Adeste Fideles

Here's the third in the Roman Miscellany carol series. Adeste Fideles was not written by St Bonaventure, as some people think, but by an eighteenth century English recusant, John Francis Wade. He spent most of his life in exile overseas because of his Jacobite sympathies and was strongly associated with the English College, Douai. The tune was probably based on the Air Anglois in Favart's comic opera Acajou.

The popular carol was first used by the English Catholic Community and it gained the name the 'Portuguese Hymn' simply because it could be heard at the Portuguese Embassy Chapel in London (the extra-territorial embassy chapels were open centres of Catholicism in Protestant London during 'penal times', often with impressive musical and liturgical resources).

In 1841, nearly a century after its composition, the carol was translated by Frederick Oakeley. He became a Catholic in 1845 and, after Ordination, founded the Mission of St John's, Islington - just down the road from my current parish.