Lauda Sion

Aquinas presenting Lauda Sion to the Pope

"Lauda Sion" is a sequence for the Roman Rite Mass on the Feast of Corpus Christi. It was written by St. Thomas Aquinas around 1264, at the request of Pope Urban IV for the new Mass of this feast, along with Pange lingua, Sacris solemniis, and Verbum supernum prodiens, which are used in the Divine Office.

Overview

The Gregorian melody of the Lauda Sion is borrowed from the eleventh-century sequence Laetabundi iubilemus attributed to Adam of Saint Victor.

The hymn tells of the institution of the Eucharist and clearly expresses the belief of the Roman Catholic Church in transubstantiation and in Real presence, that is, that the bread and wine truly become permanently and irreversibly the Body and Blood of Christ when consecrated by a validly-ordained priest or bishop during the Mass. The fact that the hymn had been composed for the Holy Mass is testified by the sixth stanza: Dies enim solemnis agitur / In qua mensæ prima recolitur / Hujus institutio - On this festival divine / Which records the origin / Of the glorious Eucharist.

Lauda Sion is one of only four medieval sequences which were preserved in the Roman Missal published in 1570 following the Council of Trent (1545–1563) by will of Saint Pius V—the others being Victimae paschali laudes (Easter), Veni Sancte Spiritus (Pentecost), and Dies irae (requiem masses). (A fifth, Stabat Mater, would later be added in 1727.) Before Trent, many feasts had their own sequences. The existing versions were unified in the Roman Missal promulgated in 1570. The Lauda Sion is still sung today as a solemn Eucharistic hymn, though its use as a sequence is optional in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite. Before the reform of 1970, it was sung on Corpus Christi as a sequence between the gradual Oculi omnium and the Gospel of the day, after the verse of the Alleluia.

The sequence's English title is Sing forth, O Zion, sweetly sing or, as below, Sion, lift up thy voice and sing.

As with Aquinas's other three Eucharistic hymns, the last few stanzas of the Lauda Sion are often used alone, in this case, to form the Ecce panis Angelorum.

Text

Latin text

English translation

Lauda Sion Salvatórem Lauda ducem et pastórem In hymnis et cánticis. Quantum potes, tantum aude: Quia major omni laude, Nec laudáre súfficis. Laudis thema speciális, Panis vivus et vitális, Hódie propónitur. Quem in sacræ mensa cœnæ, Turbæ fratrum duodénæ Datum non ambígitur. Sit laus plena, sit sonóra, Sit jucúnda, sit decóra Mentis jubilátio. Dies enim solémnis ágitur, In qua mensæ prima recólitur Hujus institútio. In hac mensa novi Regis, Novum Pascha novæ legis, Phase vetus términat. Vetustátem nóvitas, Umbram fugat véritas, Noctem lux elíminat. Quod in cœna Christus gessit, Faciéndum hoc expréssit In sui memóriam. Docti sacris institútis, Panem, vinum, in salútis Consecrámus hóstiam. Dogma datur Christiánis, Quod in carnem transit panis, Et vinum in sánguinem. Quod non capis, quod non vides, Animósa firmat fides, Præter rerum ordinem. Sub divérsis speciébus, Signis tantum, et non rebus, Latent res exímiæ. Caro cibus, sanguis potus: Manet tamen Christus totus, Sub utráque spécie. A suménte non concísus, Non confráctus, non divísus: Integer accípitur. Sumit unus, sumunt mille: Quantum isti, tantum ille: Nec sumptus consúmitur. Sumunt boni, sumunt mali: Sorte tamen inæquáli, Vitæ vel intéritus. Mors est malis, vita bonis: Vide paris sumptiónis Quam sit dispar éxitus. Fracto demum Sacraménto, Ne vacílles, sed memento, Tantum esse sub fragménto, Quantum toto tégitur. Nulla rei fit scissúra: Signi tantum fit fractúra: Qua nec status nec statúra Signáti minúitur. Ecce panis Angelórum, Factus cibus viatórum: Vere panis filiórum, Non mitténdus cánibus. In figúris præsignátur, Cum Isaac immolátur: Agnus paschæ deputátur Datur manna pátribus. Bone pastor, panis vere, Jesu, nostri miserére: Tu nos pasce, nos tuére: Tu nos bona fac vidére In terra vivéntium. Tu, qui cuncta scis et vales: Qui nos pascis hic mortáles: Tuos ibi commensáles, Cohærédes et sodáles, Fac sanctórum cívium. Amen. Allelúja.

Sion, lift up thy voice and sing: Praise thy Savior and thy King, Praise with hymns thy shepherd true. All thou canst, do thou endeavour: Yet thy praise can equal never Such as merits thy great King. See today before us laid The living and life-giving Bread, Theme for praise and joy profound. The same which at the sacred board Was, by our incarnate Lord, Giv'n to His Apostles round. Let the praise be loud and high: Sweet and tranquil be the joy Felt today in every breast. On this festival divine Which records the origin Of the glorious Eucharist. On this table of the King, Our new Paschal offering Brings to end the olden rite. Here, for empty shadows fled, Is reality instead, Here, instead of darkness, light. His own act, at supper seated Christ ordain'd to be repeated In His memory divine; Wherefore now, with adoration, We, the host of our salvation, Consecrate from bread and wine. Hear, what holy Church maintaineth, That the bread its substance changeth Into Flesh, the wine to Blood. Doth it pass thy comprehending? Faith, the law of sight transcending Leaps to things not understood. Here beneath these signs are hidden Priceless things, to sense forbidden, Signs, not things, are all we see. Flesh from bread, and Blood from wine, Yet is Christ in either sign, All entire, confessed to be. They, who of Him here partake, Sever not, nor rend, nor break: But, entire, their Lord receive. Whether one or thousands eat: All receive the self-same meat: Nor the less for others leave. Both the wicked and the good Eat of this celestial Food: But with ends how opposite! Here 't is life: and there 't is death: The same, yet issuing to each In a difference infinite. Nor a single doubt retain, When they break the Host in twain, But that in each part remains What was in the whole before. Since the simple sign alone Suffers change in state or form: The signified remaining one And the same for evermore. Behold the Bread of Angels, For us pilgrims food, and token Of the promise by Christ spoken, Children's meat, to dogs denied. Shewn in Isaac's dedication, In the manna's preparation: In the Paschal immolation, In old types pre-signified. Jesu, shepherd of the sheep: Thou thy flock in safety keep, Living bread, thy life supply: Strengthen us, or else we die, Fill us with celestial grace. Thou, who feedest us below: Source of all we have or know: Grant that with Thy Saints above, Sitting at the feast of love, We may see Thee face to face. Amen. Alleluia.

Another translation is used in the 1981 Lectionary approved for Australia and New Zealand (Volume 1, pages 601-603). It is by James Ambrose Dominic Aylward OP (1813-1872) and was published in Annus Sanctus in 1884, pages 194-196.

A 1773 translation into German, "Deinem Heiland, deinem Lehrer", by Franz Xaver Riedel is a procession hymn for the Feast of Corpus Christi.

Reception

According to Dom Guéranger, Lauda Sion:

it is here that the utmost power of a Scholasticism, not crude and truncated, like that of today, but juicy and complete, like that of the Middle Ages, was able to bend the rhythm of the Latin language to the clear exposition and demand a dogma, as abstract for the theologian as it is sweet and consoling for the heart of the faithful.

See also

• Veni Creator Spiritus
• Pange lingua
• Transubstantiation

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Lauda Sion.—The opening words (used as a title of the sequence composed by St. Thomas Aquinas, about the year 1264, for the Mass of Corpus Christi. That the sequence was written for the Mass is evidenced by the sixth stanza:

Dies enim solemnis agitur

In qua mensæ prima recolitur

Hujus institutio.

("for on this solemn day is again celebrated the first institution of the Supper"). The authorship of the sequence was once attributed to St. Bonaventure; and Gerbert, in his "De cantu et musica sacra", declaring it redolent of the style and rhythmic sweetness characteristic of the verse of this saint, moots the question whether the composition of the Mass of the feast should not be ascribed to him, and of the Office to St. Thomas. The fact that another Office had been composed for the local feast established by a synodal decree of the Bishop of Liège in 1246 also led some writers to contest the ascription to St. Thomas. His authorship has been proved, however, beyond question, thanks to Martine (De antiq. rit. eccl., IV, xxx), by the dissertation of Noël Alexandre, which leaves no doubt (minimum dubitandi scrupulum) in the matter. There is also a clear declaration (referred to by Cardinal Thomasius) of the authorship of St. Thomas, in a Constitution issued by Sixtus IV (1471-1484), and to be found in the third tome of the "Bullarium novissimum Fratrum Prædicatorum". In content the great sequence, which is partly epic, but mostly didactic and lyric in character, summons all to endless praise of the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar (lines 1-15); assigns the reason for the commemoration of its institution (lines 16-30); gives in detail the Catholic doctrine of the Sacrament (lines 31-62): "Dogma datur Christianis", etc.; shows the fulfillment of ancient types (lines 63-70): "Ecce panis angelorum", etc.; prays the Good Shepherd to feed and guard us here and make us sharers of the Heavenly Table hereafter (lines 71-80): "Bone pastor, panis vere" etc. Throughout the long poem the rhythmic flow is easy and natural, and, strange to say, especially so in the most didactic of the stanzas, despite a scrupulous theological accuracy in both thought and phrase. The saint "writes with the full panoply under his singing-robes"; but always the melody is perfect, the condensation of phrase is of crystalline clearness, the unction is abundant and, in the closing stanzas, of compelling sweetness. A more detailed description of the content of the "Lauda Sion" is not necessary here, since both Latin text and English version are given in the Baltimore "Manual of Prayers", p. 632. In form, the sequence follows the rhythmic and stanzaic build of Adam of St. Victor's "Laudes crucis attollanus", which is given by present-day hymnologists as the type selected by St. Thomas for the "Lauda Sion". Thus the opening stanzas of both sequences have the form:

