Whence the Te Deum?
This essay was delivered at the annual St. Michael Conference at Zion Lutheran Church in Detroit, Michigan on September 30th of this year.
Not long after I began sifting through the research that has been conducted over the years on the origin of the Te Deum Laudamus, I was tempted simply to read, or at least to summarize, a masterful treatise on the matter already written in 2012 by James Krikava, to which Fr. Braden called my attention. His research is scholarly and extensive, and his presentation is a delightful read. I do have a number of additions and opinions of my own to include, but Krikava deserves credit for getting me started, and directing my attention to some important resources.
The Te Deum has a long and storied history. It has been a favorite and familiar hymn since its creation in the fifth century. The Roman Breviary prescribes the Te Deum at the end of Matins on all feasts throughout the year, on all Sundays excepting during penitential seasons, and on all ferial days during Eastertide (namely from Low Sunday to Ascension Day) except Rogation Monday.
The Te Deum has long been popular in non-liturgical settings as well. Its common use for consecration of bishops or kings is well-known. Pope Urban II is said to have launched the first Crusade in 1095 with the singing of the Te Deum as they set out on their journey. The Te Deum was sung at the Council of Constance (1414-1418) when the schism of the Western Church with its warring popes was at last healed. The Te Deum has been set to music by such illustrious composers as Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Handel, Verdi, Dvorak, Britten and Penderecki.
Martin Luther thought so highly of it that he ranks it with the early symbols of the faith, with the Apostles’ and Athanasian Creeds.[1]
There’s a macabre account of its performance after King Louis XIV had a successful surgery in 1687, successful surgery being an unusual thing in those days. The conductor was Jean-Baptiste Lully, who kept time by tapping a large staff on the stage, and in his exuberance, he accidentally thumped on his foot and injured it so severely that he developed gangrene and died.[2]
There is a claim whose source I could not find—copied verbatim in several places—that says this:
The Te Deum is said to have had a powerful and remedial effect on people during the medieval era. It was believed that people were cured of terminal diseases during the singing of the hymn, while others regained their sight on hearing it. Some were said to have been arisen or awakened from the dead as the hymn was sung.
There’s a story that after the relics of St. Agatha were carried to Catania, a demon-possessed woman was healed by the relics, and a crowd of bystanders saw here cross herself, and they immediately began to rejoice over the miracle. The monks were safely in bed at the time, and the crowd compelled them by the crowd to get up, ring the bells, and sing the Te Deum.[3]
The hymn is associated with courage, integrity, and Christian determination. Martyrs are known to have sung it while being massacred, especially in the East. There’s a gripping account of Japanese Christians being led to martyrdom in 1597, the so-called “26 Martyrs of Nagasaki,” who walked barefoot in the snow for over 600 miles, with their left ears cut off, some with noses cut off, from Kyoto to their martyrdom in Nagasaki; and as they marched, they sang the Te Deum, having been prepared for martyrdom by the customary catechetical memorization of the Latin hymn and learning to understand each phrase.[4] In China, in 1900 a notoriously anti-Christian governor ordered the execution of Christians. Among them were five nuns who knelt and sang the Te Deum before having their throats cut.[5]
Gripping accounts like this remind us that it’s worthy of our time to look into the origins of this hymn, arguably the most venerable in all of Christendom. Whence the Te Deum? Where did it come from?
There’s a legend that this canticle was composed spontaneously and antiphonally by St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, at Augustine’s Baptism by Ambrose in a.d. 385. The legend seems to have arisen from a treatise on predestination by Hincmar of Rheims in the middle of the ninth century, which was embellished in the 11th century.[6] The story was taken at face value in a number of later manuscripts that reference the hymn as Hymnus Ambrosianus, Hymnus Augustini, or Hymnus sanctorum doctorum Ambrosii et Augustini.
But most later summaries of the evidence question the authenticity of the legend, suggesting that its account of rather miraculous spontaneity is reminiscent of other legends of saints, such as those surrounding the fourth-century life of St. Nicholas, which, without independent attestation, are difficult to take too seriously as anything more than the result of pious imagination.
At this point, however, I admit that I find myself somewhat compelled piously to imagine that for all we know there could be more truth to such legends than post-Enlightenment thinkers will allow themselves to believe. The legend arose from something, after all, and the Baptism of St. Augustine was itself a truly miraculous event. We will do well to recall that Augustine had been a determined pagan well into his adult life; even the deathbed conversion of his pagan father didn’t move him to repentance. It was, according to Augustine, the incessant prayers of his mother Monica that finally brought him to the point of conversion. No doubt the occasion of his Baptism was therefore one of great joy not only for Augustine, but for Ambrose his baptizer, who finally got to behold the fruit of his labors. There was much that was miraculous about that event, added to the very miraculous nature of Baptism itself. Perhaps Hincmar’s report has more truth in it than is commonly thought.
