“O Hail the Cross”: Palestrina’s Lovely Lenten Motet

For Sunday, March 22, 2026
O Crux Ave by Palestrina

By David Jolliffe

At the 11 a.m. service on March 22, St. Paul’s adult choir will return to the music of Giovanni Perluigi da Palestrina (1525 to 1594), singing his sublime motet, “O Crux Ave.”  Scholars cannot provide a specific date for the composition, but the consensus is that it is from Palestrina’s “mature period,” from 1550 to 1599.

The piece is an a capella motet, scored for a four-part mixed choir.  “O Crux Ave” is not actually an independent work but is the sixth stanza of Palestrina’s larger setting on a sixth-century hymn, “Vexilla Regis” (“The Royal Banners Forward Go”) by Venantius Fortunatus.”

“O Crux Ave” is traditionally sung during the later months of Lent, and Roman Catholic churches often perform the motet on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on September 14. 

The Latin lyrics provide a pious contemplation, centering on the cross as a symbol of hope:

O Crux ave, spes unica
hoc Passionis tempore!
piis adauge gratium
reisque dele criminal

In translation:

O hail the Cross, our only hope
in this passiontide!
Grant increase of faith to believers
and remove the stains of the guilty.

The central representative of the Roman school of Renaissance music, Palestrina is considered by many to be the leading composer of late 16th-century Europe. He moved to Rome as a child and underwent musical studies there. In 1551, Pope Julius III appointed him maestro of the Cappella Giulia at St. Peter’s Basilica. He left the post four years later, unable to continue as a layman under the papacy of Paul IV, and held similar positions at St. John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore in the following decade. Palestrina returned to the Cappella Giulia in 1571 and remained at St Peter's until his death in 1594.