Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 13.djvu/461

This page needs to be proofread.

SALVE


409


SALVE


cruentatum), 326, 328, 330; 156 (Salve latus Salva- toris), 166, 169, 170; 106, 116, (?). 40. This curiously constructed hymn (the lines are here numbered as they are found in P. L., loc. cit.) has neither rhyme nor classical quantity, while the fourth line of each stanza is in iambic rhythm and the other three lines are in trochaic rhythm. Three translations are indi- cated below.

JuuAN, Dictionary of Hymnology (London, 1907), pp. 989 and 1097, give first lines of trs. from the Latin and German; Daniel, Thesaurus hymnologicus, I, 232, and note, p. 233, declares his view that all the cantos "breathe forth the heats and fires of divine love, so that nothing could be imagined softer or sweeter", II, 359, gives a canto which b, as Mone says, an incoherent mix- ture, IV, 22-1-8, gives the complete poem, with excellent notes pp. 228-31; Mone, Laleinische Hymnen, I, 162-74, gives much critical apparatus; Trench, Sacred Latin Poetry (London, 187-1), gives cantos Ad Pedes and Ad Faciem, and (p. 138) says of the hymns attributed to St. Bernard: "If he did not write, it is not easy to guess who could have written them; and indeed they bear profoundly the stamp of his mind, being only inferior in beauty to his prose." Konigsfeld, Lateinische Hymnen und Gesdnge (Bonn, I860), 190-201, gives twelve stanzas with Ger- man tr.; March, Latin Hymns (New York, 1875), 144-119, gives fifteen stanzas (with notes, p. 277). The hymn Jesu dulcis amor meus, tr. Caswall, in Lyra Catholica (1849) ; latest ed. 1884); tr. Wallace, 1874; tr. Bagshawe in Breviary Hymns and Missal Sequences (London, 1900), 75.

H. T. Henry.

Salve Regina, the opening words (used as a title) of the most celebrated of the four Breviary anthems of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is said from the P'irst Vespers of Trinity Sunday until None of the Saturday before Advent. .\n exception is noted in Migne's "Diet, de liturgie" (s. v.), namely that the rite of Chalons-sur-Marne assigns it from the Purification B. M. V. until Holy Thursday. Another variation, peculiar to the cathedral of Speyor (where it is chanted solemnly everyday "in honour of St. Bernard"), may have been based on (>ither of two legends connecting the anthem with the saint of Clairvaux. One legend relates that, while the saint was acting as legate Apostolic in Germany, he entered (Christmas Eve, 1146) the cathedral to the processional chanting of the anthem, and, as the words "O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo ^Iaria" were being sung, genuflected thrice. According to the more common narrative, however, the saint added the triple invocation for the first time, moved thereto by a sudden inspiration. "Plates of brass were laid down in the pavement of the church, to mark the footsteps of the man of God to posterity, and the j^laces where he so touchingly implored the clemency, the mercy, and the sweet- ness of the Blessed Virgin Mary" (Ratisbonne, "Life and Times of St. Bernard", American ed., 1855, p. 381, where fuller details are given). It may be said in piussing that the legend is rendered very doubtful for several reasons: (a) the narrative ap- parently originated in the sixteenth century, and re- lates a fact of the twelfth; (b) the silence of con- temporaries and of the saint's companions is of some significance; (c) the musical argument, as il- lustrated by Jean de Valois ("Le 'Salve Regina' dana rOrdre de Citeaux" in "La Tribune de Saint-Ger- vais", May, 1907, p. 109), suggests a single author of both the anthem and its concluding words.

