An Alleluia for St. Michael and All Angels: Laudate Deum, omnes angelus

According to the Benedictines of Brazil, Laudate Deum, omnes angelus - the Alleluia for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany - can be used as an alternate to Sancte Michael archangele as the Alleluia for the September 29 Feast of St. Michael and All Angels (AKA "Ss. Michaelis, Gabrielis et Raphaelis, Archangelorum").

I could not find a recording of  Sancte Michael archangele - so here's Laudate Deum, omnes angelus, which is very pretty indeed.   (Again, though:  I am quite amazed at the cottage industry of St. Michael Archangel videos - all highly dramatic, and often using some of the most surprising music as background! - at YouTube.  It seems that the "soldier of God's armies" image really appeals to some people.)




The text comes from Psalm 148, verse 2:

Laudate Deum, omnes Angeli eius: laudate eum, omnes virtutes eius. Alleluia.

Praise God, all His Angels, praise Him, all His hosts. Alleluia.

You can listen to recordings of the Introit, Offertory, and Communio at Ss. Michaelis, Gabrielis et Raphaelis, Archangelorum (St. Michael and All Angels, that is): September 29.   Listen to the Office Hymns atSeptember 29: The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels.

Other posts for this feast day are collected here.


The Collect for St. Michael and All Angels is a nice one:

Everlasting God, you have ordained and constituted in a wonderful order the ministries of angels and mortals: Mercifully grant that, as your holy angels always serve and worship you in heaven, so by your appointment they may help and defend us here on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Marion Hatchett, in his Commentary on the American Prayer Book, says about this feast that:

The observance of a day to honor Saint Michael dates to the fifth century when a church near Rome was dedicated to the archangel.  The Leonine sacramentary contains a proper for St. Michael's Day (nos. 844-859).  In the Eastern churches other angels have been so honored, but the feasts of Gabriel and Raphael did not enter the ROman calendar until this century.

In the 1549 Book the title was expanded to include all angels.  Michael is mentioned in Jude 9 and Rev. 12:7 (see also Dan. 10:13, 21, and 12:1).  On the basis of these passages he has been honored as the "captain of the heavenly hosts."  Gabriel was the messenger of God at the annunciation to Zechariah (Lk. 1:19) and to Mary (Lk. 1:26).  He is also mentioned in Dan. 8:16 and 9:21.  Raphael is named in the Old Testament Apocrypha (Tobit 3:16-17 and 5:5 ff.).  The word "angel" literally means "messenger."

Just for interest, this appears to be a composition by one Rafał Krzychowiec based on the text of other Alleluia for today, Sancte Michael archangele (gregorian chant score below the vid).  Interestingly, this piece has spoken parts; I don't know what's being said, though.

I'm not sure which came first, but this text has often been used as an antiphon in various offices in addition to its use here as an Alleluia for the mass:

Sancte Michael archangele defende nos in proelio ut non pereamus in tremendo judicio. 

Saint Michael Archangel, defend us in battle so that we may not perish in the awful day of judgment.

Wikipedia has more about a longer "Prayer of St. Michael," and notes that:

This prayer, whose opening words are similar to the Alleluia verse for Saint Michael’s feasts on 8 May and 29 September in the Roman Missal of the time (which ran, "Sancte Michael, defende nos in proelio ut non pereamus in tremendo iudicio"), was added in 1886 to the Leonine Prayers that in 1884 Pope Leo XIII ordered to be said after Low Mass, for the intention of obtaining a satisfactory solution to the problem that the loss of the Pope's temporal sovereignty caused in depriving him of the evident independence required for effective use of his spiritual authority.

Here's a lovely piece of Byzantine art with Michael as subject; the page says it's an "Ivory panel from a Byzantine diptych. Constantinople (AD 525-550)," now in the British Museum.

More from the Wikpedia page:

Constantinople, 6th century AD

Standing beneath an ornate arch, at the top of a flight of steps, the archangel holds an orb and a staff. The Greek inscription, which would have continued on the other leaf read: Receive the suppliant before you, despite his sinfulness.

This is the largest surviving Byzantine ivory panel and probably represents an imperial commission originating from Constantinople. It has been suggested that the angel was presenting the orb to an emperor, perhaps Justinian I (527-565 AD), who was depicted on the other lost leaf.

