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Authors: Mark Lawson-Jones
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Bonaventure.
There is no better example of this than the carol, ‘Adeste Fideles’ that we know more commonly as ‘O Come all ye Faithful’. The history of this particular carol was shrouded in mystery and both the lyrics and the music have been the subject of intense speculation and research for many years.
The lyrics, from time to time, have been attributed to St Bonaventure, the thirteenth-century Italian scholar. They have also been attributed to Cistercian monks; some have said they are Portuguese in origin, some German and some Spanish.
The music has received no less speculation, being attributed first to the seventeenth-century English organist John Reading, and then his son. The famous composer of operas, oratorios and concertos, George Frideric Handel, has also received some attention from those anxious to discover the truth behind the music, as have many others. For a time, the Portuguese musician Marcos Antonio da Fonseca was in the frame, until it was realised that he was born twenty years after the first publication of the music.
The mystery of the music and the lyrics was almost solved in 1946, when the Revd Maurice Frost of Oxford, discovered a new manuscript of the hymn. Sadly the cover was missing so there were no signatures or publishing marks. The manuscript was described as a ‘Choir book, Medieval manuscript on paper. 92 leaves, written in red and black musical notation’, with a reference to ‘ Regem nostrum Jacobum ’ (‘Our King James’). Someone had also written the words ‘ regem angelorum ’ which is quite close to ‘ regem Angliorem ,’ (‘King of England’). The new discovery shed a whole new light on the lyrics and music, however with the missing front cover more detective work was needed.
At the beginning of 1947, a Benedictine monk in Buckfast Abbey, Devon, published a thirty-two page report, which has almost certainly settled the matter. Dom John Stephan OSB, started his study after the discovery the manuscript, and even though there were many questions left unanswered, he started to obtain photographs of all the early versions of the carol. He was curious about the fact that in the manuscript the mention of King James came immediately before ‘Adeste Fideles’. His attention first focussed on the discovery by the Revd Frost.
The dealers who sold the manuscript had dated it to around 1687, which if correct, would mean that the copy of the carol was at least fifty years older than any other in existence. They had decided the age based on the presence of the Jacobite statement about the King, therefore they believed it was when James II was still on the throne of England.
The cover of Dom John Stephen’s study of ‘Adeste Fideles’.
Dom Stephan’s first reaction to this claim was that the James referred to need not necessarily be James II, but might well be ‘James III’, the Old Pretender, who lived until 1765, and had devoted followers all through that period. After closely examining the watermarks of the paper used for the writing, he confirmed the accuracy of his suspicion. The end-paper used for the cover bore the date ‘1795’, but the rest of the book had different watermarks, which were traced by an expert to a period between 1720 and 1750.
The earliest copies of the ‘Adeste’ all bear the signature of John Francis Wade, so the next step was to examine the photographs. On looking at the first of these photographs, Dom Stephan was immediately struck by the similarity of the handwriting with that of the new ‘Jacobite’ manuscript. Other copies corroborated the exciting new finding.
With this new evidence, he contacted the Revd Frost to point out the coincidence. There was no escaping the conclusion to be drawn from this comparison of handwritings: the new manuscript was the product of the same scribe. Further investigation finally uncovered the scribe as a professional music-copyist who lived and worked at Douai, a flourishing town in France,
There is no better example of this than the carol, ‘Adeste Fideles’ that we know more commonly as ‘O Come all ye Faithful’. The history of this particular carol was shrouded in mystery and both the lyrics and the music have been the subject of intense speculation and research for many years.
The lyrics, from time to time, have been attributed to St Bonaventure, the thirteenth-century Italian scholar. They have also been attributed to Cistercian monks; some have said they are Portuguese in origin, some German and some Spanish.
The music has received no less speculation, being attributed first to the seventeenth-century English organist John Reading, and then his son. The famous composer of operas, oratorios and concertos, George Frideric Handel, has also received some attention from those anxious to discover the truth behind the music, as have many others. For a time, the Portuguese musician Marcos Antonio da Fonseca was in the frame, until it was realised that he was born twenty years after the first publication of the music.
The mystery of the music and the lyrics was almost solved in 1946, when the Revd Maurice Frost of Oxford, discovered a new manuscript of the hymn. Sadly the cover was missing so there were no signatures or publishing marks. The manuscript was described as a ‘Choir book, Medieval manuscript on paper. 92 leaves, written in red and black musical notation’, with a reference to ‘ Regem nostrum Jacobum ’ (‘Our King James’). Someone had also written the words ‘ regem angelorum ’ which is quite close to ‘ regem Angliorem ,’ (‘King of England’). The new discovery shed a whole new light on the lyrics and music, however with the missing front cover more detective work was needed.
At the beginning of 1947, a Benedictine monk in Buckfast Abbey, Devon, published a thirty-two page report, which has almost certainly settled the matter. Dom John Stephan OSB, started his study after the discovery the manuscript, and even though there were many questions left unanswered, he started to obtain photographs of all the early versions of the carol. He was curious about the fact that in the manuscript the mention of King James came immediately before ‘Adeste Fideles’. His attention first focussed on the discovery by the Revd Frost.
The dealers who sold the manuscript had dated it to around 1687, which if correct, would mean that the copy of the carol was at least fifty years older than any other in existence. They had decided the age based on the presence of the Jacobite statement about the King, therefore they believed it was when James II was still on the throne of England.
The cover of Dom John Stephen’s study of ‘Adeste Fideles’.
Dom Stephan’s first reaction to this claim was that the James referred to need not necessarily be James II, but might well be ‘James III’, the Old Pretender, who lived until 1765, and had devoted followers all through that period. After closely examining the watermarks of the paper used for the writing, he confirmed the accuracy of his suspicion. The end-paper used for the cover bore the date ‘1795’, but the rest of the book had different watermarks, which were traced by an expert to a period between 1720 and 1750.
The earliest copies of the ‘Adeste’ all bear the signature of John Francis Wade, so the next step was to examine the photographs. On looking at the first of these photographs, Dom Stephan was immediately struck by the similarity of the handwriting with that of the new ‘Jacobite’ manuscript. Other copies corroborated the exciting new finding.
With this new evidence, he contacted the Revd Frost to point out the coincidence. There was no escaping the conclusion to be drawn from this comparison of handwritings: the new manuscript was the product of the same scribe. Further investigation finally uncovered the scribe as a professional music-copyist who lived and worked at Douai, a flourishing town in France,
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