Hail, Queen! Ave Regina Caelorum

Hail, Queen of Heaven

Ave Regina Caelorum means “Hail, Queen of Heaven.” These are the opening words of one many traditional prayers addressed to Mary. Marian prayers are sometimes controversial among non-Catholic Christians. It’s not my purpose to explore that controversy in depth in this discussion. I’ll just quickly point out prayers such as the Ave Regina Caelorum don’t aim at putting a human woman in the place of God. They are asking a fellow human being to pray to God for us. That will be clear below.

Ave Regina Caelorum is one of the four “Marian Antiphons” that Catholics traditionally sing or recite at the end of Compline. Compline is Night Prayer, the final prayer of the day (as it’s name suggests) in the Liturgy of the Hours. Tradition associates particular antiphons with certain parts of the liturgical calendar. This antiphon starts February 3rd, the day after the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. That celebration, on February 2nd, is the traditional end of the Christmas Season. Ave Regina Caelorum is the closing of the daily liturgy until Wednesday of Holy Week.

We don’t know who wrote the Ave Regina Caelorum.  We do know that it’s not terribly old, as traditional prayers go. The earliest manuscript in which it appears dates from the 12th century. It probably isn’t much older than that. Rhyming verse, after all, was rare before the mid-to-late Middle Ages.

The Gate of Heaven

The titles and images, in the other hand, are all much older.  “Queen of Heaven” goes back at least to Ephraim the Syrian in the 4th Century. The concept itself goes back even further, to at least the reign of King David. In the Davidic Kingdom, the mother of the king, the queen mother, was The Queen. And so Bathsheba, for example, did not enjoy queenly honors as David’s wife.  When her son by David, Solomon, was king however, she sat at the right hand of his throne. Jesus, King of Heaven, naturally honors his own human mother in the same way.

The image of the gate also has Old Testament antecedents:

Then he brought me back to the outer gate of the sanctuary, which faces east; and it was shut.  And he said to me, “This gate shall remain shut; it shall not be opened, and no one shall enter by it; for the Lord, the God of Israel, has entered by it; therefore it shall remain shut.  Only the prince may sit in it to eat bread before the Lord; he shall enter by way of the vestibule of the gate, and shall go out by the same way.” (Ezekial 44:1-3)

Just a generation or two later, St. Ambrose and St. Augustine identified Mary with this gate. After all, the Lord had quite literally entered through her.

The Root of Jesse

Likewise, the image of the Root of Jesse. This one comes from the the Book of Isaiah:

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,
    and a branch shall grow out of his roots. (Isaiah 11:1)

Jesse was King David’s father. Luke’s geneology (Luke 3:23-38) places Mary in the line of King David. Her identification as Root of Jesse was obvious to early Christians. The descendant of Jesse, Jesus, will spring from her.  And, as Jesus is the Light of the World (John 8:12), Mary is therefore Ex qua mundo lux est orta. That is, “From whom the Light of the World has risen.”

Hail, Queen!

The language of the prayer points to both her queenly station in Heaven, and her role as the human mother of Jesus. Notice we say AVE when addressing Mary under her heavenly titles. This is the formal greeting we use when meeting a superior. For example, Ave, Caesar “Hail, Caesar!”  We use the less formal SALVE when we acknowledge her earthly, maternal role as “root” and “gate.” This word is used for greeting our familiars. The English translation below tries to replicate this by using “Hail” to translate Ave. Where the Latin instead uses Salve our English translation uses “thou,” which used to be the familiar form of “you.”

Since we’re taking a close look at language, it’s worth considering the English word “pray.” The English word comes from the Latin precari, which means to “ask earnestly, beg, entreat.” “Pray” originally means simply “ask.” You will sometimes still see it used in that sense in English. Think of Sherlock Holmes saying “Pray tell.” In other words, “I’m asking you to tell me.” When we direct prayers to saints, we are asking them to bring our petition to God. Scripture tells us that “The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects” (James 5:16).

And given that, who could be more righteous than the Blessed Mother of Jesus Himself? And if asking Bathsheba’s help was a sure way to King Solomon’s heart, won’t Jesus bestow at least as much favor on his own mother?

To Approach the King

That fact also explains the structure of the prayer. Marian prayers are always prayers of petition in which we ask Mary to pray to her Divine Son on our behalf. There is a universal structure to prayers of this sort. They were the same among pagans, Hebrews, and Christians, whether addressed to living persons, saints in heaven, pagan “gods” or God himself. We first remind our addressee why it is appropriate that we go to them. It might be that they have some particular authority. It may be that they owe us a debt, or that we have been particularly loyal to them. When Mordecai calls on Esther to save her people, he reminds her:

Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this? (Esther 4:13-14)

Unlike Esther, Mary is not afraid to approach her King. Nonetheless, in our greeting, we invoke first her authority: she’s the Queen of Heaven and the Mistress of Angels.

Glory at the End

But she’s also the King’s Mother, and therefore close to his heart. And so, next,we invoke her personal relationship with the One whose favor we are ultimately seeking. As Root and Gate, she is the human mother through whom Christ came into our world. In the next stanza we remind her of the favor God has bestowed on her (Gaude . . . decora). Finally, in the last line, we’re ready to ask the favor we’re seeking: et pro nobis Christum exora. “And pray to Christ for us.”

Now, you might be wondering: what does this hymn have to do with the somber season of Lent? Notice the that it looks ahead, first, to Mary’s final destination in Heaven. Next it looks back to her role in the incarnation. The trials of Lent, and by extension of our earthly life, are the necessary road between the two. What better to contemplate in our last waking moments of the day in this penitential season than the Glory at the end of the journey?

Featured image top of page: The Coronation of the Virgin by Dieric Bouts, c. 1450.

Victoria’s Ave Regina Caelorum

Aside from the traditional chant tones, numerous composers have set the Ave Regina Caelorum to music. In the clip below, the Ensemble Plus Ultra sings Tomás Luis de Victoria’s version.

Latin	English
Ave, Regina caelorum, Ave, Domina Angelorum: Salve, radix, salve, porta Ex qua mundo lux est orta: Gaude, Virgo gloriosa, Super omnes speciosa, Vale, o valde decora, Et pro nobis Christum exora.	Hail, O Queen of Heaven. Hail, O Lady of Angels Hail! thou root, hail! thou gate From whom unto the world a light has arisen: Rejoice, O glorious Virgin, Lovely beyond all others, Farewell, most beautiful maiden, And pray for us to Christ.