O Come Let Us Adore Him

Translator: Frederick Oakeley

Frederic Oakeley graduated M.A. at Oxford, and took Orders in the Church of England. He became Prebendary of Lichfield Cathedral, preacher at Whitehall, and incumbent of Margaret Chapel, London. He was active in the "Oxford Movement," and in 1845, called attention to his views for the purpose of seeing if he could continue to hold an Oxford degree, with so great a change in his opinions. The question was tried, and he was perpetually suspended unless he retracted. He then resigned his positions in the Church of England, and entered the Church of Rome, in which he became a Priest, and Canon of the diocese of Westminster. His publications are numerous, and some of them have considerable value. --Annotations of the Hymnal, Charles Hutchi… Go to person page >

Author: John Francis Wade

John Francis Wade (b. England, c. 1711; d. Douay, France, 1786) is now generally recognized as both author and composer of the hymn "Adeste fideles," originally written in Latin in four stanzas. The earliest manuscript signed by Wade is dated about 1743. By the early nineteenth century, however, four additional stanzas had been added by other writers. A Roman Catholic, Wade apparently moved to France because of discrimination against Roman Catholics in eighteenth-century England—especially so after the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. He taught music at an English college in Douay and hand copied and sold chant music for use in the chapels of wealthy families. Wade's copied manuscripts were published as Cantus Diversi pro Dominicis et Festis p… Go to person page >