William Temple, theologian, Archbishop of Canterbury, 27 October 1944
Ronald Knox described him thus:
A man so broad, to some he seem'd to beNot one, but all Mankind in Effigy.Who, brisk in Term, a Whirlwind in the Long,Did everything by turns, and nothing wrong.Bill'd at each Lecture-Hall from Thames to Tyne,As Thinker, Usher, Statesman, or Divine.
George Bernard Shaw called him, "a realized impossibility."
Who was this remarkable person?
William Temple, 98th Archbishop of Canterbury, was born in 1881, the second son of Frederick Temple (born 1821, priest 1847, headmaster of Rugby 1857, Bishop of Exeter 1869, Bishop of London 1884, Archbishop of Canterbury 1897, died 1902). At the age of two, he had the first attack of the gout that would be with him throughout life and eventually kill him. His eyesight was bad, and a cataract, present from infancy, left him completely blind in the right eye when he was 40. However, he was an avid reader, with a near-photographic memory, and once he had read a book, it was his. He was a passionate lover of the music of Bach. In literature, his special enthusiasms were poetry (Browning and Shelley), drama (the Greeks and Shakespeare), and a few novels, especially The Brothers Karamazov. He believed that theological ideas were often explored most effectively by writers who were not explicitly writing theology.
He was at Oxford (Balliol) from 1900 to 1904, and was president of the Oxford Union (the debating society of the University). Here he developed a remarkable ability to sum up an issue, expressing the pros and cons so clearly and fairly that the original opponents often ended up agreeing with each other. This ability served him in good stead later when he moderated conferences on theological and social issues. However, it was not just a useful talent for settling disputes. It was, or developed into, an important part of his philosophy, a belief in Dialectic, derived from Hegel and from Plato. He thought that beliefs and ideas reach their full maturity through their response to opposing ideas.
In 1906, he applied for ordination, but the Bishop of Oxford would not ordain him because he admitted that his belief in the Virgin Birth and the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus was shaky. However, Davidson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, after a careful examination, decided that Temple's thought was developing in a direction that would inevitably bring him into an orthodox position, and decided to take a chance on ordaining him (deacon 1909, priest 1910). He may be said to have won his bet, in that by 1913 Temple had indeed committed himself fully to the orthodox position, and could write: "I believe in the Virgin Birth...it wonderfully holds before the imagination the truth of Our Lord's Deity and so I am glad that it is in the Creed. Similarly I believe in our Lord's Bodily Resurrection."
In 1908 he became president of the Workers' Educational Association (founded by Frederick Denison Maurice), and in 1918 joined the British Labour Party, and worked actively for the implementing of its platform. He also became vigorously involved in movements for Christian co-operation and unity, in missions, in the British Council of Churches, in the World Council of Churches, in the Church of South India (a merger of Anglican, Congregationalist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches into a single church, with provisions for safeguarding what each group thought essential).
In 1916 he married Frances Anson, and the night before the wedding he stayed up late to finish writing his first major theological treatise, Mens Creatrix (the Creative Mind). Eight years later he published a companion volume, expanding and clarifying the ideas of the first, called Christus Veritas (Christ the Truth). In 1921 he was made Bishop of Manchester, a heavily industrial city. In 1926 Britain experienced what was known as the General Strike, in which most workmen in all trades and industries went on strike, not against their particular employers, but against the social and economic policies of the country as a whole. In Manchester this meant primarily a coal stoppage. Temple worked extensively to mediate between the parties, and helped to bring about a settlement that both sides regarded as basically fair.
He excelled, it would seem, not as a scholar, but as a moderator, and above all as a teacher and preacher. In 1931, at the end of the Oxford Mission (what is known in many Protestant circles as a Revival Meeting), he led a congregation in the University Church, St Mary the Virgin, in the singing of the hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross." Just before the last stanza, he stopped them and asked them to read the words to themselves. "Now," he said, if you mean them with all your heart, sing them as loud as you can. If you don't mean them at all, keep silent. If you mean them even a little and want to mean them more, sing them very softly." The organ played, and two thousand voices whispered:
Were the whole realm of nature mine,That were an offering far too small;Love so amazing, so divine,Demands my soul, my life, my all.
