Hymn: Jerusalem the Golden

Sung in Worship: George Turcotte Funeral Service, June 8 

The words are by Bernard of Cluny (fl. early 12C), a French-born son of English parents or parents of English stock, who entered the Benedictine Abbey at Cluny (in the Haut Jura) probably sometime in the first quarter of the 12C, perhaps after having been a monk at St Sauveur d’Aniane (near Montpellier).  He was certainly in Cluny in the Abbacy of Peter the Venerable (1122-11), to whom he dedicated the poem De Contemptu Mundi, of which this hymn is a part.  The poem, of 3000 lines, is a harsh satire of nearly everything, written in dactylic hexameters in three sections, without caesurae, with tailed rhymes and a feminine leonine rhyme between the two first sections.  Here’s an English translation of the opening lines which gives a sense of the rhythm and rhyme:
These are the latter times, these are not better times, Let us stand waiting;
Lo, how with awfulness He, first in lawfulness, comes arbitrating!  
Nearer and nearer yet!—Wrong shall in terror set, right shine refulgent.
Sad ones he liberates, righteous remunerates, ever indulgent.
—Samuel Duffield (1867)
 
The hymn is a cento from Bernard,  translated by by John Mason Neale (1818-1866) first in  his Medieval Hymns and Sequences, where it is part of a much longer portion of Bernard.  The translation was broken into four hymns  in, e.g., A&M. The editors of A&M also added the doxology beginning “Jesu, in mercy bring us.”

Samuel Sebastian Wesley (Charles Wesley’s grandson) wrote the tune “Aurelia” (a mistake for aurea, “Golden”) for these words, but W.H. Monk, musical editor for A&M, chose the tune “Ewing” and altered Wesley’s tune somewhat without consulting the composer. (It is now the setting for “The Church’s One Foundation.”)  The tune was composed by Alexander Ewing (1834-1895j, a Scot, for the Aberdeen Harmonic Choir either for “Jerusalem the Golden” or for  “For thee, oh dear, dear country,” another part of Bernard translated by Neale.  Ewing had studied for the law, but his career was entirely in the British army.  He served in Constantinople, China, Ireland, New Brunswick, Malta and Ceylon (Sri Lanka).  In Fredericton he sang in the cathedral and played the organ.  He was displeased with Monk’s altercations of his tune