This Latin hymn, "Nocte surgentes vigilemus omnes" ("Rising at night, let us all keep watch"), first appears in breviaries of the tenth and eleventh centuries. It was long credited to Pope Gregory the Great, but scholars now regard that as an honorary attribution. A. S. Walpole proposed Alcuin of York (ca. 735-804) or another writer at the court of Charlemagne, pointing to its Sapphic meter and its stress on prayer and watchfulness. Medieval monks sang it at Sunday Matins, in the dark before dawn, from the octave of Pentecost to the Sunday nearest October 1. That span covers the Trinity season, so this hymn belonged to these very Sundays for centuries, as the Church turned toward judgment and the end of the age. Percy Dearmer translated it for The English Hymnal (1906) and adapted it for morning worship: "Father, we praise Thee, now the night is over." His stanzas follow the pattern of Psalm 5 ("in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for You and watch"), and LSB prints his text unaltered. The tune CHRISTE SANCTORUM is an eighteenth-century French melody, a Neo-Gallican chant shaped for the Sapphic meter.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026