Monday, June 23, 2014

Urban VIII?


Does any body know if the following verses, taken from the hymn Ut queant laxis, are "improvements" to a lost original text made by Pope Urban VIII? I could be off on this one, but did Paulus Diaconus really write this!?

Nuntius celso veniens Olympo,
Te patri magnum fore nasciturum,
Nomen, et vitae seriem gerendae
Ordine promit

4 comments:

  1. Apparently the entire Vespers hymn was left untouched by Urban VIII and his helpers (like a few others, "Ave Maris Stella," and St. Thomas's great hymns for Corpus Christi). I suppose the use of "Olympo" is analogous to the use of "barathro" in the "Ad coenam Agni providi."

    A very blessed feast of the Holy Forerunner, one of my favorite feast days, as it seems to be for you, too!

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  2. http://www.ceec.uni-koeln.de/ceec-cgi/kleioc/0010/exec/pagepro/%22kn28-1018_625.jpg%22/segment/%22body%22

    "celso veniens olimpo" is at least in this 15th century Breviary. In Liber Hymnarius (1983) this is for some unknown reason corrected to "caelo veniens supremo".

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  3. "Veniens Olympo" is the translation that's in the 1570 option on DivinumOfficium.com, which surprised me also yesterday, since that is pre-Urban VIII.

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  4. Indeed, 'veniens Olympo' appears in 1568BR and in the Breviarium Monasticum. In my, 1880s, copy of the latter olympo is not capitalised.

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