Fortunatus and Neale teach us about the cross

Some of the oldest hymns in the Anglican canon are by Fortunatus, the 6th century cleric who was the leading Latin poet of his era — the first century after the fall of Rome — and a contemporary of Gregory the Great. His best known are probably the Easter hymns “Hail thee, festival day” and “Welcome happy morning.”

As with so many things ancient and medieval, much of what we know and use of Fortunatus’ work is owed to John Mason Neale, who did the original translation of “Hail thee, festival day.” Today for Good Friday we sang two of the Fortunatus’ hymns for Holy Week that were translated by Neale:

• Pange lingua gloriosi: “Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle” (a slightly different arrangement than #66 in Hymnal 1940)
• Vexilla Regis prodeunt: “The royal banners forward go,” sometimes credited to Theodulph of Orleans. We sang the H40 #63 version, transposed down one step (from G to F).

The Royal Banners Forward Go

The latter begins

The royal banners forward go,
The cross shines forth in mystic glow,
Where he, as man, who gave man breath,
Now bows beneath the yoke of death.

This translation was first published in 1851 (without music) by Neale in his Medieval Hymns & Sequences. In this book, he explains the text thus:

This world-famous hymn, one of the grandest in the treasury of the Latin Church, was composed by Fortunatus, on occasion of the reception of certain relics by S. Gregory of Tours and S. Radegund previously to the consecration of a church at Poitiers. It is therefore strictly and primarily a processional hymn, though very naturally afterwards adapted to Passiontide.

As with all popular Neale translations, it later was picked up by Hymns Ancient & Modern and The English Hymnal.

The Hymnal 1940 Companion lists eight latin verses:

Vexilla regis prodeunt
Fulget crucis mysterium
Quo carne carnis conditor
Suspensus est patibulo.

Confixa clavis viscera
tendens manus, vestigia
redemptionis gratia
hic inmolata est hostia.

Quo vulneratus insuper
Mucrone diro lanceae
Ut nos lavaret crimine
Manavit unda et sanguine.

Impleta sunt quae concinit
David fideli carmine
Dicens In nationibus
Regnavit a ligno Deus.

Arbor decora et fulgida
Ornata Regis purpura
Erecta [sic] digno stipite
Tam sancta membra tangere.

Beata, cujus brachiis
Saecli pependit praemium
Statera facta corporis
Praedam que tulit Tartari.

O crux ave, spes unica
Hoc passiones tempore
Auge piis justitiam
Reisque dona veniam.

Te summa Deus trinitas
Collaudet omnis spiritus:
Quos per crucis mysterium
Salvas, rege per saecula.

It also said

Since the tenth century it has been the Vesper office hymn from Passion Sunday to Wednesday in Holy Week. The “vexillum” was the old Roman cavalry standard which, after Constantine, was surmounted by a cross instead of the Roman eagle.

The six verses in H40 are V1,4,5,6 of Fortunatus, and two concluding stanzas from the 10th century office hymn. The H40 HC says the text has been in the Episcopal Hymnal since 1874, making it one of the first of Neale’s hymns adopted for U.S. use. According to Hymnary, the text is reprinted in 118 hymnals.

Sarum Plainchant

H40 has two tunes. The second tune, Parker, was written in 1894 for this text.

As for #63 (First Tune), Hymnal 1940 Companion says

The first tune, Vexilla Regis, is the Sarum form of the traditional melody for this text, undoubtedly as old as the words themselves.

Hymnal 1982 (#162) retains this text-tune pairing, but says the oldest record of the tune is a 12th century Roman manuscript. It is dropped from the Book of Common Praise 2017;  the text (with the other H40 tune) was published in the 1939 Book of Common Praise.

Medieval Lutheran Hymnody

Next to Anglicans, the Lutherans are the most respectful of our medieval (and ancient) liturgical and musical patrimony. Thus, it was not completely surprising that Thursday Issues Etc. broadcast a new one-hour segment on this hymn, with an enthusiastic endorsement by LCMS pastor (and chief liturgist) Will Weedon.

This hymn is part of the Lutheran canon, although (as Weedon alludes to) the latest LCMS hymnal, the 2006 Lutheran Service Book, provides a less Gregorian and more hymn-like chant (#455), with reduced melisma, barred to a consistent 3-beat rhythm.

Pastor Weedon noted that the hymn had several Holy Week applications, including Maundy Thursday and the veneration of the cross at Good Friday. (Today we sang it after the veneration of the cross). In his view, the “royal banners” would be better understood as battle standards, as when Romans (or Christians) were going to fight the enemy.

Weedon was excited that the third verse was a quote from a reference to the cross in Psalm 96:10 in the Old Latin, pre-Vulgate (presumably Vetus Latina) book of psalms. In the 6th century, the Vulgate was less than 200 years old and Fortunatus would have known the earlier (Septuagint-derived) psalter. In the earlier psalm, the verse refers to the “wood,” i.e. the wood of the cross.

In accord with this view, the Adam Clarke commentary identifies multiple quotations of this earlier psalm translation by the patristic fathers:

Say among the heathen that the Lord reigneth - Justin Martyr, in his dialogue with Trypho the Jew, quotes this passage thus: Ειπατε εν τοις εθνεσι, ὁ Κυριος εβασιλευσε απο του ξυλου, "Say among the nations, the Lord ruleth by the wood," meaning the cross; and accuses the Jews of having blotted this word out of their Bibles, because of the evidence it gave of the truth of Christianity. It appears that this reading did exist anciently in the Septuagint, or at least in some ancient copies of that work, for the reading has been quoted by Tertullian, Lactantius, Arnobius, Augustine, Cassiodorus, Pope Leo, Gregory of Tours, and others. The reading is still extant in the ancient Roman Psalter, Dominus regnavit a ligno, and in some others. In an ancient MS. copy of the Psalter before me, while the text exhibits the commonly received reading, the margin has the following gloss: Regnavit a ligno crucis, "The Lord reigns by the wood of the cross." 

Musical Recordings

iTunes lists three vocal recordings, from Ely Cathedral, Gloucester Cathedral, and St. John’s College Cambridge. The Gloucester Cathedral recording is of tune Gonfalon Royal, the alternate tune (#128.ii) for the text (#79) in the New English Hymnal. It is not obvious what St. John’s singing.

The Ely recording is the only recording I could find of the Sarum tune. Shazam™ says that it is also the one used in the Issues Etc. broadcast.

So while this is one of Neale’s less popular texts, nonetheless it continues on 150 years later as a testimony in the third millennium from the middle of the first millennium.