Thee we adore, O hidden Saviour, thee

Thee we adore, O hidden Saviour, thee. Thomas Aquinas* (ca. 1224/5-1274), translated by James Russell Woodford* (1820-1885). This is a translation of the Latin hymn of ca. 1260, attributed to St Thomas Aquinas, beginning ‘Adoro te devote, latens Deitas’*. It had seven stanzas, of which Woodford translated four. John Mason Neale*, who translated it as ‘Humbly I adore Thee, hidden Deity’ in his Mediaeval Hymns and Sequences (1851), wrote as follows: The following hymn of S. Thomas Aquinas to the Holy Eucharist was never in public use in the Mediaeval Church; but it has been appended, as a private devotion, to most Missals. It is worthy of notice how the Angelic Doctor, as if afraid to...