Jesu Dulcis Memoria
Jesu dulcis memoria
Hymn for Vespers on the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. A cento of a longer hymn is usually ascribed to Saint Bernard (1091-1153). There are six translations of the hymn; more of this cento. The English translation given in Britt is by E. Caswall; the third verse reads
O Hope of every contrite heart,
O Joy of all the meek,
To those who fall, how kind Thou art
How good to those who seek!
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Jesu Dulcis Memoria
A poem ranging from forty two to fifty three stanzas (in various manuscripts), to form the three hymns of the Office of the Holy Name: “Jesu dulcis memoria” (Vespers), “Jesu rex admirabilis” (Matins), “Jesu decus angelicum” (Lauds). A feature of the long poem is the single rhymic scheme for a stanza, e.g.: Jesu dulcis memoria, Dans vera cordis gaudia, Sed super mel et omnia Ejus dulcis præsentia. The ascription of authorship to St. Bernard is general and, thinks Mearns, (Dict. of Hymnology, 1892), probable — a view which he is still inclined to in the second edition of the “Dictionary” (1907). Guéranger thought that certain manuscripts “prove beyond a doubt” that it was composed in the fourteenth century by a Benedictine abbess — a view contradicted by the manuscript cited by Mearns, of about 1200. Blume (see Hymnody and Hymnology) denies its authorship by St. Bernard, and Dom Pothier (Revue bénédictine, X, 147) found it in a manuscript of the eleventh century ascribed to a Benedictine abbess (St. Bernard was born in 1090).
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Mearns in Dictionary of Hymnology (2nd ed., London, 1907), 585, 1536, 1656; to the list should be added trs. by Bagshawe, Breviary Hymns and Missal Sequences (London, 1900); Donahoe, Early Christian Hymns, series I (New York, 1908); Henry in American Ecclesiastical Review (Jan., 1900), Latin text, tr., and comment, and (Feb., 1900), comment on authorship.
H.T. HENRY Transcribed by Mary Thomas
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XVI (Index Volume)Copyright © 1914 by The Encyclopedia Press, Inc.Online Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, March 1, 1914. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Jesu Dulcis Memoria
SEE BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX’S HYMNS.