thumb|upright|Detail from a [[choirbook leaf, Italy c.1400-1420]]

Vexilla regis prodeunt (; often known in English translation as The Royal Banner Forward Goes) is a Latin hymn in long metre by the Christian poet and saint Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers. It takes its title from its incipit.

In modern English usage, it is sung to a variety of tunes, although the original plainsong melody is the most common variant.

History

The hymn was first sung for the procession (on November 19, AD 569) of a relic of the True Cross, that was sent by Byzantine Emperor Justin II from the East at the request of St. Radegunda, and was carried in great pomp from Tours to her monastery of Saint-Croix at Poitiers.

Its original processional use is commemorated in the Roman Missal on Good Friday, when the Blessed Sacrament is carried in procession from the Repository to the High Altar. Its principal use is in the Divine Office, with the Roman Breviary assigning it to Vespers from the Saturday before Passion Sunday daily to Maundy Thursday, and to Vespers of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (September 14), and in the pre-Vatican II Breviary also for the Feast of the Finding of the True Cross (May 3rd), and of the Triumph of the Holy Cross (July 16th).

Textual variations

thumb|Vexilla Regis prodeunt sung to the original [[plainsong melody]]

Originally the hymn comprised eight stanzas. In the tenth century, stanzas 7 and 8 were gradually replaced by new ones (O crux ave, spes unica, and the doxology, Te summa Deus trinitas), although they were still retained in some places.

In the seventeenth century the correctors of the Breviary under Urban VIII revised the whole hymn in the interest of classical prosody. The Commission on Plain Chant under Pius X restored the ancient form of the text. The Graduale Romanum (1908) gives only the ancient form of the hymn, while the Antiphonary (1912) gives only the revised form. The Processionale (1911) gives both forms.

There exist multiple variants of the common English translation, originally by John Mason Neale in 1851.

Original text (strophes 1, 6 & 7)

{|

|<poem></poem>

|style="padding-left:2em;"|<poem>The Royal Banner forward goes,

The mystic Cross refulgent glows:

Where He, in Flesh, flesh who made,

Upon the Tree of pain is laid.

O Cross! all hail! sole hope, abide

With us now in this Passion-tide:

New grace in pious hearts implant,

And pardon to the guilty grant.

Thee, mighty Trinity! One God!

Let every living creature laud;

Whom by the Cross Thou dost deliver,

O guide and govern now and ever! Amen.</poem>

|}

Revised text (strophes 1, 6 & 7)

{|

|<poem> In 1906 Percy Dearmer and Ralph Vaughan Williams included it in The English Hymnal, and the hymn was retained in the successor volume, The New English Hymnal (1986). In North America, the hymn is also published in Lutheran Worship.

In addition to the original plainchant, the hymn is often sung to the hymn tune Gonfalon Royal, a melody composed for this hymn by Percy Carter Buck in 1913 to be sung at Harrow School in England, where he was director of music (Gonfalon is a Norman word for a banner).

References in later works

Both words and tune are quoted in a number of musical works. Gounod took a very plain melody based on the chant as the subject of his "March to Calvary" in the oratorio "La rédemption" (1882), in which the chorus sings the text at first very slowly and then, after an interval, fortissimo. Franz Liszt wrote a piece for solo piano, Vexilla regis prodeunt, S185, and uses the hymn at the beginning and end of Via crucis (The 14 stations of the Cross), S53. Anton Bruckner composed a motet based on strophes 1, 6 and 7 of the text (1892). Gustav Holst used both the words and the plainchant melody of Vexilla regis in The Hymn of Jesus (1917).

Dante makes an early literary allusion in Inferno, where Virgil introduces Lucifer with the Latin phrase Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni. Dante's reference is itself later referenced in Walter M. Miller Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz. Vexilla regis is mentioned in Stephen's discussion of his aesthetic theory in chapter V of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

The poet-artist David Jones entitled a 1947 painting "Vexilla Regis", and mentions the hymn in his long poem The Anathemata: fragments of an attempted writing, and also in his book of essays "Epoch and Artist." In "A Commentary on The Anathemata of David Jones" by Rene Hague, the latter makes several references to the "Vexilla Regis."

References

  • Vexilla Regis at Thesaurus Precum Latinarum
  • Vexilla regis prodeunt sung by monks from Randol Abbey and nuns from St Cecilia's Abbey, Ryde
  • "The Royal Banners Forward Go" sung by the Gloucester Cathedral Choir