This brief motet – if one may term it so – has a renaissance feel to it, but is from the 1989 film, Henry V, whose director and lead role was Kenneth Branagh, and the soundtrack by the prolific Scottish composer Patrick Boyle. The two did many films together, but here we present Boyle’s Non Nobis Domine, which our college schola plans to sing at an upcoming Right to Life banquet, as requested. The line is from Psalm 115, ‘not unto us, O Lord, but unto Thy name be the praise’, which the victorious English sing after their apparently miraculous crushing of the French at the battle of Agincourt in the midst of the Hundred Years’ War (1415), which was eventually won by the French under the patronage of Saint Joan of Arc. Like many of the current conflicts in the Church – not quite as bloody, but perhaps just as internecine – Who knows whose side God was on in the brutal conflict of two Catholic nations. Perhaps both, perhaps either, at different times. His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts not ours. Which is why we give Him the praise and glory, not ourselves, and pray that His holy and perfect will be done at all times.
Anon, here is the scene from the film, which some readers may recall, not quite as long ago as Agincourt, even if it may feel like it to some:
