"Dies irae" ("the Day of Wrath") is a Latin sequence attributed to either Thomas of Celano of the Franciscans (1200–1265) or to Latino Malabranca Orsini (d. 1294), lector at the Dominican studium at Santa Sabina, the forerunner of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (the Angelicum) in Rome. The sequence dates from the 13th century at the latest, though it is possible that it is much older, with some sources ascribing its origin to St. Gregory the Great (d. 604), Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), or Bonaventure (1221–1274). It is a medieval Latin poem characterized by its accentual stress and rhymed lines. The metre is trochaic. The poem describes the Last Judgment, the trumpet summoning souls before the throne of God, where the saved will be delivered and the unsaved cast into eternal flames. It is best known from its use in the Roman Rite Catholic Requiem Mass (Mass for the Dead or Funeral Mass). An English version is found in various Anglican Communion service books. The first melody set to these words, a Gregorian chant, is one of the most quoted in musical literature, appearing in the works of many composers. The final couplet, Pie Jesu, has been often reused as an independent song.

Use in the Roman liturgy

The "Dies irae" has been used in the Roman Rite liturgy as the sequence for the Requiem Mass for centuries, as made evident by the important place it holds in musical settings such as those by Mozart and Verdi. It appears in the Roman Missal of 1962, the last edition before the implementation of the revisions that occurred after the Second Vatican Council. As such, it is still heard in churches where the Tridentine Latin liturgy is celebrated. It also formed part of the pre-conciliar liturgy of All Souls' Day. In the reforms to the Catholic Church's Latin liturgical rites ordered by the Second Vatican Council, the "Consilium for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy", the Vatican body charged with drafting and implementing the reforms (1969–70), eliminated the sequence as such from funerals and other Masses for the Dead. A leading figure in the post-conciliar liturgical reforms, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, explained the rationale of the Consilium: "They got rid of texts that smacked of a negative spirituality inherited from the Middle Ages. Thus they removed such familiar and even beloved texts as "Libera me, Domine", "Dies irae", and others that overemphasized judgment, fear, and despair. These they replaced with texts urging Christian hope and arguably giving more effective expression to faith in the resurrection." "Dies irae", slightly edited, remains in use ad libitum as a hymn in the Liturgy of the Hours on All Souls' Day and during the last week before Advent, for which it is divided into three parts for the Office of Readings, Lauds and Vespers, with the insertion of a doxology after each part.

Indulgence

In the Roman Catholic Church there was formerly an indulgence of three years for each recitation and a plenary indulgence for reciting the prayer daily for a month. This indulgence was not renewed in the Manual of Indulgences.

Text

The Latin text below is taken from the Requiem Mass in the 1962 Roman Missal. The first English version below, translated by William Josiah Irons in 1849, albeit from a slightly different Latin text, replicates the rhyme and metre of the original. This translation, edited for more conformance to the official Latin, is approved by the Catholic Church for use as the funeral Mass sequence in the liturgy of the Catholic ordinariates for former Anglicans. The second English version is a more dynamic equivalence translation. Because the last two stanzas differ markedly in structure from the preceding stanzas, some scholars consider them to be an addition made in order to suit the great poem for liturgical use. The penultimate stanza, Lacrimosa, discards the consistent scheme of rhyming triplets in favour of a pair of rhyming couplets. The last stanza, Pie Iesu, abandons rhyme for assonance, and, moreover, its lines are catalectic. In the liturgical reforms of 1969–71, stanza 19 was deleted and the poem divided into three sections: 1–6 (for Office of Readings), 7–12 (for Lauds) and 13–18 (for Vespers). In addition, "Qui Mariam absolvisti" in stanza 13 was replaced by "Peccatricem qui solvisti" so that that line would now mean, "You who absolved the sinful woman". This was because modern scholarship denies the common mediæval identification of the woman taken in adultery with Mary Magdalene, so Mary could no longer be named in this verse. In addition, a doxology is given after stanzas 6, 12 and 18:

Manuscript sources

The text of the sequence is found, with slight verbal variations, in a 13th-century manuscript in the Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III at Naples. It is a Franciscan calendar missal that must date between 1253 and 1255 for it does not contain the name of Clare of Assisi, who was canonized in 1255, and whose name would have been inserted if the manuscript were of later date.

Inspiration

A major inspiration of the hymn seems to have come from the Vulgate translation of Zephaniah 1:15–16: Other images come from the Book of Revelation, such as (the book from which the world will be judged), (sheep and goats, right hand, contrast between the blessed and the accursed doomed to flames), (trumpet), (heaven and earth burnt by fire), and ("men fainting with fear... they will see the Son of Man coming"). From the Jewish liturgy, the prayer Unetanneh Tokef appears to be related: "We shall ascribe holiness to this day, For it is awesome and terrible"; "the great trumpet is sounded", etc.

Other translations

A number of English translations of the poem have been written and proposed for liturgical use. A very loose Protestant version was made by John Newton; it opens: Jan Kasprowicz, a Polish poet, wrote a hymn entitled "Dies iræ" which describes the Judgment day. The first six lines (two stanzas) follow the original hymn's metre and rhyme structure, and the first stanza translates to "The trumpet will cast a wondrous sound". The American writer Ambrose Bierce published a satiric version of the poem in his 1903 book Shapes of Clay, preserving the original metre but using humorous and sardonic language; for example, the second verse is rendered: The Rev. Bernard Callan (1750–1804), an Irish priest and poet, translated it into Gaelic around 1800. His version is included in a Gaelic prayer book, The Spiritual Rose.

Literary references

Music

The words of "Dies iræ" have often been set to music as part of the Requiem service. In some settings, it is broken up into several movements; in such cases, "Dies iræ" refers only to the first of these movements, the others being titled according to their respective incipits. The earliest surviving polyphonic setting of the Requiem by Johannes Ockeghem does not include "Dies iræ". The first polyphonic settings to include the "Dies iræ" are by Engarandus Juvenis (1490) and Antoine Brumel (1516) to be followed by many composers of the renaissance. Later, many notable choral and orchestral settings of the Requiem including the sequence were made by composers such as Charpentier, Delalande, Mozart, Berlioz, Verdi, Britten and Stravinsky. Giovanni Battista Martini ended his set of (mostly humorous) 303 canons with a set of 20 on extracts of the sequence poem.

13th-Century Gregorian Chant

The original Gregorian setting, dating back to the 13th century, was a sombre plainchant (or Gregorian chant). It is in the Dorian mode. In four-line neumatic notation, it begins: In 5-line staff notation:

Musical quotations

The traditional Gregorian melody gained widespread recognition through its use in Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. Since then, it has become associated with themes of death and terror, especially during the 19th century. After Berlioz, it was used as a theme or musical quotation in many classical compositions, including: It has also been used in many film scores and popular works, such as: