Oh, Vinde, Fiéis!

Translator: James Theodore Houston

Born in 1847. He was a missionary in Bahia, Brazil under the Presbyterian Board of New York, he later was transferred to Rio de Janeiro. He collaborated on the hymnal Hinos e Cânticos Sagrados published by John Boyle in Rio de Janeiro, 1888. After 28 years of ministry, he returned to the United States and died in Oakland, CA at the age of 82. Go to person page >

Author (attributed to): 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 >