Stabat Mater


The Stabat Mater is a 13th-century Christian hymn to the Virgin Mary that portrays her suffering as mother during the crucifixion of her son Jesus Christ. Its author may be either the Franciscan friar Jacopone da Todi or Pope Innocent III. The title comes from its first line, "Stabat Mater dolorosa", which means "the sorrowful mother was standing".
The hymn is sung at the liturgy on the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. The Stabat Mater has been set to music by many Western composers.

Date

The Stabat Mater has often been ascribed to Jacopone da Todi, but this has been strongly challenged by the discovery of the earliest notated copy of the Stabat Mater in a 13th-century gradual belonging to the Dominican nuns in Bologna.
The Stabat Mater was well known by the end of the 14th century and Georgius Stella wrote of its use in 1388, while other historians note its use later in the same century. In Provence, about 1399, it was used during the nine days' processions.
As a liturgical sequence, the Stabat Mater was suppressed, along with hundreds of other sequences, by the Council of Trent, but restored to the missal by Pope Benedict XIII in 1727 for the Feast of the Seven Dolours of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Text and translation

The Latin text below is from an 1853 Roman Breviary and is one of multiple extant versions of the poem. The first English translation by Edward Caswall is not literal but preserves the trochaic tetrameter rhyme scheme and sense of the original text. The second English version is a more formal equivalence translation.

Indulgence

To the Stabat mater was attributed the indulgence of 100 days each time it was recited.

Musical settings

Composers who have written settings of the Stabat Mater include:
Most settings are in Latin. Karol Szymanowski's setting is in Polish, although it may also be sung in Latin. George Oldroyd's setting is in Latin with an English translation for Anglican and Episcopalian use.