«VICTIMAE PASCHALI». - Easter Sequence adorned with a splendid Gregorian melody that strikingly highlights the impassioned dialogue on the Risen Christ between Mary Magdalene and the community of the faithful, a dialogue that inspired various medieval liturgical Easter dramas.
Originally it comprised nine strophes; but since the reform of St. Pius V (1570) it has counted only eight, the fifth strophe—which recalled the Jews’ disbelief—having been deleted. Rhyme and assonance are employed; this has led some to think that its author, Wipo (d. after 1046), a poet and musician, chaplain to the emperors Conrad II and Henry III, drew inspiration from a pre-existing text.
BIBL.: U. Chevalier, Repertorium hymnologicum, II, Louvain 1897, no. 21505 (see also supplement); H. Breslau, Die Werke Wipos, 3rd ed., Leipzig 1915; J. Handschin, Gesungen, Apologetik, in Miscellanea L. C. Mohlberg, II, Rome 1949, pp. 75-90; J. A. Jungmann, Missarum sollemnia, Eng. trans., Turin 1953, pp. 352-53. A. Pietro Fruta