heart’; he continues with a history of sacred song illustrated by quotations from the Old and New Testaments and closes with a unique passage that describes in some detail the manner in which edifying congregational singing is to be conducted.
Morin and Burn (1926) attributed the composition of the Te Deum to Niceta, but appear to have done so merely on the grounds of his obvious interest in ecclesiastical song.
M. Gerbert: Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum (St Blasius, 1784/R, 3/1931)
G. Morin: ‘Nouvelles recherches sur l'auteur du Te deum’, Revue bénédictine, xi (1894), 49–77, 337–45
A.E. Burn: Niceta of Remesiana: his Life and Works (Cambridge, 1905)
C.H. Turner: ‘Niceta of Remesiana II: Introduction and Text of De psalmodiae bono’, Journal of Theological Studies, xxiv (1922–3), 225–50
A.E. Burn: The Hymn ‘Te Deum’ and its Author (London, 1926)
G.G. Walsh, ed.: Niceta of Remesiana: Writings (New York, 1949/R)
J.W. McKinnon: Music in Early Christian Literature (Cambridge, 1987)
J.W. McKinnon: ‘Desert Monasticism and the Psalmodic Movement of the Later Fourth Century’, ML, lxxv (1994), 505–21
JAMES W. McKINNON