Hymns & Liturgical Texts
Stabat Mater
Christianity Hymns
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The Stabat Mater contemplates Mary standing at the foot of the cross, her soul pierced by the sword Simeon foretold, and then turns to her with an audacious request, that the singer be allowed to stand there with her, to feel what she felt, and to be defended by the cross at the day of judgement. A product of the thirteenth century Franciscan devotion to the passion, it is commonly ascribed to the Franciscan poet Jacopone da Todi, though the ascription is contested. Admitted to the Roman missal as a sequence in 1727 for the feast of the Seven Sorrows, it became, through its musical settings, one of the most composed sacred poems in existence.
Facts
Disputed
Attributed Author / CompilerTraditionally ascribed to the Franciscan friar Jacopone da Todi, a poet of the Franciscan devotion to the passion, though Pope Innocent III and Bonaventure have also been proposed as author. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd revised edition, Cross and Livingstone, eds., Oxford University Press, 2005) records that scholarship has settled on none of the thirteenth century candidates, and the sequence entered the Roman missal in 1727 without the question having been resolved. 1 The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd revised edition, Cross and Livingstone, eds., Oxford University Press, 2005) surveyed the competing thirteenth century candidates proposed for this Latin sequence on the sorrows of Mary: the Franciscan friar Jacopone da Todi, a poet of the Franciscan devotion to the passion, alongside Pope Innocent III and Bonaventure. Weighing the evidence for each, it finds none of the three candidates has been settled on by scholarship, and notes the sequence entered the Roman missal in 1727 with the authorship question still unresolved at that much later date. Practice
Who Performs ItClergy or ordained officiants 2 A sequence within the Mass liturgy. Solitary or CommunalPerformed by a gathered group 2 A sequence in the Roman missal for the feast of the Seven Sorrows. Attributions
TraditionChristianity (Roman Catholic) 1 Use
What It Is Used ForContemplative: repeated to still or transform the mind 1 Meditation on the sorrow of Mary at the cross, used for the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows and in Lenten devotion Form
Form of the Text Learn More
The Mother Standing at the Cross
The Stabat Mater begins as a picture, the sorrowful mother standing in tears beside the cross while her son hangs on it, her grieving soul pierced by the sword old Simeon had promised. For its first third the poem only looks, asking who could fail to weep seeing the mother of Christ in such torment. Then it turns, and the remaining stanzas are addressed to Mary directly, in a chain of petitions almost shocking in their intimacy, make me feel the force of your grief, make me weep with you, fix the wounds of the crucified deep in my heart, let me stand beside the cross with you and join you freely in your mourning, and at the end, when my body dies, let my soul be given the glory of paradise. It is passion devotion in the Franciscan manner, seeking not to understand the cross but to feel it, and its origin lies in that thirteenth century Franciscan world.
The common ascription is to Jacopone da Todi, the lawyer turned wild Franciscan penitent poet, though manuscripts do not secure it and Pope Innocent III and others have been proposed. Long used as a devotional text, it was admitted to the Roman missal as a liturgical sequence only in 1727, for the feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, and it is also sung stanza by stanza between the Stations of the Cross.
The Most Composed Poem of Sorrow
No sacred poem of its length has drawn more music. The roll of Stabat Mater settings runs practically continuous from the Renaissance to the present, Josquin and Palestrina in the polyphonic golden age, Domenico Scarlatti for ten voices, and then Pergolesi's setting of 1736, composed in the last weeks of his life at twenty six, which became one of the most printed and performed works of the entire eighteenth century, its opening duet of grinding suspensions the very sound of the pierced soul.
Haydn's large setting carried his early fame across Europe. Rossini, long retired from opera, produced a Stabat Mater whose theatrical fervour scandalized some and thrilled everyone else. Dvorak composed his, the first great Czech oratorio, in the years he lost three children, and it is impossible not to hear the biography in it. Verdi placed a Stabat Mater among his final works, the Four Sacred Pieces, and the twentieth and twenty first centuries kept faith with the text, Szymanowski's luminous Polish setting, Poulenc's, and Arvo Part's spare tintinnabular meditation among many. The poem's attraction for composers is structural as well as devotional, a long text that moves from picture to petition, from grief observed to grief requested, offering music the same journey inward that the words make.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Addressed To
Mary, Figures The Stabat Mater contemplates Mary at the foot of the cross and turns to her with a direct request.
Belongs to Tradition
Rejected Here
Refused on the same ground as the other Marian devotions, and its subject, Mary's part in the passion, is precisely what the Reformed churches would not sing about.
Element Of
The sequence of the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, and the hymn sung between the Stations of the Cross.
Originates in Language
Part Of
Admitted to the Roman missal as the sequence for the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows in 1727.
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