Towards a Trinitarian Rereading of the “Kyrie eleison”: From the Biblical Cry to the Medieval Tropes

English version of the article published in Phase 66, no. 381 (2026), digital supplement, pp. III–XIX (Centre de Pastoral Litúrgica, Barcelona). Please cite the original.
Original (Spanish)

Abstract. This article examines the liturgical invocation Kyrie eleison from a hermeneutical-Trinitarian perspective, arguing that the predominantly Christological reception of the invocation in postconciliar Roman liturgy does not exhaust its semantic and theological richness. The study proceeds on three levels: the biblical foundation, the current liturgical norm (analyzing the Latin text of the GIRM and the Spanish and Mexican vernacular Missal translations), and medieval hermeneutics, where Kyrie tropes offer a privileged witness to a Trinitarian interpretation of the ninefold invocation. Central to the argument is the analysis of Kyrieleison as a compact liturgical form capable of its own hermeneutical density without being detached from its biblical matrix.

Keywords: Kyrie eleison, liturgical tropes, medieval liturgical hermeneutics, Roman Rite, Trinitarian theology.

Introduction

There is one precise moment in the Ordo Missae of the Roman Rite that might seem, at first sight, unequivocally Christological: the invocation Kyrie eleison. Liturgical history, however, invites us to be more modest about absolutes.

In the postconciliar Roman Rite, the Kyrie is received predominantly as a Christological acclamation: the people’s cry is addressed to Christ the Lord, as the troped forms of the penitential act proposed by the current Roman Missal attest. This reception is not without foundation (biblical, historical and normative), and the present article does not intend to contradict it. It sets out, rather, to show that it does not exhaust the semantic and theological density of the invocation; that the medieval liturgical tradition knew a consciously Trinitarian hermeneutic of the Kyrie, largely forgotten after the post-Tridentine standardization of the Roman liturgical books; and that this forgetting is an impoverishment that contemporary liturgical reflection should reconsider.

The status quaestionis in recent scholarship is relatively thin. In the Italian-speaking world, Emmanuela Zurli has addressed the biblical and semantic dimension of the invocation, showing that the Gospel eleison does not arise from a penitential context but from a plea for maternal love addressed to the Kyrios.1 In the same area, G. Baroffio has noted, in a brief but significant remark, that the Carolingian tradition of Kyrie tropes allows the nine invocations to be read as a “Trinitarian acclamation”.2 In the English-speaking world, Jose Belleza has recently examined the Kyrie tropes from a Thomistic perspective, proposing a perichoretic reading of the ninefold structure as a privileged hermeneutical key to the rite.3 In the French-speaking world the question has received no specific monographic treatment, although Niels Krogh Rasmussen had pointed to the risk of an exclusively Christological reading that “conjures away” the Trinitarian openness of the introductory rites.4 In the Spanish-speaking world, we have not been able to identify studies devoted specifically to this problem.

This article seeks to help fill that gap from a liturgical-hermeneutical perspective, with specific attention to the Spanish-speaking world. The method is threefold: the biblical foundation of the invocation; its current normative reception through the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) and the Spanish and Mexican Missals, with particular attention to the compact liturgical form Kyrieleison; and an analysis of the medieval Kyrie tropes as evidence of a consciously articulated Trinitarian hermeneutic, supported by the commentaries of Amalarius of Metz and Honorius of Autun.

1. The Cry of the Poor: The Biblical Foundation of the Kyrie eleison

In the Synoptic Gospels, the formula Kyrie, eleison (or its equivalents) appears in several significant passages (Mt 9:27; 15:22; 17:15; 20:30-31; Mk 10:47-48; Lk 17:13; 18:38-39).5 A careful reading reveals a fact worth stressing: in no case does the cry arise from a context of confession of guilt. The one who cries out is not accusing himself, but expressing a radical need before someone perceived as able to remedy it. Fausti’s commentary on the two blind men of Jericho (Mt 20:29-34) is illuminating: “Their invocation has the force of a cry and the wisdom of the word that expresses what they need.”6

And further on:

Misery calls for mercy, darkness for light, death for life. Our cry always has an attentive ear that listens to it.7

The biblical eleison is thus an ascending cry of the miser, in the fullest and most evangelical sense of the term, who recognizes in the Kyrios the power to transform his situation. It does not arise primarily from a confession of guilt, but from a need that implores presence, help and mercy.8

This distinction is not secondary: it defines the anthropological and theological nature of the invocation, and it will have direct consequences for understanding its place in the introductory rites of the Mass.

