Hail, Holy Queen

HAIL, HOLY QUEEN. - The best known and most popular of the four Marian Antiphons, which are recited in honor of the Most Blessed Virgin at the end of the canonical Hours. Leo XIII (Jan. 6, 1884) also prescribed it as the final prayer in the private celebration of Holy Mass (Leonis XIII Acta, IV, Rome 1885, pp. 5-6).

The text and the author. - It seems that the author of the text is the same as that of the ancient melody. As to structure, the S. R. is a rhythmic prose and may be considered a sequence with a single rhyme in e (1. "misericordie"; 2. "salve"; 3. "Heve"; 4. "valle"; 5. "converte"; 6. "ostende"), except for the two closing lines (originally two senarii) with coupled rhyme ("pia", "Maria"). But because of the richness of its rhythm, the short lyric may be arranged in various ways, all equally harmonious (cf. J. de Valois, in La Trib. de St-Gervais, 18 [1912], pp. 10-12). According to the ancient melody, illustrated by Dom Pothier (v. bibl.), the S. R. may be divided into seven members of unequal length, with various clauses:

1. 1. Hail, Queen / Mother of mercy,
2. 2. Life, sweetness / and our hope, hail!
3. 3. To Thee we cry / exiled children of Eve
4. 4. To Thee we sigh / groaning and weeping
In this valley of tears.
5. 5. Come then / our advocate,
Those thy merciful eyes / turn upon us.
6. 6. And Jesus, / the blessed fruit of thy womb,
Show to us after this exile.
7. 7. O Clement, / o loving,
O sweet / Virgin Mary.

The two words: Mater, in the first verse (double quinarius), and Virgo, in the last (senarius), constitute a later addition, due probably, at least for Mater, to Cluniac influence, since the Marian expression Mater misericordiae was very dear to the first abbots of Cluny, where the S. R. was received with great honor (cf. P. Cousin, cited in bibl.). This interpolation goes back at least to the 13th century (cf. H. Thurston, in Rev. Clerg. fr., 1917 [cited in bibl.], p. 501. The critical text of the S. R. is given by G. M. Dreves, Anal. hymn., L, Leipzig 1907, p. 318 ff.).

The author of the gloriosa antiphona, as it is called by an anonymous writer of the 13th century (cf. H. Thurston, p. 510), remains uncertain. Once the attribution to St. Bernard had fallen (cf. John the Hermit, Vita s. Bern., 7: PL 185, 544), the attributions to St. Peter of Mezonzo, bishop of Compostela (986-1000), upheld, on the authority of Durandus (Racion., IV, 22), by Eladio Oviedo Arce and by S. Navarro (v. bibl.), and to Adhemar of Monteil, bishop of Le Puy-en-Velay (papal legate in the First Crusade, d. Aug. 1, 1098 at Antioch), preferred by the authors of the Histoire litt. de France (VIII, Paris 1747, pp. 468-72) and by Vacandard (v. bibl.), still find credit. In favor of Adhemar there stands in fact the explicit testimony of the chronicler Alberic of Trois-Fontaines (d. 1240), who, to explain the name of Antiphona de Podio ("Antiphon of Le Puy") given to the S. R., says it was composed precisely by Bishop Adhemar (Chron., a. 1130; MGH, Scriptores, XXIII, p. 828). But Blume (v. bibl.) has demonstrated that the probable, if not altogether certain, author of the S. R. is Hermannus Contractus (v.), monk of Reichenau, d. 1054 (cf. Ioan. Ego, De vir. ill. Augiae Div.: PL 143, 9). It is certain that in cod. Augiensis 55, of the 9th century (Landesbibliothek of Karlsruhe), at f. 22 a monk of the mid-11th century (therefore a contemporary of Hermann) made a writing exercise (probatio pennae) reproducing the "incipit" of the antiphon (Salve, regine misericordiae) and following it with a tropus for the first part of the same: an evident sign that the "trope" chosen was then familiar to the monks of Reichenau, and much more so must the S. R. have been. That the latter has as its place of origin the abbey of Reichenau is also confirmed by the fact that for the 11th century no traces of it are found elsewhere.

