Three Magnificent Antiphons of the Christmas Octave
A trip through time and memory
II Nonas Ianuarii (4 January) Anno Incarnationis MMXXIV
The Octave of the Holy Innocents
Dum medium silentium
Dum medium silentium tenerent omnia et nox in suo cursu medium iter perageret omnipotens Sermo tuus Domine a regalibus sedibus venit. Alleluia.
While all things keep watch in the midst of silence Lord and the night in its courses passes through the midpoint of its journey your Almighty Word comes down from his royal throne. Alleluia.
This little bit of perfection that so exquisitely captures the mood of Christmas is the antiphon sung at the Magnificat of First Vespers and the Benedictus at Laudes on the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas and serves as well as the basis for the Introit of the Mass of that day. It is unknown when it first arrived in the Divine Office but its presence there seems to go back deep into the first millennium since it is found1 already in use in a tenth century manuscript of the Benedictine Office that itself claims to be a representative of the Office that Gregory the Great restored at the close of the sixth century.
The text of the antiphon comes more or less from the Book of Wisdom (18: 14-15) but is not an exact rendering of the Latin text that we find our Vulgate. None of the differences, save an omission that will be discussed shortly, substantially change the meaning of the text so it is very curious why it should be worded differently.
Usually the reason for a variation between a Scriptural text found in the Vulgate, especially in the Old Testament, and that found in the Liturgy is because the Liturgy tends to prefer the far more ancient pre-Vulgate Old Latin translations of the books of the Old Testament that have their origin in the Greek Septuagint to Jerome’s later translations from the Hebrew manuscripts available to him in the late fourth century that we find in the Vulgate.
But in this case that is completely unnecessary since the Book of Wisdom was originally written in Greek and Saint Jerome by his own admission2 left the preexisting Old Latin version completely untouched. So in theory at least the Old Latin and the Vulgate versions should be one and the same.
Here then is the Latin text from the Vulgate edition of the book of Wisdom:
Cum enim quietum silentium contineret omnia et nox in suo cursu medium iter haberet omnipotens sermo tuus de cælo a regalibus sedibus… prosilivit
For when the still silence surrounded all and night had journeyed to its midway point your almighty word leapt down from his royal throne in heaven…
A few words have been omitted here to make the comparison to the antiphon clearer and this will be explained below, but what follows are a few observations about the textual differences in the remainder of the line. The antiphon when it says dum in medium silentium tenerent omnia makes omnia or ‘all things’ the grammatical subject of the sentence. All things hold themselves in silence, or all things are keeping watch in silence. Whereas in the Vulgate text Cum enim quietum silentium contineret omnia the silence itself is the subject. The silence encompassed everything.
The second observation is the verb tense. In the Vulgate it is crystal clear that this is a narration of a past event whereas the antiphon does not necessarily read that way. It could be a past tense ‘while all things were keeping watch in silence’ or it could be a present tense translation as you see above ‘while all things keep watch in silence’. The preposition dum leaves open both possibilities and in many ways actually favors the present tense.
That the antiphon is at least in some way a liturgical adaptation of Wisdom 18: 14-15 and not a direct word for word quotation from any version is highly probable given both the omitted words and the addition of Domine which turns the thing into a direct address to the Lord, but that does not make the change in mood and perspective and vocabulary any less curious.
While the drama is heightened a little by the shift to the present tense there really was no need to change it. It would have worked with the past. Nor was there any real need at all to change the grammatical subject to meet the needs of the Feast. Could this then have come from a now long forgotten Latin translation of the Book of Wisdom that, given the Liturgy’s love for preserving ancient things3 that might otherwise have been forgotten, may predate even the very old one that Jerome knew in the fourth century?
On to the omission: in the book of Wisdom these words are not spoken to God as in the antiphon but are an extremely poetic description laced with prophetic language of an event then long in the past: the extermination of the first born of Egypt on Passover night. This accounts for the words that are not found in our antiphon: durus debellator in mediam exterminii terram. “The almighty word sprung forth from his royal throne: a hard man of war in a land of destruction.”
Looking at an image of the Christ Child in 2023 we might look askance at this. We don’t think of Him that way and we really haven’t, at least in the West, for a very long time now. We see the creche and marvel at his innocence and vulnerability. Our eyes dew up at Mary’s tender love and Saint Joseph’s watchful care. The more pious among us might shed tears over this beautiful Child who is destined to shed his Blood and suffer so much for our sins. And while there is truth in all of that, this is not how the ancients saw it.
For the ancient pagan world in which the Church took root the coming of the God-man was an act of war.4 That little child laying in the lap of the Theotokos and nursing at her breast was a judgement upon the prince of this world and those who would follow him.5 The Gospel was to be preached to the nations6 as a Judgement: either they would accept it and be saved, or reject it and be destroyed by their own stupidity. There was no middle ground. No compromise. It was a fight to the death.
It is in this sense that we can best understand the origins of this particular antiphon and why words that had originally been written about the destroying angel of Passover ended up being applied to the Babe of Bethlehem.
