When it is said
In the Old Spanish Church the priest prayed these words at a Mass on 1 January, the first day of the year.
Anyone may pray them at the turn of the year, alone or with family, on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day.
Where it comes from
No author known
Where it comes from
The prayer comes from the old Latin services of the Church in Spain, known as the Mozarabic rite. They took shape before the Moors came, while East and West were still one Church. Rome’s services replaced them towards the end of the 11th century. Their book of prayers for the Mass survives in a single copy at Toledo, written late in the 900s.
Marius Férotin, Le Liber mozarabicus sacramentorum (1912), introduction and columns 83 to 86; Usuarium, “Sacramentarium 6129” (Toledo, manuscript 35.3); Wikipedia, “Mozarabic Rite”
How old is it?
The Benedictine monk Marius Férotin printed the Old Spanish Mass book in 1912. He wrote that the Church in Spain once fasted on 1 January, probably as a protest against the pagan New Year revels. The Mass this prayer comes from was held in the evening, and only after it could the people eat. He dated that Mass to before the 600s, the century when 1 January became the feast of Christ’s circumcision.
Marius Férotin, Le Liber mozarabicus sacramentorum (1912), note to prayer 182; Marius Férotin, Le Liber Ordinum (1904), page 450
One prayer from three
In his book Ancient Collects, the Oxford scholar William Bright joined three prayers of one Mass into this English prayer. The first lines come from the priest’s call to the people to pray, and the next from the prayer that follows it. The last come from the long prayer of thanks before the Holy, Holy, Holy. The plain wording keeps his choice of lines and words, but is made from the Latin.
William Bright, Ancient Collects, third edition (1864), page 164; Marius Férotin, Le Liber mozarabicus sacramentorum (1912), prayers 182, 183 and 186
What the words mean
Head of every beginning
In the Latin, Christ is “caput omnis principatus”. The words come from Colossians 2:10, where He is the head over every rule and power. The Latin word for rule, principatus, can also mean a beginning, and Bright’s English takes it that way: “the Head of every beginning”. For a prayer made for the start of a year, the plain wording keeps both meanings.
The Scripture in it
But You remain the same, and Your years will never end.
And you have been made complete in Christ, Who is the head over every ruler and authority.
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Latin
… ut idem Christus, qui est caput omnis principatus ac Dominus,
det nobis ita uenientis anni spatia fideli mente transigere,
qualiter oculis pietatis eius mereamur in omnibus complacere.
Deus, qui idem ipse es, cuiusque anni non deficient,
prebe nobis ita hunc annum cum placita tibi seruitutis deuotione transigere …
Terram quoque fructibus reple;
animas corporaque facito morbis delictisque carere;
scandala remoue …
et omnes in commune nociuorum casuum euentus a nostris finibus procul extrude.
Per Dominum nostrum Ihesum Christum Filium tuum …