“_Salve Regina, Mater misericordiae; vita, dulcedo et spes nostra, salve. Ad te clamamus, exules filii Evae; ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes in hac lacrymarum valle. Eia, ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte, et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc exilium ostende: O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria._”
Of late years there has been much discussion among students of ecclesiastical literature as to who was really the author of that prayer. At a recent Catholic Congress held at Munich this question was raised by a Benedictine monk. Florez devoted many pages to his argument that St. Bernard was its author.[64] In 1892 a book on the subject was published at Karlsruhe, in which W. Brambach tried to prove that Hermanus Contractus, a Benedictine monk born in 1013 in Suabia, had composed the _Salve_. There are French writers who support the claims of a French priest, Ademar de Monteil, bishop of Puy-en-Velay about 1087, said to have been one of the most active organisers of the first European crusade. But the most recent as well as the most learned and scholarly thesis[65] on this question is that of Dr. Eladio Oviedo, professor of Ecclesiastical History and Archæology at the Pontifical University of Santiago. Dr. Oviedo has spared no pains in his search for the real author of the _Salve_; he has weighed every atom of available evidence, and patiently searched through the religious literature of centuries for traces of its influence, with the result that he is convinced that--not St. Bernard, not Hermanus Contractus, not Ademar de Monteil, but Pedro de Mezonzo of Galicia was the author of this prayer so dear to the Catholic heart.
The idea is not a new one. I have met with it in several old works on Galicia, but the proofs brought forward by Dr. Oviedo are more convincing than any others that have as yet appeared in print. He shows, and I think conclusively, that the _Salve_ was known in Spain long before any allusion to it or sign of its influence appeared in French, German, or Italian literature. Gonzalo de Berceo, in the thirteenth century, introduced it into his _Milagros de Nuestra Señora_. Alfonso _el Sabio_ relates in his Cantiga 262 a legend of how an old woman, who was deaf and dumb, was cured by the Holy Virgin, and straightway taught her townspeople the memorable _Salve_, which she, in her turn, had been taught by the angels. According to Alfonso _el Sabio_, it was sung for the first time in the church of Santa Maria del Puy.