This fest is taken from hymn No, 9 in Cathemerinon, by the great Spanish poet Prudentius. That is a collection of 12 long hymns, ranging from 80 to 220 lines each. Prudentius wrote them to be sung, one at each hour of the day, reminding the believer that Christ is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. From this poem several lines were taken to form a short Latin hymn entitled “Corde natus ex parentis, ante mundi exordium” (Born Out of the Heart of the Father, Before the Beginning of the World).

John Neale (see Biographies) made a translation of six stanzas in The Hymnal Noted, 185 1, and printed it with Revelation 1:8 at the heading: “1 am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” The “evermore and evermore” refrain and the final doxology stanza were not a part of the original, but were added by later use in the church service.

Henry Baker (see SDAH 20) made his translation of nine stanzas for use in the preliminary edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern, 1 859, of which SDAH makes use of 1, 4, and 9.

Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (348-c. 413) was born in Spain to a wealthy family. He studied law and became a judge. At age 57 his self-centered life weighed heavily on his conscience, and he gave up the good life and entered a monastery. The remainder of his life was spent in meditation, prayer, and writing sacred poetry. His poems were meant for private devotions, but sections of them were appropriated for use in church.

The tune DIVINUM MYSTERIUM (Divine Mystery) originated in a medieval “trope,” which was actually a vocalized ornamentation on a single syllable of a word, usually the final “a” of alleluia. Later, creative spirits made special sets of words for these ornamentations. The tune was first discovered by Thomas Helmore in Piae Cantiones (Pious Songs), 1582, a collection made by Didrik Pedersen, a Finnish student at the University of Rostock. Helmore, the music editor, printed it in his The Hymnal Noted, 1852, with Neale’s translation. Earlier it had appeared in the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries in Germany and Italy, with the words Divinum mysterium, hence the tune name.

The arrangement SDAH uses was made for the Hymnal 1 940, by Winfred Douglas (see SDAH 72). It is to be sung in unison, with a rather free movement that goes along with the natural rhythm of the text.