Ades Pater supreme

Ades Pater supreme. Prudentius* (ca. 348- ca. 413). According to Frost (1962, p. 200) this comes from poem 6 of Prudentius’s Cathereminon, the poem written for the hours of the day. This is the ‘Hymnus ante somnum’. It consists of lines 1-12, 125-8, 141-52, and a doxology: Gloria aeterno Patri, Et Christo, vero Regi, Paraclitoque sancto, et nunc et in perpetuum. The selection of lines was found as a hymn in a 10th-century hymnal from Laon, in northern France, now at Bern (S.B. 455). It is a hymn for Vespers or Compline, marking the end of the day: Fluxit labor diei, redit quietis hora, Blandus sopor vicissim Fessus relaxat artus. A prayer follows, ‘Procul, O procul vagantum’, ‘Begone, ye...

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