"Dies Irae" (Day of Wrath) is a thirteenth century Latin hymn thought to be written by Thomas of Celano (1200 – c. 1265). It is a medieval Latin poem characterized by its accentual stress and its rhymed lines. The metre is trochaic. The poem describes the day of judgment, the last trumpet summoning souls before the throne of God, where the saved will be delivered and the unsaved cast into eternal flames.
The hymn is best known from its use as a sequence in the Roman Catholic Requiem mass (Mass for the Dead or Funeral Mass). An English version is found in various Anglican Communion missals.
Read more about Dies Irae: Use in The Roman Liturgy, Text
Famous quotes containing the word dies:
“From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity through multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education, as it is the moral of religion, philosophy, science, art, politics and economy; but a boy’s will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)