The first stanza illustrates the metric and rhymic scheme: The hymn is of uncertain date and unknown authorship, Mone (Lateinische Hymnen des Mittelalters, III, 143, no.
The Roman Breviary text is a revision, in the interest of Classical prosody, of an older form (given by Daniel, I, 248).
Daniel (IV, 139) gives the Roman Breviary text, but mistakenly includes the uncorrected line "Parcendo confessoribus".
He places after the hymn an elaboration of it in thirty-two lines, found written on leaves added to a Nuremberg book and intended to accommodate the hymn to Protestant doctrine.
Two of the added strophes may be quoted here to illustrate the possible reason (but also a misconception of doctrine in the apparent assumption of the lines) for the modification of the original hymn: The entry comments: "To the list of translations given in JULIAN, Dictionary of Hymnology, 958, should be added the versions of BAGSHAWE, Breviary Hymns and Missal Sequences (London, 1900), 166, and DONAHOE, Early Christian Hymns (New York, 1908), 50.