Personent hodie

Personent hodie in the 1582 edition of Piae Cantiones, image combined from two pages of the source text.

"Personent hodie" is a Christmas carol originally published in the 1582 Finnish song book Piae Cantiones, a volume of 74 Medieval songs with Latin texts collected by Jacobus Finno (Jaakko Suomalainen), a Swedish Lutheran cleric, and published by T.P. Rutha.[1] The song book had its origins in the libraries of cathedral song schools, whose repertory had strong links with medieval Prague, where clerical students from Finland and Sweden had studied for generations.[2] A melody found in a 1360 manuscript from the nearby Bavarian city of Moosburg in Germany is highly similar, and it is from this manuscript that the song is usually dated.[3][4]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference AMG was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference MT was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ "On This Day Earth Shall Ring" at hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com, URL accessed 4 January 2009
  4. ^ Gustav Holst, "Personet hodie" in the Oxford Book of Carols (London: Oxford University Press, 1928), p.171.