Hymn for All Hours (Hymnus Omnis Horae)

Prudentius's autobiographical preface to his collected works, written in 405 when he was fifty-seven, provides our only direct information about his life. In it he reflects with some melancholy on his years spent in law and government—a career he now views as spiritually wasted time. His decision to devote his final years to sacred poetry was not a retreat into piety but a conscious effort to baptize classical Latin verse forms for Christian use. He wrote in the meters of Horace and Virgil, but filled them with biblical and theological content. Erasmus called him "the one truly eloquent poet among the Christians" (*unum inter Christianos vere facundum poetam*).

His theology is firmly Nicene. He wrote during the generation after the Council of Constantinople (381), when the Trinitarian and Christological definitions were established but still contested. His other major works include the *Apotheosis* (on the divinity of Christ), the *Hamartigenia* (on the origin of sin), and the *Psychomachia* (an allegorical battle between virtues and vices that would profoundly influence medieval literature). But it is the *Cathemerinon* that has remained in continuous liturgical use—excerpts from these hymns still appear in the Roman Breviary.

The title *Hymnus Omnis Horae* sets this poem apart from its companions in the *Cathemerinon*. The other eleven hymns are for cockcrow, morning, before and after meals, lamp-lighting, bedtime, before and after fasting, burial, Christmas, and Epiphany. This ninth hymn alone claims every hour—it is the comprehensive confession, the one song that encompasses all the others.

This universality is theologically significant. If Christian prayer sanctifies time—marking the hours, the days, the seasons with praise—then this hymn sanctifies time itself by tracing the story that gives all time its meaning: the eternal Word who creates time, enters it, redeems it, and will bring it to its consummation. To sing this hymn is to locate oneself within the whole sweep of salvation history.

The hymn "Of the Father's Love Begotten" uses only stanzas 4, 7–9, and 37 of the original (with a later doxology added). John Mason Neale first translated these excerpts in 1851, and Henry W. Baker revised them in 1861 for *Hymns Ancient and Modern*. The tune *Divinum Mysterium*, a medieval plainchant from the Finnish collection *Piae Cantiones* (1582), has been inseparable from the text ever since.

Beautiful as the excerpt is, it omits nearly everything after the Nativity: the miracles, the Passion, the Harrowing of Hell, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the judgment. Prudentius intended a complete christological statement. Encountering the full hymn is like discovering that a beloved portrait is actually a detail from a vast fresco.

Prudentius opens by invoking Christ Himself as his Muse—a deliberate displacement of the pagan convention. Homer invoked the goddess; Virgil invoked the Muse; Prudentius invokes the Logos. This is not merely a literary device but a theological claim: true poetry has its source in the Word through whom all things were made. The Latin original begins *Da, puer, plectrum*—"Give me, O Child, the plectrum"—addressing Christ as the divine Child who alone can inspire genuine sacred song.

The poet picks up his lyre (*lyra*) and strikes the strings (*plectrum*), but the music that results will tell of *gesta Christi insignia*—"the glorious deeds of Christ." Poetry and theology merge. In the ancient world, the lyre was Apollo's instrument; here it is consecrated to the true Light.

The "king in priestly raiment" is David, who combined royal and priestly functions and whose psalms prophesied the coming Messiah. The image of David singing with "voice and lute and clashing cymbal" evokes the liturgical worship described in the Psalms themselves (Ps. 150) and the accounts of David's musical organization of Temple worship (1 Chr. 25). Prudentius presents himself as standing in David's tradition—another poet-singer inspired by the Spirit to celebrate Christ.

The phrase "the Spirit, heaven-descended, touched his lips to prophecy" recalls Isaiah's vision, where a seraph touched the prophet's lips with a burning coal (Isa. 6:6–7). David, Isaiah, and now Prudentius: a succession of inspired voices singing the same Christ across the ages.

