Pange lingua gloriosi corporis mysterium

The story

"Pange lingua gloriosi corporis mysterium" is a medieval Latin hymn attributed to Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), written for the Feast of Corpus Christi. It is also sung on Maundy Thursday, during the procession that carries the Blessed Sacrament from the church to the place where it is kept until Good Friday. Its opening words echo an older and famous Latin hymn, "Pange lingua gloriosi proelium certaminis" by Venantius Fortunatus, from which it is derived.

The hymn sets out the Catholic doctrine that the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ during the Mass. Its last two stanzas, known by their opening words "Tantum ergo", are often sung on their own: at Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and at the end of the procession of the monstrance on Holy Thursday. In English it is often sung as "Of the Glorious Body Telling", to the same tune as the Latin, and Edward Caswall made one of its many English translations.

Two plainchant tunes carry it. The better known is a tune in the Phrygian mode (Mode III) from the Roman liturgy, which was first part of the Gallican Rite; the other comes from the Mozarabic liturgy of Spain. Both became the ground of later polyphony. Juan de Urrede, a Flemish composer working in Spain in the late 15th century, wrote numerous settings, most of them on the Mozarabic melody; one of his four-voice versions was among the most popular pieces of the 16th century and was the basis for dozens of keyboard works and masses. Josquin des Prez built his Missa Pange lingua, one of his last works, dated to between 1515 and 1521 and published after his death, on the Roman tune; many commentators count it among the high points of Renaissance polyphony.

Josquin's treatment of the hymn's third line in the Kyrie of that mass gave music a theme of six notes that composers took up for centuries, among them Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Fux, whose fugues on it in the Gradus ad Parnassum made it known to every student of composition, Mozart included. Anton Bruckner's first composition set the hymn's first strophe. The Tantum ergo has its own settings, by Palestrina, Schubert, Bruckner (eight of them), Duruflé and Widor. An organ reharmonization of the hymn by Beethoven was found by the musicologist Barry Cooper in October 2012.

The hymn has been translated into many languages for worship, but the Latin remains the most sung. A Syriac translation was used at Benediction in the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church of Kerala, India, until the 1970s. By a decree of 25 August 1818 Pope Pius VII attached an indulgence of 300 days to each recitation of the whole hymn, followed by its customary verse, response and prayer, and of 100 days to the Tantum ergo alone.

What it says

A hymn of praise for the sacrament of the Eucharist, expressing the belief that in the Mass the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. Its last two stanzas turn to adoration of the sacrament. The mood is solemn and reverent.

The words