Parce Domine

[2] Parce, Domine was copied and adapted into local liturgies, and served as a model for the Irish prayer of Saint Mugint, which was allegedly composed in the 6th century by Finnian of Movilla as imitation of the Roman antiphon.

This canticle is composed of seven verses which each include the evocation of a disorder of the world, of France, of society or of the troubles caused by infidel Christians; it was a sort of catharsis where all the sins were brought to light.

[11] Along O, Roma nobilis, it was chosen as one of the hymns of the 1950 Jubilee decreed by Pope Pius XII, and was meant to insist on the penitential dimension of this Holy year after the Second World War.

[16] Claire Delbos wrote and published the last work of her life in 1952 — that is, contemporaneous with Messiaen's "Hands of the Abyss" — a piece for organ solo entitled Parce, Domine for the season of Lent.

[17] As a locus terribilis of Ash Wednesday, Parce Domine entered popular piety as a desperate cry to God in a plea for conversion.