In January 1575, Thomas Tallis and his younger friend William Byrd received from Queen Elizabeth I a monopoly patent to print music "either in English, Latine, Frenche, Italian or other tongues that may serve for musicke either in Churche or chamber, or otherwise to be plaid or soonge." Their very first publication, despite the dominant Protestant regime, was a collection of Latin hymns and motets, the Cantiones Sacrae in that same year. In many ways, the volume represents the dilemma facing English music of the late sixteenth century. The musical style found in its pages represents some of the best synthesis of English florid textures and Continental pervasive imitation. Yet its music had no official home; Latin sacred music was by then not even sung in the more leniant devotional atmosphere of the Chapel Royal, but rather was relegated to universities, illegal Catholic services, and private devotional "recreation." Though it was printed in 1575, some of Tallis' music from the Cantiones Sacrae must date from his earlier Catholic service.

Tallis' five-voiced setting of O sacrum convivium actually embodies, with a few other of the Cantiones motets, the manifold ritual shifts of the English Reformation. It could possibly have been written early in his musical career for the Abbey of Waltham Holy Cross in Essex. When the Abbeys were dissolved and English made the official language of the Church of England, Tallis or one of his colleagues often rapidly adapted Latin music into English vestments. Just so, two of the earliest sources for this motet contain an English text instead: "I call and cry to Thee." (A later version with the English text "O sacred and holy banquet" may have been the work of Dean Aldrich.) Then later, in the inflexible heart of Protestant England, Tallis published the work once again with its original text, liturgically appropriate as a Magnificat antiphon in the important and very Catholic feast of Corpus Christi. His musical setting, as well, follows many of the conventions of early sixteenth century Catholic style. He opens with a clear and conventional "point of imitation" on a joyful motive twice leaping upwards. Each phrase of Tallis' text corresponds to a musical phrase beginning imitatively and leads to a cadence; he repeats and extends the final phrase. Characteristically English cross-relations at several cadences, however, and the parallel English-texted versions, mark O sacrum convivium as a particularly insular specimen.

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