Veni Creator Spiritus

Veni Creator Spiritus, an ancient and celebrated hymn of the Roman Breviary, which occurs in the offices of the Feast of Pentecost for Vespers and Tercle, and in the Pontifical for the Ordination of Priests, Consecration of Bishops or of a Church, the 'Ordo ad Synodum,' and some other solemn services. Its author is not known with certainty. On the authority of Ekkehard's life (c. 1220) of Notker, it is ascribed to Charlemagne; and Daniel, in his Thesaurus Hymnologicus, adopts this opinion; but it seems to be certainly older than the age of Charlemagne; and its correct classical metre as well as language bespeaks an earlier and purer age. Mone thinks it the composition of Gregory the Great; others, of St Ambrose or Rabanus Maurus. It was translated by Bishop Cosin, again by Dryden, whose version was adapted by John Wesley and Toplady. The labours of more than thirty later translators have not stripped this noble hymn of all its dignity. The Veni Creator Spiritus must not be confounded with another hymn to the Holy Ghost, Veni Sancte Spiritus, Et emitte coelitus, the 'Golden Sequence,' which ranks among the masterpieces of Latin sacred poetry. The latter belongs not to the Breviary, but to the Missal, in which it forms a Sequence in the Mass of Pentecost Sunday and Octave. It is in five stanzas, each consisting of six lines of seven-syllable trochaic verse. It is certainly not older than the beginning of the 13th century. It has been variously ascribed to King Robert II. of France, to Hermannus Contractus, to Stephen Langton, and, with perhaps most probability, to Pope Innocent III. The best translations are those by Caswall and by Neale.