This stanza states the hymn's epistemological claim: these are not myths but "works sure proven" (*facta... probata*). Heaven and earth together bear witness. The language deliberately echoes the Prologue of John's Gospel: "that which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled" (1 John 1:1). Christianity is not a philosophy spun from human reason but a response to events—to "God Himself with mortals mingling, man to teach in human guise."

The word "mystic" (*mystico*) does not mean obscure or esoteric but rather "pertaining to the mysteries"—to the sacramental realities that underlie visible events. The miracles are signs pointing beyond themselves to the deeper mystery of the Incarnation itself.

Here is the theological heart of the hymn and the source of the beloved Christmas carol. Corde natus ex parentis, ante mundi exordium—"Of the Father's heart begotten, ere the world from chaos rose." The Son is eternally generated from the Father's cor (heart), not made or created. This is Nicene orthodoxy in lyric form: the Son is consubstantial with the Father, sharing the divine nature from before all worlds.

The phrase ante mundi exordium—"before the world's beginning"—deliberately evokes and replaces the cosmogonies that educated Romans would have known from their literary inheritance. In Hesiod's Theogony (c. 700 BC), the foundational Greek cosmogonic text, Χάος (Chaos) is the primordial reality: "Verily at the first Chaos came to be" (Theogony 116). For Hesiod, Chaos is not disorder in the modern sense but a yawning void or chasm—the word derives from χαίνω (chainō), "to gape"—from which Gaia (Earth), Tartarus, and Eros subsequently emerged. Chaos was thus a quasi-divine primordial condition, and from Chaos sprang Erebus (Darkness) and Nyx (Night). The gods themselves arose from this substrate; they did not precede it.

Ovid's Metamorphoses (c. AD 8), written just decades before Christ's birth and enormously influential in Latin literary culture, opens with a similar cosmogony that would have been familiar to any educated fourth-century Roman: "Before the ocean and the earth appeared—before the skies had overspread them all—the face of Nature in a vast expanse was naught but Chaos uniformly waste. It was a rude and undeveloped mass... and all discordant elements confused were there congested in a shapeless heap" (Met. 1.5–9). In Ovid's telling, some unnamed god (quisquis fuit ille deorum—"whichever of the gods it was") or "kinder nature" (melior natura) intervened to separate the elements and impose form upon this rudis indigestaque moles ("rough and undigested mass"). The cosmos thus emerges from the ordering of pre-existent matter, not from nothing.

This represents the dominant cosmological assumption of the Greco-Roman world: that matter is eternal and that creation is essentially demiurgic—the work of a craftsman imposing form upon pre-existent stuff. Plato's Timaeus had established this model philosophically: the Demiurge fashions the cosmos by looking to eternal Forms and shaping the receptacle (chōra) of formless matter. The gods themselves, in both Greek and Roman mythology, emerge within the cosmic process rather than standing outside it; they are products of theogony, not its precondition.

Against this entire framework, Prudentius makes a staggering claim: the Son exists ante mundi exordium—before the world's very beginning, before chaos itself. The Word does not emerge from the cosmic process; He precedes it. This is the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo—creation from nothing—given poetic expression. The doctrine was articulated explicitly by Theophilus of Antioch in the late second century and became standard patristic teaching, precisely in opposition to the pagan assumption of eternal matter. Theophilus wrote: "God creates and has created things that are out of things that are not" (Ad Autolycum 2.4). Creation is not formation but absolute origination.

The scriptural background lies in Genesis 1:1–2. The Hebrew tohu wabohu (תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ)—rendered in the Septuagint as aoratos kai akataskeuastos (ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος, "invisible and unformed") and in the Vulgate as inanis et vacua ("empty and void")—describes the earth's condition before God's creative word brings forth light and order. Some scholars have noted superficial parallels with ancient Near Eastern chaos traditions (the Hebrew tehom, "the deep," echoes the Babylonian Tiamat of the Enuma Elish). But the Genesis account differs fundamentally: there is no theogony, no battle between gods, no pre-existent matter independent of God. The "chaos" of Genesis is already God's creation, awaiting His ordering word—not an eternal substrate from which deity emerges.

