Christe cunctorum dominator alme. [Consecration of a Church.] This hymn of unknown date and authorship, is found in three manuscripts of the 11th century, in the British Museum (Jul. A. vi. f. 68 b; Vesp. D. xii. f. 112 b; Harl. 2961, f. 250), in the Latin Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church, 1851, p. 141, and in an 11th century Mozarabic Breviary in the British Museum. The oldest manuscript in which it is now found is one of the 9th century, in the Library at Bern. Daniel, i., No. 96, and iv. pp. 110 and 364, has the full text with various readings from the Bern manuscript, and other sources.
It has also been rendered into English through the German as follows:—
Du, dem der Himmel und die Erd' sich beuget, by A. J. Rambach, in his Anthologie, i. p. 176, in 9 stanzas. Thence altered and beginning "0 Herr, vor dem sich Erd' und Himmel beuget," in Knapp's Evangelischer Lieder-Schatz, 1837, No. 1129 (1865, No. 1286). The only translation in common use is —
Eternal Son of God, 0 Thou, a translation in L. M. of stanzas i.—iv., vi., ix. as No. 131 in the Ohio Lutheran Hymnal, 1880. [Rev. James Mearns, M.A.]
--Excerpts from John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)