2. Kyrios: The Theological Density of the Title

As Jungmann notes, the plea eleison, taken on its own, was already familiar to Christians of the first centuries through pre-Christian tradition, and the Septuagint offers forms such as κύριε ἐλέησόν με (Ps 6:3; 40:5, 11); the precise form of our Kyrie eleison, however, never occurs in the LXX.9 What the LXX does transmit is the semantic weight of the term: Kyrios renders the divine Tetragrammaton and becomes the Greek name of the God of the covenant.10 This inheritance is decisive for reading the Christological confession of Phil 2:9-11, where the Father bestows on the risen Son the name that is above every name.11

This semantic weight is confirmed and intensified in New Testament usage. In Rom 10:9 the confession Iesous Kyrios appears as a fundamental confessional formula: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord.” But the pneumatological context of 1 Cor 12:3 adds a dimension that cannot be ignored: “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” In Paul, confessing the Kyrios is a Trinitarian act: it is addressed to the Son, but it is possible only in the Spirit and before the Father. The title, therefore, is not hermetically restricted to a single determination. In the New Testament it unfolds within a Trinitarian dynamic of confession, gift and invocation: it is the name the Father gives the risen Son (Phil 2:9-11), the name the Spirit makes it possible to confess (1 Cor 12:3), and the name the Book of Revelation also attributes to the eternal and almighty God as such in clearly liturgical settings, the heavenly liturgy of the throne and the song of the living creatures (Rev 4:8; 11:17), thus anticipating the dynamic of every ecclesial invocation of the Kyrios.12 The Trinitarian openness of the Kyrios should not, then, be understood as a mere late medieval elaboration: it already has a foundation in the confessional dynamic of the New Testament witness.

Jungmann observes, however, that in early liturgical use “the meaning of κύριος remains undetermined”, and that the Christological reference was only gradually made precise.13 This constitutive semantic openness of the title does not dissolve the Christological reference (on the contrary, it roots it in the history of salvation), but it prevents that reference from being closed in on itself.

3. From Biblical Cry to Rite: Kyrieleison as a Compact Liturgical Form

The passage from biblical cry to liturgical rite is not a simple transposition.14 The celebrating tradition receives and stabilizes Kyrie eleison as a compact liturgical form, often written and sung as a single word, Kyrieleison, which does not coincide materially with the biblical wording. In the Greek Gospels we find two distinct words, Kyrie and eleison; the Vulgate, for its part, transmits the plea through Latin formulas such as Domine, miserere. In this precise sense, and not as an invention ex nihilo, one may speak of a liturgical neologism: a ritual, graphic and melodic unit born of the Church’s celebrating reception of the biblical plea.

That this fusion raised problems even for musicologists is shown by the very fact that the medieval graphic and musical tradition tends to merge the two words: whether the “e” is the final vowel of Kyrie or the initial vowel of eleison, the boundary between them dissolves in melismatic continuity.15 The question is not merely graphic: the liturgical-musical tradition receives the invocation as a ritual, graphic and melodic unit whose hermeneutical density is not exhausted by the biblical reconstruction of the formula alone.16

The manuscript tradition corroborates this process from within the primary source. The critical apparatus of Hanssens’s edition of the Liber officialis records, for the same term, variants such as kyryeleison (ms. O) and kyrrieleison (mss. HR, corrected to kyrrieleison, ms. C), showing that the fused spelling was already circulating in Carolingian manuscripts.17

Precisely because it is a compact liturgical form (and, in this sense, a liturgical neologism), the Kyrieleison can carry a semantic density that biblical exegesis alone does not exhaust. Its referent is not fixed in advance by the Gospel text: it is the Dominus whom the praying Church recognizes in the celebration, with all the Trinitarian openness that this name has carried since the LXX. The Kyrieleison is the most concentrated form of that word: a compound word, a single ritual breath, an invocation that the medieval tradition would not hesitate to expand, in the tropes, toward full Trinitarian confession.

