History
The hymn begins with the words that the angels sang when the birth of Christ was announced to shepherds in Luke 2:14. Other verses were added very early, forming a doxology, which in the 4th century became part of morning prayers, and is still recited in the Byzantine Rite Orthros service.
The Latin translation is traditionally attributed to Saint Hilary of Poitiers (c. 300–368), who may have learned it while in the East (359–360). The Vulgate Latin translation of the Bible was commissioned only in 382. The Latin hymn thus uses the word excelsis to translate the Greek word ὑψίστοις (the highest) in Luke 2:14, not the word altissimis, which Saint Jerome preferred for his translation.
Read more about this topic: Gloria In Excelsis Deo
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility—I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)