This hymn began as "Surrexit Christus hodie," an anonymous Latin song from Bohemia written shortly before 1400; the earliest copies survive in Prague manuscripts and in a song collection from the Cistercian monastery at Vyšší Brod dated 1410. German versions followed, and one printed by Johann Leisentrit in 1567 is the likely source of the English first stanza. That stanza appeared in Lyra Davidica (London, 1708), a collection "partly new composed, partly translated from the High-German, and Latin hymns," where every line ended "Halle-Halleluiah." Stanzas 2 and 3 were added anonymously later in the eighteenth century, and stanza 4, the doxology, is by Charles Wesley (1739). The tune EASTER HYMN, by an unknown composer, first appeared in Lyra Davidica as well. The Hymn Tune Index records twenty variants of it before 1820; the form we sing, with its long, rising "Alleluias," was settled by about 1754. The LSB companion notes that the word "today" in the first line makes the hymn especially fitting for Easter Day.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026