The liturgical Kyrie eleison thus inherits this semantic density: it is the cry of the poor who recognize the Lord, and the identity of that Lord (Christ, yes, but Christ as Son of the Father who acts through the Spirit) is not exhausted by any of its partial determinations.

4. The Current Reception: The Kyrie in the Postconciliar Roman Rite

To assess the current reception of the Kyrie properly, it should first be placed within the introductory rites as a whole. The Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani describes these parts (entrance, greeting, penitential act, Kyrie, Gloria and collect) as rites that have the character of an opening, an introduction and a preparation. Their purpose is that the faithful, gathered together, should establish communion and dispose themselves to hear the Word of God and to celebrate the Eucharist worthily.18

This framework matters, because it prevents the Kyrie from being reduced to a mere extension of the penitential act. The penitential dimension may be present, especially when the Kyrie is integrated into one of the forms of the penitential act; but the overall logic of the introductory rites is broader: to gather, to introduce, to prepare, to dispose the assembly before the Lord.

No. 52 of the same Institutio defines the Kyrie specifically as the chant by which the faithful acclaim the Lord and implore his mercy: cantus quo fideles Dominum acclamant eique misericordiam implorant.19 The Latin wording does not identify the referent of Dominus restrictively. This openness should not be exaggerated, since current celebrative practice clearly favors a Christological reception; but neither should it be ignored. The Kyrie is acclamation of the Lord and plea for mercy before it is, in certain ritual contexts, a penitential formula explicitly addressed to Christ.

The vernacular translations of the Spanish and Mexican Missals preserve this breadth by rendering Dominus as Señor. The Spanish term, like the Latin, may function in liturgical use with an immediate Christological reference, but it does not of itself close off the biblical and Trinitarian density of the name invoked. At this level the translations do not impoverish the Latin text: they keep its sobriety and its openness.20

It is also significant that the ritual possibility of troping the Kyrie invocations remains provided for by postconciliar liturgical legislation itself.21 Troping is therefore not an abolished practice but a liturgical possibility still in force, even though the tropes the Missal now proposes are exclusively Christological.

It is in the troped form of the penitential act (Form III) that Christologization becomes explicit and programmatic:22

You were sent to heal the contrite of heart: Lord, have mercy.
You came to call sinners: Christ, have mercy.
You are seated at the right hand of the Father to intercede for us: Lord, have mercy.

Even more significant is the contrast Stingl draws between these new tropes and their medieval precedent: the postconciliar tropes “are addressed to Christ alone, whereas the medieval tropes have a Trinitarian orientation”.23 This observation opens the question at the heart of our inquiry.

5. The Kyrie Tropes: Theological Status and Trinitarian Orientation

5.1. The Theological Status of the Tropes: A Forgotten Treasure

The term tropus designates, according to the definition developed by the Corpus Troporum research group in Stockholm, the chants that constitute

an introduction, an interpolated phrase or an addition inserted into a liturgical chant of the Roman Mass or into a chant of the Office.24

As Giuseppe Cremascoli has shown, these texts “constitute a language about God, built for the precise purpose of serving the liturgical hours, when the believer, as a member of the community, comes before the Most High to meet him in faith and through invocation”.25 And further: “Theology surpasses prayer, doctrine surpasses invocation”,26 which amounts to saying that these texts are formulations of the Church’s faith in sung form.

Giulio Cattin states that “the theological content of the tropes is still a hidden treasure”.27 The post-Tridentine standardization of the Roman liturgical books excluded troping from the ordinary form of the rite.28 The interruption of the tradition explains the forgetting, but it does not cancel the theological validity of what was suppressed.

