"Lauda Sion" is asequence prescribed for theRoman CatholicMass for the feast ofCorpus Christi. It was written bySt. Thomas Aquinas around 1264, at the request ofPope Urban IV for the new Mass of this feast, along withPange lingua,Sacris solemniis, andVerbum supernum prodiens, which are used in the Divine Office.
TheGregorian melody of the Lauda Sion is borrowed from the eleventh-century sequenceLaetabundi iubilemus attributed toAdam of Saint Victor.
The hymn tells of the institution of theEucharist and clearly expresses the belief of the Roman Catholic Church intransubstantiation and inReal presence, that is, that the bread and wine truly become permanently and irreversibly the Body and Blood of Christ when consecrated by a validly-ordained priest or bishop during the Mass. The fact that the hymn had been composed for the Holy Mass is testified by the sixth stanza:Dies enim solemnis agitur / In qua mensæ prima recolitur / Hujus institutio.[1]
Lauda Sion is one of only four medieval sequences which were preserved in theRoman Missal published in 1570 following theCouncil of Trent (1545–1563) by Will of SaintPius V—the others beingVictimae paschali laudes (Easter),Veni Sancte Spiritus (Pentecost), andDies irae (requiem masses). (A fifth,Stabat Mater, would later be added in 1727.) Before Trent, many feasts had their own sequences.[2] The existing versions were unified in theRoman Missal promulgated in 1570.[3] The Lauda Sion is still sung today as a solemn Eucharistic hymn, though its use as a sequence is optional in theOrdinary Form of the Roman Rite. Before the reform of 1970, it was sung on Corpus Christi as a sequence between thegradualOculi omnium and the Gospel of the day, after the verse of theAlleluia.[4]
The sequence's English title isSing forth, O Zion, sweetly sing[5] or, as below,Sion, lift up thy voice and sing.
As with Aquinas's other three Eucharistic hymns, the last few stanzas of the Lauda Sion are often used alone, in this case, to form theEcce panis Angelorum.
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Another translation is used in the 1981 Lectionary approved for Australia and New Zealand (Volume 1, pages 601-603). It is by James Ambrose Dominic Aylward OP (1813-1872) and was published in Annus Sanctus in 1884, pages 194-196.[6]
A 1773 translation into German, "Deinem Heiland, deinem Lehrer", byFranz Xaver Riedel [de] is a procession hymn for the Feast of Corpus Christi.
According toDom Guéranger, Lauda Sion:
it is here that the utmost power of aScholasticism, not crude and truncated, like that of today, but juicy and complete, like that of the Middle Ages, was able to bend the rhythm of theLatin language to the clear exposition and demand adogma, as abstract for the theologian as it is sweet and consoling for the heart of the faithful.
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