Prudentius draws on this tradition while using the very language of pagan cosmogony ("chaos") to subvert it. When he writes ante mundi exordium, he is asserting that the Son—the Logos through whom all things were made (John 1:3)—exists before the very "beginning" that Hesiod and Ovid described. Chaos does not precede the Word; the Word precedes chaos. This is not merely chronological priority but ontological transcendence. The Son is fons et clausula—source and end—of all that exists. Nothing lies outside His creative sovereignty.

The titles Alpha and Omega, which Prudentius calls Christ's cognomina ("surnames"), come from Revelation (1:8, 21:6, 22:13), where Christ claims: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending." Between these first and last letters of the Greek alphabet lies the entire sweep of language—and language, in the ancient understanding, participates in the structure of reality itself. To be Alpha and Omega is to encompass all meaning, all history, all existence. Prudentius emphasizes that Christ is both the fons (source, fountain) from which all reality flows and the clausula (ending, conclusion) toward which all things tend. The Alpha-Omega imagery thus reinforces the point against pagan cosmogony: there is no reality outside the Word, no primordial chaos preceding Him, no residue of matter independent of His creative act.

This stanza would have struck a fourth-century Roman reader as a direct challenge to the regnant philosophical and literary assumptions about the cosmos—a claim that the educated pagan's deepest convictions about origins were fundamentally mistaken.

This stanza echoes both Genesis 1 ("He said... and it was done") and Psalm 33:9 ("He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast"). Creation is by divine *fiat*—the Word speaks and reality appears. The "universe of three in one" (*trina rerum machina*) refers to the three-tiered cosmos of ancient cosmology: earth, sky (or air), and sea—not to the Trinity, though the echo is theologically resonant.

Everything that exists under sun and moon—that is, everything in the created order—exists by the Word's command. This establishes the magnitude of what follows: the Creator of all this will take on creaturely flesh.

The Incarnation is presented here in its starkest terms: He assumed a body "frail and feeble, doomed to die" (*formam caduci, membra morti obnoxia*). The language emphasizes the reality of Christ's humanity—this is no phantom body, no mere appearance, but genuine mortal flesh subject to decay and death.

The purpose (*ne gens periret*—"lest the race should perish") is explicitly soteriological. Humanity, created from dust ("the race from dust created"), has been sentenced by "the dreadful Law" to the depths of Hell. This "Law" is the divine judgment against sin, the sentence of death that passed to all through Adam. The Latin *primoplasti*—"of the first-formed"—refers to Adam, the prototype, from whose seed (*germine*) all humanity descends into condemnation. The Incarnation is rescue.

"The Maid the curse retrieved"—Mary's role is to reverse what Eve inaugurated. This typology (Eve/Mary, curse/blessing) was standard in patristic thought, found in Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and throughout the tradition. Mary is the new Eve who, by her obedient *fiat* ("Let it be to me according to your word," Luke 1:38), undoes the disobedient *fiat* of the first woman.

The "sacred Babe" (*puer... sacratus*) is called "Redeemer of the world" (*redemptor orbis*)—the title that captures His entire mission. He is born that He might redeem; the manger already points to the Cross. The arms that receive Him are the same arms that will, in Simeon's prophecy, know that a sword will pierce her own soul (Luke 2:35).

The hymn now shifts from theological statement to doxology, calling heaven and earth to praise. "Angels and archangels"—the heavenly hierarchy—join with "ye faithful" on earth. This cosmic liturgy echoes Isaiah's vision (Isa. 6:3) and the heavenly worship in Revelation (4:8, 5:11–14). The Sanctus of the liturgy draws on these same texts.

"Every tongue His name confessing"—Prudentius anticipates Philippians 2:10–11, where at the name of Jesus every knee bows "in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord." The Incarnation initiates a worship that will ultimately encompass all creation.

