Aeterne Rex altissime

Aeterne Rex altissime. Latin, 9th century or earlier. This anonymous hymn was cited by Gottschalk of Orbais* in the 9th century, and entered the liturgical tradition as an Ascension hymn in the 9th-century New Hymnal (see ‘Medieval hymns and hymnals*). It continued in use throughout the middle ages, in (for example) the Dominican* and Cistercian* hymnals as well as in Benedictine liturgical practices. It was included in the 1632 printed Roman Breviary; this text was edited in the 19th century, in Daniel's Thesaurus Hymnologicus I. 196-7, along with an earlier version from a Würzburg MS, and stanzas from the ‘Mozarabic’ Breviary (that is, the late 11th-century Roman liturgy as transmitted...