Tempus adest floridum is part of Piae Cantiones (Piae Cantiones ecclesiasticae et scholasticae veterum episcoporum), which is a collection of late-medieval secular and religious songs sung by students and high school students, esp. at the cathedral school in Åbo, Finland. Some of the church songs are written in "inferior" Latin, a medieval hybrid language.

The background of the songs is various, some originate from Germany (and are related to German poetry of the clerici vagantes such as Carmina Burana with its nature poetry and love poems), some from Finland and Finnish students from Turku must have brought them to the University of Rostock, the oldest in Baltic Sea Region. They were first printed (in Latin) in Greifswald and in 1616 even in Finland. The original edition was then widely distributed in the Nordic countries and has remained so until today with 15 copies alone in Swedish libraries.

The Latin song Tempus adest floridum "had its given connection with the schoolchildren's wanderings to sing May in the villages, a custom that a Danish author wanted to derive from the ancient flower festivals. It was found in Swedish translation by Laurentius Jonae Gestritius in his son's Hymnal published in 1619. ”(Allan Arvastson, Imitation och förnyelse. Psalmhistoriska studier. Lund 1971, p. 54f). The first two lines relate to the Song of Songs, 2:12.

It (especially the first two lines) has also been conceived as a role model for "Then Blomstertijd nu kommer", which in turn was first printed in Jesper Swedberg's Swedish hymnbook from 1694.

Åke G. Sjöberg