I realise this question is no sign of intelligence, but in my socratic wisdom I hereby declare myself ignorant and will question everything.
Sunday night I watched this show on tv about Napoleon, some mini-series or something of that kind. Now, to make a long story really short, they were going to sound the Te Deum in church. I don’t understand ‘Te Deum’, just those two words. How does it translate? You to God? or is Deum some strange way of vocative, isn’t the vocative of Deus Dee? Yet Dee also looks weird. Me very confused…
The prayer book translation of ‘Te Deum laudamus’ is ‘We praise Thee, O God’. And in the Te Deum, God is addressed as ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ throughout: ‘te dominum confitemur’; ‘te ergo quaesumus domine’, etc.
The whole sentence reads : Te Deum laudamus, te Dominum confitemur
The Dominum is clearly a complement (or should I say a predicate?) of the direct object te : “we recognize you as our Lord”. It could be the same with Deum “we praise you as God”. It could also be considered as a simple apposition : “we praise you, i.e. God.”