«VENI CREATOR SPIRITUS». - Hymn of Vespers and Terce in the Office of Pentecost. By an unknown author of the late 9th century, it is already found in codices of the late 10th century and appears in the liturgy in 1049, when Leo IX intoned it at the Council of Reims. It is one of the Church’s most common hymns and is always sung at the beginning of solemn sacred acts.
In the first three stanzas the Holy Spirit is invoked by the titles attributed to him by Scripture; with the fourth begins a supplicatory form in which light is requested for the intellect, ardour for the heart, strength for the will, fidelity to the Grace of the Lord. It concludes with the petition always to believe in him, the Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
BIBL.: S. G. Piment, Les hymnes du Brév. rom., III, Paris 1884, pp. 125-43; J. Henry, The hym. V. P. C. S., in Americ. Eccles. Rev., 3 (1897), pp. 573-96; A. Wilmart, L'hymne et la séquence du St. Esprit, in La vie et les arts liturg., 2 (1914), pp. 392-98 (reproduced in Auteurs spirituels et textes déviés du m. d. latin, Paris 1932, pp. 37-45); A. Mitra, Gli inni del Brev. rom., Naples 1947, pp. 128-30. Silverio Mattei