The authorship is now generally ascribed to Her- mann Contractus (q. v.). Durandus, in his "Ra- tionale", ascribed it to Petrus of Monsoro (d. about 1000), Bishop of Compostella. It has also been at- tributed to Adhemar, Bishop of Podium (Puy-en- Velay), whence it has been styled "Antiphona de Podio" (Anthem of Le Puy). Adhemar was the first to ask permission to go on the crusade, and the first to receive the cross from Pope Urban II. "Be- fore his departure, towards the end of October, 1096, he composed the war-song of the crusade, in which he asked the intercession of the Queen of Heaven, the Salve Regina" (Migne, "Diet, des Croisades", B. V. Adhemar). He is said to have asked the monks of Cluny to admit it into their office, but no trace of


its use in Cluny is known before the time of Peter the Venerable, who decreed (about 1135) that the anthem should be sung processionally on certain feasts. Perhaps stimulated by the example of Cluny, or because of St. Bernard's devotion to the Mother of God (the saint was diligent in spreading a love for the anthem, and many pilgrim-shrines claim him as founder of the devotion to it in their locality), it was introduced into Citeaux in the middle of the twelfth century, and down to the seventeenth cen- tury was used as a solemn anthem for the Magnificat on the feasts of the Purification, Annunciation, and Nativity B. V. M., and for the Benedictus at Lauds of the Assumption. In 1218 the general chapter prescribed its daily processional chanting before the high altar after the Capitulum; in 1220 it enjoined its daily recitation on each of the monks; in 1228 it ordered its singing "mediocri voce", together with seven psalms, etc., on every Friday "pro Domino Papa" (Gregory IX had taken refuge in Perugia from Emperor Frederick II), "pro pace Romanae Ecclesiae", etc. etc. — the long list of "intentions" indicating how salutary was deemed this invocation of Our Lady. The use of the anthem at Com- pline was begun, says Godet ("L'Origine liturgique du 'Salve Regina' " in "Revue du clerge frangais", 15 August, 1910), by the Dominicans about 1221, and was rapidly propagated by them. Before the middle of that century, it was incorporated with the other anthems of the Blessed Virgin in the "modernized" Franciscan Breviary, whence it en- tered into the Roman Breviary. In Couteulx's "Annales ordinis Cartusiensis" (Montreuil, 1901) it is said (under the year 1239) that the anthem had been in use in that order (and probably from its foundation) before Gregory IX prescribed its uni- versal use. The Carthusians sing it daily at Vespers (except from the First Sunday of Advent to the Oc- tave of the Epiphany, and from Passion Sunday to Low Sunday) as well as after every hour of the Little Oflice B. V. M. The Cistercians sang it after Com- pline from 1251 until the close of the fourteenth cen- tury, and have sung it from 1483 until the present day — a daily devotion, except on Holy Thursday and Good Friday. The Carmelites say it after every hour of the Oflice. Pope Leo XIII prescribed its recitation (6 January, 1884) after every low Mass, together with other prayers — a law still in force.

While the anthem is in sonorous prose, the chant melody divides it into members which, although of unequal syllabic length, were doubtless intended to clo.se with the faint rhymic effect noticeable when they are set down in divided form:

(1) Salve, Regina (Mater) misericordiae,

(2) Vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve.

(3) Ad te clamamus, exsules filii Hevac;

(4) Ad te suspiramus gementes et fientes in hac lacrymarum valle.

(5) Eia ergo advocata nostra, illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte.

(6) Et Jesum, bonedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc exsilium ostende.

O clemens, O pia,

O dulcis (Virgo) Maria. Similarly, Notker Balbulus ended with the (Latin) sound of "E" all the verses of his sequence, "Laus tibi, Christe" (Holy Innocent3\ Dreves notes that the word "Mater" in the first verse is found in no source, but is a late insertion of the sixteenth century (".A.nalecta hymnica", L, Leipzig, 1907, p. 319). Sim- ilarly, the word "Virgo" in the last verse seems to date back only to the thirteenth centnrv. Mone (Latein- ische Hymnen des Mittelalters, II, 203-14) gives nine medieval hymns based on the anthem. Daniel (The- saurus hymnologicus, II, 323) gives a tenth. The "Analecta hymnica" gives various transfusions and tropes (e. g. XXXII, 176, 191-92; XLVI, 130-43).