O Sacred Head, Now Wounded Lyrics Paul Gerhardt, from a medieval Latin poem, translated by James W. Alexander, 1830

The hymn goes back to a Latin poem, Salve caput cruentatum, the seventh part of a cycle called Membra Jesu Nostri. The Hymnology Archive credits Arnulf of Leuven, around 1240 to 1250. Many hymnals still name Bernard of Clairvaux, and Trinity Hymnal does. Paul Gerhardt, then a pastor at Mittenwalde, translated the cycle into German. All seven poems appeared in the 1656 Frankfurt edition of Praxis Pietatis Melica. His version, O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden, has ten stanzas of eight lines.

James W. Alexander made the English translation most Americans sing. It first appeared in the New York Observer on April 24, 1830, in ten stanzas, and The Christian Lyre cut it to eight. Henry W. Baker in 1861 and Robert Bridges in 1898 made other English versions.

The tune PASSION CHORALE comes from Hans Leo Hassler, who wrote it in 1601 as a secular love song in his Lustgarten neuer teutscher Gesäng. It was first used with a sacred text in 1613, a funeral hymn by Christoph Knoll, and it has gone with Gerhardt's words since 1656. Johann Sebastian Bach harmonized it several times, and most hymnals print the setting from his St. Matthew Passion. Trinity Hymnal prints it in A minor with Isaiah 53:5 as the Scripture reference.

The Hymnology Archive notes that The Christian Lyre may not have reached print until early 1831, although its copyright date is 1830.