Come holy ghost, our souls inspire  

The Latin original, Veni creator spiritus, was written probably by Hrabanus Maurus (ca. 783-856).  Born in Mainz, Rabanus was educated in the Benedictine Abbey at Fulda, where he later became a monk.   He was ordained a deacon in 801 and then sent to Marmoutier Abbey in Tours, where the Abbot was the English scholar Alcuin,  the leading intellectual of Carolingian Europe.  It was Alcuin who gave Rabanus the surname Maurus, after the disciple of St Benedict. When he returned to Fulda Rabanus was made director of the monastic school, which, under his leadership, became a renowned centre of learning.  Rabanus was ordained to the priesthood in 814 and became Abbot of Fulda in 822 and then Archbishop of Mainz in 847.  In addition to a large body of biblical commentary, sermons, doctrinal and administrative works and an etymologically-based encyclopedia, Rabanus wrote poems and hymns.  He died at Winkel on the Rhine in 856.  The Veni Creator is commonly sung on the feast of Pentecost, and, from quite early, at the beginning of Papal Conclaves when the procession of Cardinals reaches the Sistine Chapel.

 

We sing the English translation, or, really, paraphrase, by John Cosin (1594-1672), who was born in Norwich and educated at the King’s School there and then at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.  After he was ordained Cosin served in several positions before becoming Archdeacon of Yorkshire, East Riding.   Throughout his career he was subject to attacks fr being "too Romish."  In 1635 he was appointed Master of Peterhouse College in Cambridge, and then Vice-Chancellor of the university and Dean of Peterborough Cathedral.  Cosin was always closely attached to the King and his family, and at the beginning of the Commonwealth he was exiled to France along with them.  At the Restoration he resumed the Mastership of Peterhouse until the autumn of 1660, when he was made Bishop of Durham.  Cosin was largely responsible for the 1662 revision of the Book of Common Prayer.  Much earlier, in 1627, he had written A Collection of Private Devotions, said to have been requested by Charles I, urged by his French consort, Henrietta Maria [thus reported by John Evelyn in 1651, recalling an earlier conversation with Cosin].  That volume included his paraphrase of Veni creator.  Cosin’s paraphrase was sung at the coronation of Charles II and subsequently at all British coronations.

 

The tune is a Gregorian chant first known in an 11th century manuscript from Kempten Abbey in Swabia, though the chant may be older than the text.  Modern hymnals use a version in the Vesperae Romanum published in Mechlin, Belgium, in 1848.