O esca viatorum
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O esca viatorum is a Catholic Eucharist - hymn in Latin . It can be found for the first time in a Würzburg hymn book from 1647. The author is unknown. The text has spread with various melodies, also in German and English translations. The song O miraculous food ( God's praise (1975) No. 503) or O holy soul food ( God's praise no. 213) is based on the hymn.
origin
The print of the hymn in the Würzburg hymn book Sirenes Marianae from 1647 was the first publication; this emerges from a note in the Würzburg hymn book Sirenes partheniae from 1649. Assumptions of a higher age, even ascriptions to Thomas Aquinas , are outdated. The hymnologist Ernest Edwin Ryden accepts a German Jesuit as the author .
Form and content
The three stanzas consist of six iambic triples with the rhyme scheme [aabccb], where a and c are feminine rhymes and b is masculine .
The theme of the prayer in the first two stanzas is the longing for union with Jesus Christ in communion . The metaphors of the first stanza revolve around the hunger for the body of Christ , the second around the thirst for the blood of Christ . In the third stanza the longing becomes eschatological and is directed towards the unveiled seeing of the face of Christ, which is promised in the secrecy of the sacramental figures.
text
|
Mainz 1661 |
translation |
|
O esca viatorum, |
O food of the wanderers, |
|
O lympha, fons amoris, |
O clear water, source of love that
springs |
|
O Jesu, tuum vultum, |
O Jesus, grant that
, when the covering is removed, |
Translations
The first German adaptation was added to the hymn in the Würzburg hymn book Keusche Meerfrewlein / Oder Geistliche Gesäng ... from 1649, then the same in the Mäyntzisch hymn book from 1661. As a result, there were numerous new versions and additions, some of which were far removed from the Latin original . The four-stanza versions of the divine praise editions from 1975 and 2013 are compiled from several sources; they only differ in the first line, which was decided in 1975 to “ de-spiritualize ”. In 1975 and 2013 an equivalent for verse 2 of the original "O lympha, fons amoris - O sweet potion of life", which was included in the list of standard songs ("O sweet Bronn of life"), was dispensed with.
Of the English-language versions, the near-original adaptation by Athelstan Riley (1906) O food of men wayfaring is the most widespread.
Melodies
The first prints of the hymn offer a “restrained” Doric melody, which was probably only sung in the 17th century. The Cologne hymn book Sirenes Symphoniacae from 1678 gives him a joyfully moving baroque melody to which Heinrich Bone wrote his sacrament song Nun praises God and sings in 1847 .
In the German-speaking area, the assignment to Heinrich Isaacs Innsbruck continued, I have to let you through. Is this melody in the , also added to the German version of God's praise (No. 213). At the same time, the referenced the same melody in Now all forests are resting (No. 101). - As with all sacred texts for this melody, the last line has been extended by two syllables compared to the original because of the closing melism.
literature
- Hansjakob Becker : O holy soul food . In: Geistliches Wunderhorn. Great German hymns . Ed., Presented and explained by Hansjakob Becker u. a. Munich 2001, pp. 239–248