Height: 42.8 cm (16.9 in) Width: 14.3 cm (5.6 in) Depth: 0.9 cm (0.35 in)

Still more for St. Michael and All Angels: Duo seraphim clamabant, Francisco Guerrero (1528-1599)

A gorgeous version of this motet sung by The Choir of Westminster Cathedral.



Here is the text and translation from CPDL; the texts come from Isaiah 6:3 and 1 John 5:7:

Duo seraphim clamabant alter ad alterum:
Sanctus Dominus Deus Saboath.
Plena est omnis terra gloria ejus.
Tres sunt, qui testimonium dant in coelo:
Pater, Verbum et Spiritus Sanctus:
et hi tres unum sunt.
Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth.
Plena est omnis terra gloria ejus.


Two seraphim cried to one another:
Holy is the Lord God of Sabaoth.
The whole earth is full of his glory.
There are three who bear witness in heaven:
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit:
and these three are one.
Holy is the Lord God of Sabaoth.
The whole earth is full of his glory.

More for St. Michael and All Angels: Faire is the Heaven

This beautiful piece for double choir by William Harris (1883-1973) takes its text from Edmund Spenser (1552-1599). Here it's sung by the University of London Chamber Choir at Ely Cathedral.

FAIRE is the heaven, where happy soules have place
In full enjoyment of felicitie;
Whence they doe still behold the glorious face
Of the Divine, Eternall Majestie;
Yet farre more faire be those bright Cherubins,
Which all with golden wings are overdight.
And those eternall burning Seraphins,
Which from their faces dart out fiery light;
Yet fairer than they both and much more bright,
Be the Angels and Archangels, which attend
On God’s owne person without rest or end.
These then in faire each other farre excelling,
As to the Highest they approach more neare,
Yet is that Highest farre beyond all telling,
Fairer than all the rest which there appeare.
Though all their beauties joyned together were;
How then can mortall tongue hope to expresse
The image of such endlesse perfectnesse?

  - Edmund Spenser

The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels: St. Peter's, Chicago and Full Homely Divinity

This video has last year's full service of the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels celebrated at St. Peter's, Chicago (observed in 2011 on October 2).



Here's the blurb at the YouTube page:

For more information, visit our website at http://www.stpeterschicago.org/. St. Peter's celebration of the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels (transferred from September 29) was truly a feast -- for the senses and for the soul. Hymns included "Christ, the fair glory of the holy angels"; "Praise the Lord, ye heavens adore Him"; "Ye holy angels bright"; "Let all mortal flesh keep silence"; and "Ye watchers and ye holy ones." The choir also performed a fantastic anthem written by our organist and choirmaster, Br. Nathanael Deward Rahm, based on Psalm 96.

St. Peter's welcomed its former rector, the Very Rev. James H. Dunkerley, back to the pulpit to help dedicate some portions of the most recent capital campaign -- Visions, Voices, and Devotion. And the rector, the Very Rev. Sarah K. Fisher, sang the Mozarabic chant for Eucharistic Prayer D, which appropriately enough for the day tells of "countless throngs of angels [who] stand before You to serve You night and day."

A beautiful liturgy by beautiful people, in a beautiful church for a beautiful God.

"Christ, the fair glory of the holy angels" is is the English-translation version of Christe, sanctorum decus Angelorum, the traditional hymn at Lauds for this feast day. As you can see, there are loads of other angel-themed hymns as well, including the wonderful and spooky "Let all mortal flesh keep silence," with its references to "six-winged seraphs" and "cherubim with sleepless eye," sung at Communion. And you don't often get to hear Eucharistic Prayer D chanted Mozarabic-style - but you do hear it on this video (beginning at around 52 minutes). (They also say the Prayer of Humble Access at this parish - nice to hear it.)

And Full Homely Divinity has a new (or revised) version of its posting for this day; don't miss it!   It's got a full rundown on all the orders of angels:  watchers and holy ones, bright seraphs, cherubim, and thrones; dominions, princedoms, powers, virtues, archangels, and angels' choirs. (Plus a bit about the Theotokos, even "higher than the cherubim, more glorious than the seraphim!") Here's an excerpt:

