Propers for St. Jerome Emiliani
  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    I've been going through the propers for the feast of St. Jerome Emiliani, patron of orphans and abandoned children, this Wednesday, July 20, since we're singing a High Mass, and the texts are remarkable. The Introit is rather grim; I've never seen the word jecur (liver) in chant before.

    My liver is poured out upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people, when the child and the suckling fainted away in the streets of the city. Ps. 112. 1 Praise the Lord, ye children: praise ye the Name of the Lord. .Glory be to the Father. My liver is poured out upon the earth.

    The Offertory is also unusual:

    When thou didst pray with tears, and didst bury the dead, and didst leave thy dinner, and hide the dead by day in thy house, and bury them by night, I offered thy prayer to the Lord.

    The beautiful Communio:

    Religion clean and undefiled before God and the Father, is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their tribulation, and to keep one's self unspotted from this world.

    Propers attached. Has anyone ever sung this Mass?
    St. Jerome Emiliani.pdf
    260K
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Julie,

    Never sung this Mass, but parts of it sound very familiar, as if the proper melodies were, in part, borrowed from elsewhere -- more than just the predictable modal endings, I mean.

    Thank you for introducing me to it.

    Now: one more question. How is it that you come to be singing a High Mass on this feast?
  • JulieCollJulieColl
    Posts: 2,465
    We have a monthly Missa Cantata which usually falls on the third Wednesday of the month. The melodies for this feast do sound familiar, thankfully. Sometimes they're quite abstruse.
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