At the start of this month, after a much needed and appreciated break from digital duties, I was quickly whisked away into one of my usual rabbit-hole adventures. When visiting my go-to site for rare chants, the Society of St. Bede, I was treated with a study on the Vespers hymn for the feast of the Holy Name, Jesu dulcis memoria. In it I learned that not only that the current Roman melody, much beloved and sung in churches everywhere, differs from its Franciscan-inspired predecessor of 130+ years ago, but that the concatenation of the Vespers with the Matins (Jesu rex admirabilis) and Lauds (Jesu decus angelicum) hymns does not even constitute the totality of the original hymn. The deviation from the source are apparent from the first line, which originally read Dulcis Jesu memoria. The excerpt provided by the Society of St. Bede from Hymns of the Roman Liturgy (1957) by the Rev. Joseph Connelly, M.A. goes into enough detail on this subject to satiate the appetite of most web users, but it only whetted mine.
I had to find the full 42-verse original of Dulcis Jesu memoria, I just had to. Searching Connelly's reference to Dom André Wilmart's 300+ page article 'Le Jubilus dit de saint Bernard' in 1943's Ephemerides Liturgicae did not produce much at the start, but it did lead me to Dr. Helen Deeming's 2014 article 'Music and Contemplation in the Twelfth-Century Dulcis Jesu memoria' which includes not only the Wilmart transcription but both a translation and even a musical transcription from the original manuscript by Deeming herself. Two other comparative studies fell out of this search, one by Hymnolgy Archive and another by Dick Wursten, with screenshots galore of one of my favorite things: old books.
At this point, a normal person would say that the objective of finding the hymn has been met several times over and the research is now complete. However, my modus operandi in situations like is his to say, "Hey, look, a squirrel!" An ancillary result from the previous search was Dr. Denis Renevey's 'The Dulcis Iesu memoria: Tradition and the Devotion to the Name of Jesus,' a chapter from his 2022 book Devotion to the Name of Jesus in Medieval English Literature, c. 1100 - c. 1530. A sentence pulled from the Abstract reads,
The Franciscan Guibert of Tournai, a significant agent at the [1274 Second Lyon] council, wrote a series of sermons in the form of meditations, the Sermones de nomine Iesu (De laude melliflui nominis domini nostri), as a means of encouraging the veneration of the Name within Franciscan houses.
which unfortunately contained a favorite subset of one of my favorite things: old sermons. I just had to find this collection of sermons on the Holy Name. Footnote 72 from Dr. Renevey's chapter offers the following breadcrumb:
All references to Guibert’s treatise by column number are to the following edition; Sermones de nomine Iesu (De laude melliflui nominis domini nostri), ed. B. Bonelli, in: S. Bonaventura opera omnia, Suppl. III (Lyon, 1506 and Trient: Ex typographia episcopali Joannis Baptistae Monauni, 1774), 495–610.
And so commences the Herculean effort of unearthing this obscure document. As it stands, the Sermones were originally attributed to St. Bonaventure but over time this would be recognized as Guibert's work. This "over time" happened to be before the 1860's because Opera Omnia collections by this point have excised these Sermones. Searching for the title under Guibert's name wasn't helpful, either, since the Internet is more interested in his "Sermons on various states" (where he supposedly has some spicy takes on marriage) than on the Holy Name. With enough shifting of quotation marks in the search bar, I finally landed on the manuscript database of Melk, Austria. Exercising German parts of my brain I didn't know I had, I found under Teil 4 (Part 4) of this catalog page the work De laude melliflui nominis domini nostri Iesu Christi by Guibertus Tornacensis OFM (Ps. Bonaventura). Jumping to folio 69r of the c. 1434 manuscript, I was greeted with the following introduction and prologue:
Incipit pulcherrimum et devotissimum opusculum de laude melflui nominis domini nostri Iesu Christi editum a devoto domino Bonaventura ordinis fratrum minorum doctore eximio in sacra pagina quondam sancte romane ecclesie presbytero cardinali. Prologus huius operis.
Mulier Chananaea precibus importuna sed verius opportuna salutem filiae petiit...
![Melk, Benediktinerstift, Cod. 1918 (783, O 19 [1]), fol. 69r (15th century).](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e8288e_ccb2eb408ea74e5591d225193a3bae16~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_147,h_190,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,blur_2,enc_auto/e8288e_ccb2eb408ea74e5591d225193a3bae16~mv2.jpg)
In all possible humility, finding a primary source in a medieval manuscript is a pretty big achievement, but without also having medieval eyes the contents are not useful in the practical sense. A second day's light being now far spent, I was on the verge of emailing a librarian from Melk or Dr. Renevey himself for a transcript of the Sermones when I randomly thought of searching for the publisher of Bonelli's collection. This Hail Mary proved eminently successful as I was treated on the first page of results with an Internet Archive copy of the Supplement III I was specifically looking for, which on Column 495 had beautifully displayed...
and a little farther down the same introduction and prologue found in the manuscript could also be read:
In thanksgiving (though I should have done so from the start), I prayed St. Thomas Aquinas's Oratio ante studium. In kind St. Thomas threw me another bone by directing me to ARLIMA, a site whose acronym in French means "The Archives of Literature from the Medieval Age," which contains a page on Bonaventure summarizing everything I've found and more. Most likely this was to check my pride; I welcomed this dual-revelation with open arms.
So now I can say that my research was concluded. To the inquiring reader of this post, I predict two questions come to mind. 1. "Why this general drive to deep research?" To that, I suppose since that one curious day when I had trouble locating the original source for St. Leonard of Port-Maurice's sermon on the "The Little Number of Those Who Are Saved" I trained myself to not take Catholic quotes at face value (inter alia, this also puts into question Pope St. Pius X's supposed quote that modernists should be "beaten with fists"). 2. "Why this specific drive to deep research?" To that, the love of the sweet name of Jesu. In time, I pray, that by my hand or someone else's these Latin sermons will be transcribed and translated for the edification of Catholics in the third millennium and beyond.
Sequar quocumque ieris,
michi tolli non poteris,
cum meum cor abstuleris,
Jesu, laus nostri generis.
I will follow you wherever you go,
you cannot be taken from me,
since you stole my heart,
Jesus, praise of our race.
-Verse 36 of Dulcis Jesu memoria, Deeming translation