which is continued through five stanzas. In the sixth stanza the form changes in the "Lauda Sion" to: "Dies enim solemnis agitur" etc., as quoted above; and in the "Laudes crucis" to the identical (numerical) rhythms of:

Dicant omnes et dicant singuli,

Ave salus totius sæculi

Arbor salutifera.

Both sequences then revert to the first form for the next stanza, while in the following stanza both alter the form to:

in which all three lines are in the same rhythm. Both again revert to the first form, the "Lauda Sion" having ten such stanzas, the "Laudes crucis" twelve. We next come to a beautiful stanzaic feature of the sequences of Adam, which is imitated by the "Lauda Sion". The stanzaic forms thus far noticed have comprised three verses or lines. But now, as if the fervour of his theme had at length begun to carry the poet beyond his narrow stanzaic limits, the lines multiply in each stanza. Thus, the following four stanzas in both sequences have a form which, as it has in various ways become notable in the "Lauda Sion", may be given here in the text of one of its stanzas:

Ecce panis angelorum

Factus cibus viatorum;

Vere panis filiorum

Non mittendus canibus.

Finally, both sequences close with two stanzas having each five lines, as illustrated by the penultimate stanza of the "Lauda Sion":

Bone Pastor, panis vere,

Jesu, nostri miserere;

Tu nos pasce, nos tuere,

Tu nos bona fac videre

In terra viventium.

It is clear from the above detailed comparison of the two sequences that St. Thomas, following the form of the "Laudes crucis" throughout all its rhythmic and stanzaic variations, composed a sequence which could be sung to a chant already in existence; but it is not a necessary inference from this fact that St. Thomas directly used the "Laudes crucis" as his model. In form the two sequences are indeed identical (except, as already noted, that one has two stanzas more than the other). But identity of form is also found in the "Lauda Sion" and Adam's Easter sequence, "Zyma vetus expurgetur", which Clichtoveus rightly styles "admodium divina", and whose spirit and occasional phraseology approximate much more closely to those of the "Lauda Sion". This is especially notable in the sixth stanza, where the first peculiar change of rhythm occurs, and where in both sequences the application of the theme to the feast-day is made directly and formally. Thus (in "Lauda Sion"): "Dies enim solemnis agitur", etc.; and (in "Zyma vetus"): "Hæc est dies quam fecit Dominus" (This is the day which the Lord hath made). It may well be surmised that Adam desired to include this famous liturgical text in his Easter sequence of "Zyma vetus expurgetur", even at the expense of altering the rhythm with which he had begun his poem; and St. Thomas, copying exactly the new rhythmic form thus introduced, copied also the spirit and pungency of its text. The same thing is not true, however, of the corresponding stanza of the "Laudes crucis", which gives us merely similarity of form and not of content or of spirit. Other verbal correspondences between the "Zyma vetus" and the "Lauda Sion" are observable in the closing stanzas. It may be said, then, that the "Lauda Sion" owes not only its poetic form, but much also of its spirit and fire, and not a little even of its phraseology, to various sequences of Adam, whom Guèranger styles "le plus grand poète du moyen áge". Thus, for instance, the two lines (rhythmically variant from the type set in the first stanza) of the "Lauda Sion":

Vetustatem novitas,

Umbram fugat veritas,

were directly borrowed from another Easter sequence of Adam's, Ecce dies celebris, in which occurs the double stanza:

Lætis cedant tristia

Cum sit major gloria

Quam prima confusio.

Umbram fugat veritas,

Vetustatem novitas,

Luctum consolatio —

while the "Pascha novum Christus est" of the Easter sequence of Adam, and the "Paranymphi novæ legis Ad amplexum novi Regis" of his sequence of the Apostles, find a strong echo in the "Novum pascha novæ legis" of the "Lauda Sion".

