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From Hymns of the Roman Liturgy, Connelly:
“Jam Lucis Orto Sidere” we sing at Prime, and the same words could well be used to describe the Feast of Christmas.
The Light of the World has appeared, the Redeemer has come.
The two themes of Redemption and Light are found right through the Christmas Liturgy, and no full appreciation of these Hymns is possible except against the background of the Missal as well as of the Breviary, for the Hymns are rather reticent, especially on the theme of Light.
The Feast of the Birth and the Feast of the Epiphany stand at either end of this Season; the former thinks more of God becoming man and the latter of the God who became man.
The Epiphany is the inevitable climax of the Season, not a pale reflection of the Feast of the Birth.
“A Solis Ortus Cardine”.
Author. Cælius Sedulius.
This poet is not to be confused with the Irish poet of the 9th-Century A.D., known as Sedulius Scotus or Sedulius of Liege, of whom it has been said that “he combined a lively humour with an adequate amount of piety”.
Cælius Sedulius lived in the 5th-Century A.D., probably being born at Rome, and taught philosophy at Rome and in Achaia.
Cælius Sedulius lived in the 5th-Century A.D., probably being born at Rome, and taught philosophy at Rome and in Achaia.
It seems that he was converted by a certain Macedonius and that he then turned his talents to the cause of Christianity.
Some state that he was always a Layman, while others think that he was an Ordained Priest. But if little is known of his life, his writings have always been very well known and popular.
His greatest work, the “Carmen Paschale”, was intended to replace to some extent the old classics and their mythology.
For this purpose he gathered together the miraculous events of The Bible and presented them with much allegory and symbolism.
His language is predominantly didactic, without much striving after effect, though at times it rises to great heights.
Nothing of the Carmen Paschale has passed into the Liturgy, except five lines in honour of Our Lady, namely:
Salve, sancta parens, enixa puerpera regem
Qui caelum terramque tenet per saecula;
Gaudia matris habens cum virginitatis honore,
Nee primam similem visa es, nee habere sequentem. Sola sine exemplo placuistifemina Christo.
Of these quotations, the first is used, with slight verbal changes, as the Introit for the Common of Feasts of Our Lady.
The first two lines of the second quotation are part of the second Antiphon of Christmas Lauds, and the third line is part of the Magnificat Antiphon on the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lady.
Besides the “Carmen Paschale”, only two of his Hymns survive, of which one is the “A Solis Ortus Cardine”. This Hymn is quantitative, though it tends sometimes to be accentual. It also uses rhyme, though not consistently.
These two tendencies foreshadow what the Latin Hymn was to become in Later Centuries.
It is also an acrostic or alphabetical Hymn, each verse beginning with the next letter, while Aeterna caeli gloria is alphabetical by lines. Verses A to G make up the present Hymn, and Verses H, I, L and N are used for Vespers of the Epiphany.
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