I don't know anything about these new English translations. Could you share some info?

There is a partial copy of the new book here. I don't know why it only includes one hymn, Pange lingua, but perhaps the others have not changed? So that gives you the Tantum ergo.

Here: Let Us, Therefore, Bow and Worship

and Here: O Victim Bringing Saving Grace

Maybe the new versions are better as literal translations (my latin isn't good enough to judge). There is no rhyme to them however which just makes them really awkward to sing.

^which I think is also a noble goal. I don’t think that the old translations are necessarily bad. But there are some things that I find nicer about the new ones. It’s nice to not have a dog in the fight.

Indeed, one frustration which I have with Divinum Officium, and many other translations besides that of Bute, is that the poetry is sometimes mediocre at best but the Latin is totally obscured. Which is a problem because there are apparently very few translations meant either for comparison only or where, like in this case, literalism and meter were privileged over rhyme… no, I wish some of these people had said, “No, I don’t think that one more metered and rhyming but not especially literal translation of Conditor (Creator, less often) Alme Siderum is going to be sung at low Mass or in the Anglo-Catholic world.”

Thanks everyone

One of the tactics of modernism is to constantly keep you off balance. Vernacular divides. It puts you in a “camp” and puts a timestamp on your intellect.

This is why they employ vernacular texts. Constantly making it “better” by “studiously revising”. Demonic.

Yes, but although this is vastly easier with vernacular, it did happen with the Latin too. When Urban VIII "fixed" the traditional hymns of the Church, he created variants which still cause some confusion and division to this day.

But overall you are right Francis, the Devil has it much easier now with all these various vernacular translations.

ICEL:

O Victim bringing saving grace
who open wide the gate of heav’n
our foes assail and press us hard;
give us your strength, bring us your aid.

Caswall:

O saving Victim, op'ning wide
The gate of heav'n to us below,
Our foes press on from every side;
Thine aid supply, thy strength bestow.

How does Caswall fail as an accurate rendering of the Latin text? In what way has the new text improved upon it? I would also like to see it demonstrated, since it is really not apparent to me, that the new text does not actually rely upon the Caswall translation. If anything, Caswall takes his greatest liberties in translating ‘bella’ as ‘foes’, which is certainly not an apparent literal sense of the Latin word (although it works very well to convey the meaning), and ICEL seems to have taken that word right from him, as likewise with ‘press’, ‘strength’ and ‘aid’. Not to mention ‘opening wide’ for ‘pandis’.

Speaking of literal sense — where is ‘saving grace’ in the original?

The Latin text never forces rhyme*, so I don't see why the English text should do so. It is really just a carry over from traditional, original English hymns.

*although rhyme does appear often simply due to the inflectional nature of this language

Rhyme does not ‘often appear’ as if by chance in these poems — Aquinas employs a clear ABAB rhyme scheme throughout the text.

Medieval Latin hymnody, beginning very early, originates the use of rhyme as a deliberate systemic device in Latin poetry.

As for truly ‘forced’ rhyme, I quite agree. But that in itself is the poet’s art. A deliberate arrangement of language nevertheless able to sound beautiful, lyrical, and natural.

[EDIT: Ironically, here I tried to use an example of a poetic translation of Dante that I had thought reproduced the original rhyme scheme, but I realized on revisiting it, to make sure that I had remembered correctly, that the poet had omitted the rhyme scheme except in very select spots. Haha, a nice dose of humility for me tonight.]

@OMagnumMysterium

Yes, but although this is vastly easier with vernacular, it did happen with the Latin too. When Urban VIII "fixed" the traditional hymns of the Church, he created variants which still cause some confusion and division to this day.

From my research, textual variations are common, and also from long before Urban VIII.
Hymns are written for the Liturgy, so why should they not be modified to suit the Religious Order using them? We can add or remove verses unsuitable for the place of use or the Liturgical day. A processional hymn is to cover the procession, so should have enough verses, in other places a shorter procession is used, so why not shorten the hymn i.e. Salve Festa Dies. If a processional hymn is then used for the Office why not split it.

A quick look through recent vernacular Hymn / song books show that Hymns are not static, they mutate.

The guiding principle is the Liturgical use, changing hymns to suit politics and or the language police, is not a good idea it will not lead us to God. The Urban VIII commission would have been better employed correcting the Latin of errant schoolboys. The work they did with their red pens, just as Dom Lentini with the Liber Hymnarius, took their red pens to the Hymns, it was not wrong, they have produced in some cases hymns as good as the originals, but was it a good use of their time?

Does a Hymn need to follow classical Latin forms? (Urban VIII)

Does a Hymn need to have references to miracles removed? (Lentini)

Why do Doxologies need to conform to one ideal? (Lentini)

@francis

"This is why they employ vernacular texts. Constantly making it “better” by “studiously revising”. Demonic."

There were many and various vernacular Latin translations before the Vulgate. By this logic, brought to its logical conclusion, we should actually all be celebrating Mass in Greek and Greek alone. The Church even replaced one of the Greek OT books in the Septuagint with a more literally-translated edition, so one can't even argue that the Greek is unchanging.

Also, I find it very imprudent to assume bad will on the part of others, when it could even more easily and safely be assumed that there is actually good will. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by ignorance/unskillfulness."



