Vexilla regis prodeunt
[1] The hymn was first sung for the procession (on November 19, AD 569) of a relic of the True Cross, that was sent by Byzantine Emperor Justin II from the East at the request of St. Radegunda, and was carried in great pomp from Tours to her monastery of Saint-Croix at Poitiers.
Its original processional use is commemorated in the Roman Missal on Good Friday, when the Blessed Sacrament is carried in procession from the Repository to the High Altar.
In the tenth century, stanzas 7 and 8 were gradually replaced by new ones (O crux ave, spes unica, and the doxology, Te summa Deus trinitas), although they were still retained in some places.
[4][5] Original text (strophes 1, 6 & 7) Vexilla regis prodeunt: Fulget crucis mysterium Quo carne carnis conditor, Suspensus est patibulo.
[7] Revised text (strophes 1, 6 & 7) Vexilla Regis prodeunt: Fulget Crucis mysterium, Qua vita mortem pertulit, Et morte vitam protulit.
Blest Trinity, salvation's spring, May every soul Thy praises sing; To those Thou grantest conquest By the holy Cross, rewards apply.
[citation needed] Johann Wilhelm Kayser dissents from both, and shows that the vexillum is the cross which (instead of the eagle) surmounted, under Constantine, the old Roman cavalry standard.
Gounod took a very plain melody based on the chant as the subject of his "March to Calvary" in the oratorio "La rédemption" (1882), in which the chorus sings the text at first very slowly and then, after an interval, fortissimo.
[citation needed] Franz Liszt wrote a piece for solo piano, Vexilla regis prodeunt, S185, and uses the hymn at the beginning and end of Via crucis (The 14 stations of the Cross), S53.
[citation needed] Dante makes an early literary allusion in Inferno, where Virgil introduces Lucifer with the Latin phrase Vexilla regis prodeunt inferni.
Vexilla regis is mentioned in Stephen's discussion of his aesthetic theory in chapter V of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.
[citation needed] The poet-artist David Jones entitled a 1947 painting "Vexilla Regis", and mentions the hymn in his long poem The Anathemata: fragments of an attempted writing, and also in his book of essays "Epoch and Artist.
