Regnantem sempiterna per saecula susceptura – Dictionary of Hymnology

The Latin hymn "Regnantem sempiterna per saecula susceptura" is an early medieval liturgical sequence appointed for the season of Advent. Within the historic English rites, it served specifically as the proper sequence for the Second Sunday in Advent, steering congregational focus toward Christ's eternal sovereignty and his impending advent in judgment and grace.

Manuscript and Missal History

The sequence boasts an exceptionally rich manuscript tradition in England and France, establishing its presence in the Western liturgy before the turn of the first millennium:

Early Anglo-Saxon Sources: The earliest text is preserved in a late tenth or early eleventh-century manuscript in the Bodleian Library (Bodl. 775, f. 168), executed around the year 1000. It also appears in an eleventh-century Winchester liturgical volume housed at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (MS. 473), and a slightly later eleventh-century manuscript dating to around 1070 (Douce, 222, f. 82 b). A twelfth-century English Gradual in the British Museum (Reg. 2 B. iv. f. 59 b) further documents its early transmission.
Continental and Regional Missals: The hymn was widely transcribed across the fourteenth century. It is found in French Missals representing the regional uses of Paris and Sens, both preserved in the British Museum. In England, it forms an integral part of the primary regional uses, appearing in a Sarum Missal (circa 1370), a Hereford Missal (circa 1370), and a York Missal (circa 1390)—all now held in the Bodleian Library. It is likewise preserved in the Scottish St. Andrews Missal.

The printed Latin text was edited and made available to nineteenth-century hymnologists through Dr. John Mason Neale's Sequentiae ex Missalibus (1852, page 5). This text was subsequently reprinted by Hermann Adalbert Daniel in his Thesaurus Hymnologicus (Volume V, page 172) and by Anselm Schubiger in his Kethrein (Number 2).

English Translations

The medieval sequence was rendered into English verse through several distinct translations during the mid-nineteenth-century liturgical revival:

"Christ that ever reigneth" was translated by Edward Arthur Dayman specifically for The Hymnary and published within that collection in 1872.

"Him Who ruleth creation" is a translation executed by John David Chambers and included in his Lauda Syon (1866).

"To welcome Him Who shall for ever reign" was translated by John William Hewett and contributed to Orby Shipley's devotional anthology, Lyra Messianica (1864).

"Reception giving to the King eternal" was translated by Charles Buchanan Pearson for his prose and verse rendering of the Sarum Missal in English (1868). Pearson subsequently published a second, metrical translation, "Let the choir devoutly bring," within his specialized volume, Sequences from the Sarum Missal (1871).