For many who participated, it was a never-forgotten experience.
Temple became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1942, when a German invasion seemed likely. He worked for the relief of Jewish refugees from Naziism, and publicly supported a negotiated peace, as opposed to the unconditional surrender that the Allied leaders were demanding.
His gout worsened. His last public appearance was at a clergy retreat (a time spent in a secluded place, with silence, prayer, meditation, reading, and listening to sermons), where he was taken by ambulance and spoke standing on his one good foot. He died on 26 October 1944.
The current issue of Books in Print (American) shows the following works available by him. (Stars mark what one biographer calls his three most important books.)
- *Readings in St. John's Gospel, 1985, Morehouse Pub, 391 pp, paper $9, LC 84-62374, ISBN 0-8192-1360-8 (a bargain! Highly recommended)
- Hope of a New World, $17, ISBN 0-8369-1778-2 Ayer
- Essay on the Origin and Nature of Government, $14.50 AMS Press ISBN 0-404-70109-4
- Christian Faith and Life, Morehouse, 150pp, pap $10, ISBN 0-8192-1631-3 (originally delivered as the Oxford Mission addresses, first published in 1931 from shorthand notes of the addresses)
- *Nature, Man, and God (the Gifford Lectures 1932-33). $67.50 AMS Press. (The Gifford Lectures are an endowed annual series of lectures on Natural Theology--that is, the lecturer is to take his evidence from the observed facts of nature and not ask his listeners to accept the genuineness of any particular revelation to Moses or David or Mohammed or.... The series is prestigious. William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience and Edwyn Bevan's Symbolism and Belief were both originally Gifford Lectures.)
- Works in 4 Volumes, $24.50 per volume, Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-8371-1775-5, 0-8371-0851-9, 0-8371-0852-7, 0-8371-0853-5.
Other works of his, not listed as being in print, but presumably included in the Works mentioned above (although the title does not explicitly say Complete Works), include the following:
- Christus Veritas: An Essay, London, Macmillan, 1934.
- Mens Creatrix: An Essay, London, Macmillan, 1935.
- *Christianity and the Social Order, New York, Penguin Books, 1942
Link: http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/JEK/home.html
Alfred the Great, King of the West Saxons, 26 October 899
In the 800's the cycle partly repeated itself, as the Christian Anglo-Saxons were invaded by the Danes, pagan raiders, who rapidly conquered the northeast portion of England. They seemed about to conquer the entire country and eliminate all resistance when they were turned back by Alfred, King of the West Saxons.
Alfred was born in 849 at Wantage, Berkshire, youngest of five sons of King Aethelwulf. He wished to become a monk, but after the deaths (all in battle, I think) of his father and his four older brothers, he was made king in 871. He proved to be skilled at military tactics, and devised a defensive formation which the Danish charge was unable to break. After a decisive victory at Edington in 878, he reached an agreement with the Danish leader Guthrum, by which the Danes would retain a portion of northeastern England and be given other concessions in return for their agreement to accept baptism and Christian instruction. From a later point of view, it seems obvious that such a promise could not involve a genuine change of heart, and was therefore meaningless (and indeed, one Dane complained that the white robe that he was given after his baptism was not nearly so fine as the two that he had received after the two previous times that he had been defeated and baptized). However, Alfred's judgement proved sound. Guthrum, from his point of view, agreed to become a vassal of Christ. His nobles and chief warriors, being his vassals, were thereby obligated to give their feudal allegiance to Christ as well. They accepted baptism and the presence among them of Christian priests and missionaries to instruct them. The door was opened for conversions on a more personal level in that and succeeding generations.
In his later years, having secured a large degree of military security for his people, Alfred devoted his energies to repairing the damage that war had done to the cultural life of his people. He translated Boethius's Consolations of Philosophy into Old English, and brought in scholars from Wales and the Continent with whose help various writings of Bede, Augustine of Canterbury, and Gregory the Great were likewise translated. He was much impressed by the provisions in the Law of Moses for the protection of the rights of ordinary citizens, and gave order that similar provisions should be made part of English law. He promoted the education of the parish clergy. In one of his treatises, he wrote:
"He seems to me a very foolish man, and very wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear."
