Our glorious Christmas and Easter hymns are too wonderful to sing just once a year! We should find great joy in celebrating these two events of redemptive history many times during the year. We have more hymns for those two seasons than could possibly all be sung during the short time they are observed on our calendars. Since the biblical events associated with Christmas and Easter are so very special, it’s not surprising to realize how many hymns have been written for those two events, some of which stretch back hundreds of years.
One of those whose origins go back a thousand years (!) is the Easter hymn, “Sing Choirs of New Jerusalem.” We sing a more recent 19th century translation of the Latin text that comes from Bishop Fulbert of Chartres. He was born in Italy about 960 and died in Chartres, France in 1028, having served as Bishop there from 1006 until his death. Having studied at Rheims, he was a pupil of Gerbert of Aurillac, who would later become Pope Sylvester II. Fulbert also taught and became head of the Cathedral school at Chartres. He lectured on many subjects, including medicine, and was able to attract many well-known scholars to the schools, thus making the Chartres institution one of the best schools of its time.