The reference to "seer and sibyl" (*vates et sibylla*) is striking. Alongside the Hebrew prophets (*vates*), Prudentius includes the Sibyls—the pagan prophetesses whose oracles were believed by many early Christians to have foretold Christ. The Sibylline Oracles (a collection of Jewish and Christian texts presented as pagan prophecies) were widely cited by patristic authors as evidence that even the Gentile world had received hints of the coming Savior.

This reflects a generous theology of preparation: God's revelation was not limited to Israel but scattered seeds of truth throughout the nations. Augustine would later argue similarly that Platonic philosophy had prepared the Gentile mind for Christian truth. Prudentius sees all authentic prophecy—Jewish and pagan alike—converging on Christ.

The miracles section begins with the Wedding at Cana (John 2:1–11), Christ's first public sign. Prudentius emphasizes the transformation itself—"clear, cold water turns to juice of noblest vine"—and the astonishment of those present. The servant (*minister*) who draws the water knows the miracle; the host (*architriclinus*) who tastes the wine marvels without knowing its source.

John's Gospel calls this a "sign" (*sēmeion*) that "manifested His glory" (John 2:11). The water-to-wine transformation is itself a symbol: the old order (water for Jewish purification rites) gives way to the new (the wine of the messianic banquet). Prudentius does not allegorize explicitly, but the theological weight is present in his choice to begin here.

"Thy lips' sweet nectar, mixed with clay"—a beautiful rendering of John 9:6, where Jesus makes mud with saliva and anoints the blind man's eyes. The image of Christ's saliva as "nectar" elevates the earthy miracle to something almost sacramental. The ancient world associated saliva with life-force and healing power; here the life-giving Word Himself applies His own substance to restore sight.

The theological point is the reality of Christ's body: He has real saliva, real hands, a real presence. These are not miracles performed at a distance by divine decree alone, but healings accomplished through physical touch, through the medium of the incarnate flesh.

The raising of the widow's son at Nain (Luke 7:11–17) is presented with characteristic Prudentian tenderness. The Latin captures the pathos: a widowed mother (*vidua mater*) wailing (*plangens*) for her only son, struck down in the glad tide of youth (*adulescens*). Jesus's single word—"Rise!" (*Surge!*)—reverses death.

This is one of three resurrections in the Gospels (the others being Jairus's daughter and Lazarus). Prudentius treats each as a distinct demonstration of Christ's authority over death, building toward the climactic resurrection of Christ Himself.

The raising of Lazarus (John 11:1–44) is the most dramatic of the three, and Prudentius captures its significance: Lazarus had been dead four days ("three nights had passed away" by Jewish reckoning). The body was "touched already with decay" (*tabentibus... membris*)—Martha objected that "by this time he stinketh" (John 11:39). Yet the voice of Christ penetrates even corruption.

The Lazarus miracle is traditionally understood as the immediate cause of the authorities' decision to kill Jesus (John 11:45–53). Life-giving power provokes murderous opposition. In raising Lazarus, Christ seals His own death warrant—a death that will issue in universal resurrection.

The feeding of the five thousand (John 6:1–14; Matt. 14:13–21; Mark 6:30–44; Luke 9:10–17) is the only miracle recorded in all four Gospels. Prudentius highlights the abundance: "twelve woven baskets" (*duodenas... cophinos*) of fragments remain after thousands are satisfied. The numbers are symbolic—twelve baskets for twelve tribes, five loaves and two fish becoming inexhaustible provision.

This miracle leads directly into the Bread of Life discourse (John 6:22–59), which Prudentius draws upon in the following stanza. The multiplication of loaves points beyond itself to the eucharistic mystery.

Here Prudentius makes the eucharistic connection explicit. Christ is "our celestial Bread" (*caelestis... panis*), and whoever feeds on His grace (*gratia*) never hungers again. The language echoes John 6:35: "I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger."