5.2. Amalarius of Metz: A Carolingian Witness to the Trinitarian Reading

Amalarius of Metz offers direct testimony to a Trinitarian reception of the Kyrie when he notes that he had his cantors sing invocations addressed to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit: Kyrie eleison, Domine Pater, miserere; Christe eleison, miserere qui nos redemisti sanguine tuo; Kyrie eleison, Domine, Spiritus Sancte miserere.29 This is one of the oldest and most explicit witnesses to a Trinitarian articulation in the chanting of the Kyrie.

The ternary structure of the nine invocations acquired a settled Trinitarian meaning from the ninth century onward, encouraged especially by the Gallican liturgies during the anti-Arian controversies: nine, as three times three, becomes an intensified figure of the Trinitarian mystery.30

It is significant that Amalarius himself does not impose a single reading. In the same chapter he also offers a simpler interpretation: the Kyrie can be understood as a deprecation that the cantors raise after the antiphon, to implore the Lord’s mercy.31 The same chapter specifies that this mercy must precede every priestly prayer for three reasons: so that serenetur mens sacerdotis, so that he may be dignus loqui Deo, and so that the Lord may look with mercy, and not with wrath, on one who prays with a weary body.32 None of these reasons reduces the invocation to a penitential register: the mercy invoked is the mercy that prepares the encounter with God, not the mercy that absolves a fault. The coexistence of these interpretations within the source itself authorizes a plural hermeneutic of the rite.

Amalarius also bears direct witness to the tension between Gallican and Roman practice: “Nam quod nos Galli in finitis psalmis nocturnalibus solemus cantare orationem dominicam, romana ecclesia praetermittit”.33 Amalarius is explicitly aware of a difference between the two traditions, and this allows his testimony on the Kyrie to be placed on a liturgical frontier between the Gallican inheritance and Roman norms.

5.3. Textual Analysis: The Kyrie Lux et origo (Kyrie I)

The trope most representative of the Trinitarian orientation of the medieval Kyrie is the Lux et origo (Kyrie I of the Graduale Romanum).34 The very name Lux et origo, kept as the title of Kyrie I in the Graduale Romanum since the 1908 edition, attests to the survival of the trope as the melody’s nickname even when the troped text is no longer sung.35 Its structure reproduces the ternary distribution of the nine invocations, assigning each group of three to one of the divine Persons.36

Lux et origo lucis, summe Deus, eleison. – In cuius nutu constant cuncta, semper eleison. – Qui solus potes misereri nobis, eleison.

Redemptor hominum et salus eorum benigne, nobis eleison. – Per crucem redempti a morte perenni te exoramus eleison. – Qui es verbum Patris, sator pietatis, lux veritatis, eleison.

Paraclite, Spiritus Sancte Deus, nobis eleison. – Medicina nostra et misericordia, eleison. – Trinitas et unitas sancta nostri semper eleison.37

In the first set of three, the Father appears through the vocabulary of light, origin and governance of creation: Lux et origo lucis, in cuius nutu constant cuncta. The image of light is not decorative: it echoes the Johannine prologue (Jn 1:4-5) and the Nicene horizon of divine light, in which the Son is confessed as Lumen de Lumine, and it places the plea within the horizon of the Father as source and principle of the whole Trinitarian economy. In the second set, the Son is named from the economy of redemption: Redemptor hominum, per crucem redempti, Verbum Patris, sator pietatis, lux veritatis. The Christological vocabulary deployed here is not arbitrary: it connects the plea for mercy with the concrete saving work of the Son, making each eleison a soteriologically determined invocation. In the third set, the Holy Spirit is invoked directly as Paraclite, Spiritus Sancte Deus, and then as medicina nostra et misericordia: mercy is not mechanically shared out among three addressees, but unfolds a Trinitarian economy of supplication in which each Person is implored according to the proper mode of his saving action. The final invocation, Trinitas et unitas sancta nostri semper eleison, is not a mere concluding sum: it rules out a distributive reading of the trope by affirming that the mercy implored from the three Persons finds its unity in the one Triune God. The final eleison does not close a series: it recapitulates it and grounds it in the unity of the One and Triune God.

