The Introit for St. Stephen: Etenim sederunt ("Princes met and talked against me")

Etenim sederunt is the Introit for the Feast of St. Stephen, December 26. Here's a video of it from the GradualeProject.





The text comes from various parts of Psalm [118/]119; here is the Latin and English from Divinum Officium:

Introitus
Ps 118:23; 118:86; 118:23
Sedérunt príncipes, et advérsum me loquebántur: et iníqui persecúti sunt me: ádjuva me, Dómine, Deus meus, quia servus tuus exercebátur in tuis justificatiónibus.
Ps 118:1
Beati immaculáti in via, qui ámbulant in lege Dómini
V. Glória Patri, et Fílio, et Spirítui Sancto.
R. Sicut erat in princípio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculórum. Amen
Sedérunt príncipes, et advérsum me loquebántur: et iníqui persecúti sunt me: ádjuva me, Dómine, Deus meus, quia servus tuus exercebátur in tuis justificatiónibus.

Introit
Ps 118:23, 86, 23.
Princes met and talked against me, and the wicked persecuted me wrongfully; help me, O Lord my God, for Your servant meditates on Your statutes.
Ps 118:1
Happy are they whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord.
V. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
R. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Princes met and talked against me, and the wicked persecuted me wrongfully; help me, O Lord my God, for Your servant meditates on Your statutes.

Here's the chant score:

 In writing this post, I've come across some interesting stuff.  Apparently this Introit has at quite a number of tropes associated with it. 

Tropes are embellishments of the liturgical chants; they were sung prior to or interspersed with the Proper chants of feast days.   They are a development of the Middle Ages, and were abolished eventually at the council of Trent in 1570.  Here's a description from the Encyclopedia Britannica:

Trope, in medieval church music, melody, explicatory text, or both added to a plainchant melody. Tropes are of two general types: those adding a new text to a melisma (section of music having one syllable extended over many notes); and those inserting new music, usually with words, between existing sections of melody and text.

Troping was rooted in similar practices in the ancient Byzantine liturgy and arose in the West, probably in France, by the 8th century. The custom reached the musically important Swiss monastery of Saint Gall by the 9th century and soon became widespread throughout Europe. It was abolished in the 16th century by the Council of Trent.

Two important medieval musical-literary forms developed from the trope: the liturgical drama and the sequence (qq.v.). A troped chant is sometimes called a farced (i.e., interpolated) chant.

Here is an example of one of the tropes on this Introit, found in the book Early Trope Repertory of Saint Martial de Limoges, by Paul Evans.  The book describes it as an example of "line-by-line interpolations, in which a trope introduces each phrase of the official chant":

Trope:  Hodie Stephanus martye celos ascendit, quem propheta dudmum intuens eius voce dicebat:
Introit:  Etenim sederunt principes et adversum me loquebantur.
Trope:  Insurrexerunt contra me Iudeorum populi inique,
Introit:  Et iniqui persecuti sunt me.
Trope:  Invidiose lapidibus appresserunt me;
Introit:  Adiuva me Dominus Deus meus.
Trope:  Suscipe meum in pace spiritum,
Introit:  Quia servus tuus exercebatur in tuis iustificationibus.

Tropes were new compositions, and the melody and texts were conceived simultaneously, according to Evans.  Unfortunately, I was not able to find any audio or video of any of the tropes for this feast - but I will keep looking.  Perhaps there will be some video online for tropes of major feasts; there are many associated with Christmas, so I may return there.

 

[EDIT 11/14/23:  Thanks to an anonymous commenter on this post, I now have an example of a trope on this Introit - but unfortunately I haven't yet been able to make out what the words are.  Here's the video anyway; you can hear that the trope introduces the Introit, and it is then interspersed between each line of the text.  Hopefully at some point I'll succeed in finding the text of the trope, and will return here to post it if I do:

 

Thanks, Anonymous!]

This page in the book The Winchester Troper, from Mss. of the Xth and XIth Centuries - edited by Walter Frere - contains a complete list of tropes associated with this feast from those sources.  Here's screen-cap of that page, listing all the tropes, with some footnotes; as you can see, there are several tropes each associated with the Introit, the Offertory, and the Communio:

I am now reading a bit more about the tropes on this Introit, but want to get this post published today, so that will be another post.

Here's an interesting painting of St. Stephen by Mariotto di Nardo; the full title is apparently "Predella Panel Representing the Legend of St. Stephen: Devils Agitating the Sea as Giuliana Transports the Body of St. Stephen from Jerusalem to Constantinople / The Re-interment of St. Stephen beside St. Lawrence in Rome."

No idea what that's about, but I'll check it out!