He died on 26 October 899, and was buried in the Old Minster at Winchester. Alone among English monarchs, he is known as "the Great."
The writer G.K.Chesterton has written a long narrative poem about Alfred, called, "The Ballad of the White Horse." In my view, it would be improved by abridgement (I would, for example, terminate the prologue after the line "And laid peace on the sea"), but I think it well worth reading as it stands, both for the history and (with minor reservations) for the theology.
Link: http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/JEK/home.html
Forty Martyrs (RC) of England and Wales , 25 October 1570
After Henry's death, Edward ruled from 1547 to 1553 (aged 10 to 16), and was (or his advisors were) Protestant. After his death, Mary (born 1516) ruled from 1553 to 1558, and was vigorously Roman Catholic, trying to undo all the changes of the previous reigns, but by methods that lost her support she might otherwise have had. After her death, Elizabeth (born 1533) ruled from 1558 to 1601, and was a moderate Protestant, attempting so far as possible to avoid conflict with either side. For some years, she succeeded fairly well, and then the Pope decreed (in 1570, I think) that: (1) Roman Catholics in England, who had hitherto been attending the English-language services in their parish churches, must instead receive the sacraments from priests smuggled in from the mainland to say Mass in Latin; and (2) Elizabeth was no lawful monarch, and Roman Catholics had a duty to depose her and replace her with her Roman Catholic cousin, Mary of Scotland. The English government reacted by declaring that the saying of Mass in Latin was treason. The stage was set for more than a hundred years of religious martyrdoms with political undercurrents.
In 1970, the Vatican selected as representatives of a larger group (totalling perhaps three hundred) forty Roman Catholic men and women, both clergy and laity, who suffered death for conscience' sake during the years from 1535 to 1679. Their names are given below, with years of death. Those marked with an asterisk (*) are Welsh, the others English.
Religious Orders (monks, friars, etc.):
Carthusians:
John Houghton, Augustine Webster, Robert Lawrence, 1535;
Brigittine: Richard Reynolds; 1535.
Augustinian friar: John Stone; 1539.
Jesuits:
Edmund Campion, 1581;
Robert Southwell, Henry Walpole, 1595;
Nicholas Owen, Jesuit laybrother, 1606;
Thomas Garnet, 1608;
Edmund Arrowsmith, 1628;
Henry Morse, 1645;
Philip Evans*, David Lewis*, 1679.
Benedictines:
John Roberts*, 1610;
Ambrose Barlow, 1641;
Alban Roe, 1642.
Friar Obervant, John Jones*, 1598;
Franciscan, John Wall, 1679.
Secular Clergy (parish priests not in monastic orders):
Cuthbert Mayne, 1577;
Ralph Sherwin, Alexander Briant, 1581;
John Pain, Luke Kirby, 1582;
Edmund Gennings, Eustace White, Polydore Plasden, 1591;
John Boste, 1594;
John Almond, 1612;
John Southworth, 1654;
John Lloyd*, John Plessington, John Kemble, 1679.
Laymen:
Richard Gwyn*, poet and schoolmaster 1584;
Swithun Wells*, schoolmaster, 1591;
Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, died in prison (poisoned?) 1595;
John Rigby, household retainer of the Huddleston family, 1600.
Laywomen:
Margaret Clitherow, wife, mother, and schoolmistress, 1586;
Margaret Ward, for managing a priest's escape from prison, 1588;
Anne Line, widow, "harborer of priests", 1601.
Link: http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/JEK/home.html
Geoffrey Chaucer, poet, spiritual writer , 25 October 1400
The two works of his chiefly read today are Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales. Both are available in paperback in the Penguin Classic series, translated by Nevill Coghill into modern English. Troilus and Criseyde is ISBN 0-14-044239-1 and costs $9. The Canterbury Tales is ISBN 0-14-044022-4 and costs $6. Professor Coghill used to appear on request before various groups to read from his Chaucer translations, and, on one occasion which he cherished long after, a lady came up afterwards and said, "That was wonderful. Thank you so much. We are so sorry that Mrs. Chaucer was unable to come with you."
