Thomas, John, Jean and John

I previously wrote about the quintessential “doubting Thomas” hymn, “O sons and daughters let us sing” (H40: 99; H82: 206). The English translation by John Mason Neale (of the Latin text “O Filli et Filiae”) was first published in his Medieval Hymns and Sequences (1851).

For the first Sunday after Easter, the doubting Thomas passage (John 20:19-31) is found in Years A,B and C of the Revised Common Lectionary as it was in the one year lectionary of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. The 1549, 1559 and 1662 BCP only read John 20:19-23, which has the fearful disciples in a locked room and Jesus showing his hands, but not Thomas satisfying his doubts.

However, I said little about the author of the original Latin text, Jean Tisserand. Little is known about him, other than he was a Franciscan monk, founded a women’s order, and died in Paris in 1494. His text is his most enduring legacy.

Even more mysterious is the origin of the tune, appropriately dubbed O Filli et Filiae, of which the oldest extant source is a Paris publication from 1624. The Hymnal 1940 Companion (1951, p. 74) says

The tune, O fillii et filiae, is probably the original contemporary melody since none other has been used with the text.

Thirty years later, the Hymnal Companion to the Lutheran Book of Worship (p.236) concluded essentially the same thing

O FILLI ET FILIAE belongs to this text and probably is contemporary with it.

Thus, I think it’s safe to say this is one of the oldest pairings of text (translated into the vernacular) with its corresponding tune. (The likely prize-winner is the plainsong Lord’s prayer, which is believed to be from the patristic era.)

As I’ve argued before, a central part of our Christian heritage is not just the teachings and beliefs of the church, but also the liturgy and music used to catechize those beliefs. Let us hope that the Church keeps Friar Tisserand’s contribution for another 500 years.

The Day of Resurrection

Among the canon of Anglican hymns for the Feast of the Resurrection is, appropriately enough, “The Day of Resurrection,” a hymn translated from the Greek by John Mason Neale.

The text is attributed to eighth century Greek Theologian, St. John of Damascus. According to Hymnary, the hymn is published in more than 450 hymnals.

Hymns of the Eastern Church

While my previous research has emphasized Neale’s translations from Latin, Neale also translated Greek hymns. In 1862, he published his pathbreaking translations of more than fifty hymns from the Greek in his book Hymns of the Eastern Church. As John Julian summarized in his 1892 Dictionary of Hymnology (p. 788):

Dr. Neale conferred even greater boon upon the lovers of hymnology than by his translations from the Latin, when he published, in 1862, his Hymns of the Eastern Church. In his translations from the Latin be, did what, others had done before; but in his translations from the Greek he was opening entirely new ground. “It is,” he says in his preface to the first edition, “a most remarkable fact, and one which shows how very little interest bas been hitherto felt in the Eastern Church, that these are literally, I believe, the only English version of any part of the treasures of Oriental Hymnology.”

As early as 1838 he had printed a few of his versions in The Ecclesiastic, but it was not till the appearance of the complete volume that the interest of the general public was awakened in them. Then they became wonderfully popular. His translations “Christians, dost thou see them?”, “The day is past and over,” “’Tis the day of Resurrection,” and his Greek-inspired “Art thou weary,” and “O happy band of pilgrims,” are almost as great favourites as “Jerusalem the golden,” and the first in his Hymns of the Eastern Church, “Fierce was the wild billow,” deserves to be. Dr. Neale had a far more difficult task before him when he undertook these Greek hymns than he had with the Latin, and he appeals to the reader “not to forget the immense difficulty of an attempt so perfectly new as the present, when I have had no predecessors and therefore could have no master.”

Beyond “The Day of Resurrection,” and “Jerusalem the Golden,” perhaps the most popular in this collection is “Come, ye faithful, raise the strain,” a second Easter hymn by St. John of Damascus.

Hymnal 1940, #96, 1st tune

The Day of Resurrection

In Hymns of the Eastern Church, “The Day of Resurrection” is one of 12 by St. John of Damascus — nine for Easter and three for Doubting Thomas Sunday (now celebrated July 3).

As noted, translation from Greek is trickier than from Latin. However, Neale’s 1862 translation is almost completely unchanged:

’Tis the Day of Resurrection: Earth! tell it out abroad!
The Passover of gladness! The Passover of GOD!
From Death to Life Eternal,— From this world to the sky,
Our CHRIST hath brought us over, With hymns of victory.

Our hearts be pure from evil, That we may see aright
The LORD in rays eternal Of Resurrection-Light:
And, listening to His accents, May hear, so calm and plain,
His own—All Hail!—and hearing, May raise the victor strain!

Now let the Heav’ns be joyful! Let earth her song begin!
Let the round world keep triumph, And all that is therein:
Invisible and visible Their notes let all things blend,—
For CHRIST the LORD hath risen,— Our joy that hath no end.

It was picked up (naturally) in Hymns Ancient & Modern (2nd edition, 1877), which initiated the three changes we keep today:

• Drop the “’Tis” in the first phrase
• “From this world to the sky” became “From earth unto sky”
• “Invisible and visible their notes let all things blend” became “Let all things seen and unseen their notes together blend.”

These three same verses were used in The English Hymnal (1906) and — as far as I can tell — all subsequent publications in Anglican hymnals.

Anglo-German Tune: Ellacombe

Ellacombe (which Anglicans sing today) was not the first tune for “The Day of Resurrection.” In Hymns A&M (#132 in the 1877/1889 edition), the tune was Rotterdam (by Berthold Tours). Hymnary says it’s the third most popular hymn for the text over the last 150 years.

