« ADORO TE DEVOTE ». — A rhythm said to be by s. Tommaso d'Aquino, proposed by the Roman Missal as a prayer after Mass.
The A. consists of seven stanzas, each of four verses, rhyming in pairs, in trochaic catalectic or truncated senarii, composed according to accent. Only the first verse has an introductory syllable or anacrusis, which could cause it to be mistaken for an iambic trimeter: Adoro té devòte, - Idrene Délida. Elisions are abolished; the caesura comes after the first tripody. Its metrical structure makes it particularly interesting, since, so far as appears, there is no other example of it in medieval Latin literature.
The hymn's renown and popularity came after its insertion into the Missal of Pius V (14 July 1570), among the prayers completing the thanksgiving after Mass. The manuscripts now known number about thirty, all from the 15th and 16th centuries, except for three from the 14th century (128 of Montecassino, 286 of Klosterneuburg, and 14963 lat. of the Bibl. Naz. of Paris).
Wilmart holds that s. Tommaso was not the author of the A., making the following observations: 1) there is no evidence for the A. apart from the manuscripts that transmit its text; the oldest of these, the Klosterneuburg manuscript, dates from around 1350 and contains a version from 1323, that is, half a century after the death of s. Tommaso (7 March 1274); 2) apart from six manuscripts that do not specify the author, all the others, including the three oldest, support the attribution to s. Tommaso; but the circumstance, mentioned by many of them, that Tommaso composed the A. « instante suo obitu, ante sumptionem Corporis Domini », conflicts with what his biographer Guglielmo da Tocco tells us (Vita t. Th., X, 59); 3) the authentic poems of s. Tommaso — those for the office of Corpus Domini — do not possess the simplicity and lyricism of the A. To this objection, however, one may reply that the A. too contains, here and there, traces of theological reasoning, even if to a lesser degree than in the other compositions of the Aquinate, in which, moreover, the poetic inspiration always emerges, however restrained by the rigor of dogmatic terminology.
However the controversy concerning the authorship of s. Tommaso may be resolved, the A. is a masterpiece of Christian poetry, a harmonious, simple, and profound composition that has greatly benefited Catholic devotion.
Originally it must have Elevation (v.); its author must have drawn inspiration from a text already familiar to popular piety, a text found in the Sum. Theol. (part IV, q. 10) of Alessandro di Hales (d. in 1245): Adoro te, Iesu Christe salvator, qui per mortem tuam redimisti mundum, quem credo sub hac specie, quam video, contineri.
The memoriale of verse 17 recalls the words of the consecration « in mei memoriam facietis » (cf. Lc. 22, 19, and I Cor. 11, 24); the pie pellicane of verse 21 evokes a well-known symbolism (cf. Dante, Par., XXV, 113).
In music, the first and last stanzas, joined together, constitute a Eucharistic motet. The post-classical Gregorian melody, in mode V, is a strophic composition. Among the ancient settings, mention should be made of the anonymous polyphonic one from 1625, for three equal voices, with the ending: Ave Iesu, verum Manhu, Christe Iesu! - Adauge fidem omnium credentium.