“Quaerens me sedisti lassus”
I can never read or hear today’s Gospel about the exchange between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well without recalling the beautiful stanza of the Dies irae:
Quaerens me sedisti lassus,
Redemisti crucem passus:
Tantus labor non sit cassus.
[Literally translated: In search of me you sat down weary; / you redeemed me by suffering the Cross. / May so great a labor not be in vain.]
The stanza is preceded by one that is just as beautiful:
Recordare, Iesu pie,
quod sum causa tuae viae;
ne me perdas illa die.
[In your mercy, Jesus, remember / that I am the reason for your journey. / Do not permit me to be lost on that fateful day.]
I find the two verses infinitely consoling. The “I” and the “me,” of course, are not only the poet, but every reader or singer of this great hymn.
Here are two paragraphs about the hymn, taken from a Lutheran site:
Thomas de Celano, friend and biographer of Francis of Assisi, is generally credited with the authorship of this great medievel sequence, the opening lines of which are taken verbatim from the Vulgate version of Zeph. 1:15. Julian, writing of the general acceptance of this hymn, declares:
The hold which this sequence has had upon the minds of men of various nations and creeds has been very great. Goethe uses it, as is well known, in his Faust with great effect. It also furnishes a grand climax to Canto VI in Sir Walter Scott’s Lag of the Last Minstrel. It has been translated into many languages, in some of which the renderings are very numerous, those in German numbering about ninety and those in English about one hundred and sixty. In Great Britain and America no hymn-book of any note has appeared during the past hundred years without the “Dies Irae” being directly or in directly represented therein. Daniel, writing from a German standpoint, says:
“Even those to whom the hymns of the Latin Church are almost entirely unknown, certainly know this one; and if any one can be found so alien from human nature that they have no appreciation of sacred poetry, yet, as a matter of certainty, even they would give their minds to this hymn, of which every word is weighty, yes, even a thunderclap.”
From another standpoint, Archbishop Trench says:
“Nor is it hard to account for its popularity. The meter so grandly devised, of which I remember no other example, fitted though it has here shown itself for bringing out some of the noblest powers of the Latin language—the solemn effect of the triple rime, which has been likened to blow following blow of the hammer on the anvil, the confidence of the poet in the universal interest of his theme, a confidence which has made him set out his matter with so majestic and unadorned a plainness as at once to be intelligible to all,—these merits, with many more, have given the Dies Irae a foremost place among the masterpieces of sacred song.”—Sac. Lat. Poetry, 1874, p. 302.
The hymn was dropped from funeral Masses after Vatican II, and I wonder how familiar it is to most Catholics today.
This has alway been one of my favorites, well remembered from the good (bad?) old days when most of the masses during the week–in my parish, at least–were masses for the dead with those black vestments no longer in use either. It was usually sung in abbreviated form–again in my parish– but I heard it so often I learned part of it by heart and looked up the rest in an Engish-Latin missal. I am glad to hear that you are also an afficionado–if that is the word.
In film I swear I heard it in Alexander Nevsky (Eisenstein) being intoned by some sinister monks and also in the Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman), but that was a half-century ago. Can anyone else recall these films?
I must say that one quarter of my ancestory is Lutheran. Could that account for my fondness for the Dies Irae?
I can attest to Joe’s fondness for the Dies Irae. When our daughter was wakeful as a baby the only solution seemed to be to rock her in her carriage, while uttering soothing sounds. As I can’t carry a tune, he was the designated lullaby provider and his invariable number was the Dies Irae, which, intoned softly, seemed to have a magical effect. Years later, our daughter came home from school demanding that we get her a copy of the marvelous musical piece her teacher had played for the class. Turned out it was Danse Macabre with its Dies Irae theme, rendered a bit quirkily and with an accent on the potential for the grotesque. But she loved it anyway. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Yes, Berlioz used it, and that version, I believe it was, was used to great effect in the film “The Shining.”
I was once talking to a big burly French priest in Lyons who believed that the Solesmes monks had ruined Gregorian Chant by sissifying it. And he illustrated it by a mocking prissy version of the first stanza of the “Dies irae.” He then fairly shouted, “It’s the DIES IRAE! Listin to the words! This is how it’s supposed to sound!~” And he proceeded to sing it in a lusty baritone so that you could believe that the saeclum was about to dissolve.
I read somewhere today that the hymn was not composed for requiem Masses, but for Advent, to prepare us for the Final Judgment. Does anyone know if this is true?
But in any case, it certainly isn’t all gloom and doom, as the two stanzas I cite above illustrate.
Truly sublime!
It’s ironic that the contemporary liturgical “reform” which relegated the Dies Irae to Limbo (if I may) was itself a “reform of the reform.” The Dies Irae was first popularized by serious reformers, the rigorist Franciscans around Thomas of Celano in the 13th century.
To return the Dies Irae to its rightful place therefore what we need is a reform of the reform of the reform.
One suggestion to future musical geniuses: Please set to music the Voice from the Whirlwind chapters in the Book of Job.
And another (facetious) suggestion: If we are changing the law to abolish the statute of limitations for some purposes why not also extend copyright protection so that the Church can collect royalties on these ancient hymns.
Joseph, it is in the Seventh Seal. Prokovief seemed to use random chants in Nevsky to underscore the wicked Latin-ness of the Teutonic Knights, but I don’t think he used the Dies Irae.
It’s totally in the Lion King, however.
I love the Dies Irae, too. I guess everyone from my generation loves it. We had Requiem Masses nearly every morning at my parish, complete with blessing of the catafalque, when I was in grade school, and we girls in the choir sang it every day. Teste David cum Sybilla. (Loved that bit, bringing in the old pagan oracle.) Juste judex ultionis. (Loved that bit, going down so low.)
I sing it in the shower. (And sometimes the Vidi Aquam.)
Frank Zappa (same age cohort) plays part of it on a record, forget which one.
The Mozart version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZTd9jXQLMU&feature=fvwrelv
Coming from a small Midwestern parish I don’t ever remember hearing this.
According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary the belief that Virgil’s 4th Eclogue prophesied the birth of Christ combined with the belief that the Cumaean Sibyl inspired the 4th Eclogue was one thing that led Christians to attribute significance to Sibylline oracles. There are two very late collections of “Sibylline” material. Some of it is certainly Christian in inspiration, and apparently some of it is Jewish. It would be interesting to know Celano’s exact grounds for pairing Sibyl with David (i.e., the Psalmist). Could it be an interpretation of the 4th eclogue? Perhaps Celano knew the City of God (10.37; Vol. III p. 375 in the Loeb edition), or drew on someone who agreed with Augustine that Virgil was drawing on the Sibyl in speaking of Christ.
Professor Gannon –
Why was Virgil thought to have prophecised the birth of Christ? What did he say?
I fear the intergenerational thread has been cut. While I’ve heard of it and have read the text as a matter of curiosity, it hasn’t been part of my living prayer and worship, nor my children’s. And I speak as one who turns 50 this year.
I was once listening to the mozart version when my daughter, age about seven, piped up: “Dad, when do we get to the REX part?”
In case any have not heard the Gregorian Chant, here’s a website.
http://www.mp3rocket.com/mp3/-1_00/Saint-Meinrad-Gregorian-Chant-Schola-Lenten-Litany.htm
The words are here: http://www.blc.edu/comm/gargy/gargy1/ELH.Hymn.info.DEF.html
The fourth movement of Berlioz’ “Symphonie fantastique” makes dramatic use of it.
Beautiful!
I had never heard it before except in secular music.
I totally want it for my funeral, if only I could hear it then!
But at least partly in the vernacular, and with some different words.