IMPLENTE MUNUS AGAINUS
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,414
    Dear Colleagues -
    Several months ago the MHI provided me (us) with a superb translation of Implente munus debitum, the office hymn for The Office of Readings, and II. Vespers of the Baptism of the Lord. It has been beautifully offered at the baptism of one of my scholar's daughters, and will be featured again, sung in an organ recital preceding a comissioned work using Implente as a cantus firmus. (The work itself is by Gregory Hamilton, Musical Director of Holy Trinity Seminary in Dallas.)

    According to the index of Liber Hymnarius the hymn (or the tune??) is X. century. That is all that I can find about it. Can any of you provide me with more information, such as tune age-source, text age-author? This would be greatly appreciated in the composition of program notes. (It's really irresponsible of the Solesmes monks not to provide this information in appendices or companion volumes. An Anglican book would do this.)

    Any information that you can glean would be useful. It's in none of my sources, and I seem to run into a dead end on the internet.
  • smvanroodesmvanroode
    Posts: 997
    A quick search shows that the first four stanzas of the hymn Implente munus debitum are taken from the last part of the hymn Inluxit orbi iam dies:

    Iohanne Baptista sacro
    implente munus debitum,
    Iordane mersus hac die
    aquas lavando diluit,

    non ipse mundari volens,
    ex ventre natus virginis,
    peccata sed mortalium
    suo ut fugaret lavacro.

    dicente Patre quod 'meus
    dilectus hic est Filius,'
    sumensque sanctus Spiritus
    formam columbae caelitus,

    hoc mystico sub nomine
    micat salus ecclesiae ;
    persona trina consonat,
    unus Deus per omnia.

    Some lines have been edited for the Liber Hymnarius. Arthur Walpole has some conjectures about the dating of this hymn as well as some notes in his Early Latin Hymns (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 314-316. The author is most certainly unknown. The manuscripts Walpole used for the text of this hymn all date from the tenth and eleventh century:

    Bibl. Nat. Lat. 1092 (XI)
    Boulogne 20 (about 1000)
    Trier 1245 (X)
    Vatican 7172 (XI)

    So, the indication in the Liber Hymnarius that the hymn text is from the tenth century seems to be about the best the editors could give.
    But Franz Mone, in Lateinische Hymnen des Mittelalters (Freiburg, 1853), p. 77, says he found the hymn text in Trier 1418, an eighth century manuscript. Whereas Walpole holds the hymn to be later than Sedulius, Mone thinks it predates Sedulius (fifth century). Another take at the origin of the hymn can be found in Hermann Albert Daniel, Thesaurus hymnologicus (Leipzig, 1855), pp. 11-13.

    Could you post the English translation? (Oh, found it!)
    Thanked by 2tomjaw M. Jackson Osborn
  • tomjaw
    Posts: 2,782
    Thanks smvanroode, I started a quick search, but got called away...

    MJO what melody is it set to ? I could do a search for the melody...
    (I do not have a copy of the Liber Hymnarius, anyway it seem to be full of modern Hymns, or ancient Hymns edited to suit modern ideas.)

    The reason why more information is not given by the Solesmes monks, can be shown by the books written about these ancient Hymns. Some of them have been referenced by smvanroode above, but there are many more!

    Also any modern book would have to look into the modern text changes... So why was this verse omitted?

    As for melodies we have a greater problem, the earliest manuscripts do not have melodies. Our Hymn could be found in a manuscript from the 5th c. but the first manuscripts with a melody could be as late as the 15th c.

    How many hymns found in Anglican books are older than say 200 years? I am sure that translations of ancient Latin Hymns can be found in Anglican books, but how much do they tell us about the origins of the original text?
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,414
    Many, many thanks, smvanroode -
    This information will be most appreciated as I put program notes together.
Add a Comment