Apparuit benignitas

A fifteenth-century Latin Christmas poem on the Incarnation preserved in a manuscript at Karlsruhe and documented by Franz Joseph Mone. While the complete poem of ninety-two lines was not translated in its entirety, a famous cento beginning at line 5 ("O amor quam exstaticus") was translated into English by the Reverend Benjamin Webb for The Hymnal Noted in 1854.

Webb's translation, supplemented by an added doxology, begins with the familiar line "O Love, how deep, how broad, how high!" Revised versions of this translation appeared widely across late nineteenth-century collections, including Hymns Ancient and Modern (1861), The Salisbury Hymn-Book (1857), The People's Hymnal (1867), and Thring's Collection (1882).