An Important New Online Resources: Dom Lentini’s Te Decet Hymnus

My colleague Matthew Hazell has uploaded to archive.org a scan of an important resource for the study of the reform of the Divine Office, Dom Anselmo Lentini’s book Te decet hymnus: L’innario della “Liturgia Horarum”. Dom Lentini (1901-89), a monk of the abbey of Montecassino, was the head of the coetus (subcommittee) that reformed the Office hymns, and this book is the official account of their work.

The bulk of the book is taken up with the hymns themselves, with information on the author and date of each one, if known, or if not, an estimate at least of the period in which it was composed. In the cases where hymns are excerpts from longer ones, it indicates which strophes of the original text are used. (This is not by any means an innovation of the reform.) It also indicates where relevant, some of the other which breviaries had the hymn in their repertoire, i.e. Dominican, Premonstratensian etc. Prior to the internet age, the tools for researching other medieval breviaries were very limited, and so this information is certainly useful, but far from comprehensive. There are also many bibliographical references to scholarly collections of hymnography in which the original texts have been collected, such as the Analecta hymnica.

There is also detailed information about the changes which were made to the hymns for various reasons. I have often referred to these changes in articles that I have written here, and my favorite adjective to describe them is “cack-handed”. As with the rest of the liturgy, the hymns were subjected to an aggressive campaign of ideological censorship, based on the Bright Ideas of the members of the each coetus as to what Modern Man™ could bear to hear in his prayers. So for example, all references to fasting in Lent are replaced by “abstinence” or something similar.

There is a common notion that the Liturgy of the Hours undid Pope Urban VIII’s classicizing reform of the Latinity of the hymns, and reverted to the original texts. This is largely true, but not entirely so. In addition to imposing the aforementioned ideological censorship, Dom Lentini also “corrected” many metrical irregularities, and changed unusual words. Many of these changes are well made, but many of them were unnecessary, and together, they have the unfortunate effect of homogenizing the hymns.

Lastly, I note that the non-Latin text (all the notes, the prenotanda etc.) is in Italian, but I hazard to guess that at least the more basic notes are simple enough as to be intelligible to those who know some Latin, or one of the other Romance languages.