Abstract
Ancient and medieval Latin hymns are appreciated beyond the confines of the Catholic Church; they teach by means of an appeal to the imagination. Especially in the nineteenth century, excellent translations of some of these hymns have been written, helping to keep them in use as part of Christian worship; however, the Liber Hymnarius, the only official hymnbook of the Latin Rite, contains many hymns that have yet to be translated. Traditional Latin hymnody is rich in scriptural imagery, most notably the imagery of light. Hymn translation is a very different process from the composition of original hymns. Because of the competing values of literary creativity and faithfulness to the model, hymn translation offers unique challenges and good, even great, poets can find themselves constrained by its demands. The best hymn translations show why the challenge is worth facing, and help Catholics today make a connection with their forebears in earlier centuries.
Notes
1 Dante, Paradiso, canto I, ll. 70–72, trans. by John Ciardi (New York: New American Library, 1961), p. 26.
2 A few images have become so deeply part of the iconographic tradition of the church that they are as trust- worthy as scripture, for example, the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary as the ‘star of the sea’.
3 Author’s translation.