C.S.Lewis's book, The Allegory of Love, which deals with allegorical love poetry from Ovid to Spenser, and with the late medieval ideal of Courtly Love (described briefly below) devotes a chapter of that book to Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. I enthusiastically recommend this chapter, and also the one on Spenser. For someone not interested in the history of Western literature, the remainder of the book will contain some boring parts, but it is worth sifting through the chaff to find the wheat. Speaking only for myself, my whole understanding of what is meant by a subconscious desire or thought has been radically altered by reading it.
Lewis points out that Chaucer translated into the English of his day Boethius' work, The Consolations of Philosophy, which discusses, among other things, the problem of how God's foreknowledge is to be reconciled with man's free will. This question is explicitly discussed at length in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde.
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories supposedly told by a set of thirty pilgrims to Canterbury Cathedral, to the shrine of Thomas of Canterbury, martyred in 1170. It is agreed among them that, to pass the time as they ride along, each pilgrim will tell two stories on the way there and two on the way back. That makes 120 stories, but Chaucer had completed only 24 of them when he died. The framework of the book gives him a chance to give us descriptive portraits of the pilgrims, a varied and fascinating group. (One notes, with a wince or a cynical wink, that Chaucer takes it for granted, and expects his audience to do likewise, that a mendicant friar or member of certain other religious groups will of course be a fraud.)
Most of the stories deal with the question of the proper attitude toward marriage, love, sex, and the connections between them. In Chaucer's day, the upper classes, at least, held that it was a man's highest privilege to select a lady and lay his heart at her feet, counting her smile an ample reward for years of faithful service. (This is what is meant by the ideal of Courtly Love. Perhaps some of you will remember the ice cream scene at the party at Twelve Oaks in the opening portion of the movie Gone With The Wind. That is a mild version of the ideal, except that in earlier days, a lady was expected to pick out just one man, and concentrate on making his life miserable.) On the other hand, a wife was obliged to obey her husband, and this did not fit the pattern of the knight serving his lady, ready to risk his life to satisfy her slightest whim. Chaucer explores this problem through the stories told by his pilgrims. The Miller's Tale is a light-hearted caper about a youth who has an affair with his landlord's wife. It is followed by the Reeve's Tale, with a superficially similar theme, but with themes of treachery and malice becoming explicit, as we are reminded that, quite aside from any religious prohibition, adultery has a way of turning out not to be just innocent fun-and-games. The Knight's Tale deals with two noble warriors, each prepared to fight to win the hand of his lady in marriage.
The Franklin's Tale I met years ago, when I had been disputing with my teacher about how Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew is to be interpreted--whether Shakespeare really believed that women ought to obey their husbands. He said, "Have you read The Franklin's Tale, from The Canterbury Tales? You ought to. You would love it, and it deals directly with this question." He then summarized the plot for me, and I promptly went home and read the original, and he was right--I loved it, and went on to read the rest of the tales.
The Franklin tells us of a knight who loved a lady and won her heart and hand, so that they were married. But they agreed that he would continue to obey her and let her make all the decisions for them both, except that in front of outsiders she must give him obedience and deference, lest he be laughed at. They lived happily together, but then he had to make a journey by sea. She went out often to the shore to look for his ship, and she noticed some dangerous rocks near the harbor, likely to sink a ship. She began to worry that her huband's ship would be wrecked coming home, and her husband drowned. Meanwhile, a squire, a young bachelor, saw her, became utterly obsessed by her, and finally told her, "I must have you or I will die." She answered, "Clear away those jagged rocks that endanger the ships, and I promise on my honor to be yours." He went away in despair. But he met a magician, who said, "For a thousand pounds, I will make the rocks disappear." The squire joyfully agreed and promised on his honor to pay the sum. The magician, with an appropriate spell, made the rocks appear to have vanished (although he did not actually remove them, which we all know is impossible--after all, this is the fourteenth century!). The squire rushed off to see the lady, and told her: "The rocks are gone, and you remember your promise. Naturally, I insist on nothing. I simply remind you that your honor is at stake. My sole concern is for your honor." The lady, who had unthinkingly made the promise in the certainty that the rocks would never be moved (as if she had said, "you shall have me when pigs fly"), saw that they were gone, and was utterly distraught. She fled home, and a few days later, when her husband returned home safely, she told him everything and asked him, "What shall I do?" He answered, weeping: "A promise is a promise. You must keep your word." Accordingly, she returned to the squire and said, "I am here, at my husband's word, to keep my promise." The squire realized how much in love the knight and the lady were, and how much her honor meant to them both, and said: "I release you from your promise. Go in peace." The lady returned to her husband, told him what had happened, and they were happy. Meanwhile, the squire gathered all his money, about five hundred pounds, gave it to the magician, and asked for time to pay the rest. The magician asked, "Did I not keep my part of the bargain?" The squire said, "You did." The magician asked, "And did you not have your pleasure of the lady?" The squire said, "No, I did not," and explained the whole thing. The magician said: "The knight behaved nobly, the lady behaved nobly, and you behaved nobly. Shall it be said that we scholars are alone incapable of nobility? Perish the thought! Take back your five hundred pounds and forget about the debt. This spell is on the house!" End of story.
