"Aeterna lux, Divinitas!" is an anonymous Latin hymn for Trinity Sunday. Hymnologists consider it to be of relatively late origin.
The nine-stanza text in four-line stanzas appeared in the Corolla Hymnorum published at Cologne in 1806 (p. 41). It was subsequently printed by Hermann Adalbert Daniel in his Thesaurus Hymnologicus (1843, Vol. II, p. 369), though Daniel provided no indication of the source manuscript or publication from which he obtained the text.
The hymn entered English usage through two primary nineteenth-century translations:
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"O Thou immortal Light divine": Translated by Edward Caswall, first published in his Masque of Mary, and Other Poems (1858, p. 277) and later included in his Hymns and Poems (1873, p. 129). An abbreviated form of this translation appeared in several Roman Catholic hymnals for schools and missions. An altered adaptation beginning "O Light Eternal, God most High" was included in The Hymnary (1872, No. 338).
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"Eternal Light, Divinity": Translated by Richard Frederick Littledale specifically for The People's Hymnal (1867, No. 163), where it was published under the initial "L."
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