SALVE, CAPUT CRUENTATUM.
This selection is taken from a hymn in seven parts, each addressing some member of Christ's body on the cross, the feet, the knees, etc. The composition is more probably by some German poet than by Bernard, but its supposed origin with the latter has become a subject of religious legend. One ancient copy describes the hymn as 'a divine and most devout prayer of the Abbot St. Bernard, which he made when an image of the Saviour with outstretched arms embraced him from the cross.' Again we read, 'The image on the cross bowed itself and embraced him with its wounded arms as a sure token that to it this prayer was most pleasing.'
Julian refers to eight English metrical versions. One of the finest forms in which it has come into the language (through P. Gerhardt's free German version 'O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden') is O sacred Head! now wounded.
3. Conquassatum: mangled. 7. Immutatus: 'His visage was so marred more than any man.'—Isaiah 52. 14. 10. All heaven shudders. The curia is the centre of government. 11. viror: Late Latin for viriditas, vigor; we might freely render brightness. 14. Expressing the extremity of weakness, hanging all in faintness. 19. intersigno: proof, Late Latin. 23-25. From whose mouth I have taken honey with the sweetness of milk, beyond all delights. A figurative use of the story of Samson, who found a honeycomb in the mouth of the carcass of the lion which he had slain, Judges 14. 8, 9. Milk is religiously associated with honey because of the description of Canaan in Deuteronomy 31. 20, terram lacte et melle manantem. 28-30. Now that death is near Thee, lay here Thine head, rest in my arms. 32. gauderem: I would rejoice, were I associated with Thy holy passion; present contrary to fact condition. 40. absque: without, ante- and post-classic preposition. 46. emigrare: depart from life. Cf. qui e vita emigravit, Cicero, De Legibus, 2. 48. 49. Temetipsum: Thine own self. An emphatic -met is suffixed to Te.
'JESUS, THE VERY THOUGHT OF THEE.'
The author is probably St. Bernard, the abbot of Clairvaux and the great preacher of the Second Crusade. Few men in Christendom have ever exercised a personal influence equal to his.
These quartrains are selected from a hymn composed of fifty such, and familiar to English-speaking Christians from Caswall's translation, Jesus, the very Thought of Thee, and Ray Palmer's Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts. It was a favorite of Livingstone who quotes from it in his African Diary. 'No other poem in any language,' says Julian, 'has furnished to English and American hymn-books so many hymns of sterling worth and well-deserved popularity.'
Subject, Jesus.
1-4. Iesu: vocative. We would expect das instead of dans and tui instead of eius. Supply est with praesentia.
13-16.