Pie Jesu, (×4)
Qui tollis peccata mundi,
Dona eis requiem. (×2)
Agnus Dei, (×4)
Qui tollis peccata mundi,
Dona eis requiem, (×2)
Sempiternam (×2)
Requiem.
Pious Jesus,
Who takes away the sins of the world,
Give them rest.
Lamb of God,
Who takes away the sins of the world,
Give them rest,
Everlasting
Rest.
Notes and references
^Pie is the vocative of the word pius ("pious", "dutiful to one's parent or God").[4] "Jesu" (Iesu in Latin) is the vocative of Jesus/Iesus.[5]Requiem is the accusative of requies ("rest"), sometimes mistranslated as "peace", although that would be pacem, as in Dona nobis pacem ("Give us peace").
References
^Steinberg, Michael. "Gabriel Fauré: Requiem, Op. 48." Choral Masterworks: A Listener's Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 131–137.
^White, William. Notes and Queries. Oxford University Press, 1904, p. 490. "In Greek, which did not possess the sound sh, but substituted s, and rejected the Semitic evanescent gutturals, Yēshū(ā) became Yēsū' (Ἰησοῦ), in the nominative case Yēsū'∙s (Ἰησοῦς). In Latin these were written in Roman letters Iesu, nominative Iesu∙s. In Old French this became in the nominative case Jésus; in the regimen or oblique case Jésu. Middle English adopted the stem-form Jesu, the regular form of the name down to the time of the Renascence. It then became the fashion to restore the Latin ∙s of the nominative case, Jesu∙s, and to use the nominative form also for the objective and oblique cases, just as we do in Charle∙s, Jame∙s, Juliu∙s, and Thoma∙s. Very generally, however, the vocative remained Jesu, as in Latin and in Middle English, and this is still usual in hymns."