But as it happens there are some legitimate reasons for questioning it. Chief among them is the lateness of Hincmar’s reference, the singularity of it, and the variety of other early claims of authorship. Also, and tellingly, it has been noted that the Psalms employed in the third part of the Te Deum, that is, in the last eight verses, corresponds to Jerome’s second revision of the Psalter, the so-called Gallican Psalter of 388. His first revision, known as the Roman Psalter, is from 382, and it bears less similarity to the Te Deum, making it seemingly impossible that the hymn is older than 388, which is three years after the Baptism, though it’s also possible that the hymn was modified to its current form after the 388 Psalter was written.[7]
Further evidence against the claim of Ambrosian authorship is that what we do know about St. Ambrose is that he is known to have composed nineteen other hymns, and they were all written in meter, unlike the Te Deum which employs rhythmic prose. So there is no internal evidence to support the claim of his authorship. What is also known about St. Ambrose is that he is said to have introduced hymns from the East, so it is quite possible that the Te Deum was one such hymn. Perhaps the kernel of truth in the legend is that the Te Deum was at least sung at St. Augustine’s Baptism.
Luther’s opinion on the legend was that it doesn’t matter. “It does no harm,” he wrote, “whether one believes it or not—it is nevertheless a fine symbol or creed (whoever the author) composed in the form of a chant, not only for the purpose of confessing the true faith, but also for praising and thanking God.”[8]
The oldest ascription of authorship is in a codex from the 8th or 9th century.[9] This manuscript attributes it to Hilary of Poitiers, who died in 368, which would also make it a possibility that the hymn was available to Ambrose.
Other early ascriptions do assign authorship to Ambrose and Augustine, but not convincingly. There is, for instance, another 9th century source, a letter from Charles the Great to Pope Hadrian referring to the hymn as coming from Ambrose and Augustine, but the ascription appears to be written in a later hand, replacing the former title that reads simply Laudes post nocturn. An Irish Book of Hymns from the 16th century likewise ascribes the hymn to Ambrose and Augustine,[10] evidently following the prior ascription uncritically.
But since the end of the 19th century, most observers came to agree with the assessment of Dom G. Morin that the more plausible source is one Nikitas of Remesiana, who is known to have composed psalms and hymns in the fourth century.[11] The evidence for this claim of authorship comes by way of consideration of a number of 10th or 11th century manuscripts of the Te Deum that bear the inscription Ymnus sancti Viceti epis[copi]. The reasoning goes this Viceti is actually a corrupted form of Niceti, the result of an accidental change of the initial “N” into a “V.” The name Nicetus was popular in the fourth century, so while other possibilities arose as to which Nicetus was meant, speculation settled on Morin’s suggestion, in 1894, that it was Nikitas of Remesiana because of his having been a composer of hymns.
The first actual reference to the hymn is in the Rule for Monks, of Caesarius of Arles, said to have been drawn up in a.d. 502, ordering it as part of the Sunday morning service. Aurelian of Arles (Archbishop from 546 to 551) also ordered it to be said on every Sabbath at Matins, and Benedict of Nursia (d. 547) also provided for it to be said on Sunday and its vigil, when it is to precede the Gospel.[12]
One W. S. Swanson opined in the late 19th century that there’s strong evidence the original form of the hymn must have been written before the Nestorian controversy. Nestorius began preaching against the word Theotokos in 428 or 429 and the Council of Ephesus condemned his teachings in 431. Swanson avers that the church catholic, reacting against Nestorianism, began to prefer strong and unambiguous desigations of Jesus’ divinity and the unity of His Person as divine and human.
Swanson’s attention in this regard focuses on the 16th verse, whose earliest form runs “Tu ad liberandum suscepisti hominem; Non horruisti virginis uterum (You to deliver took upon yourself man: you did not despise the virgin’s womb).” But there’s an ambiguity here. A literal and wooden translation would be, “you, to deliver, took upon yourself, man.” So the question is what was taken upon him, whether it is meant that he took man upon himself to deliver him, or, according to the reading that is more familiar to us, that he took upon himself the determination to deliver man, leaving the matter of the incarnation entirely in the clause that follows, namely, “You did not despise the virgin’s womb.” In this case, however, the Latin is somewhat awkward. Before Nestorius, so Swanson’s reasoning goes, the idea of his taking man upon himself would have been easy to say as a reference to the incarnation, but afterwards, it could also be taken in an adoptionist sense (as in “you took a man upon yourself”), so the term was generally replaced by the less ambiguous adsumpsit humanitatem or humanam naturam.
