Ye faithful, with gladness

Author: Hugh T. Henry

Born: November 27, 1862, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Died: March 12, 1946, Jessup, Pennsylvania. Henry attended LaSalle College, the University of Pennsylvania, and St. Charles Seminary, Overbrook, Pennsylvania. After ordination in 1889, he taught English and Latin at the seminary until 1894, music and literature until 1917, and directed the seminary choir. He went on to serve as Rector of the Philadelphia Catholic High School for Boys (1902-19), and professor of homiletics at the Catholic University of America, Washington, DC (1919-37). He is also remembered as a lecturer at the Catholic Summer School, Cliff Haven, New York; president of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia; editor of Church Music (1905-14); and aut… Go to person page >

Author: 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 >