Te Deum

Te Deum (Te Deum laudamus, Te Dominum confitemur), a well-known Latin hymn of the Western Church—so called from its first words—sung at the end of matins on all feasts except Innocents' Day, and on all Sundays except during penitential seasons. The hymn is one of the most simple, and at the same time the most solemn and majestic, in the whole range of Latin hymnology. Its authorship is uncertain. The chronicle of Bishop Datus of Milan (died c. 552), which unhappily is both unauthentic and worthless, describes the Te Deum as the joint production of St Ambrose and St Augustine, into which they both burst forth by a common inspiration on occasion of the baptism of Augustine. Hence the Te Deum is commonly called the Ambrosian Hymn. The first actual reference to it is in the rule of Cæsius of Arles, who was made a bishop in 502, and it is at any rate certain that it arose as early as the 5th century, and in its modern form was used by Hincmar of Rheims in the 9th century. It is ascribed by some authorities to Hilary of Arles, by others to some disciple of Cassian of Marseilles, but in no case is the evidence at all satisfactory. The hymn in its current form consists of twenty-nine verses; the first twenty-one verses are uniform in the four oldest versions current, and it seems probable that verses 1-10 were a Greek hymn dating back to the 2d century, although Bishop John Wordsworth in Mr Julian's Dictionary thinks verses 7-9 are a reminiscence of Cyprian, not vice versa, and that the Greek form of verses 1-10 is a translation from the Latin, not an original composition. In the Anglican morning prayer it follows the first Lesson, except when the Benedicte is preferred as its alternative. It is frequently used also in the services of both Presbyterian and Congregationalist churches, and there are more than twenty metrical renderings of it in English hymnology.

See the Rev. John Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology (1892), and Prebendary Edgar C. S. Gibson in Church Quarterly Review for April 1884.