"Don’t fall for that Satanic ploy. Stick to the Latin. It’s universal, unchanging, and a sacral language which cannot be altered in speaking, chanting and meaning."

-Universal? False. Greek and Aramaic/Syriac were used liturgically hundreds of years before Latin. Latin has never been used in these regions, other than when Western powers invaded and imposed Western practices on the native folk (the Holy Land, St Thomas Christians of India, etc). Additionally, the Roman Rite was celebrated in a Slavic language (Glagolithic Use) long before the 2nd Vatican Council.

-Unchanging? See above regarding the change from the Old Latin to Vulgate.

-Sacral? In the 300's it simply was a vernacular language, which is why the Church of North Africa switched to Latin, followed by Rome. Latin is not inherently sacral, like Hebrew and Greek (which are bestowed this status by being the language of Divine Revelation). It is sacral due to longstanding usage, but this is of different character than inherent sacredness, at least I would argue.



"And by the way, the devil can’t stand it!"

Food for thought: Should we trust the words of the devil, who is the "father of lies"?

Language means nothing if there is no faith, hope, and love in Jesus Christ our Savior, so to be so very nitpicky* about language I believe misses the point. If one believes you can led astray by debates about vernacular, so too can one be led astray by debates about sacral language, by that same standard.

*Obviously nitpicky is different than proper concern and care.

@NihilNominis

I agree that Latin originates the concept, but what I was trying to get at is that many Latin hymns do not have a rigid attachment to rhyme.

I took a very brief look (<5min) at the "Hymns of the Breviary and Missal" pdf, and saw many cases where a hymn with a general rhyme scheme broke the pattern in one or more of the stanzas.

I agree that Latin originates the concept, but what I was trying to get at is that many Latin hymns do not have a rigid attachment to rhyme.

I took a very brief look at the "Hymns of the Breviary and Missal" pdf, and saw many cases where a hymn with a general rhyme scheme broke the pattern in one or more of the stanzas.

There’s a lot of Late Antique poetry in that book, and I think a lot of the rhyme schemes you perceived as being there and then being broken might actually be false friends and not rhyme schemes at all.

In the case of those verses, you are absolutely right, English poets in the past who put them into rhyming verse were doing so to honor English-language poetic conventions of their time — Old English poetry, ironically, not having held to a rhyme scheme either.

So Gregory the Great, Ambrose, Sedulius, etc., there’s not really a rhyme scheme to be found there. That’s not how they were thinking of poetry. Maybe you can argue that a rhyme was used on purpose here and again, but it’s neither consistent nor structural.

But to apply that same line of thinking to hymns written over 500 years later by men like Bernard or Aquinas, who have a very clear rhyme scheme and are extremely strict about it, would be to draw a false equivalence.

So, for example if I look at a Sequence like Lauda Sion, or Stabat mater, not only is the rhyme scheme there within the stanzae, but it’s actually used to link stanzae together structurally which, are also linked together musically.

This whole thing reminds me of when they were restoring the frescoes in the Sistine chapel. The assumption was made that all of the paintings were the same, and that they had all been finished by Michelangelo in true fresco. So a solvent was applied that would dissolve anything that was not pigment that had become part of the plaster.This was supposed to remove soot, later additions, etc. What ended up happening, however, was that in many cases eyes, shadows, and other fine details that Michelangelo apparently had added later were also removed along with the soot and the scum.

Poetry and its history are complex, but in translating liturgical texts, we, like the Sistine crew, oversimplify to our detriment, and apparently either apply the rule that we always have to rhyme or never have to rhyme equally to all hymns from all periods, regardless of their musical use and the rhyme structure of the original poem.

In doing so, we apply a caustic solvent to 1000 years of hymnographicical history that removes so many of the unique colors, shadows, and characteristic feelings from texts from so many individual, expressive, and ‘inspired’ authors, and instead yields a kind of uniform, non-lyrical sameness across this entire history.

The fact that this late-medieval rhyming hymn is treated in the exact same way as a Late Antique non-rhyming hymn of Ambrose would be, is, in a nutshell, exemplary of the poverty of inspiration and art that is here.

I also hasten to add, I think truly inspired poets and translators are an incredible gift of God to the Church. When they have done the work of putting these hymns faithfully, whether they mirror classical structures, or use the poetic conventions of their own day, I think real consideration needs to be given to making those versions the official versions that are used in liturgical worship.

For example, “All Glory, Laud, and Honor” is not at all modeled on the poetic structure of the original Latin text. However, it succeeds wonderfully as a poem in its own right.

The ICEL texts above fit the music, but do not reflect important structures of the original poems and, very arguably, do not succeed independently as poetry or as literal translations.

Caswall’s renderings of the Benediction hymns, however, do both. It seems a shame to lose them for equally non-literal, less poetic, renderings that are farther from the original.

The whole Divine Office Hymnal sounds like it was rendered by someone who was deaf.
There is no grace to it, no enjoyment of speaking the words aloud. (^lacking lyricism) Whether through a metrical rhyme scheme, through alliteration, or through internal rhyme, the 16th-19th century English translator/poets rendered memorable poetry. I wonder if these ICEL translators have ever written an original poem?