The other stories, or most of them, deal in other ways with the question, "What ought to be the relation between a man and a woman, or between husband and wife?" In one story, a knight sets out on a quest to learn what it is that women want most, and arrives at the answer: "What they want most is to have their husbands show them as much consideration after marriage as before."
The book ends with the Parson's Tale, which is not a tale but a sermon on sin, and repentance, and confession, and forgiveness, and amendment of life. It is followed immediately by Chaucer's farewell remarks, in which he asks pardon for anything in his work that may have encouraged his readers to sin, but asks to be remembered for anything that has pointed them toward virtue, holiness, and the love of God.
The Tales Chaucer was still working on when he died. By contrast, his Troilus and Criseyde is a finished and polished work, a single long narrative poem (about 8239 lines), completed at least thirteen years before his death. It takes place during the Trojan War, and the point of view (as in Shakespeare's play on the same topic) is entirely that of the Trojans. The reason is straightforward. The English of Chaucer's time, like the Romans of Virgil's time, claimed to be descended from the Trojans. (There was a movement in Chaucer's day to rename London as "Troynovant" or "New Troy.") The story deals with a Trojan woman named Criseyde whose father is a soothsayer. He has foreseen the fall of Troy and accordingly deserted to the Greeks, leaving his daughter behind. Prince Troilus, son of the king of Troy, falls in love with her, visits her secretly, and woos her and wins her love. (Marriage is never mentioned, presumably because the king would never consent to having his son marry the daughter of a traitor.) They are happy together, until Prince Antenor is captured by the Greeks, and they (wishing to please the soothsayer) offer to return Antenor, but demand Cressida in exchange. Thus she and Troilus are parted, but she assures him that she will find means to return. But being once among the Greeks, she is afraid to try to return to Troy. A Greek warrior, Diomede, offers her his protection, and she accepts. Thus she betrays Troilus, who is reduced to despair. He fights fiercely in battle against the Greeks, and kills many of them, but is himself killed at last. Then, Chaucer draws the moral. Romantic love is a glorious feeling, but one cannot rest one's ultimate confidence on feeling. The love of Troilus and Cressida for one another, while genuine, and beautiful, and glorious, did not have the protection of the Sacrament of Marriage, and passes away like everything else that this world has to offer. For lasting love and lasting happiness, one must begin with the love of God, and love others in the context of that love. The closing lines of his poem read like this:
Lo, such an end had Troilus for love!Lo, such an end his valor, his prowess!Lo, such an end his royal state above,Such end his lust, such end his noblenessLo, such an end this false world's brittleness,Oh, all you fresh young people, he or she,And such began his loving of Criseyde As I have told it you, and thus he died.Cast the heart's countenance in love and fearIn whom love grows and ripens year by year, Come home, come home from worldly vanity!And give your love to Him Who, for pure love,Upwards to God, Who in His image here Has made you; think this world is but a fair Passing as soon as flower-scent in air.He will be false to no one that wil layUpon a cross first died that He might pay Our debt, and rose, and sits in Heaven above; His heart wholly on Him, I dare to say.Behold how much their gods are worth to you!Since He is best to love, and the most meek, What need is there a feigning love to seek? Behold these old accursed pagan rites! Behold these wretched worldly appetites!Behold your labor's end and guerdon due From Jove, Apollo, and Mars, that rascal crew! Behold the form in which the ancients speak Their poetry, if you should care to seek.With all my heart for mercy ever I pray,O moral Gower, I dedicate this book To you, and you, my philosophic Strode. In your benignity and zeal to look, To warrant, and, where need is, to make good. And to that truthfast Christ, Who died on rood,From visible foes, and the invisible one,And to the Lord right thus I speak and say: Thou One and Two and Three and Never-ending, That reignest ever in Three and Two and One, Incomprehensible, all-comprehending, Defend us all! and Jesu, Mary's Son, Make us in mercy worthy to be thine,For love of her, mother and maid benign!Link: http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/JEK/home.html
