Finding Meaning in Life: Unraveling 'Media Vita in Morte Sumus'

Start hereThe words of Media vita are a plea for mercy. Yet in 1310 a church council at Cologne banned singing it against any persons without the archbishop's licence. How did a prayer for help come to be sung at people?

01Who wrote it

Nobody knows who wrote Media vita, the medieval chant that opens “In the midst of life we are in death”, or when.

The best-known origin story is about Notker of St Gall, a monk who died in 912. It says he wrote the antiphon after watching workmen build a bridge over a gorge near the abbey.

Notker was a real monk of St Gall, and the antiphon does appear in St Gall manuscripts. But according to John Julian’s Dictionary of Hymnology, the story has not been traced earlier than a chronicle by J. Metzler, written in 1613. Julian adds that no evidence can be found for the story or for Notker as its author.

Julian says the antiphon appears in only three St Gall manuscripts, all comparatively late: one from the fourteenth century, one from 1431 and one from 1507. None of them names Notker.

02What the words say

Read to the end, the chant is a question and a plea. Here it is in Latin, beside the English of the Book of Common Prayer as revised in 1662.

The Latin is from the Sarum (Salisbury) Breviary, a book of daily church services, in its Paris edition of 1531. It is printed in Julian’s Dictionary, a reference book on hymns.

Latin	Book of Common Prayer (1662)
Media vita in morte sumus:	In the midst of life we are in death:
quem quaerimus adjutorem nisi te, Domine,	of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord,
qui pro peccatis nostris juste irasceris?	who for our sins art justly displeased?
Sancte Deus, sancte fortis, sancte et misericors Salvator:	Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour,
amarae morti ne tradas nos.	deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death.

It asks who can help, answers that only God can, and asks not to be handed over to death.

The last Latin line says only amarae morti, bitter death. The word eternal is the Prayer Book’s addition.

The refrain Sancte Deus, sancte fortis has a longer history of its own. It is based on the Trisagion, a Greek invocation whose name means thrice holy. It was introduced into the Greek service books in about AD 446.

03What the chant is

Media vita in morte sumus is the first line of a medieval church chant, an antiphon: a short sung text that goes with a psalm or canticle in the daily round of prayer.

Where it was sung. The Sarum Breviary sets Media vita at Compline, as the antiphon to the Nunc Dimittis canticle, for 15 days around the middle of Lent. Compline is the last prayer of the day. It is also in the York Breviary printed in 1493.

How old it is. The earliest copy Julian cites is in a manuscript now in the British Library, Harley MS 2961. There it is set for use during Lent. That manuscript is the Leofric Collectar, written at Exeter in the third quarter of the eleventh century.

Pope Urban II called for the expedition that became the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont in 1095. So the chant was already being copied in England before the Crusades began.

What people did with it. A German hymn scholar, Rambach, says it was in universal use by the middle of the thirteenth century, as a prayer in times of trouble. Julian passes this on. Rambach adds that people also used it as an incantation, a kind of spell.

The Cologne ruling of 1310

The clearest medieval record of how it was used comes from a church council. In 1310 a council of the church province of Cologne, under Archbishop Henry of Virneburg, issued a set of statutes. The twenty-first reads:

Prohibemus item, ne in aliqua Ecclesiarum nobis subiectarum, imprecationes fiant, nec decantetur MEDIA VITA contra aliquas personas, nisi de nostra licentia speciali.

It bans curses in the churches under the archbishop. It also bans singing the Media vita “against any persons, except by our special licence” (our translation). The reason given is that it is for the archbishop to judge when such things are to be done.

Some books date this ruling to 1316. Julian gives 1316, with 1310 in brackets. The statutes as printed in Hartzheim’s Concilia Germaniae, a collection of church council texts, are headed 1310.

So by the early fourteenth century, people were singing a prayer for mercy at other people, as a curse. The church wanted a say in when that happened.

A Crusader or Templar battle chant.	A Lenten antiphon, already in an English service book before the First Crusade was preached.
Written by Notker of St Gall.	A tradition not traced earlier than a chronicle written in 1613.

04Where you have heard it

The line reached modern ears mainly by two routes: a German hymn by Luther and the English burial service.

In German. German translations were in use by the fifteenth century. Martin Luther took one of them, altered it and added two stanzas of his own. He published the hymn in the Erfurt Enchiridion of 1524 as Mitten wir im Leben sind (“In the midst of life we are”, in George MacDonald’s translation).

Julian says it became, and in his day still was, one of the foremost German hymns for the dying.

In English. Miles Coverdale published an English version of Luther’s hymn in 1539, In the myddest of our lyvynge. Ten years later the line entered the Church of England’s services.

The first Book of Common Prayer was first used on Pentecost Sunday, 9 June 1549. It was mainly the work of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury.

In its burial service, at the graveside, the priest says (or the priest and clerks sing): “In the myddest of lyfe we be in death”. The rest of the antiphon follows in English.

The familiar wording, “In the midst of life we are in death”, comes from the 1662 revision.

05The battle-chant label

You may have met the chant labelled a Crusader or Templar battle chant. We could not find where those labels began. Here is what the sources do say.

Doesn't hold up as a Crusader or Templar chant. The antiphon was being copied into an English service book for Lent before the First Crusade was preached. We found no medieval source that connects it with the Crusades or with the Templars.

Can't confirm as a battle song. The earliest report we found is from a German writer, Bässler, in 1858. Julian passes on his claim: “it was used as a war song by the priests accompanying the hosts before and during battle”. Julian names no medieval witness for this, and we did not find one.

The use that is on record is a different one: the Cologne ruling of 1310 against singing it against people without the archbishop’s licence.

06Why it resonates

Out of context, the first line can sound like a battle cry. Read to the end, it is something quieter: a plea for help in the face of death.

The thought in the first line is simple: death is not only at the end of life but in the middle of it. The antiphon’s own answer is not to seize the day but to ask for help.

For classical versions of the same thought, compare memento mori in Older Than You Think and Horace’s line in Carpe diem.

07Quick answers

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How we checked this · Last checked October 2026

• The chant's history rests mainly on John Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology, read in the Internet Archive's scan of volume 1, pages 720 and 721.
• The Cologne statute was read in Hartzheim's Concilia Germaniae, volume 4; the translation from the Latin is ours.
• The manuscript's date and origin are from the EM1060 catalogue entry for British Library Harley 2961.
• We could not find where the Crusader and Templar labels began, and found no medieval witness for the battle-song report that Julian passes on.

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