But Swanson’s assertion is perhaps overwrought. In the first place, suscepisti hominem would have to be understood in the former sense, while the latter sense is what has generally prevailed, notwithstanding the grammatical harshness of the Latin. Moreover, Swanson’s claim that there is strong evidence of an arising anti-Nestorian queasiness over the phrase is somewhat contradicted by the fact that it seems to have been accepted especially in Africa without such a misunderstanding.[13] Moreover, given the strong Christology of the previous century, with its robust ecumenical councils and creeds affirming the deity of Christ every which way they could, with their strong aversion to and denunciation of the Arians, one would think the supposed queasiness about a possible misinterpretation of suscepisti hominem would have been just as much in evidence before as after the Council of Ephesus.
In any case, Nikitas of Remesiana remains a favorite as the source of the hymn. Yet this claim is not without debate. Krikava himself, who admits to wishing the author to have been Nikitas because Remesiana is in southeast Serbia, tied to Krikava’s own Slavic lineage, grudgingly suggests another intriguing theory.
In 1996, Professor P. E. Springer published in Logia an alternative to the view that Viceti was a corruption of Niceti. What if it was not a corruption at all? What if the V is in fact a V? What if the term was just a poor transliteration of the Greek word νικητής, meaning ‘victor’? If so, it would not have been a designation of the author, but the One to whom the hymn was dedicated, namely, the Victor, written in the dative case as νικητῇ (“to the victor”). Springer’s conclusion is that this makes the Te Deum a hymn expressly dedicated to Christ as Victor, a title not at all uncommon in early Christianity. This conclusion becomes stronger when the positioning of the words in the hymn is taken into account: Te Deum Laudamus, literally, “You, O God, we praise,” with emphasis on the first word. Perhaps, Springer suggests, this was a polemical confession of the deity of Jesus, by way of defiantly addressing Him specifically as God, in much the way hymns were often written as early as the second century.
The idea is certainly attractive, especially given the polemical context of the third and fourth centuries, when the Church was keen to be bold in confessing the divinity of Jesus against the Arians and Nestorians. It’s easy to see the Te Deum as another instance of this stalwart insistence. The problem, however, is with the words of the second clause, “All the earth worships You, the Father Everlasting.” Krikava acknowledges that if the Te Deum is to be interpreted as an address specifically to Jesus, then the words of that clause would have to be understood in the much same way as we read Isaiah 9:6, which says of the Child that is born to us that “His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (NKJV). In that passage we have no difficulty attaching the Name of the Triune God to Jesus without confusing the Persons: since God is one, His name is one, and it is listed there in the singular. So it is acceptable to say that Jesus’ “name” is the name of the Triune God, and that this name is also “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” even though He is not the Father or the Spirit. This is how traditionally the Isaiah prophecy is understood.
This explanation is not really convincing, however, when applied to the Te Deum, since, unlike the acclamation in Isaiah 9, whose specific references can be attributed to each of the three Persons of the Trinity, the Te Deum has no specific referent for Te except the Father Everlasting. And whereas in Isaiah 9 it is the name of God that is singular with each of the three Persons sharing it, we do not see this in the Te Deum where, rather, Te would have to be Himself the One called “Father.” As far as I can tell, there is no other fourth century catholic writer that wanted to affirm the deity of Jesus by referring to Him as the Father; indeed if we did come to conclude that this is addressing Jesus, as Springer wants us to believe, we would have to admit that it also sounds like a confusion of the Persons at best, and modalism at worst.
But for this to be understood as a strong Christological hymn, there is really no need to see the Te in Te Deum as being the Second Person of the Trinity. Springer’s point can be maintained, that the hymn can be seen as polemical, with a strong Christological flavor, if we simply look at it in agreement with Springer’s strong emphasis on the opening pronoun, this way: Thee, O God, we praise, as a Triune God and nothing less. Then the second part becomes the emphatic insistence on the divinity of Christ as the “King of glory, the everlasting Son of the Father.” The hymn does indeed have the distinctive flavor of a late fourth century creation.
