Mater Hierusalem, civitas sancta Dei

translated as
O mother, dear Jerusalem

adapted as 
Jerusalem, my happy home

with
MATERNA
ROGERO (DIANA)

I. Text: Origins

The English hymn “O mother, dear Jerusalem” and its relatives and variants come from a Latin text, “Mater Hierusalem, civitas sancta Dei,” otherwise known as Chapter XXV in the spuriously named Meditations of St. Augustine. The texts in that collection are not by Augustine. The Meditations have their roots in an 11th century collection held at the Bibliothèques-Médiathèques (Bibliothèque municipale) de Metz, MS 245, a codex formerly belonging to the Monastery of St. Arnulf in Metz (Abbaye de Saint-Arnould de Metz). The text “Mater Hierusalem,” etc., is found on folios 68v–71r. This MS does not contain the name of Augustine; rather, it was signed by Johannes, who is almost certainly Jean, the abbot of Fécamp (ca. 990–1078). The work was intended for Agnes, widow of Henry III of Germany. It can be divided into two parts, the first of which was copied and transmitted under the name Liber Supputationum, and attributed to Augustine by the end of the 12th century. The second part became known as the Confessio Theologica. By the end of the 14th century, the Liber Supputationum was combined with works attributed to Anselm of Canterbury (ca. 1033–1109) and was renamed the Meditationes Divi Augustini Episcopi Hipponensis. One useful English translation can be found in The Meditations, Soliloquia, and Manuall of the Glorious Doctour S. Augustine (1631).

In Metz MS 245 (Fig. 1), the text “Mater Hierusalem, civitas sancta Dei” is not clearly delineated as a separate text, even starting in the middle of a sentence. It starts 17 lines from the bottom of folio 68v, “mat’ hierl’m ciuitas scá dí,” etc., and ends at the first word of the 20th line of folio 69r. In later manuscripts and editions, this portion of the text was extracted unto its own.

This portion of the manuscript was helpfully transcribed by Stephen A. Hurlbut in The Picture of the Heavenly Jerusalem (1943), pp. VI 17–20 (Fig. 2). In Hurlbut’s edition, the text is misleadingly presented with a strong incipit in capital letters, but his work is very helpful for interpreting the many abbreviations and shortcuts in the original Latin script.

Hurlbut listed twelve manuscript editions of the Meditationes Divi Augustini, which date mostly from the 15th century. It appeared in print starting around 1482. In the example below, “Mater hierusalem ciuitas sancta Dei” was designated as chapter 24, but in other editions it is often given as chapter 25.

An early translation of this text into English was published in The Meditations, Soliloquia, and Manuall of the Glorious Doctour S. Augustine (Paris: Nicolas de la Coste, 1631 | Fig. 4). This edition includes some scriptural cross-references in the margins.

Fig. 4. The Meditations, Soliloquia, and Manuall of the Glorious Doctour S. Augustine (Paris: Nicolas de la Coste, 1631).

II. Text: Metrical Translation

“O mother, dear Jerusalem” is a metrical translation and paraphrase of “Mater Hierusalem civitas sancta Dei,” including the first few lines of Chapter XXVII (in the earliest manuscripts of the Meditations, these two followed one another; Chapter XXVI, the hymn by Damiani, was a later insertion). This metrical paraphrase was first published in The Glasse of vaine-glorie: Faithfully translated (out of S. Avgvstine his booke), by W.P. Doctor of the Lawes (London: Iohn Windet, 1585 | Fig. 5). Nothing is known about the author, W. Prid, or William Prid, except the credentials named in the title (Doctor of Laws). In Prid’s translation, he included numerous scriptural cross-references in the margins. The first line, for example, he equated with Galatians 4:26, “But Jerusalem, which is above, is free, which is the mother of us all” (Geneva, 1560).

Fig. 5. The Glasse of vaine-glorie: Faithfully translated (out of S. Avgvstine his booke), by W.P. Doctor of the Lawes (London: Iohn Windet, 1585).

III. Text: Adaptation and Development

The English text beginning “Jerusalem, my happy home” is much less a translation from the Latin than it is an adaptation inspired by the same ideas. The oldest known copy of this hymn is in a British Library manuscript, Add. 15225, fols. 36v–37v, dated by some scholars to ca. 1593, attributed to “F.B.P. To the tune of Diana.” The codex as a whole dates to about 1616. The British Library text contains 26 stanzas of four lines.

Owing to some unsubstantiated guesswork by nineteenth century scholar Daniel Sedgwick, the initials F.B.P. have been credited in some printings to “Francis Baker, Priest,” but the true author is unknown. The writer is believed to have been a Catholic under persecution in the late 16th century. For more on the tune DIANA, see section IV below.

Fig. 6. British Library, MS Add. 15225, fols. 36v–37v.
   

The earliest printed source of the hymn is The Song of Mary the Mother of Christ . . . with the Description of Heauenly Ierusalem (London: E. Allde, 1601 | Fig. 7), where it was given in 19 stanzas, unattributed.

A full transcription of the British Library text was made by Horatius Bonar in The New Jerusalem: A Hymn of the Olden Time (Edinburgh: Johnstone & Hunter, 1852). The preface to Bonar’s edition mentions the erroneous attribution of this text to David Dickson (1583–1663), a Scottish Presbyterian minister. His name, for example, appeared in the earliest hymnal printing of MATERNA (see Tune 1 below).

Another edition of the text was prepared by Hyder E. Rollins in Old English Ballads (1920 | Fig. 8). Rollins compared the British Library copy with the 1601 publication, provided some additional early sources, and annotated his transcription. He noted two early examples in which the designated tune was called “O man in desperation,” and he mentioned another British Library source where the tune was partly notated (MS Add. 38599, fols. 133v–134v).

