Adeste fidelis john purifoy biography
Adeste fidelis john purifoy biography
John purifoy composer.
Wade, John Francis (1711-16th August 1786)
He was a hymnist and Catholic layman born in England with his father being a cloth merchant. It is known that he was a Catholic layman and there are two stories about his move to France but one is that he had fled persecution by 1731 and went to Flanders, Belgium, and the other is that he fled in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 and he went and lived in Douay, France, with other Catholic exiles from England.
He took a position as a music teacher of church and Latin song and was a copier of hymn manuscripts and plainchant to be used privately and by local chapels.
He had many connections in the Catholic music world and was acquainted with Thomas Arne and Samuel Webbe among many others as well as it being said that he was “an instrumental force in the English revival of plainchant”.
Maybe as early as 1740, it is known that he wrote the song “Adeste Fideles” which is still popular today and more commonly known as &#