The original liturgical use. - The S. R. must have been received, as soon as it was composed, as an antiphon ad canticum (Magnificat or Benedictus) and as a processional chant. In the Statutes of Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, drawn up ca. 1135, it is in fact prescribed for the procession customarily held on the feast of the Assumption and when the community went to the church of St. Mary (Statuta Congr. Cluniacensis, 76: PL 189, 1048). The Cistercians from the mid-12th century used it as an antiphon, at the Magnificat and the Benedictus, for the four major feasts of the Virgin; from 1218 they practiced its daily recitation and in 1251 they adopted it as the chant after Compline. However, the Dominicans sang it regularly after Compline, at Bologna, around 1230, by disposition of the master general Bl. Jordan of Saxony, and then throughout the whole Order (General Chapter of Limoges, 1250). On the suggestion, perhaps, of Raymond of Peñafort, in 1239 Pope Gregory IX ordered it to be sung in the churches of Rome, after Compline, on Fridays (Vita Greg. IX, in RIS, 1st ed., III, 1, p. 582 D; cf. P. Godet [v. bibl.], p. 475). Around this time the S. R. was sung, after Compline, also in the chapel of the king of France, St. Louis IX (cf. S. Bäumer [v. bibl.], I, p. 375).

The Franciscans adopted it, together with the other Marian Antiphons, around 1249 (Wadding, Annales, III, 208 ff.; cf. Anal. Franc., 3 [1897], p. 275). The use spread more or less everywhere. Thus the Council of Peñafort (1302) prescribed it for the province of Valladolid, "every day, after Compline, with the prayers for the Church, the Pope and the King" (can. 12: Mansi, XXV, 105). According to the Rubricae novae, brought to light by Giovanni Mercati (Rass. Greg., 2 [1903], coll. 436-40), the Franciscan custom was introduced into the Roman Breviary in 1350 by Pope Clement VI. The reform of Pius V (1568) definitively regulated its use: from Trinity Sunday to the first Sunday of Advent.

The music. - The original melody of Hermannus Contractus, in the freer form of a sequence (text in H. Besseler, Die Musik d. M. A., Potsdam 1931, p. 87 [ex. 49]), has undergone many variants (the principal forms are: the "Dominican" and the "Cistercian"). In the 16th century and following, new melodies arose, especially through the influence of the Filippine Oratory. The simple, almost syllabic one, in tone v, by now popular, seems due to Fr. F. Bourgoing (original form in A. Gastoué, Cours de plain-chant, Paris 1904, p. 85 ff.; cf. J. de Valois, in La Trib. de St-Gervais, 18 [1912], p. 80). The more ornate one, in tone 1, is by Henri Du Mont, Oratorian, d. 1684 (cf. Eph. Lit., 60 [1946], p. 86). The ancient melody is, however, superior in feeling and in art.

Various developments. - As an antiphon after Compline, the S. R., joined with prayers and other religious chants, gave rise, from the 13th century onward, to offices of devotion, extra-liturgical, called, from the antiphon that was their center, Salve (in France Salut), that is, an evening salutation to the Mother of God. In certain places this exercise of Marian piety was carried out with music and organ; toward the 16th century it also concluded with the exposition of the Most Blessed Sacrament. A similar custom still prevails at the sanctuary of Einsiedeln.

Even today at Lyons the S. R. is sung in the rite of absolution of the dead, with the medieval tropes.

After the Ave maris stella, the S. R. was once the favorite chant of sailors: thus, for example, for the companions of Columbus. Famous even today is the evocative evening singing of the S. R., with polyphonic music, in the abbey of Einsiedeln (formerly an offshoot of Reichenau), where it was instituted by John of Lenzingen, Cistercian, on Aug. 11, 1547. Likewise in the celebrated abbey of Montserrat in Spain.

Literary and religious value. - For the initial invocation, the hymn of John the Geometra (3rd century) is to be remembered: Χαῖρᾱ μοι, ὁ Βασίλειος (Hymni in Deipor., IV: PG 106, 864). There is in it also a certain correspondence of thoughts; but "the Western S. R. is by far superior for the impetus of the sentiment that supplicates trustfully" (G. Prampolini, Storia Univ. della Lett., II, Turin 1934, p. 298). Both from the point of view of the words and of the melody, the S. R. "is one of those compositions that are equivalent to a whole poem" (Pothier [v. bibl.], p. 147), and Dante makes its divine sweetness echo in the evocative background of the "valletta amena" (Purg., VII, 82).

Commentaries. - The four sermons In antiphonam S.R. (PL 184, 1059-78), attributed both to St. Bernard of Clairvaux and to Bernard, archbishop of Toledo (d. 1124), as well as the Meditatio in S. R. (PL 184, 1077-80, and, with variants, in PL 149, 583-90) attributed to Anselm of Lucca (d. 1083), are valuable texts, but of doubtful authenticity and uncertain date. Famous commentaries: St. Peter Canisius, De Maria Virgine, Ingolstadt 1577 (pp. 616-25); François Coster, De cantico S. R., Antwerp 1587; St. Alphonsus M. de' Liguori, Le glorie di Maria (part 1).

Igino Cecchetti