Ad celebres, Rex coelice, laudes cuncta

The Latin liturgical prose "Ad celebres, Rex coelice, laudes cuncta" is an ancient Notkerian sequence composed for the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels. The text stands as a highly significant monument of medieval hymnody, with its transmission history extensively documented across both continental and British manuscript traditions.

The earliest surviving text of the sequence is preserved within a manuscript of proses and sequences in the Bodleian Library (MS. Bodley 775). This copy was written in England during the reign of King Æthelred the Unready, specifically between the years 994 and 1017, establishing the definitive foundational structure of the text.

The sequence was subsequently integrated into the regional English liturgies of the medieval Church, serving as a standard proper sequence for Saint Michael's Day within the Sarum, York, and Hereford Missals. The variations and textual evolution of the York use were later compiled and published by the Surtees Society in their 1872 reprint of the York Missal.

On the European continent, several critical editions trace the text through later medieval copies. Hymnologist Hermann Adalbert Daniel indexed the opening lines from eleventh and twelfth-century manuscripts originally belonging to the Monastery of Saint Emmeram at Ratisbon (Regensburg), which were later transferred to the state collections in Munich.

Fuller text-critical apparatuses, including extensive variant readings from eleventh-century Stuttgart and Munich manuscripts, were published in the nineteenth century by Franz Joseph Mone in his Lateinische Hymnen des Mittelalters, by Joseph Kehrein, and from a twelfth-century manuscript preserved in the British Museum (Add. 11669, f. 53).

Translations in Common Use

The Latin sequence was rendered into English during the high period of the Victorian liturgical revival through the work of the Reverend Charles Buchanan Pearson:

Pearson's initial English translation, "To celebrate Thy praise, O King of heaven," was published on page 447 of The Sarum Missal in English in 1868. Following a series of authorial revisions, Pearson reissued the translation in 1871 within his specialized volume, Sequences from the Sarum Missal, under the modified opening line, "To give Thee glory, Heavenly King."

A popular altered version of this text achieved broader denominational use. Published as entry Number 374 in the influential Anglican collection The Hymnary (1872), this text was structured as a cento compiled from Pearson’s revised translation. The specific editorial alterations were introduced by the compilers of the hymnal with the explicit permission of the translator.