5.4. The Kyrie Cunctipotens Genitor Deus (Kyrie IV)

A second example confirms that the Trinitarian orientation of the Lux et origo is not an isolated case: the Cunctipotens Genitor Deus (Kyrie IV),38 cited by Cremascoli as a paradigmatic example:39

Cunctipotens genitor, Deus omnicreator, eleison. – Fons et origo boni, pie, luxque perennis, eleison. – Salvificet pietas tua nos, bone rector, eleison.

Christe, Dei splendor, virtus patrisque sophia, eleison. – Plasmatis humani factor, lapsi reparator, eleison. – Ne tua damnetur, Jesu, factura, benigne, eleison.

Amborum sacrum spiramen, nexus amorque, eleison. – Procedens fomes, vitae fons, purificans vis, eleison. – Purgator culpae, veniae largitor opimae, eleison.

Analysis shows that the troped text does not merely distribute the invocation among the three Persons: it articulates a very precise theological grammar. The Father is invoked as fons et origo boni, lux perennis: the vocabulary of goodness, source and light forms the basis of the plea addressed to him. The Son is Dei splendor, virtus patrisque sophia: the formula echoes Pauline Christology directly (1 Cor 1:24: Christum Dei virtutem et Dei sapientiam) and the wisdom tradition. The Holy Spirit receives the trope’s densest definition: amborum sacrum spiramen, nexus amorque. The formula (the spiramen common to Father and Son, at once nexus and amor) condenses a characteristic core of Augustinian pneumatology: the Holy Spirit as vinculum caritatis between the Father and the Son, according to the Trinitarian theology of the De Trinitate.40 What makes the Cunctipotens remarkable is not only its Trinitarian distribution, but the fact that the troped text takes up the technical vocabulary of Trinitarian theology, patristic and scholastic, and inscribes it within an invocatory form. It is not a treatise describing the three Persons: it is a plea that addresses each of them according to what each is in the economy of salvation.

The number nine is not a neutral datum here. In the medieval arithmological horizon, nine could be read as an intensification of the ternary: three times three. This is not a merely quantitative fact, but a structure capable of receiving a Trinitarian interpretation. Such a conviction belonged to the exegetical-liturgical method that medieval commentators applied both to Scripture and to the rite. William of Auxerre summed up the underlying principle when he wrote: “In trinario creavit Deus omnia, scilicet in numero, pondere et mensura”.41 All creation bears the ternary imprint of its author, and nine, as three times three, expresses an intensification of the ternary structure. The nine Kyrie eleison of the Cunctipotens can thus be read as a numerical inscription of the Trinitarian mystery in liturgical supplication: three multiplied by itself, expressing the fullness of the One and Triune God.

5.5. The Hermeneutical Tradition: From Amalarius to Honorius of Autun

Honorius of Autun, in his Gemma animae, explicitly reads the ninefold structure of the Kyrie within a Trinitarian hermeneutic: the first threefold Kyrie refers to the adoration of the Trinity, the threefold Christe contemplates Christ in relation to the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the last threefold Kyrie again confesses the worship due to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.42 Honorius’s testimony extends, in a more systematic commentary form, the reading already sketched by Amalarius: what the Carolingian author had articulated in the practice of Trinitarian chant distributed among the cantors, Honorius formulates as an explicit interpretation of the ritual structure. Between the two authors one can thus recognize a hermeneutical line, from the ninth to the twelfth century, that understands the nine invocations as a Trinitarian articulation of the Church’s supplication. This exegetical tradition finds its counterpart in the tropes themselves, where Trinitarian confession takes sung form.

Cremascoli documents tropes that express Trinitarian faith with the precision of scholastic theological language. The trope Immense caeli conditor formulates the Trinitarian confession as follows:43

Ergo tres hypostases una in usia confitentes /
Tibi, o Kyrie, psallimus devote concinentes: / Kyrie eleison.

