Abstract
This magnificent, beautifully produced, astonishingly inexpensive volume is the first in a projected series of five. It represents a collaboration between the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) and the Catholic University of America. We are treated here to a very full scholarly analysis of all the Hymns found in the current Liturgia Horarum of the Catholic Church. After a most helpful series of introductory essays, each Latin hymn is set out, supplied with its recent ICEL translation, and commented on in detail. This first volume contains the 58 Hymns given in the current Roman Office for the Seasons of the Church’s Year. We await forthcoming volumes to deal with the remaining 236 Hymns. Volume 2 will cover Ordinary Time, including Hymns for the Little Hours, and for the 4-week cycle of the Office of Readings, Lauds and Vespers. Then Volume 3 will cover the Solemnities of the Lord and the Office of the Dead; Volume 4 will include Hymns for the Feasts of Saints, including Commons, from January to August, and Volume 5 the Feasts of Saints from September to December.
Behind this whole project is a conviction, happily shared by those officially charged with oversight of our worship, that the Latin Hymns of the Divine Office form a rich and precious liturgical patrimony. These Hymns are well worthy of careful study, and of retaining in their Latin form. This conviction has resulted in a bold policy decision by ICEL. That is: all the Hymns supplied in the volumes of the Divine Office henceforth to be published in English must remain translations from the Latin. Reference must always be made to the Latin originals: for Latin remains the typical language of the Liturgy of the Latin Catholic Church. Of course the translators have done their best to produce English versions that can be read or sung with facility. But no attempt has been made to create rhyming poems in the idiom of original English Hymn compositions: for that would necessitate free paraphrase, at best, and would depart from the primary aim of the translator, which is to render the original text as faithfully as possible. In addition: these new English Hymn translations even strive to preserve or echo the metre of their Latin originals.
Of course a gulf exists between the Latin and English tongues. Most Latin words contain two or more syllables, as needed to express their varying inflection. But many words of Anglo-Saxon origin are monosyllabic. Consider, by way of example, the Hymns of Venantius Fortunatus (+ c. 600) for Holy Week. Some 16 multi-syllable Latin words here have monosyllable equivalents in English: reed, nail, blood, tree, wood, lamb, weight, earth, sky, sea, world, and so forth.
After 10 years of study, directed by Mgr Andrew Wadsworth, in 2019 a complete set of new English translations of the Hymns of the Divine Office was officially adopted by ICEL. The Conference of Catholic Bishops of the United States was quick off the mark in overseeing publication of a special volume containing these translations. Called The Divine Office Hymnal, this volume sets out its English texts below music on a five-line stave. Each Hymn comes with two musical versions, on facing pages: first in modern hymn idiom, and secondly with a traditional Chant setting.
Meanwhile, the American Catholic Bishops are also well ahead with their project of producing a new Second Edition Liturgy of the Hours in English. Publication of that is expected in mid-2026, following the hoped-for Vatican confirmation. This updated edition will feature our ICEL hymns, plus also new translations of intercessions and Psalms, and will incorporate the new Feasts and Memorials introduced since the First Edition appeared now 50 years ago, in 1975.
As for the Latin Hymns of the Liturgia Horarum: all are easily accessed via the Liber Hymnarius published by Solesmes in 1983; second edition 2019. Our Commentary here notes that these Hymns “span seventeen centuries of poetic composition. Although music and poetry changed dramatically over the course of these centuries, the genre of liturgical hymnody composed for and consistently used in the Divine Office displayed a high level of continuity. The purposes for which these hymns were written and sung, as well as the liturgical life of monastic communities and cathedrals, helped to maintain this continuity. These hymns are some of the finest examples of the thousands of hymns produced from the fourth century onwards. They tell the story of the development of the hymn from the iambic dimeters of St Ambrose to the rhyming sequences of the thirteenth century, and finally they tell of the return to a preference for quantitative metre in the modern era . . . Sobriety, simplicity and elegance of style combined with theological and spiritual depth are the hallmark of the early Christian Latin Hymns. They say all that is needed with feeling but without excess” (from the Introduction).
