In honour of it being Good Friday I am pausing the current series to bring you an ancient hymn which I have always found to be very moving at this time of year, although I must say it seems to have fallen out of favour these days and I have found it less frequently sung in church services.
O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” is an Easter hymn based on a Latin text written during the Middel Ages. The hymn is based on a long medieval Latin poem, Salve mundi salutare, with stanzas addressing the various parts of Christ’s body hanging on the Cross. The last part of the poem, from which the hymn is taken, is addressed to Christ’s head, and begins “Salve caput cruentatum”. The poem is often attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux (1091–1153), but is now attributed to the medieval poet Arnulf of Leuven (died 1250). A selection of stanzas from the seven cantos were used for the text of Dieterich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri addressing the various members of the crucified body.
The poem was translated into German by the Lutheran hymnist Paul Gerhardt (1607–1676). He reworked the Latin version to suggest a more personal contemplation of the events of Christ’s death on the cross. It first appeared in Johann Cruger’s hymnal ‘Praxis pietatis melica’ in 1656. Although Gerhardt translated the whole poem, it is the closing section which has become best known, and is sung as a hymn in its own right. The German hymn begins with “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden”.
The music for the German and English versions of the hymn is by Hans Leo Hassler, written around 1600 for a secular love song, which first appeared in print in the 1601. The tune was appropriated and rhythmically simplified for Gerhardt’s German hymn in 1656 by Johann Crüger. J.S. Bach arranged the melody and used five stanzas of the hymn in four different settings in his St. Matthew Passion.
The hymn was first translated into English in 1752 by John Gambold (1711–1771), an Anglican vicar in Oxfordshire. His translation begins, “O Head so full of bruises”. In 1830 a new translation of the hymn was made by an American Presbyterian minister, James Waddel Alexander (1804–1859). Alexander’s translation, beginning “O sacred head, now wounded”, became one of the most widely used in 19th and 20th century hymnals.
Another English translation, based on the German, was made in 1861 by Sir Henry Wiliams Baker. Published in Hymns Ancient and Modern, it begins, “O sacred head surrounded by crown of piercing thorn”. In 1899 the English poet Robert Bridges (1844–1930) made a fresh translation from the original Latin, beginning “O sacred Head, sore wounded, defiled and put to scorn”. This is the version used in the 1940 Hymnal (Episcopal), the 1982 Hymnal (Episcopal; stanzas 1–3 and 5), and the New English Hymnal (1986) and several other late 20th-century hymn books.
