October is the month of the Holy Rosary, traditionally, we sing the Salve Regina after Mass on Sundays. The Salve Regina is the most popular Marion antiphon. Most people know it in English, because it is traditionally prayed after the Rosary. However, not as many people know it in Latin - so here's your chance …
October is the month of the Holy Rosary, traditionally, we sing the Salve Regina after Mass on Sundays.
The Salve Regina is the most popular Marion antiphon. Most people know it in English, because it is traditionally prayed after the Rosary. However, not as many people know it in Latin – so here’s your chance to learn it in Latin!
Please do listen along, and maybe practice singing this most wonderful Marian antiphon using the chant sheet below.
The Salve Regina is sung all over the world, especially during the month of October, and this month we join in this wonderful tradition.
Salve Regina without music:
Salve, Regina, Mater misericordiæ,
vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve.
Ad te clamamus exsules filii Hevæ,
Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes
in hac lacrimarum valle.
Eia, ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos
misericordes oculos ad nos converte;
Et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui,
nobis post hoc exsilium ostende.
O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria.
Salve Regina in English, such as we pray at the end of the Holy Rosary:
Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy,
our life, our sweetness and our hope!
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve;
to thee do we send up our sighs,
mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.
Turn then, O most gracious advocate,
thine eyes of mercy toward us,
and after this our exile,
show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary!
Marian antiphons have been sung, since the thirteenth century, at the close of Compline, the last Office of the day. Liturgically, the Salve Regina is the best known of four prescribed Marian Anthems recited after Compline, and, in some uses, after Lauds or other Hours. Its use after Compline is likely traceable to the monastic practice of intoning it in chapel and chanting it on the way to sleeping quarters.
It was set down in its current form at the Abbey of Cluny in the 12th century, where it was used as a processional hymn on Marian feasts. The Cistercians chanted the Salve Regina daily from 1218.
In the 18th century, the Salve Regina served as the outline for the classic Roman Catholic Mariology book The Glories of Mary by S. Alphonsus Liguori. In the first part of the book Alphonsus, a Doctor of the Church, discusses the Salve Regina and explains how God gave Mary to mankind as the “Gate of Heaven”.
It was added to the series of prayers said at the end of Low Mass by Pope Leo XIII.
The Salve Regina is traditionally sung at the end of a priest’s funeral Mass by the decedent’s fellow priests in attendance.
