The English hymn writer Catherine Winkworth is celebrated in the Anglican Church today. Her brilliance at language had an early outing when at 16 she had a bilingual pun published in Punch magazine. General Napier, the English colonialist, had ruthlessly captured the Indian province of Sindh with terrible bloodshed, and Winkworth said that his battle dispatch should simply have read Peccavi – the Latin word for ‘I have sinned’. Her hymn speciality was translating German chorales into popular English hymns. ‘Now thank we all our God’ (Nun danket alle Gott), and ‘From heaven above to earth I come’ (Vom Himmel hoch) are hers. She died near Geneva in 1878.
Anglicans also remember today the work of John Mason Neale, who brought Latin, Greek, Syrian and Russian hymns into the English hymn book. Neale was a Victorian high churchman, and was interested in reintroducing feast days, saints, ceremony and music to the Anglican Church. His hymn translations include ‘O come, O come, Immanuel (Veni, veni, Emmanuel) and ‘The day of resurrection’, an 8th century Greek hymn by St John of Damascus. Neale also wrote the lyrics of the Christmas carol, ‘Good King Wenceslaus’, which he set to a 13th century folk tune about the coming of spring. Neale died yesterday in 1866.
Finding, following, keeping, struggling,
Is He sure to bless?
Angels, martyrs, saints, and prophets
Answer, Yes!
John Mason Neale, ‘Art thou weary, art thou languid?’ based on an 8th century hymn of St Stephen of Mar Saba
Pope Stephen III began his papacy today in the year 768. His rival for the throne of St Peter, Constantine II, a hapless puppet Pope operated by Tuscan nobles, was dethroned, stripped of office, chased through the streets with heavy weights lashed to his feet, imprisoned in a monastery, and finally blinded and excommunicated.
It is the feast of the 2nd century saint, Donatus of Muenstereifel, a young Roman soldier in the famed 12th Legion, the Fulminatrix, the ‘Thunderstruck Legion’. Fighting Germanic tribes on the River Danube under the leadership of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, soldiers of the legion were almost surrounded when they were saved by a freak rainstorm. Donatus was put to death when he gave thanks to the wrong deity (the Christian God, rather than Mercury or Jupiter) for this famous deliverance.
Just to complicate matters, another Donatus has his feast today, St Donatus of Arezzo, a Bishop in the 4th century. It is said that he was once celebrating Mass, using a glass chalice, when some pagans crashed the service and shattered the chalice. Donatus put the pieces together and marvelled at the miracle: not a drop of wine was spilt.
Image: stnorbert