262. Jerusalem the golden
Bernard of Cluny, 12th century
Tr. John M. Neale, 1818-66
“And the city was pure gold” Rev. 21:21.
This hymn is from a Latin manuscript of 3,000 lines entitled “De Contemptu Mundi” (On Contempt of the World), written by Bernard of Cluny while he was a monk at the famous monastery of Cluny, France, c. 1145. Practically nothing is known of him except his authorship of this poem. Two other hymns, “Brief life is here our portion,” and “For thee, O dear, dear country,” not in the Hymnary, are taken from the same poem. The original was not written as a hymn at all but as a “bitter satire on the fearful corruption of the age,” especially of the Church of Rome, in contrast to which the author paints the joys of the new Jerusalem. The author employed throughout the unusually difficult meter known as “dactylic hexameter with tailed rhymes,” of which Bernard himself says: “Unless the Spirit of wisdom and understanding had flowed in upon me, I could not have put together so long a work in so difficult a meter.” The reading of the Latin stanzas best reveal the rhythm and music of the original:
1.
Urbs Sion aurea, patria lactea,
Cive decora,
Omne cor obruis, omnibus obstruis
Et cor et ora.