John Francis Wade was an English hymnist who is credited with writing and composing the hymn

Hymn

A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...

 "Adeste Fideles

Adeste Fideles

"Adeste Fideles" is a hymn tune attributed to English hymnist John Francis Wade . The text itself has unclear beginnings, and may have been written in the 13th century by John of Reading, though it has been concluded that Wade was probably the author.The original four verses of the hymn were...

" (which was later translated to "O Come All Ye Faithful").

Born either in England or in Douai

Douai

-Main sights:Douai's ornate Gothic style belfry was begun in 1380, on the site of an earlier tower. The 80 m high structure includes an impressive carillon, consisting of 62 bells spanning 5 octaves. The originals, some dating from 1391 were removed in 1917 during World War I by the occupying...

, France

Early Modern France

Kingdom of France is the early modern period of French history from the end of the 15th century to the end of the 18th century...

, Wade fled to France after the Jacobite rising of 1745

Jacobite Rising of 1745

The Jacobite rising of 1745, often referred to as "The 'Forty-Five," was the attempt by Charles Edward Stuart to regain the British throne for the exiled House of Stuart. The rising occurred during the War of the Austrian Succession when most of the British Army was on the European continent...

 was crushed. As a Catholic layman, he lived with exiled English Catholics in France for the rest of his life. There, he taught music and worked on church music for private use.

Jacobite symbolism

Professor Bennett Zon, Head of the Department of Music at Durham University

Durham University

The University of Durham, commonly known as Durham University, is a university in Durham, England. It was founded by Act of Parliament in 1832 and granted a Royal Charter in 1837...

, has noted that Wade's Roman Catholic liturgical

Liturgy

Liturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...

 books were often decorated with Jacobite

Jacobitism

Jacobitism was the political movement in Britain dedicated to the restoration of the Stuart kings to the thrones of England, Scotland, later the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the Kingdom of Ireland...

 floral imagery, and argued that the texts had coded Jacobite meanings. Zon describes the hymn "Adeste Fideles" as a birth ode to Bonnie Prince Charlie

Charles Edward Stuart

Prince Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart commonly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or The Young Pretender was the second Jacobite pretender to the thrones of Great Britain , and Ireland...

 replete with secret references decipherable by the "faithful": the followers of the Pretender, James Francis Edward Stuart

James Francis Edward Stuart

James Francis Edward, Prince of Wales was the son of the deposed James II of England...

.

External links

• Biography and works at the Cyber Hymnal