Aeterna Christi munera

Aeterna Christi munera. Perhaps by Ambrose of Milan* (339/40-397). This hymn exists in two principal forms, but with many variants: 1. ‘Aeterna Christi munera/ Et martyrum victorias’. This hymn was attributed to Ambrose by Bede* in his De arte metrica, and this attribution was accepted by 19th- and early 20th-century editors: Analecta Hymnologica attributes it to Ambrose (50.19), and so does A.S. Walpole (1922, p. 104). The attribution had already been called into question (see JJ, p. 24), and Jacques Fontaine (1992) lists the hymn as ‘possibly by him’. Milfull describes it as ‘probably’ by Ambrose (a text is given in Milfull, 1996, pp. 387-91). Whatever its provenance, the hymn was already...