Whilst perusing the Christmas section of the Liber Hymnarius, with a view towards translating its ancient hymns, I discovered the beautiful A solis ortus cardine. It is an acrostic hymn, so that each verse begins with a successive letter of the alphabet: a, b, c.
Now this may seem like a frivolous organizing principle for a venerable hymn, but the practice has roots in an even more venerable hymn form: the Psalm. Psalms 119 and 145, for example, are acrostic Psalms.
Turns out that the hymn, which ends at I for Iesu, is actually only the first part of the hymn that continues on H for Herod, and is the Epiphany hymn Hostis Herdodes Impie.
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