The use of terms such as tres hypostases and una usia shows that these texts could consciously take up categories proper to Trinitarian dogma and insert them into liturgical supplication.

Cremascoli’s conclusion is illuminating:

Only in texts of this kind does theology (or, better, faith) become invocation […] the text vibrates as a sign of encounter between the human heart and the mystery of God.44

6. Conclusion: The Lordship of the One and Triune God

In its biblical origin, the invocation Kyrie eleison is not a penitential act: it is the cry of the miser who recognizes in the Kyrios the power to transform his situation of radical need. This cry carries a semantic density that Christology alone does not exhaust: since the LXX, the title Kyrios has carried with it the Trinitarian openness of the divine name.

When the liturgy condenses this cry into Kyrieleison (a compact liturgical form, a single ritual breath), it does not simply repeat a biblical formula; it takes it up into a new celebrative form. Precisely because it does not merely reproduce a codified biblical usage, the liturgical Kyrieleison can carry a semantic density that no partial exegesis exhausts.

The medieval tradition explored this openness with full hermeneutical freedom. The Kyrie tropes, and in particular the Lux et origo and the Cunctipotens Genitor Deus, constitute a Trinitarian confession articulated in doxological form: the mercy implored is the mercy of the One and Triune God, whose ultimate source is sung in the introit of the solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity: “Benedicta sit sancta Trinitas […] fecit nobiscum misericordiam suam”. This tradition, excluded from the ordinary form of the Roman Rite by the post-Tridentine standardization of the liturgical books, is not an irrelevant archaism: it is a theological treasure that liturgical reflection, and Spanish-speaking pastoral liturgy in particular, can fruitfully rediscover.45

The Kyrieleison that the Church ordinarily sings in the introductory rites of the Eucharist is, in its full semantic and theological scope, an invocation addressed to the Lord in all the Trinitarian density of that name. The medieval tropes, in their language of school and of faith, sang this possibility: that the Kyrie, standing at the threshold of the celebration, can be understood as a profession of faith in the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Claudio Campesato is a priest of the Diocese of Padua. He holds licentiates in Gregorian chant and in liturgy and is currently preparing his doctorate at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute in Rome. Alongside his academic research he writes on liturgy and music for a wider public, taking part in the Rai Italia television series “Cristianità” and contributing to L’Osservatore Romano.

