The hymn is sung at the liturgy on the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. The Stabat Mater has been set to music by many Western composers.
Date
The Stabat Mater has often been ascribed to Jacopone da Todi (ca. 1230–1306), but this has been strongly challenged by the discovery of the earliest notated copy of the Stabat Mater in a 13th-century gradual belonging to the Dominican nuns in Bologna (Museo Civico Medievale MS 518, fo. 200v-04r).[5]
The Stabat Mater was well known by the end of the 14th century and Georgius Stella wrote of its use in 1388, while other historians note its use later in the same century. In Provence, about 1399, it was used during the nine days' processions.[6]
The Latin text below is from an 1853 Roman Breviary and is one of multiple extant versions of the poem.[8] The first English translation by Edward Caswall is not literal but preserves the trochaic tetrameter rhyme scheme and sense of the original text. The second English version is a more formal equivalence translation.
Most settings are in Latin. Karol Szymanowski's setting is in Polish, although it may also be sung in Latin. George Oldroyd's setting is in Latin with an English translation for Anglican and Episcopalian use.
^Sabatier, Paul Life of St. Francis Assisi Charles Scribner Press, NY, 1919, page 286
^The seven great hymns of the Mediaeval Church by Charles Cooper Nott 1868 ASIN: B003KCW2LA page 96
^p. 574, Alighieri, Durling, Martinez (2003) Dante, Robert M., Ronald L. Oxford The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Purgatorio Volume 2 of The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri Oxford University Press. "The Stabat Mater by the Franciscan Jacopone da Todi."
^Stabat Mater, Volume 68 by Girolamo Abos, Joseph Vella Bondin 2003 ISBN0-89579-531-0 page xviii [1]
^Cesarino Ruini, "Un antico versione dello Stabat Mater in un graduale delle Domenicane bolognesi," Deo è lo scrivano ch’el canto à ensegnato: Segni e simboli nella musica al tempo di Iacopone, Atti del Convegno internazionale, Collazzone, 7-8 luglio 2006, ed. Ernesto Sergio Mainoldi and Stefania Vitale, Philomusica On-line, 9, no. 3 (2010).
^ One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Stabat Mater". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
^Caswall, Edward (1849). Lyra Catholica. London: James Burns. pp. 138–142.
^Don Giovanni Bosco (1935). Il giovane provveduto per la pratica dei suoi doveri religiosi [The young man provided for the practice of his religious duties] (in Italian). Turin: International Publishing Company, Tipografia S.E.I. (M. E. 9736), c.so Regina Margherita, n. 176. pp. 341–342. new edition, enriched with prayers according to the catechism, Masses and antiphons in Gregorian chant, and authorized by Don Paolo Albera, Rector Major of the Pious Salesian Society
