*For Christmas Eve:* For generations this carol passed for a medieval text or an anonymous continental hymn; modern scholarship instead credits both words and tune to John Francis Wade, an English Catholic scribe who copied liturgical music for exiled Catholics in Douai and London around 1744. Wade supported the Jacobite cause, the movement to restore the Catholic Stuarts to the British throne, and recent research reads Adeste Fideles as a coded Jacobite birth ode: the Latin regem angelorum, "King of Angels," doubles as a near pun on regem anglorum, "King of the English," and the summons to come to Bethlehem carried a second, political invitation to rally behind the exiled prince. As the Jacobite cause faded, the hymn shed its coded meaning and endured as a Christmas carol alone. Frederick Oakeley, an Anglican priest of the Oxford Movement, translated it into English in 1841 and revised the opening to "O come, all ye faithful" in 1852, and the tune long carried the name "Portuguese Hymn" for its regular performance at the Portuguese Embassy chapel in London. As the Opening hymn on Christmas Eve, it gathers the congregation's voice before the Nativity Gospel is even read. --- *For Christmas Day:* Modern scholarship credits both the Latin text and its tune to John Francis Wade, an English Catholic scribe who copied liturgical music for exiled Catholics around 1744, and recent research reads the hymn as a coded Jacobite birth ode as much as a Christmas carol, its regem angelorum, "King of Angels," echoing regem anglorum, "King of the English," and its summons to Bethlehem doubling as a call to rally behind the exiled Stuart line. Frederick Oakeley gave it its familiar English words in 1841, revised to "O come, all ye faithful" in 1852. Sung as the Opening Hymn the night before, this same hymn now does different liturgical work on Christmas Day itself: rather than gathering the congregation at the threshold of the Nativity Gospel, it leads the congregation to the altar with the same refrain, drawn from the Te Deum's venite adoremus, now sung as the Church comes forward to adore the newborn King present in His body and blood, binding the two services of a single feast together in one continuous act of adoration.
Sung at Our Saviour
2025