« AVE VERUM CORPUS NATUM ». — One of the best-known medieval Eucharistic salutationes. It appears in manuscripts from the fourteenth century onward and has sometimes been attributed to Pope Innocenzo VI (1352–62). Originally, it was one of the many devotional compositions intended for private use, Elevation (v.) of the Host (in elevatione Corporis Christi), and as such it is found widely disseminated in France, Germany, and England.
This “rhythm” is sometimes called antipliona, but more often oratio. Related to the Adoro te devote (v.), but used much more frequently, it was also considered in certain places, toward the end of the Middle Ages, a liturgical chant. Guéranger, observing that the brief poem was reserved for the moment of the Elevation and that in various manuscripts, among the finest, it concludes with the words In excelsis — the last words of the Sanctus — holds that the A. v. trope (v.), which would have been joined to the Trisagion, completing II.
It consists of verses governed not by classical quantitative metre, but by accentual rhythm: syllables arranged in catalectic trochaic tetrameters, corresponding to the Italian double octosyllable, with the second octosyllable truncated:
Ave verum Corpus natum De Maria Virgine.
With constant alternating rhyme, the acatalectic dimeters (the first — paroxytone — part of the double octosyllable) end in -atum; the catalectic ones (the second — truncated — part of the double octosyllable) in -ine. The Gregorian melody rightly groups them into two stanzas, each consisting of two octapodies or tetrameters.
This rhythm of trochees — the same as that of the famous Pervigilium Veneris — is gracefully replaced at the close by
O Jesu dulcis, - O Jesu pie, - O Jesu fili Mariae!
In some manuscripts this invocation is even shorter: O dulcis, o pie, - O Jesu, fili Mariae!, recalling more directly the ending of the Salve Regina; perhaps, simple as it is, consisting of only two rhymed verses, it represents the most authentic form. The text set to music by T. L. da Vittoria (1564–1637) has as its ending: O clemens, o pie - O Jesu, Fili Dei et Mariae! The principal other variants of the text are: 1) Unda fluxit et sanguine, a more elegant reading than Fluxit aqua et sanguine; but the aqua text is closer to the Gospel narrative (Io. 19, 34); 2) instead of Mortis in examine, various manuscripts have In mortis examine, an almost equally good reading rhythmically.
The theological thought of the composition is dense: three forceful assertions of the reality of the Lord’s present Body (that born of the Virgin, sacrificed on the cross, and pitilessly pierced) are followed by the soul’s trembling prayer in view of death: Esto nobis praegustatum - Mortis in examine. Perhaps the need for rhyme suggested the expression with examine, which more probably means “at the moment of death.”
In music it is considered a Eucharistic Motet. Besides the exceedingly sweet Gregorian melody, in the sixth mode and of an archaic character, and the four-part polyphonic setting by Da Vittoria, the compositions by Viadana for four voices (2 Tenors and 2 Basses), by Josquin Des Près for two and three voices, and above all that by Mozart for four voices, as well as those by Schubert, Gounod, and Martini, are famous. Among Palestrina’s doubtful works, Haberl published two A. v., one for four voices (vol. XXXI) and another, as a diminution of a Madrigal, for two voices (vol. XXXIII).