One popular and important reduction and revision of the hymn was given in Joseph Bromehead’s Psalms and Hymns, for Publick or Private Devotion (Sheffield, 1795), sometimes called the “Eckington Collection.” “Jerusalem my happy home” was credited to “B.” in that collection, and it spanned seven stanzas. This version was repeated in A Collection of Above Six Hundred Hymns, edited by Rev. Edward Williams and Rev. James Boden (Doncaster: D. Boys, 1801), and in James Montgomery’s Psalms and Hymns for Public or Private Devotion (Sheffield, 1802), and his Christian Psalmist (Glasgow: Chalmers & Collins, 1825). 

One other version of “Jerusalem, my happy home” of some importance was published in A Collection of Sacred Ballads, edited by Richard and Andrew Broaddus (1790), introducing a new stanza beginning “When we’ve been there ten thousand years.” This additional stanza was eventually appended to another hymn, “Amazing grace,” in Edwin Excell's Coronation Hymns (1910). 

With “Jerusalem, my happy home” and “O mother, dear Jerusalem” both being in common meter, and both containing similar themes, stanzas from these two texts have often been intertwined.

IV. Tunes

1. MATERNA

MATERNA, a tune by Samuel A. Ward (1848–1903), was written for and draws its name from the hymn “O mother, dear Jerusalem.” It was first published in The Parish Choir, vol. VIII, no. 378 (July 12, 1888 | Fig. 10). This first printing included a generic tune name, HYMN TUNE 27. The text is a mixture of stanzas from W. Prid and F.B.P.

The first appearance of this tune in a hymnal was in an Episcopal collection, The Church Hymnal edited by Charles Hutchins (Boston, 1894 | Fig. 11). In this printing, the tune was named MATERNA, credited to Ward, and the authorship of the text was credited erroneously to David Dickson. In the United States, this tune is more closely associated with the poem “O beautiful for spacious skies” (“America the Beautiful”) by Katharine Lee Bates (1859–1929).

2. DIANA

The British Library manuscript shown above (Fig. 6) bears the attribution “A song by F.B.P. to the tune of Diana,” which might refer to the English folksong “Diana and her darlings deare.” The earliest known printing of that song was in A Handefull of Pleasant Delites, by Clement Robinson and others (London: Richard Ihones, 1584), text only, where the suggested tune was QUARTER BRAULES. No copies of this tune could be found. The meter of this 1584 text does not match the common meter of “Jerusalem, my happy home,” so it seems unlikely that one could be sung to the tune of other.

As mentioned above, some early copies name a tune called “O man in desperation.” For this, see C. M. Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music (1966), no. 340.

The editors of The Hymnal 1940 Companion (3rd rev. ed., 1962), pp. 343–344, claimed the tune DIANA was identical to the English ballad tune ROGERO, which dates as early as 1557. Therefore, in The Hymnal 1940 (NY: Church Pension Fund, 1943), “Jerusalem, my happy home” was paired with ROGERO, but the editors called it DIANA. This claim seems to have originally come from Hyder E. Rollins, who in a letter to the London Times Literary Supplement (22 Dec. 1921), described finding a copy of the “Diana” ballad ca. 1605–1640 in the Manchester Free Library, set to ROGERO. 

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
11 June 2018
rev. 13 August 2021

For a side-by-side comparison of the Latin of Meditationes, the 1631 English translation, and the hymns “O mother, dear Jerusalem,” and “Jerusalem, my happy home,” see this PDF.

Related resources:

Metz MS 245, Bibliothèque Virtuelle des Manuscrits Médiévaux (BVMM): Images

Meditationes Diui Augustini Episcopi Hipponensis ([Venedig]: [De Bonetis], [1484]): Images

British Library, MS Add 15225: Images

The Meditations, Soliloquia, and Manuall of the Glorious Doctour S. Augustine (Paris: Nicolas de la Coste, 1631), pp. 87–92: PDF

Joseph Bromehead, Psalms and Hymns, for Publick or Private Devotion (Sheffield: J. Northall, 1795) WorldCat

Horatius Bonar, The New Jerusalem: A Hymn of the Olden Time (Edinburgh: Johnstone & Hunter, 1852): Archive.org

“Rogero,” The Ballad Literature and Popular Music of the Olden Time, ed. William Chappell, vol. 1 (London: Chappell & Co., ca. 1855), pp. 93–95: Archive.org

William T. Brooke & John Julian, “Jerusalem, my happy home,” A Dictionary of Hymnology, with Suppl. (London: John Murray, 1907), pp. 580–583: HathiTrust / p. 1656: HathiTrust

Hyder E. Rollins, Old English Ballads, 1553–1625 (Cambridge: University Press, 1920), pp. 163–169: Archive.org

Stephen A. Hurlbut, The Picture of the Heavenly Jerusalem (Washington, D.C.: St. Albans Press, 1943): PDF

“Jerusalem, my happy home,” The Hymnal 1940 Companion, 3rd rev. ed. (NY: Church Pension Fund, 1956), pp. 341–343: WorldCat

“Jerusalem, my happy home,” Hymnary.org:
https://hymnary.org/text/jerusalem_my_happy_home_name_ever_dear

“Jerusalem, my happy home,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology:
https://hymnology.hymnsam.co.uk/j/jerusalem,-my-happy-home?q=Jerusalem,%20my%20happy%20home

“O mother, dear Jerusalem,” Hymnary.org:
https://hymnary.org/text/o_mother_dear_jerusalem

Peter Turner, “John of Fécamp,” The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine (2013),
http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199299164.001.0001/acref-9780199299164-e-407