Notes

  1. E. Zurli, “Kyrie eleison. L’invocazione biblica a Dio, che ci ama come una madre”, Rassegna di Teologia 51 (2010) 215-232. ↩
  2. Cf. G. Baroffio, “Continuità e rottura con il mondo antico nella liturgia romana”, in R.B. Finazzi – P. Pontani (eds.), Dal mondo antico all’universo medievale: nuove modulazioni di lingue e di culture, Milan: EDUCatt 2013, 9. ↩
  3. J. Belleza, “On the Troped ‘Kyrie Eleison’: A Thomistic Perspective”, New Blackfriars 105/1 (2024) 31-46. ↩
  4. N.K. Rasmussen, “Quelques réflexions sur la théologie des tropes”, in G. Iversen (ed.), Research on Tropes, Stockholm – Cambridge University Press 1983, 82-86; quoted in G. Cremascoli, “Les tropes: théologie et invocation”, in C. Leonardi – E. Menestò (eds.), La tradizione dei tropi liturgici, Spoleto: CISAM 1990, 30. ↩
  5. For an exegetical analysis of these passages and a demonstration of the non-penitential character of the invocation in the Gospel context, cf. E. Zurli, “Kyrie eleison. L’invocazione biblica a Dio, che ci ama come una madre”, Rassegna di Teologia 51 (2010) 218-222. ↩
  6. S. Fausti, Una comunità legge il Vangelo di Matteo, Bologna: EDB ²2001, 401: «La loro invocazione ha la forza del grido e la sapienza della parola che esprime ciò di cui hanno bisogno». ↩
  7. Ibid., 401: «La miseria chiama misericordia, la tenebra luce, la morte vita. Il nostro grido ha sempre un orecchio attento che lo ascolta». See also Augustinus Hipponensis (Augustine of Hippo), Enarrationes in Psalmos 136,1. ↩
  8. Cf. F. Uriochio, “Misericordia”, in P. Rossano – G. Ravasi – A. Girlanda (eds.), Nuovo Dizionario di Teologia Biblica, Cinisello Balsamo: Paoline 1988, coll. 977-978. ↩
  9. Cf. J.A. Jungmann, Missarum Sollemnia. Origini, liturgia, storia e teologia della Messa romana, Milan [n.d.], 273. ↩
  10. Cf. R. Fabris, “Gesù Cristo”, in G. Barbaglio – S. Dianich (eds.), Nuovo Dizionario di Teologia, Cinisello Balsamo: Paoline 1988, coll. 605-608. ↩
  11. Cf. Uriochio, “Misericordia”, in Nuovo Dizionario di Teologia Biblica, coll. 977-978. ↩
  12. Cf. Fabris, “Gesù Cristo”, in Nuovo Dizionario di Teologia, coll. 596-620. ↩
  13. Jungmann, Missarum Sollemnia, 279: «Il senso del κύριος resta indeterminato, ciò che è assolutamente comprensibile in una semplice acclamazione». ↩
  14. On the introduction of the Kyrie into liturgical use, documented in the East (Antioch–Jerusalem) from the mid-fourth century and in Rome from the second half of the fifth, cf. M. Righetti, Storia liturgica, III: La Messa, Milan: Ancora ³1966, 213. ↩
  15. On the graphic and melismatic fusion of the invocation in the tradition of medieval liturgical chant, cf. J.C. Asensio Palacios, El canto gregoriano. Historia, liturgia, formas, Madrid: Alianza ²2008, 130-138. ↩
  16. On the graphic variants of the term in the manuscript tradition of Amalarius, see Amalarius Metensis (Amalarius of Metz), Liber officialis III, 6, 2, ed. J.M. Hanssens, Amalarii episcopi Opera liturgica omnia, II, Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana 1948 (Studi e Testi 139), 282. ↩
  17. Ibid. ↩
  18. GIRM 46 (all translations from the Latin are the author’s): «Has partes […] habent indolem exordii, introductionis et praeparationis. Finis horum rituum est, ut fideles in unum congregati communionem inducant et ad verbum Dei audiendum eiusdemque Eucharistiae celebrationem rite se praeparent». ↩
  19. GIRM 52: «Cantus quo fideles Dominum acclamant eique misericordiam implorant». ↩
  20. Cf. Misal Romano, third edition, Conferencia Episcopal Española – Conferencia Episcopal Mexicana, no. 7. ↩
  21. «Quando Kyrie cantatur ut pars actus paenitentialis, singulis acclamationibus brevis tropus praeponitur». Ordo cantus Missae, «Praenotanda», editio typica altera, Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana 1987, no. 9. ↩
  22. Misal Romano, third edition, “Form III of the penitential act”. In this English version the text is given in the wording of The Roman Missal (ICEL 2010), third form of the penitential act. ↩
  23. «Die Kyrietropen […] sind nur an Christus gerichtet, während die mittelalterlichen Tropen eine trinitarische Ausrichtung haben». A. Stingl Jr., Tropen zum Kyrie im Graduale Romanum, Eresing: Sankt Ottilien 2011, 6. ↩