The distinction between body and soul is significant: this bread nourishes not "mortal body but the soul" (*non corpus sed anima*). Yet this should not be read as a Gnostic devaluation of the body—the preceding miracles demonstrate Christ's care for bodily health and life. Rather, Prudentius points to the deeper reality: physical bread satisfies temporarily; the Bread of Life satisfies eternally.

The *Descensus ad Inferos*—Christ's descent into Hell—is affirmed in the Apostles' Creed ("He descended into Hell") and has deep roots in early Christian thought. 1 Peter 3:19 speaks of Christ preaching "unto the spirits in prison," and 4:6 says the Gospel was "preached also to them that are dead."

Prudentius depicts Christ shattering the gates of Hell: "Bolt and massy hinge were shattered, adamantine portals rent." The imagery draws on Psalm 107:16 ("He hath broken the gates of brass, and cut the bars of iron in sunder") and Isaiah 45:2. Hell's gates were designed to receive but never release; Christ breaks the one-way mechanism. The "adamantine portals" suggest absolute hardness and permanence—yet they yield before the descending Lord.

The cosmic scope of the Passion is captured in the darkening of the sun (Matt. 27:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 23:44–45). Prudentius interprets this astronomically—the created lights withdraw their radiance in mourning as their Creator dies. Meanwhile, paradoxically, "God with golden glory floods the murky realms of night"—the underworld, normally shrouded in darkness, blazes with divine light as Christ descends.

This inversion—heaven darkening while Hell brightens—captures the mystery of the Cross. What appears to be defeat is victory; what looks like the extinguishing of light is actually its triumphant invasion of the deepest darkness.

"Sing the trophy of His passion"—the Cross is a *tropaeum*, a victory monument. In Roman military practice, a trophy was erected on the battlefield from captured enemy weapons. The Cross is Christ's trophy, erected at the site of His victory over sin and death. This triumphalist theology of the Cross runs throughout patristic thought: the instrument of execution becomes the ensign of conquest.

"Marked on every faithful brow"—a reference to the sign of the Cross made in baptism and daily prayer. Christians bear the Cross on their foreheads as soldiers bear their commander's standard. The Latin *vexillum* (ensign, standard) emphasizes the military imagery: the baptized are enlisted under Christ's banner.

John 19:34 records that a soldier pierced Christ's side with a spear, "and forthwith came there out blood and water." The Fathers interpreted this exhaustively: water and blood represent baptism and eucharist, the two great sacraments flowing from Christ's wounded side. The Church herself is born from this wound, as Eve was taken from Adam's side.

Prudentius adds that the blood is "the martyr's crown of pride" (*martyrii... corona*)—those who shed their blood for Christ participate in His sacrifice. The Latin church's theology of martyrdom sees the martyr's death as a "baptism of blood" that completes what water baptism began.

The ancient Serpent (Genesis 3; Revelation 12:9, 20:2) watches the Crucifixion with malicious satisfaction—"the holy Victim slain." But his triumph is illusory. In the very moment of apparent victory, the Serpent's power is broken. His "hissing neck is broken" (*colla... fracta*)—an image drawn from Genesis 3:15, where God promises that the woman's seed will "bruise the serpent's head."

This is the *Christus Victor* theory of atonement: Christ conquers Satan through the Cross. The devil overreaches; by engineering the death of the sinless One, he loses his claim on sinful humanity. The Crucifixion is Satan's defeat disguised as his victory.

Prudentius addresses the Serpent directly with mocking triumph: "What boots it"—what good does it do you? Yes, the man "God made from clay" (*plasma de limo Dei*, echoing Genesis 2:7) was deceived by your cunning. But "God hath ta'en a mortal body and hath washed the guilt away." The Incarnation undoes the Fall; the second Adam reverses what the first Adam lost.

