AVE VERUM CORPUS NATUM. — One of the best-known medieval eucharistic salutationes. It appears in manuscripts from the 14th century onward, and has sometimes been attributed to Pope Innocent VI (1352-62). Originally it was one of the many devotional compositions for private use, for the Elevation (v.) of the Host (in elevatione Corporis Christi), and as such it is found widely diffused in France, Germany and England.
This "rhythm" is sometimes called antipliona, but more often oratio. Related to the Adoro te devote (v.), but of much more frequent use, it was in certain places, toward the end of the Middle Ages, also considered a liturgical chant. Guéranger, observing that the brief carmen was reserved for the moment of the Elevation and that in various codices, among the best, it concludes with the words In excelsis — the last words of the Sanctus — holds that the A. v. is a trope (v.), which would have been joined, completing it, to the Trisagion.
It is composed of verses regulated not by classical quantitative meter, but by accentual rhythm: syllables arranged in catalectic trochaic tetrameters, corresponding to the Italian double octonary, with the second octonary truncated:
Ave verum Corpus natum De Maria Virgine.
With a constant alternating rhyme, the acatalectic dimeters (first part — paroxytone — of the double octonary) end in -atum; the catalectic ones (second part — oxytone — of the double octonary) in -ine. Justly the Gregorian melody groups them into two strophes, each of two octapodies or tetrameters.
This rhythm of trochees — the same as that of the famous Pervigilium Veneris — is gracefully replaced, in the finale, by
O Jesu dulcis, - O Jesu pie, - O Jesu fili Mariae!
This invocation in some codices is still shorter: O dulcis, o pie, - O Jesu, fili Mariae! recalling more directly the finale of the Salve Regina; perhaps, simple as it is, composed 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 finale: O clemens, o pie - O Jesu, Fili Dei et Mariae! Other principal variants of the text are: 1) Unda fluxit et sanguine, a more elegant reading than Fluxit aqua et sanguine; but the text aqua is closer to the Gospel narrative (Jn 19:34); 2) instead of Mortis in examine, various codices have In mortis examine, a reading almost equally good for the rhythm.
Dense is the theological thought of the composition: to three strong assertions of the reality of the Lord's Body present (that born of the Virgin, immolated on the cross, pierced without pity), there follows the trembling prayer of the soul in view of death: Esto nobis praegustatum - Mortis in examine. Perhaps the necessity of rhyme suggested the expression in examine, which more probably means "in the moment of death."
In music it is considered a Eucharistic motet. Besides the Gregorian melody, most sweet, of mode VI and of ancient flavor, and the polyphonic one by Da Vittoria, for 4 voices, famous are the compositions by Viadana for 4 v. p. (2 Ten. and 2 Bas.), by Josquin Des Près, for 2 and 3 v., and above all that of Mozart, for 4 v., and those of Schubert, Gounod and Martini. Among the doubtful works of Palestrina, Haberl has published two A. v., one for 4 voices (vol. XXXI) and another, as a diminution of a Madrigal, for 2 v. (vol. XXXIII).