The plainsong melody of the "Lauda Sion" includes the seventh and eighth modes. Its purest form is found in the recently issued Vatican edition of the Roman Gradual. Its authorship is not known; and, accordingly, the surmise of W. S. Rockstro that the text-authors of the five sequences still retained in the Roman Missal probably wrote the melodies also (and therefore that St. Thomas wrote the melody of the "Lauda Sion"), and the conviction of a writer in the "Irish Ecclesiastical Record", August, 1888 (St. Thomas as a Musician), to the same effect, are incorrect. Shall we suppose that Adam of St. Victor composed the melody? The supposition, which would of course date the melody in the twelfth century, is not an improbable one. Possibly it is of older date; but the peculiar changes of rhythm suggest that the melody was composed either by Adam or by some fellow-monk of St. Victor's Abbey; and the most notable rhythmic change is, as has been remarked above, the inclusion of the intractable liturgical text: "Hæc dies quam fecit Dominus" — a change demanding a melody appropriate to itself. Since the melody dates back at least to the twelfth century, it is clear that the "local tradition" ascribing its composition to Pope Urban IV (d. 1264), who had established the feast-day and had charged St. Thomas with the composition of the Office, is not well-based: "Contemporary writers of Urban IV speak of the beauty and harmony of his voice and of his taste for music and the Gregorian chant; and, according to a local tradition, the music of the Office of the Blessed Sacrament — a composition as grave, warm, penetrating, splendid as the celestial harmonies — was the work of Urban IV" (Cruls, "The Blessed Sacrament"; tr., Preston, p. 76). In addition to the exquisite plainsong melody mention should be made of Palestrina's settings of the "Lauda Sion", two for eight voices (the better known of which follows somewhat closely the plainsong melody), and one for four voices; and also of the noble setting of Mendelssohn.

The "Lauda Sion" is one of the five sequences (out of the thousand which have come down to us from the Middle Ages) still retained in the Roman Missal. Each of the five has its own special beauty; but the "Lauda Sion" is peculiar in its combination of rhythmic flow, dogmatic precision, phraseal condensation. It has been translated, either in whole or in part, upwards of twenty times into English verse; and a selection from it, the "Ecce panis angelorum", has received some ten additional versions. Amongst Catholic versions are those of Southwell, Crashaw, Husenbeth, Beste, Oakeley, Caswall, Wallace, Aylward, Wacherbarth, Henry. Non-Catholic versions modify the meaning where it is too aggressively dogmatic and precise. E. C. Benedict, however, in his "Hymn of Hildebert", etc., gives a literal translation into verse, but declares that it is to be understood in a Protestant sense. On the other hand, as the editor of "Duffield's Latin Hymns" very sensibly remarks, certain stanzas express "the doctrine of transubstantiation so distinctly, that one must have gone as far as Dr. Pusey, who avowed that he held "all Roman doctrine", before using these words in a non-natural sense." The admiration tacitly bestowed on the sequence by its frequent translation, either wholly or in part, by non-Catholic pens, found its best expression in the eloquent Latin eulogy of Daniel (Thesaurus Hymnologicus, II, p. 88), when, speaking of the hymns of the Mass and Office of Curpus Christi, he says: "The Angelic Doctor took a single theme for his singing, one filled with excellence and divinity and, indeed, angelic, that is, one celebrated and adored by the very angels. Thomas was the greatest singer of the venerable Sacrament. Neither is it to be believed that he did this without the inbreathing of God (quem non sine numinis afflatu cecinisse credas), nor shall we be surprised that, having so wondrously, not to say uniquely, absolved this one spiritual and wholly heavenly theme, he should thenceforward sing no more. One only offspring was his — but it was a lion (Peperit semel, sed leonem)."

Kayser, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Erklärung der alten Kirchenhymnen, II (Paderborn and Münster, 1886), 77; Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (New York, 1882), s. v. for references to MSS. and translations; Dreves and Blume, Analecta Hymnica (Leipzig), x, 123; xxxvii, 58; xxxix, 226, 229; xl, 311; xlii, 104, 151, for poems founded on the Lauda Sion, and xxxvii, 269 (no. 312) for a sequence in honour of St. Thomas Aquinas, beginning Lauda Sion increatam; Ecclesiastical Review, IV, 443, for text and translation, notes and comment

External links

• H.T. Henry. "Lemma "Lauda Sion", in the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia". Archived from the original on January 16, 2000.
• "Lauda Sion Salvatorem polyphonic settings and translations". Choral Public Domain Library. Archived from the original on March 19, 2017.
• "Lauda Sion Salvatorem (Rehearsal video)". YouTube. Archived from the original on December 27, 2018. (with music sheet and translation)