When it is said
Pray it at night, as you lie down or when sleep will not come.
Its first two verses, the lines St Augustine remembered, are short enough to say in the dark.
Where it comes from
Author known
The hymn Augustine remembered
St Augustine’s mother, Monica, died at Ostia. He shed no tears at her burial, and a bath did nothing for his grief. Then he slept and woke to find it much eased. Lying alone in bed, he remembered the first two verses of this hymn by St Ambrose, the bishop of Milan. Little by little, memories of his mother came back to him until at last he let the tears he had held back flow. He wrote that his heart rested in them.
Hymns against sorrow
While Augustine was in Milan, the empress Justina turned on Ambrose for the sake of the Arian heresy. His people kept guard in the church, ready to die with their bishop. Monica was among them and spent those long watches in prayer. At that time the church at Milan began to sing hymns and psalms in the Eastern way to keep the people from wasting away in sorrow.
Certainly his
Of the many hymns credited to Ambrose, this is one of only four that are certainly his, because Augustine quotes it as his. It is already in a manuscript of about AD 700. For centuries afterwards the Western Church sang it at evening prayer on Saturdays.
John Julian, A Dictionary of Hymnology (1907), on archive.org; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, volume 10, on the Christian Classics Ethereal Library
What the words mean
Five of its eight verses
This page prints the verses of the hymn about night and sleep, with its closing prayer to the Trinity. The three it leaves out give thanks for the day that is over, praise God with heart and voice, and ask God not to let the mind sleep but to let sin sleep instead. A reader who cannot sleep could take that last verse the wrong way.
Migne, Patrologia Latina, volume 16 (1845), on Latin Wikisource
The Scripture in it
… even the darkness is not dark to You, but the night shines like the day, for darkness is as light to You.
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Latin
Deus creator omnium,
Polique rector, vestiens
Diem decoro lumine,
Noctem soporis gratia.
Artus solutos ut quies
Reddat laboris usui,
Mentesque fessas allevet,
Luctusque solvat anxios.
Ut cum profunda clauserit
Diem caligo noctium,
Fides tenebras nesciat,
Et nox fide reluceat.
Exuta sensu lubrico,
Te cordis alta somnient;
Nec hostis invidi dolo
Pavor quietos suscitet.
Christum rogemus et Patrem,
Christi Patrisque Spiritum,
Unum potens per omnia
Fove precantes Trinitas.
From Migne, Patrologia Latina, volume 16 (1845), on Latin Wikisource.