What is also fascinating about the hymn is the history of how and when it was employed. First, the fact that it seems to have become a standard canticle, even prominent in the offices for Saturday evening and Sunday, so soon after its creation, suggests to me that the church was united in its robust rejection of Arianism and Nestorianism, and perhaps even eager to embrace this polemical insistence in its liturgy. It’s worthy of note that these Christians were comfortable with a self-understanding as the church militant, and in no mood to compromise on controverted articles of faith.
These are the points that I’d like to emphasize most of all. The Te Deum is indeed cut from the cloth of the strong, unabashed, no-nonsense confessional Christendom that was ready to stake everything on its strong Christology in the 4th century. Regardless of who the author is, we can at least be sure that it comes forth from the midst of a militant environment of the sort that is foreign to us in the 21st century. Today’s religious relativism is palpable, and virtually every major denomination has been infected. Even the current Bishop of Rome has recently gone on record, in Singapore, to say that “all religions are a path to God. They are like different languages in order to arrive at God, but God is God for all. . . . Since God is God for all, then we are all children of God.”[14] The contrast with the truth of the Christian faith as it was expressed in the early centuries of the Christian era could not be sharper, and I would even venture to suggest that there is no more fitting way to respond to the Pope and all similar postmodern relativistic thinking about Christ than to sing the Te Deum.
I made it a point at St. Paul’s, where we virtually discontinued praying matins on Sundays because of weekly masses, to employ the Te Deum instead as an occasional hymn. After doing this research, I am convinced that we could employ it even more than we have. Our church’s success in encouraging every Sunday communion has the potential of relegating the Te Deum to the status of hymns the church used to sing. May it never be! This marvelous hymn is a staple for the church militant; it’s a bold confession against the devil, the world, and the flesh that our God is Triune, and that there is no other.
When we sing it, I would offer, we will do well to understand it, without changing the words we actually sing, of course, according to this paraphrase:
We praise Thee, O God, the Triune God; we acknowledge Thee alone to be the Lord. All the earth doth worship Thee, the Father everlasting, because Thou art the Creator of all. It is to Thee that all angels cry aloud, the heavens and all the Powers therein; the Powers, that is, Cherubim and Seraphim who continually do cry, saying, Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of Sabaoth. Thou alone art true: Heaven and earth are full of the Majesty of Thy Glory, and this is by the unanimous testimony of the glorious company of the Apostles who praise Thee, and the goodly fellowship of the Prophets who praise Thee, and noble army of Martyrs, the unflinching ones who confessed Thee even unto death, they too praise Thee. And this is the one and only true faith, for the Holy Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge Thee, the Triune God, that is, the Father of an infinite Majesty; Thine honorable, true, and only Son; also the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. And most emphatically do we cry, Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ. Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father. But nonetheless, when Thou tookest upon Thee to deliver man, Thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb, and when Thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, Thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers. It is Thou that sittest at the right hand of God in the Glory of the Father. We believe that Thou art the One that shalt come to be our Judge. We therefore pray Thee, O Christ, help Thy servants whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy precious blood. Make them to be numbered with Thy Saints in glory everlasting, because Thine alone is the power to do so. O Lord Christ, save Thy people and bless Thine heritage. Govern them and lift them up forever. Day by day, we magnify Thee, O Christ, and we worship Thy Name ever, world without end. Vouchsafe, O Lord Jesus, to keep us this day without sin. O Lord Jesus, have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us. O Lord Jesus, let Thy mercy be upon us as our trust is in Thee. O Lord Jesus, in Thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded.
Burnell F. Eckardt
Detroit, Michigan
September 30, 2024
[1] The Three Symbols or Creeds of the Christian Faith (LW 34:228).
[2] https://www.setonmagazine.com/family/culture/4-things-to-know-about-the-te-deum-in-musical-history
[3] https://salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2024/06/06/miracles-improvisation-and-control/
[4] https://takayamaukon.com/2020/03/07/5318/
[5]Oxford Reference, s.v., Martyrs of China. www.oxfordreference.com.
[6] John Julian, A Dictionary of Hymnology (New York: Scribner, 1892), 1122.
[7] Julian, 1123.
[8] Luther, LW 34:202
[9] Julian, 1122.
[10] Julian, 1122.
[11] See Carl P. E. Springer, (1996). “Reflections on Lutheran Worship, Classics, and the Te Deum,” Logia Vol. V. #4. (1996), 34.
[12] Julian, 1123.
[13] Ibid., 1124.
[14] https://cruxnow.com/2024-pope-in-timor-leste/2024/09/pope-in-multi-faith-singapore-says-all-religions-are-a-path-to-god