We suspect that ... colloquial and figurative uses of the term "angel" are rooted in an uncertainty about and, quite probably, a discomfort with the true nature of angels. In our experience, many people reject the existence of angels out of hand. Their objections often appear to arise from an intellectual objection to the existence of anything that cannot be seen or verified "scientifically," which, we might note, puts God in a somewhat tenuous position, as well. However, we suspect that a deeper objection for many, if not all, has to do with the realization that angels are not merely the Christian version of a fairy godmother who goes around smiling sweetly and doing nice things for people. At some of the principal appearances of angels in the Bible, the first words out of the mouth of the angel are, "Fear not!" It is not necessary to tell people not to be afraid, unless they are afraid, or think they have some reason to be afraid. When we contemplate the story of the appearance of the angels to the shepherds of Bethlehem, we hear the words, "Fear not," but it is likely that what we see (in our mind's eye) is a child, perhaps our own daughter, or the child of a friend, dressed in a flowing white gown and aluminum foil wings. The effect on us is to feel warmth and affection. Fear is the last emotion that would occur to us. And then we immediately fast forward to a vision of a sky full of twinkling stars and angels singing "Glory be to God on high!" Beauty and wonder are the things we imagine--but it is very likely that the shepherds were frightened half to death and needed to be calmed and reassured before it was possible for them to hear the truly wonderful news the angels brought. We recall a story told in class by the church historian Jaroslav Pelikan. He told us how one evening his young son was agitated and unable to sleep and came to his father for comfort. The problem, he told his father, was that there was an angel in his room. The famous scholar did not dismiss his son's story as a bad dream, the product of an active imagination, or even a ploy to delay going to bed. Rather, he took the boy seriously, and assured him that the angel had come to protect him, not to harm him. The child's fear was genuine, and understandable. The father's belief was also genuine, and no one in that class of graduate students had any doubt about that.

"We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all that is, seen and unseen...." or, as the older translation puts it, "all things visible and invisible." Is the Creed referring merely to those technically "unseen" aspects of creation which are discernible to some of the senses but not to the naked eye, such as the wind, which blows where it will but cannot be seen, or to microscopic matter, whether animate or inanimate, which is so small that it is virtually invisible? Or were the Fathers of Nicaea and Constantinople referencing a realm of creatures of another order, either in heaven or perhaps even existing side by side with us in this world in an unseen, spiritual state? Scripture and the Liturgy leave little doubt about the answer to that question. When it deals with angels at all, popular culture tends to reduce them either to the putti of Renaissance art, adorable pudgy "cherubs" adorned with wings, or else the more stately, but delicate, and almost always feminine, winged adults in flowing robes. This is a far cry from the biblical cherubim, fearsome four-faced creatures who are ever-watchful by the throne of God and who were set at the entrance to the Garden of Eden to guard the way to the Tree of Life when Adam and Eve were cast out. Far, too, from the archangels named in canonical and apocryphal Scripture, who are not characterized by gender and, in any case, are hardly delicate. Jacob Epstein's monumental Michael at the entrance to Coventry Cathedral (above left) is formidable in his triumph over Satan in the apocalyptic confrontation between good and evil. And even the usually playful putti seem distressed by the appearance of Gabriel in El Greco's painting of The Annunciation....

There is another important application of the term "angel" which must not be overlooked here, though it is not our primary subject. There are occasions in Scripture when angels appear on earth who are not actually angels. The most significant instance of this is the visit of the three men to Abraham by the oak of Mamre in Genesis 18. The story is sometimes (intentionally?) vague in its identification of the men. At a point in the story, the Lord himself speaks to Abraham. Is the speaker one of the three men or not? It is not clear, but at the beginning of the next chapter, only two of them travel on towards the doomed city of Sodom and the two are explicitly described as angels. Christian tradition has generally interpreted this appearance in trinitarian terms. No mortal may look directly upon God and survive, but God does occasionally appear in person, taking the form of an angel or, in the case of Abraham's visitors, three angels. Later in Genesis (chapter 32), Abraham's grandson Jacob is confronted in the night by a man with whom he wrestles until daybreak. The man does not prevail and Jacob refuses to let him depart until he has blessed him. The man (or angel as tradition almost always identifies him) not only blesses Jacob but gives him a new name, Israel--"he who strives with God."

Much, much more at the article.  The artwork to the right above is Viktor Vasnetsov's Seraphim, from 1896.  And here's the El Greco Annunciation mentioned in the quote above (I'm not sure of the dates of some of these, but El Greco lived from about 1541 to 1614):

EG didn't stop there, though; he was Annunciation-mad, it would seem.  Here are several more:

See the office hymns for St. Michael and All Angels, and more about the feast day, here. Other posts about St.M & AA are here.