Writers of the 1600s
Philipp Nicolai, Johann Heermann,
Paul Gerhardt, Joachim Neander
One of the great treasures of the Christian church is its hymns, and one of the greatest contributions to that treasure is that of the early Lutheran writers, beginning with Martin Luther and reaching a peak with J.S.Bach. On 26 October, the Lutheran church remembers three outstanding hymn-writers from Germany in the 1600's. Since that date is already taken on my Calendar, I here place them on 24 October.
Philipp Nicolai, hymnwriter 26 October 1608
Philipp Nicolai was born in 1556 in Germany, son of a Lutheran pastor. He studied theology at the universities of Erfurt and Wittenberg, 1575-1579, and became a pastor himself. It was a time of religious wars in Europe, and several times he had to flee or go into hiding and minister to his congregations secretly in house meetings. He was a theological writer, defending Lutheran theology chiefly against Calvinistic opponents. He also preached with great power and effectiveness. In 1588 he became pastor at Altwildungen, in 1596 he became pastor at Unna in Westphalia, and in 1601 pastor in Hamburg. But he is remembered today for writing two hymns.
While he was pastor in Westphalia, the plague took 1300 of his parishioners, mostly in the latter half of 1597, 170 in one week. To comfort his parishioners, he wrote a series of meditations which he called Freudenspiegel (Mirror of Joy), and to this he appended two hymns, both of which have become world-famous.
The first hymn was, "Wake, awake, for night is flying" (Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme). It uses the image of the watchman on a city wall (Isaiah 52:8), and of the Parable of the Bridesmaids welcoming the Bridegroom to the Marriage Feast (Matthew 25:1-13), and of the Song of Triumph in Heaven (Revelation 19:6-9). It is a favorite Advent hymn.
The second hymn was, "How bright appears the morning star" (Wie schoen leuchtet der Morgenstern). This also, with a wealth of imagery, hails Christ as our deliverer, and celebrates his triumph. It has become a favorite wedding hymn, but is also sung for Advent, for Christmas, for Epiphany, and and as a general hymn of praise.
Nicolai wrote both the words and the tunes, but the arrangements we know are due to Bach. The earliest English translations are those of Catherine Winkworth, but there have been many translations since, some of them (especially for the second hymn) content to reproduce the general spirit of the original words rather than their specific meaning. In addition, several hymnwriters have set their own words (in various languages) to one of Nicolai's tunes. If pure quality, without respect to quantity, were our criterion, Nicolai would have to be ranked as history's greatest chorale-writer, and one of its greatest hymn-writers.
Nicolai died 26 October 1608 after a brief (four-day) illness.
Johann Heermann, hymnwriter 17 February 1647
Johann Heermann was born in Silesia in Germany in 1585, the fifth and only surviving child of his parents. As a child he suffered a severe illness, and his mother vowed that if he lived he would be trained for the ministry. He became a minister, and taught at the university, but was forced to stop in 1607 because of an eye infection. In 1611 he became deacon and then pastor of the Lutheran church in the small town of Koeben near his birthplace. The Thirty Years' War was then in progress, and Koeben was burned in 1616, plundered four times between 1629 and 1634, and ravaged by pestilence in 1631. Heermann several times was forced to flee, narrowly excaping death and losing all his possessions. In 1634 a throat problem forced him to stop preaching, and he retired in 1638 and died in 1647.
