Theodulph was born about A. D. 750 of a noble family in Spain. He became abbot of a monastery in Florence, Italy, and then was appointed by Emperor Charlemagne as abbot of Fleury, 34 miles northwest of Paris, in 781. Four years later he was appointed as bishop of Orleans. Charlemagne died in 814, and there was a conspiracy to despose his son Louis the Pious, in which Theodulph was said to be implicated.

He was imprisoned, in 818 in the cloisters of the church in Angers, near the mouth of the river Loire in France. While imprisoned, he wrote this hymn (in Latin) of 78 lines, paraphrasing the story of the triumphal entry of our Lord into Jerusalem. On a Palm Sunday when the annual procession passed by prison, Theodulph sang his hymn so that it could be heard outside. Louis, who was in the procession, was delighted; he ordered the procession to be halted, and sent for the singer. One story says that the ex-bishop was pardoned on the spot and restored to his see, but another account says that he died of poisoning while in prison in about 821.

John Mason Neale (1818-1866; see Biographies) translated the opening stanzas in the original meter for his Mediaeval Hymns, 1851, and then made a revision in the present meter in nine stanzas of four lines each in his Hymnal Noted, 1854.

ST. THEODULPH was composed by Melchior Teschner in 1613 for a funeral hymn by his friend Valerius Herberger (1562-1627). The latter was the pastor of a Lutheran congregation at Oberpritschen, a suburb of Fraustadt, Poland, during the great pestilence of 1613-1630, when 2,000 people died in Fraustadt alone. The melody, however, is a very cheerful one, rising from its lowest note, B-flat, to its highest, D, more than an octave higher, and quite suitable for the present words of gladness.

Teschner was born on April 29, 1584, at Fraustadt, now Wschow, Poland. His secondary education was given at Zittau, and in 1602 he studied theology, philosophy, and music at the University of Frankfurt-on-Oder. In 1605 he accepted an appointment as cantor at the village of Schmiegel, saving his money so that he could continue study at the University of Wittenberg. In 1609 he was called to be cantor and teacher at Fraustadt, and from 1614 he was pastor of the church at Oberpritschen, where he remained 21 years until his death on December 1, 1635.

from Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal by Wayne Hooper and Edward E. White