Christ, the Fair Glory

Christe, Sanctorum decus Angelorum is the hymn at Lauds on the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels.  This is a version in English, with a metric tune, apparently sung at St. Thomas Church NYC; it's part of a playlist, so if you like Anglican hymns, keep watching!



CyberHymnal has the words; what's on the video is a slightly different version overall, though:

Christ, the fair glory of the holy angels,
Thou Who hast made us, Thou Who o’er us rulest,
Grant of Thy mercy unto us Thy servants
Steps up to Heaven.

Send Thy archangel, Michael, to our succor;
Peacemaker blessèd, may he banish from us
Striving and hatred, so that for the peaceful
All things may prosper.

Send Thy archangel, Gabriel, the mighty;
Herald of Heaven, may he from us mortals
Spurn the old serpent, watching o’er the temples
Where Thou art worshipped.

Send thy archangel, Raphael, the restorer
Of the misguided ways of men who wander,
Who at Thy bidding strengthens soul and body
With Thine anointing.

Father almighty, Son and Holy Spirit,
God ever blessèd, be Thou our Preserver;
Thine is the glory which the angels worship,
Veiling their faces.

The original words to this hymn are very old, written by Rhabanus Maurus sometime in the early 9th Century. Cyberhymnal has more on this hymn, including a midi file here, and says that:

Maurus was ed­u­cat­ed in Tours, France, around 802. In 803, he be­came di­rect­or of the Ben­e­dict­ine school at Ful­da, Ger­ma­ny. He was or­dained in 814 and went on a pil­grim­age to the Ho­ly Land. He be­came ab­bot at Ful­da in 822, and served there two de­cades. In 847, he was ap­point­ed arch­bi­shop of Mainz.

Maurus also apparently wrote the words for the Vespers hymn for this feast: Tibi Christe, Splendor Patris.


Here's something interesting about Caelites plaudant:

The text 'Christ, the fair glory of the holy angles,' is a translation of a 9th C. office hymn for the Feast of St Michael and All Angels, Christe sanctorum decus angelorum. This hymn names the celestial visitors who have graced this earth, and once again calls on them to renew their graces: Chrst the Savior, three archangels (Michael, defender; Gabriel, herald; Raphael, healer), Mary, the saints, and all the company of angels. The hymn concludes with a doxology.

The English text appeared in the 1906 hymnal, matched to Caelites plaudant, a French tune from the Rouen Antiphoner newly harmonized by Ralph Vaughan Williams, a majestic setting that is today a fixture for Michaelmas. The tune is one of very few that supports the the peculiar Greek poetic form known as Sapphic meter (11.11.11.5), named for the Greek poet who used this verse form for a significant portion of her work. The tune name means 'from heaven praise,' and is also sometimes spelled Coelites plaudant.

The Latin version of this hymn is also sung to another French tune from the same period, Christe sanctorum, which takes it's name from the words of the hymn, and in The Hymnal 1982, is given the honor of being hymn 1.

And it all comes together, doesn't it? RVW and the folk tune project involved, too! (Some day I'll have to write about that, too. I just discovered, very much by accident, that the text for one of my very favorite RVW hymns, "Monk's Gate" in the 1982 hymnal, "He who would valiant be," comes from Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress"! There are a lot of really interesting, and for me unsuspected and unexpected, connections between music and literature of different eras. This makes me even more eager to promote deep theology that will stand up to the test of time and make further such connections.)

(And, BTW, as I've written before: Sapphic meter (11.11.11.5) is my favorite meter! It's actually used for many of the Office hymns - in particular the one hymn sung, with varying words, for the Commons of Saints. But also others, including Ut Queant Laxis. It would be mighty interesting to research this fact, actually; I wonder if it's coming from Prudentius or somebody very early? Or if, instead, it was simply a popular rhythm around the time Benedict and contemps? It's a dramatic meter; the last line gets a strong emphasis simply being so different from - and so much shorter than - the first three. Well, that's on the list, too, then.)

All very interesting.

I'd like to find a good plainchant recording of this hymn, but haven't so far. When I do, I'll post it. (There was a fantastic vocal alternatim version of Dufay's Tibi Christe, Splendor Patri out there for awhile, but the YouTuber has closed his/her account. God, that was gorgeous.....)

BTW, there is a veritable cottage industry in YouTube videos dedicated to St. Michael - and especially to his battle against Satan. Well, as I've said before: I'm very much looking forward to the movie.

I believe this is an icon of St. Michael. It "comes from a gallery in Skopje, Macedonia, that mostly works on crafting and painting icons."