During the preceding century, during and immediately following the Lutheran Reformation, most Lutheran hymns had been "objective," affirming the doctrines of the faith, but not explicitly stating an emotional response. Heermann's hymns move toward the expression of the feelings of the believer.
His best-known hymn (in English circles) is "Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended?" (Herzliebster Jesu, was hast du verbrochen), a chorale used by Bach in the St Matthew Passion. It is loosely based on a Latin verse (beginning "Quid commisisti, dulcissime puer, ut sic judicareris?"), variously attributed to Augustine and to Anselm, but now to Jean de Fecamp (d. 1078). The tune, by Johann Crueger, is perhaps indebted to Psalm 23 of the Geneva Psalter.
Other hymns of his include:
"O gracious God above, true fount of joy unending" or "O God, my faithful God" (O Gott, du frommer Gott);
"Oh, what precious balm and healing, Jesus, in thy wounds I find" (based on a Latin hymn of Bernard of Clairvaux);
"O Christ, our true and only Light, Illumine those who sit in night" or "O Christ, our Light, our Radiance true";
"Lord, thy death and passion give Strength and comfort at my need" (based on a Latin hymn of Bernard of Clairvaux);
"Lord, grant thy servants grace" (an ordination hymn);
"Praise God, this hour of sorrow Shall bring a brighter morrow" (a funeral hymn).
Paul Gerhardt, hymnwriter 7 June 1676
Paul (Paulus) Gerhardt was born in 1607 near Wittenberg in Germany, and studied theology at the University of Wittenberg from 1628 to 1642. In 1651 he was ordained and made pastor of a church in Brandenburg, near Berlin. In 1657 he became third assistant at St Nicholas Church in Berlin. In his sermons, he maintained the Lutheran position against the Calvinists. He refused to sign a pledge not to bring theological argument into his sermons, and was deposed by Frederick William of Brandenberg-Prussia in 1666. His wife and four of his children died. In 1669 he was made archdeacon of Luebben, and died there 7 June 1676.
Despite personal suffering and the horrors of the Thirty Years War, Gerhardt wrote over 130 hymns, expressing both orthodox doctrines and emotional warmth in response to them. His work, like that of Heerman cited above, is counted by hymnologists as transitional between the Confessional and the Pietistic periods of Lutheran hymnody. He has been called he greatest of Lutheran hymn-writers. (Note that when we say "hymns," we are talking about words. The composing of hymn-tunes is another matter.)
His hymns include the following:
"O sacred head, sore wounded" (O Haupt voll Blut), a translation of the Latin "Salve caput cruentatum," attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux. This hymn, known as the Passion Chorale, is used with great effectiveness by Bach in the St Matthew Passion, where eleven stanzas of it are interspersed through the account of the Passion of Christ, all sung to the same tune, but with different arrangements suited to the words of the different stanzas and to the contexts in which they appear. It is one of the best-known and best-loved of Good Friday hymns.
"Awake, my heart, and render" (Wach auf mein Herz, und singe), a morning hymn.
"The duteous day now closeth" or "Now all the woods are sleeping" or "Now rest beneath night's shadow" (Nun ruhen alle Waelder), an evening hymn.
"All my heart this night rejoices" or "Once again my heart rejoices" (Froehlich soll mein Herze springen), a Christmas or Nativity hymn.
"Commit thou all that grieves thee" (Befiehl du deine Wege), often sung to the same tune as the Passion Chorale. It is a hymn about trust in God in time of trouble, and is based on a poem of Martin Luther which in turn is a metrical paraphrase of Psalm 37 ("Fret not yourself because of the evil-doer.... Commit your way to the LORD and put your trust in him, and he will bring it to pass.")
"O how shall I receive thee" or "How shall I fitly meet thee" or "O Lord, how shall I meet you" (Valet will ich dir geben), a hymn welcoming the newborn Christ, used during Advent and Christmas, and in Bach's Christmas Oratorio.