  24. “Corpus Troporum”, quoted by Asensio Palacios, El canto gregoriano, 135. For an overview of troping within Gregorian chant (chronology, ninth to eleventh centuries; geographical distribution and centers, including Saint Gall, Reichenau, Benevento and Winchester; performance practice between soloists and choir), cf. D. Hiley, Gregorian Chant, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009, 121-122 and 136-139. ↩
  25. Cremascoli, “Les tropes: théologie et invocation”, 25. ↩
  26. Ibid. ↩
  27. «Il contenuto teologico dei tropi è ancora un tesoro nascosto», in G. Cattin, La monodia nel Medioevo (Storia della Musica 2), Turin: EDT ²1991, 137. ↩
  28. Ibid., 140. ↩
  29. «Kyrie eleison, Domine Pater, miserere; Christe eleison, miserere qui nos redemisti sanguine tuo; Kyrie eleison, Domine, Spiritus Sancte miserere». Amalarius Metensis (Amalarius of Metz), Liber officialis III, 6, 1, 283. Cf. J.A. Jungmann, Missarum Sollemnia, 281. ↩
  30. Jungmann, Missarum Sollemnia, 279. ↩
  31. Amalarius Metensis (Amalarius of Metz), Liber officialis III, 6, 3, 283. ↩
  32. Ibid., III, 6, 4, 284. ↩
  33. Ibid., III, 6, 5, 284. ↩
  34. For the manuscript transmission of the trope, cf. Stingl, Tropen zum Kyrie, 93. Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi 47 (nos. 12a and 12b) records two redactions: a version A, of Italo-German tradition (witnessed, among others, by Aachen XII, f. 114; the Gradual of Saint-Yrieix [Gr 479], f. 107v; PaA 135, f. 228v), and a version B, of English tradition (Bologna 2565, p. 592; PaN 10502, f. 13; Sarum 1, p. 4*b), with notable divergences in verses 7-9. ↩
  35. Cf. Hiley, Gregorian Chant, 139, which documents how troped Latin texts, among them Lux et origo and Kyrie fons bonitatis, came to serve as nicknames for the corresponding melodies in the Graduale Romanum published in 1908, even when the troped text was no longer sung. ↩
  36. Cf. Jungmann, Missarum Sollemnia, 279. ↩
  37. Cf. Stingl, Tropen zum Kyrie, 13-15 (Kyrie I A and I B). ↩
  38. For the manuscript transmission of the trope, cf. Stingl, Tropen zum Kyrie, 95. Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi 47 (no. 4) records 84 manuscript witnesses, which places the Cunctipotens Genitor Deus, together with the Kyrie fons bonitatis, among the most widely diffused tropes of the medieval tradition. Stingl documents variations in the order of the verses in twelve representative manuscripts. ↩
  39. Cf. Cremascoli, “Les tropes”, 26; Latin text in Stingl, Tropen zum Kyrie, 15-17. ↩
  40. Cf. Augustinus Hipponensis (Augustine of Hippo), De Trinitate XV, 17, 27 – 19, 37, ed. W.J. Mountain – F. Glorie, CCSL 50A, Turnhout: Brepols 1968, 501-513. ↩
  41. Guillelmus Autissiodorensis (William of Auxerre), Summa de officiis ecclesiasticis, ed. F. Fischer [online] <https://guillelmus.uni-koeln.de/tca/tca_t2c1> [accessed July 2026], Cambrai version II.1Ca; quoted in C. Campesato, “In Littera et Tono”, Phase 65 (2025) 512. ↩
  42. Honorius Augustodunensis (Honorius of Autun), Gemma animae I, 25, PL 172, col. 554. The articulation Honorius proposes is not a linear Father/Son/Holy Spirit division across the three sets, but an overall Trinitarian reading of the ninefold structure: the first set because «Trinitas adoratur»; the second because Christ is adored «in Patre et Spiritu sancto»; the third because «Pater, Filius et Spiritus sanctus» receive due worship. Cf. Cremascoli, “Les tropes”, 26. ↩
  43. Ibid., 26; Latin text in Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi (= AH) 47, 50, 4. ↩
  44. Cremascoli, “Les tropes”, 38. ↩
  45. A living channel of transmission of troping survives, for example, in the present-day Cistercian rite: Missa VII of the Kyriale Cisterciense includes in an appendix a troped version of the Kyrie fons bonitatis, according to the Codex Sancrucensis 157 (1375), for performance in alternatim by two voices. Cf. Kyriale Cisterciense. Editio Sancrucensis et Ordo Missae, Heiligenkreuz: Typis Cisterciensibus ad Sanctam Crucem ²2014, 26 and appendix. The ritual survival of troping in particular liturgical families confirms that the medieval troped repertoire is not merely an object of historical study. ↩