Originally, “For all thy saints” was written for All Saints’ Day and published in Horatio Nelson’s Hymns for Saints Days and Other Hymns (1864). The heading was “A Cloud of Witnesses,” a reference to Hebrews 12:1: “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us…”. After appearing in Church Hymns (1871) with the revised title “For all the saints,” its usage spread.
This hymn is a commentary on the article in the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in the Communion of Saints.” The hymn emphasizes the union between the relationship with the faithful on earth (The Church Militant) and the saints in heaven (The Church Triumphant).
The tune that is now most common in the United States, SINE NOMINE, by the famous English composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), was not always a favorite. For at least half of the twentieth century, the Victorian tune SARUM by Joseph Barnby (1838-1896) was the preferred tune by many, and still is by some. ENGLEBURG by Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) initially was used often, but Vaughan Williams’ stirring melody won the day after its publication in The English Hymnal (1906), for which the composer served as music editor.
SINE NOMINE (literally “without a name” in Latin) appeared as one of four anonymous tunes in The English Hymnal. Carl Daw, Jr. notes that the Latin tune name was equivalent to the undesignated “anonymous” musical setting later attributed to Vaughan Williams. He further suggests that Vaughan Williams “may have wished to avoid overt competition with ENGLEBURG, the tune written for this text by his former teacher C. V. Stanford and published only two years earlier in the 1904 edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern”.