"Awake, my heart, with gladness, See what today is done" (Auf, auf, mein Herz), an Easter hymn;
"Evening and morning, sunset and dawning";
"Jesus, thy boundless love to me" (translated by John Wesley);
"Since Jesus is my friend, and I to him belong";
"Put thou thy trust in God, in duty's path go on";
"A Lamb goes uncomplaining forth" or "A Lamb goes forth, our griefs to share", a Good Friday
hymn;
"Blest is he that never walketh", a paraphrase of Psalm 1;
"If God Himself be for me, I may a host defy" (Ist Gott fuer mich);
"Emmanuel, we sing thy praise", a Christmas hymn;
"Holy Spirit, source of gladness! Come with all thy radiance bright";
"O enter, Lord, Thy temple, be Thou my spirit's Guest";
"O draw me, Saviour, after Thee! So shall I run and never tire", tr. J. Wesley;
"Give to the winds thy fears", tr. J. Wesley;
"A pilgrim and a stranger, I journey here below";
"I will sing to my Creator, Unto God I'll render praise";
"I'll praise thee with my heart and tongue, O Lord my soul's delight";
The hymn "Awake, my heart, and render," mentioned above, is often sung to a tune by a pupil of Melanchthon, Nicolaus Selnecker (1528-1592), Lutheran professor of theology at Leipzig, co-drafter of the Lutheran creedal statement called the Formula of Concord, who wrote words and music for many hymns. This particular tune is a hemiole (or hemiola): that is, it has alternate 6/8 and 3/4 rhythm. (A well-known modern example is the song "America" from the musical "West Side Story.") Thus, the first stanza is:
Awake, my heart, and render c - | c - B A - c | d - c -to God, thy sure Defender, c - | c - d B - G | c - B -a song of love and fervor. e - | f - e d - c | d - c -thy Maker and Preserver, B - | c - c d - e | d - d -
The hemiola form is traditional in Latin America, in Africa, in Germany, and Finland, and elsewhere (The old Finnish Koraalikirja is full of hemiolas. Query: what are the German, Finnish, and Swedish names for the form?)
Joachim Neander, hymnwriter1680
To these Lutheran hymnwriters, we may add a Calvinist, Joachim Neander, born in Bremen in 1650. After a rowdy life as an undergraduate, he underwent conversion and amendment. He became a schoolteacher, then undertook a life of solitary meditation. There is a cave named for him near Mettman-am-Rhein, which he perhaps used as his hermitage, until his death at the age of thirty. He is accounted the principal Calvinist poet in Germany, but only a few of his hymns are known in English. The best-known is "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation" (Lobe den Herren, den maechtigen Koenig der Ehren!), based on Psalms 150 and 103:1-6.
Neander was originally surnamed Neumann (New man). However, like many others of his time (such as Martin Luther's colleague Philip Schwartzerd, whose name means "black earth," and who changed it to "Melanchthon," which means the same thing in Greek), he adopted a Greek surname with the same meaning (NE- meaning "new" as in "neo-Marxist" or whatever, and ANDER meaning "man" as in "android, polyandry, andrology," and so on. In Greek, ANTHROPOS means "man (gender-inclusive)" while ANER, ANDR- means "man (gender-specific)". Thus, "anthropology" is the study of humans in general, while "andrology" is the medical study of the male body, just as "gynecology" is cencerned with the female body. The respective equivalents in Latin are HOMO, HOMIN- (gender-inclusive) and VIR (gender-specific). In English, "man" does double-duty for both. Some feminists are trying to substitute "person" for "man" in all gender-inclusive uses, but this is awkward, because the gender-inclusive meaning is the primary one for "man". I have thought of reviving "were" (pronounced "weer") as in "werewolf" and "weregeld" for the gender-specific meaning, but am not optimistic about the chances of success.). When Joachim Neander went to live in a cave by a river, the river came to be named for him as the Neander River, and the valley of that river was called the Neander Valley, or Neander Dale. The German word for "dale" is "thal" (the "th" is pronounced much like English "t"), and so the valley and general region is the Neanderthal. It is here that remains were first found of an early European population that have accordingly come to be called Neanderthal Man.
Link: http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/JEK/home.html
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