Music Tuesday: Adoro Te Devote

My friend Kelly, who has commented on this blog, and, actually as I think on it, was one of the people who inspired me to start this blog many years ago, sent me an email concerning this lovely hymn.   Kelly is the music director at her parish—I think that’s her title but actually I’m not a hundred percent sure.  Nonetheless she is involved in the music at her parish.  She sent me an email of a hymn that she came across, Adoro te devote, translated into English as “I Devoutly Adore You.” 

No, she wasn’t sending me a note of adoration—hahaha—but telling me about the translator into English of this hymn which was originally composed in Latin by St. Thomas Aquinas as a prayer.  Most people know about St. Thomas’s philosophic and theological gifts, but less known is his gift for composing poetry in Latin, and his poetry was prayer.  According to Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoro_te_devote this prayer was not part of the liturgical works Aquinas had composed for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_Corpus_Christi but for his own private use before the Blessed Sacrament.  Here is a rendition of the hymn in Latin, followed by the Latin text.

 

Adoro te devote

By St. Thomas Aquinas

 

Adoro te devote, latens deitas,

Quæ sub his figuris vere latitas;

Tibi se cor meum totum subicit,

Quia te contemplans totum deficit.

 

Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur,

Sed auditu solo tuto creditur.

Credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius;

Nil hoc verbo Veritátis verius.

 

In Cruce latebat sola Deitas,

At hic latet simul et Humanitas,

Ambo tamen credens atque confitens,

Peto quod petivit latro pœnitens.

 

Plagas, sicut Thomas, non intueor:

Deum tamen meum te confiteor.

Fac me tibi semper magis credere,

In te spem habere, te diligere.

 

O memoriale mortis Domini,

Panis vivus, vitam præstans homini,

Præsta meæ menti de te vívere,

Et te illi semper dulce sapere.

 

Pie Pelicane, Jesu Domine,

Me immundum munda tuo Sanguine:

Cujus una stilla salvum facere

Totum mundum quit ab omni scelere.

 

Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio,

Oro, fiat illud quod tam sitio:

Ut te revelata cernens facie,

Visu sim beátus tuæ gloriæ. Amen.

Now that is very beautiful.  What Kelly had sent me was a link to an English translation of the hymn posted at the website, Hymnary.  Hymnary by its own identification, is a “comprehensive index of hymns and hymnals.”  I believe you can think of it as a library of hymns, and I’ve actually come across it before but I can’t remember why.  I must have done a search for a hymn and Hymnary popped up.  Kelly’s surprise when she looked at the Adoro te devote page, and why she thought of me, was the translator of the Latin hymn into English.  If you look at the bottom of the page the English translator is listed as “G. Manly Hopkins,” that is the great English poet and Catholic convert, Gerard Manly Hopkins.  I have posted often on Hopkins, and you can find those posts here.  

What is funny about that Hymnary page is that below the translator’s name is this about him: “no biographical information available about G. Manley Hopkins.”  Hahaha, that is very funny.  They could just have looked in Wikipedia or Norton’s Anthology of English Literature.  I suspect that the people who run Hymnary are mostly Protestant musicians, and so don’t know very much of poets nor of famous Catholic converts.  Hopkins is a great modernist poet who converted to Catholicism and became a Jesuit priest.  Like Thomas Aquinas, Hopkins’ poems are prayers as well.  Here is the Hopkins translation of the Adore te devote.

 

Adoro te devote

By St. Thomas Aquinas

Translated by Gerard Manly Hopkins

 

Godhead here in hiding whom I do adore

Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more.

See, Lord, at thy service low lies here a heart

Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.

 

Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived;

How says trusty hearing? that shall be believed;

What God's Son has told me, take for truth I do;

Truth himself speaks truly or there's nothing true.

 

On the cross thy godhead made no sign to men;

Here thy very manhood steals from human ken:

Both are my confession, both are my belief,

And I pray the prayer made by the dying thief.

 

I am not like Thomas, wounds I cannot see,

But I plainly call thee Lord and God as he:

This faith each day deeper be my holding of,

Daily make me harder hope and dearer love.

 

O thou, our reminder of the Crucified,

Living Bread, the life of us for whom he died,

Lend this life to me, then; feed and feast my mind,

There be thou the sweetness man was meant to find.

 

Like what tender tales tell of the Pelican,

Bathe me, Jesus Lord, in what thy bosom ran--

Blood that but one drop of has the pow'r to win

All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.

 

Jesus whom I look at shrouded here below,

I beseech thee, send me what I thirst for so,

Some day to gaze on thee face to face in light

And be blest forever with thy glory's sight.

What is amazing is that Hopkins keeps Thomas’s eleven syllable line (called the hendecasyllabicline) and the coupling rhyme scheme.  The hendecasyllabic line is much more common in Latin and not very common in English. 

First let’s listen to it read as a poem, read here by Jonathan Roumie. 

 

Notice Hopkins also keeps the caesura—the pause in the middle of most lines—that forms the heart of the melody.  Listen to the Latin again and hear how Aquinas composes a pause at the end of each line but also a subtle, shorter pause in the middle of each line, the caesura.  Hopkins is very conscious of the caesura and incorporates it into the English translation as well. 

It’s not a complicated poem thematically.  The poem is about being and praying before the Blessed Sacrament—that which we Catholics consider to be the real presence of Jesus—that which looks like bread but has through transubstantiation become the Body of Christ.  The Thomas in the fourth stanza is a reference to Thomas the Apostle—the doubting Thomas of the Gospels.  Thomas Aquinas is saying that though he may be a “Thomas,” he is not the doubting one.  The allusion to the Pelican in the sixth stanza is a reference to the pelican being a symbol for Christ.  It was legendary that the pelican poked her chest until it bled to feed her chicks the blood which poured out.  From Wikipedia: 

 

In a newer, also medieval version of the European myth, the pelican was thought to be particularly attentive to her young, to the point of providing them with blood by wounding her own breast when no other food was available. As a result, the pelican came to symbolize the Passion of Jesus and the Eucharist, supplementing the image of the lamb and the flag. This mythical characteristic is referenced in the hymn "Adoro te devote" ("Humbly We Adore Thee"), where in the penultimate verse, Saint Thomas Aquinas describes Christ as the loving divine pelican, one drop of whose blood can save the world. Similarly, the 1678 Christian allegorical novel The Pilgrim’s Progress describes how “the pelican pierce[s] her own breast with her bill … to nourish her young ones with her blood, and thereby to show that Christ the blessed so loveth his young, his people, as to save them from death by his blood.”

Now here is a musical version of the hymn with the Gerard Manly Hopkins translation.  Note, the English version goes by the name "Godhead Here in Hiding: from the first words of the opening lines.

 

I picked this version because it sings all seven stanzas.  I think it important that one hear all seven stanzas to get the full insight of Thomas’s prayer.

Now if you want to hear a more modernized, ballad shaped rendition, the wonderful Matt Maher arranged this version.  He does take liberties with the stanza order and does not sing them all. 

 

That is beautiful too.  And the guitar instrumentation doesn’t take away from the reverence.

This reminds me of my post from earlier this month on the 750^th anniversary of the death of St. Thomas Aquinas.  I also noted there how Pope Francis has authorized a plenary indulgence for all those who visit a Dominican church, shrine, or chapel.  You can get the details of the indulgence here.  

I just want to end with emphasizing how St. Thomas Aquinas was so much more than a theologian.  Philosopher, theologian, scholar, ethicist, mystic, poet, friend.  In this 750^th year, discover a good biography and learn about his life and work.