Two authors in particular dominate the story of Hymns in Latin liturgical worship. First, of course, is St Ambrose, Bishop of Milan from 374 to his death in 397. Although St Hilary of Poitiers had composed some hymns before him, Ambrose is credited with more or less founding the genre of Hymn singing in the Catholic Church. Several hymns quite securely attributed to him have been sung regularly in the Divine Office from his day to the present. The scholars of Cantate Domino heap praise on the poetic quality of these Hymns. Those of us who are very familiar with Ambrosian hymns may well rejoice to have our eyes opened by what they say. We already knew, perhaps, that the hymns of Ambrose are easy to sing and to memorise; that they are theologically precise, and entirely orthodox; that they employ scansion according to quantity, following the best classical models, though also with an eye to the stress accent which never quite ceased to underlie Latin diction. What we discover from this commentary is that Ambrose habitually employed subtle patterns of parallelism, assonance, consonance, alliteration and balance: that he would deliberately introduce slight variations in his metre to dispel monotony; that his hymns always have eight verses, or stanzas, for both practical and symbolic reasons; that his scriptural and poetic allusions are extremely rich; but all the while his aim was to form the people who sing into fervent disciples of Christ, immovably attached to His Church.
The second dominating figure to mention is Dom Anselmo Lentini (1901–1989), Benedictine Monk of Monte Cassino, Master Latinist, prolific composer of Latin liturgical Hymns, and leader of the special “coetus” or team appointed by Pope St Paul VI to revise the Hymns of the Divine Office, following the Second Vatican Council. We have detailed information about all the choices Lentini made in this work, because he wrote about them in two books, published in 1968 and 1984. One chief work of Lentini and his team was to undo the reforms instituted by Pope Urban VIII (1568 –1644). This Pope much disliked those Hymns of the repertoire which were composed in the post-classical period, when Latin pronunciation gradually passed from syllable length to syllable stress. With this change came also the ever-increasing use of Rhyme. In quantitative metre, the last syllable is barely heard; in stressed metre, it acquires structural importance. Urban directed that all these “barbaric” hymns be changed, and brought into line with the best (pagan) classical models. Lentini happily restored the originals: though not without making plenty of changes of his own. He cut stanzas considered excessively lengthy, and he tinkered with lines he found clumsy or not to his taste. And although Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium does not actually mandate the introduction of new hymns, Lentini introduced no fewer than 42 of his own compositions into the official Liturgy of the Catholic Church.
Our editors consider Lentini’s hymns to be very fine. They certainly fill many a lacuna. Nevertheless, not every decision of Lentini’s need be regarded as beyond criticism. Our commentary then highlights all these changes, leaving the reader to decide whether or not they are an improvement. While the focus is always on the Hymn as found in the current Liturgia Horarum, any original version is also always noted and commented on.
It is impossible in a brief review to cover the enormous wealth of scholarly commentary found in this volume. But to take just one random example: the Hymn for Lauds during Advent up to 16th December, Vox clara ecce intonat. This hymn is found in many mediaeval manuscripts, the earliest of which is a complete Hymnal from the tenth century, originating in Canterbury. Of course our Hymn could be considerably older than this. At first, the commentary seems to damn the Hymn with faint praise:
“In classical quantitative metre and post-Carolingian accentual verse, hiatus and elision are treated carefully, either reduced to a minimum or avoided altogether. This hymn makes no attempt whatsoever to avoid either. It has seven instances of hiatus, two in the first line, as well as several quantitatively incorrect syllable lengths; and after three instances of hiatus in the first two lines, it has an elision (eminus has to be pronounced em’nus).”
But then:
“The rich layering of metaphors, the vocabulary found in Ambrose and Prudentius, and the strong rhythm of the poetic lines make this hymn a magnificent and powerful expression of the spiritual and liturgical message of Advent . . .” There follow 5 pages of dense, sometimes quite technical but always enlightening commentary.
The editors of this book are to be congratulated on their enormous achievement. They have made a wealth of scholarship available for a wide public, surely reaching far beyond the rather narrow circle of academic students of liturgy. And they have struck a blow for the integrity of the Roman Office: demonstrating the need to keep its Latin original both alive and active within the mainstream of Catholic worship.