The washing away of guilt suggests baptism, but more broadly indicates the entire economy of redemption: God assumes what He would heal. As Gregory Nazianzen famously argued, "What has not been assumed has not been healed." By taking mortal flesh, God heals mortal flesh.

"Christ, our Captain"—the Latin *dux* carries both military and leadership connotations. Christ leads His people not only by command but by example: He Himself enters "Death's domain" (*mortis... imperium*) so that those imprisoned there might follow Him out.

"Breaking by His great example ancient sins' enthralling chain"—Christ's death and resurrection provide both the power and the pattern for human liberation. His example breaks sin's chain not merely by moral influence but by actually accomplishing what humanity could not accomplish for itself: victory over death.

The "third glad morning"—Easter—sees not only Christ's resurrection but, according to Matthew 27:52–53, the resurrection of "many bodies of the saints which slept." Prudentius envisions the patriarchs and saints of the Old Testament rising with Christ and ascending with Him—"followed Him who went before."

This is the "firstfruits" of 1 Corinthians 15:20: Christ rises as the first installment of a general resurrection that will eventually include all the faithful dead. The Old Testament saints, who lived in hope of what Christ would accomplish, now share in its benefits.

This stanza provides a striking image of bodily resurrection: "Limb to limb unites and rises from the ashes dry and cold." Against those who might spiritualize the resurrection into mere immortality of the soul, Prudentius insists on physical reconstitution: "Skin and flesh, anew created, muscle, bone and nerve enfold."

This is the catholic faith as expressed in the creeds: "I believe in the resurrection of the body." The same body that dies—though transformed and glorified—will rise. Prudentius's vivid materialism reflects biblical teaching (Ezekiel's valley of dry bones in chapter 37; Paul's discussion in 1 Corinthians 15) and stands against Gnostic and Platonic tendencies to devalue the body.

The Ascension completes the arc: "the Victor mounts triumphant to the Father's judgment-seat." The journey that began before all worlds in the Father's heart (*corde natus ex parentis*) now returns to its source, but bearing humanity with it. Christ brings back to heaven "the glory by His passion made complete"—the glory is not diminished by the Incarnation and Cross but perfected through them.

Philippians 2:9–11 provides the theological framework: "God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name." The humiliation (kenosis) leads to exaltation (glorification). Christ receives what was always His by right, but now as the God-Man, as the Pioneer who has opened the way for human nature itself to enter the divine presence.

Christ enthroned is both King and Judge. The hymn looks forward to the final judgment: "Till at last for all offences righteous judgment Thou shalt bring." This is not a threat but a promise—justice will be done. The Judge is the Savior; the One who will render verdict is the One who shed His blood for the world's redemption.

"Judge of souls departed... of all the living King"—the titles embrace both the dead and the living. No one escapes His jurisdiction, but His jurisdiction is one of mercy to those who receive it and justice to those who refuse it. The throne at the Father's right hand is both royal and judicial.

The hymn moves toward its close with a vision of universal praise. "Old and young uniting"—the ages of life harmonize. "Maid and matron"—women in every state. "Infant lips"—even those who cannot yet speak intelligibly. "Boys and girls together"—the whole human family joins the cosmic choir.

This universality echoes Psalm 148 and anticipates the heavenly worship of Revelation 5:13: "And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever."

The final stanza extends praise beyond humanity to all creation. "Storm and summer sunshine, gliding stream and sounding shore, sea and forest, frost and zephyr, day and night"—the entire natural order, animate and inanimate, is called to adoration. This is the cosmic liturgy in which the human hymn-singer participates.

The closing words—"through the ages evermore" (*saeculorum in saecula*)—return us to the Alpha and Omega of stanza 4. The hymn ends where it began, in eternity. Time itself becomes a vehicle of praise, and the praise extends beyond time into the endless ages of God.

This is the vision that has sustained Christian worship for sixteen centuries: all creation, all history, all humanity gathered into a single song of praise to the One who was, and is, and is to come.