Jesu Dulcis Memoria, a poem ranging from forty-two to fifty-three stanzas (in various manuscripts), from which the Roman Breviary takes twelve stanzas to form the three hymns of the Office of the Holy Name: “Jesu dulcis memoria” (Vespers), “Jesu rex admirabilis” (Matins), “Jesu decus angelicum” (Lauds). A feature of the long poem is the single rhymic scheme for a stanza, e.g.:
Jesu dulcis memoria,
Dans vera cordis gaudia,
Sed super mel et omnia
Ejus dulcis praesentia.
The ascription of authorship to St. Bernard is general and, thinks Mearns (Dict. of Hymnology, 1892), probable—a view which he is still inclined to in the second edition of the “Dictionary” (1907). Gueranger thought that certain manuscripts “prove beyond a doubt” that it was composed in the fourteenth century by a Benedictine abbess—a view contradicted by the MSS. cited by Mearns, of about 1200. Blume (see Hymnody and Hymnology) denies its authorship by St. Bernard, and Dom Pothier (Revue benedictine, X, 147) found it in a MS. of the eleventh century, ascribed to a Benedictine abbess (St. Bernard was born in 1090).
H. T. HENRY