The most popular hymn (according to Hymnary) is Lancashire by Henry Smart. This seems to be the most popular tune for this texts in American Protestant hymnals: it is used (for example) by Methodist (United Methodist Hymnal, 1989), Southern Baptist (Celebrating Grace, 2010), Presbyterian (Glory to God, 2013) and Lutheran (The Lutheran Hymnal, 1941; Christian Worship, 1993; Lutheran Service Book, 2006) hymnals.

The second most popular tune is Ellacombe. According to Hymnary.org and The Cyberhymnal, the original tune for Ellacombe was published in a German Catholic hymnal in 1784, and then revised by various German hymnals in the 19th century.

The current version and harmonization was by William Henry Monk, music editor of Hymns Ancient & Modern, for the first (1868) supplement to Hymns A&M. The text is “Come, sing with holy gladness”. The name (for a village in Devon) also dates to Hymns A&M. The tune was also used later for “Hail to the Lord’s anointed.”

The English Hymnal was the first to pair Neale’s (modified) text with Ellacombe.

The English Hymnal (1906), #137

Among Anglicans in the former colonies:

• Hymnal 1916 (#171) gave a choice of two tunes: 1) Rotterdam and 2) Greenland (by Michael Haydn). 
• Hymnal 1940 (#96): first tune is Ellacombe from TEH, and the second is All Hallows — written in 1892 by George Clement Martin (1844-1916). It is a rare example of when H40 has multiple tunes but doesn’t keep at least one of those used in H16.
• Hymnal 1982 (#210) just has Ellacombe
• Book of Common Praise 2017 (#123) not surprisingly also only has Ellacombe.

The text and tune also stand unchanged in hymn #217 of the New English Hymnal (1986).

Conclusion

We can thank Neale for preserving and making accessible a 1300-year-old Easter text by one of the greatest theologians of the Eastern church. By hymnal standards, Neale’s 1862 translation has well stood the test of time. 

Meanwhile, we must say “Alleluia” to William Henry Monk for publishing an adaptation of this stirring tune in Hymns Ancient & Modern —  and to Percy Dearmer and Ralph Vaughan Williams for pairing the text with this tune.

References

• John Julian, ed., “John Mason Neale,” A Dictionary of Hymnology, New York: Scribner’s Sons (1892), 785-791.
• J.M. Neale, trans., Hymns of the Eastern Church, London: J.T. Hayes, 1862, available at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/hymnseasternchu01nealgoog/

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.

Extra-canonical Palm Sunday melody

As I've noted before, there are two obligatory Palm Sunday hymns in an Episcopal (or American Anglican) church: “All glory, laud and honor” and “Ride on, ride on in Majesty.”  Apparently they are obligatory for Lutheran congregations too, and in 2015 the LCMS talk show Issues Etc. did an 54-minute podcast episodes on the latter. Today at church we did both, along with the Bach-harmonized “O sacred head, sore wounded”; this is a pretty standard American Anglican combination.

I’ve written repeatedly about “Glory and laud and honor,” as John Mason Neale originally began his most ecumenically successful hymn translation. In my 2018 journal article on Hymnal Noted, it was found in 22 of 24 major American hymnals from the 20th century.

Three Riding Tunes

However, for the closing processional, “Ride on” had an unfamiliar tune, so I thought I’d research the various options. To recap, the text was written in the 1820s by an Oxford poetry professor.

In my list of top Lenten hymns, I noted there are two commonly used tunes. I checked a broader range of hymnals, and Hymnal 1940 was the only one to have three tunes:

1. The King’s Majesty: Hymnal 1940, Hymnal 1982, Book of Common Praise 2017.
2. Winchester New: The English Hymnal, New English Hymnal, Hymnal 1916, Hymnal 1940, Book of Common Praise 2017.
3. St. Drostane: Hymnal 1916, Hymnal 1940. This appears to have been the preferred 19th century American tune but has fallen away.

King’s Majesty is the one I sang as a kid. It appears to have become the American standard, as it is the only tune in two 2006 Lutheran hymnals: the ELCA’s Evangelical Lutheran Worship and the LCMS’ Lutheran Service Book. It was so popular that it was the only one retained by Hymnal 1982.

About the tune, The Hymnal 1940 Companion writes:

The King’s Majesty was composed by Graham George for this text in the Hymnal 1940. It is a splendid example of the modern unison tune, with a rhythmic freedom which helps convey to the listener the grandeur of its subject.

Alas, for those not familiar with it, that rhythmic freedom helps make it difficult to sing.

Winchester New — a 17th century Lutheran tune — has both a straightforward metre and is familiar from other usages (it appears three times in Hymnal 1940 and Book of Common Praise 2017. It is the only tune I’ve seen for this text in English hymnals.

Hubert Parry

However, today our music director threw me for a loop by using a fourth tune, Jerusalem, by the great English choral composer Charles Hubert Hastings Parry (1848-1918). Hymnary says that this 1916 (double long metre) tune is most often used for “O day of peace that dimly shines” and “And did those feet in ancient time.”

The latter is how it appears in New English Hymnal, with the text by poet William Blake that some have called England’s alternative national anthem. Apparently this was the text for which Parry wrote the tune, and how it was premiered by his former student Walford Davies. It was one of his final works, as he died in 1918 in the great influenza epidemic.

Still, I was unable to find anyone outside our parish who uses this idiosyncratic pairing. My childhood choir director had his own idiosyncratic combination — “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” to Land of Rest — so obviously it’s easy to do for anyone who knows how to look up an alternate tune with the same meter.