VER THE LAST fifteen years, we have constantly discussed the URBANITE REVISION of the ancient hymns. It would be impossible to “encapsulate” or “epitomize” everything we’ve said; so I won’t try. One reason we’ve frequently mentioned this shameful ‘reform’ is to emphasize that Christ’s Church being led by flawed human beings is nothing new. On one hand, Pope Urban VIII did some excellent things; e.g. he allowed Father Isaac Jogues to celebrate the Holy Mass although his fingers had been mutilated by the Iroquois. On the other hand, Pope Urban VIII did something iniquitous: viz. he personally destroyed most of the ancient hymns.1 Popes before him had threatened to do likewise, but Urban actually went through with it.
Roger Capel • The following article, which talks about the URBANITE REVISION, supports certain assertions I made during a presentation a few years ago (at the Sacred Music Symposium) vis-à-vis the absurd ellisions in the breviary hymn for the Sacred Heart:
* PDF Download • “Hymns are meant to be sung” (4 pages)
—1943 article regarding the URBANITE REVISION by Roger Capel.
Father Fortescue describes the ‘corrections’ of Pope Urban VIII as follows:
In the seventeenth century came the crushing blow which destroyed the beauty of all Breviary hymns. […] They had no concept of the fact that many of these hymns were written in metre by accent; their lack of understanding those venerable types of Christian poetry is astounding. […] So they embarked on that fatal reform whose effect was the ruin of our hymns. They slashed and tinkered, they re-wrote lines and altered words, they changed the sense and finally produced the poor imitations that we still have, in the place of the hymns our fathers sang for over a thousand years. […] No one who knows anything about the subject now doubts that that revision of Urban VIII was a ghastly mistake, for which there is not one single word of any kind to be said.
If you desire to know more about the URBANITE REVISION, the best source is probably the Brébeuf Catholic Hymnal. Much information is provided there, accompanied by gorgeous color plates. That book also gives examples of how Monsignor Ronald Knox “surreptitiously restored” parts of the pre-Urban hymns when he created his famous translations for the New Westminster Hymnal.
1 Technically, he formed a committee of four Jesuit poets to accomplish this revision: Famiano Strada, Tarquinio Galluzzi, Mathias Sarbiewski, and Girolamo Petrucci. However—from what we can tell—the committee deferred to his every wish. (Pope Urban VIII considered himself an expert in Latin poetry.)
