Urbs beata Jerusalem dicta pacis visio

Urbs beata Jerusalem dicta pacis visio is the first line of a 7th or 8th-century hymn sung in the Office of the Dedication of a Roman Catholic church.

Text

The hymn comprises eight stanzas, together with a doxology. The text is scripturally inspired by Ephesians ii. 20, 1 Peter ii. 5, and Revelation xxi.Henry, H. T. "Urbs beata Jerusalem dicta pacis visio." In "Catholic Encyclopedia". Vol. XII. New York: Robert Appleton Co., 1911, [http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_%281913%29/Urbs_beata_Jerusalem_dicta_pacis_visio http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_%281913%29/Urbs_beata_Jerusalem_dicta_pacis_visio] (accessed November 30 2007).] The translation below is by John Mason Neale.Schaff, Philip. History of the Christian Church, Volume IV: Mediaeval Christianity. A.D. 590-1073. [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc4.titlepage.html http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc4.titlepage.html] ]

Under Pope Urban VIII, a group of correctors revised the hymn, replacing the unquantitative, accentual, trochaic rhythm with quantitative, iambic metre (with an addition syllable), and the stanza appeared in the Breviary with divided lines:

Coelestis Urbs Jerusalem,
Beata pacis visio,
Quæ celsa de viventibus
Saxis ad astra tolleris,
Sponsæque ritu cingeris
Mille Angelorum millibus.

Originally, the first four stanzas of "Urbs beata Jerusalem" were usually assigned, in the Office of the Dedication of a church, to Vespers and Matins, while the last four were given to Lauds. After the revision, the hymn for Lauds was changed to "Alto ex Olympi vertice".

Criticism

Hymnologists, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, have criticizedWho|date=April 2008 the revisions done under Pope Urban VIII. Of this hymn in particular some, such as Neale, thinkweasel-inline that, although it did not suffer as much as some others, it lost much of its beauty in the revision; others declare that it was admirablyweasel-inline transformed without unduly modifying the sense.

However this may be, the changed rhythm and the additional syllable did not deter the editors of the Ratisbon Antiphonary from including a melody, which fitted admirablyweasel-inline the rhythm of the "Pange lingua gloriosi", but which was greatly marredweasel-inline and rendered hardly singableweasel-inline when updated to the reversed rhythm of the "Coelestis Urbs Jerusalem". A different textual revision, ascribed to Sebastian Besnault, appeared in the Sens Breviary of 1626:

Urba beata, vera pacis Visio Jerusalem,
Quanta surgit! celsa saxis Conditor viventibus:
Quæ polivit, hæc cooptat Sedibus suis Deus.

Neale considered this inferior to the original, but superior to the Roman revision.Fact|date=April 2008 Roundell admitted the blemishes in the original that would suggest emendation, but thoughtVague|date=April 2008 that the Roman revision left out "most of the architectural imagery", and noted that the Sens Breviary omitted "the whole conception of the Heavenly City 'as a bride adorned for her husband'". He neverthelessweasel-inline considered the revisions, if looked at as new hymns, "spirited and attractive".citequote

References