O Admirabile Commercium
O admirabile commercium Creator generis humani animatum corpus sumens de Virgine nasci dignatus est et procedens homo sine semine largitus est nobis suam Deitatem
O thrice wondrous exchange! the Creator of the human race deigned to be born! taking a breathing body from the Virgin: going forth a man without seed He did grant to us his own Divinity
This antiphon is the first antiphon of both Vespers and Laudes on the Octave of Christmas and pairs with Psalm 109 at Vespers and Psalm 92 at Laudes. Its opening words ‘O wondrous exchange’ have found their way with a fair degree of frequency into homilies and devotions throughout the centuries as an expression of the absolute wonder and awe of the faithful soul at what God has done for us in the Incarnation.
The antiphons of the Christmas Octave 1 January are some of the longest and most theologically dense of the entire liturgical year and this one is no exception. In its entirety it is a broad theological statement concerning the Incarnation and corresponds quite nicely with the doctrine as solemnly affirmed at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople.
This antiphon is found7 as well in the first millennium Office attributed to Gregory the Great and its exuberant celebration of the union of the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ has the air of having been composed as a liturgical marker of the triumph over Arianism sometime during the centuries between the Council of Constantinople and the reign of Pope Gregory.
(Polyphonic setting for ‘O Admirale Commercium’ composed by Hans Leo Hassler 1601. Performed by Ensemble Vocal Européen de la Chapelle Royale Philippe Herreweghe)
Mirabile Mysterium
Mirabile mysterium declaratur hodie innovantur naturae Deus homo factus est id quod fuit permansit et quod non erat assumpsit non commixtionem passus neque divisionem
The wondrous divine secret is made known: today the order of the universe is altered. God has become man: that which was remains and He has taken to Himself that which was not - and He suffered neither to blend with it nor to be divided from it.
This perfectly wondrous antiphon is found at the Benedictus of Laudes on the morning of the Octave of Christmas and like the previous O admirabile commercium it contains incredible theological depth and is intimately related to the other great Christological heresy of Nestorianism.
Nestorianism arose in the 420s AD almost half a century after the Council of Constantinople had finally put an end to the worst phase of the Arian crisis at least within the bounds of the Roman Empire. It essentially proposed that Jesus Christ is two separate and distinct persons, one divine and one human, that somehow inhabited the same being. More or it less cut Him in half and tried to stitch the resulting two lumps of the carcass back together in the sloppiest way possible.
This nonsense was of course condemned in the strongest terms possible by both the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon though there was a tragic misunderstanding concerning Chalcedon that has left a wound in the Mystical Body of Christ to this day. But one can see how this antiphon defies Nestorianism and affirms the declarations of these Councils by insisting on the unity of the divine and human natures of Jesus Christ in one single Person that suffered neither mixing nor division.
Since this antiphon is found as well8 in the Office attributed to Saint Gregory, and given its unabashed connection to the Nestorian crisis, it would not be unreasonable to place its composition sometime in the fifth century following the Councils of Ephesus and/or Chalcedon.
— As a personal side note I once had a brief discussion with a faithful member of the Egyptian Coptic Church of Alexandria who seemed to be laboring under the notion created by centuries of misinformation that Western Catholics had somehow accepted Nestorianism or at least some form of semi-Nestorianism at the Council of Chalcedon. I assured him that this was absolutely not the case and as evidence I told him the story of this antiphon Mirabile mysterium that proclaimed that there was neither mixture nor division in the Person of Christ, almost quoting word for word from Cyril of Alexandria, and informed him that it had been sung everywhere in the West from the middle part of the first millennium up until the latter part of the twentieth century. It seemed to make an impression.
Take that Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity!
(Mirabile Mysterium composed by Jacom Handl 1586. Performers unknown.)
Saint Giussepe Maria Tomasi, Responsoriali et Antiphonaria Romanae Ecclesia…, Rome, 1686, p. 244
Epistola ad Cromatium et Heliodorium taken from the Weber-Gryson critical edition of the Vulgate, Biblia Sacrata Vulgata, 2007, p. 957
If this is a liturgical adaptation of some version of the text of Wisdom 18: 14-15 it is likely to be extremely ancient. When it speaks of the Word coming down from heaven the antiphon does not use the word verbum that we are all familiar with from et Verbum caro factum est which became the universally used Latin descriptor of the Eternal Word after Saint Jerome’s revision of the Gospel of John in the late fourth century, but instead uses the word Sermo. The only other place I have ever seen sermo used to describe the Eternal Word is in the Testimonies of Saint Cyprian of Carthage (Book II ch. vi) written around the year 248 AD, almost a century and a half prior to Saint Jerome’s revision of the Gospels, where he quotes the Latin translation of the opening line of the Gospel of John then current in his day about one hundred and fifty years after Saint John wrote it as In principio erat Sermo et Sermo erat apud Deum et Deus erat Sermo. This might give us some clue as to the time frame we are looking at for the creation of this antiphon.
The Testimonies incidentally is a great work to combat much of the tripe that masquerades as Biblical so called ‘scholarship’ in our time since here you have an author writing barely two centuries after Our Lord’s Ascension on the other side of the Mediterranean who quotes endlessly from all of the Gospels and most of the New Testament including the Apocalypse, and even the so called ‘apocryphal’ books such as Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) of the Old Testament, as Scripture and as something that seemed to him at least to have been accepted as such already for quite some time.
1 John 3:8
John 12:31, 1 John 3:8
Mark 16: 15-16
Tomasi, p. 244
ibid. p. 244