ὃ 82. BEGINNINGS OF EVANGELICAL HYMNODY. 501
“Through all the centuries from Otfrid to Luther” (says Wackernagel),! “we meet with the idolatrous veneration of the Virgin Mary. There are hymns which teach that she pre-existed with God at the creation, that all things were created in her and for her, and that God rested in her on the seventh day.” One of the favorite Mary-hymns begins, —
“ Dich, Frau vom Himmel, ruf ich an, In diesen grossen Nothen mein.” 3
Hans Sachs afterwards characteristically changed it into
“ Christum vom Himmel ruf ich an.”
The medieval hymnody celebrates Mary as the queen of heaven, as the “eternal womanly,” which draws man insensibly heavenward.? It resembles the Sixtine Madonna who carries the Christ-child in her arms.
German Hymnody of the Reformation.
The evangelical church substituted the worship of Christ, as our only Mediator and Advocate, for the worship of his virgin-mother. It reproduced and improved the old Latin and vernacular hymns and tunes, and produced a larger number of original ones. It introduced congregational singing in the place of the chanting of priests and choirs. The hymn became, next to the German Bible and the German sermon, the most powerful missionary of the evangelical doctrines of sin and redemption, and accompanied the Reformation in its triumphal march. Printed as tracts, the hymns were scattered wide and far, and sung in the house, the school, the church, and on the street. Many of them survive to this day, and kindle the flame of devotion.
1 II, p. xiii.; compare Nos. 222, 226, 728, 870, 876.
2 Wackernagel, II. 799 sqq., gives this hymn in several forms. It was sung on the feast of the Nativity of Mary, and at other times.
81 allude, of course, to the mystic conclusion of the second part of Goethe’s Faust :—
* Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.’’
502 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1530.
To Luther belongs the extraordinary merit of having given to the German people in their own tongue, and ina form eclipsing and displacing all former versions, the Bible, the catechism, and the hymn-book, so that God might speak directly to them in His word, and that they might directly speak to Him in their songs. He was a musician also, and composed tunes to some of his hymns.! He is the Ambrose of German church poetry and church music. He wrote thirtyseven hymns.2 Most of them (twenty-one) date from the year 1524; the first from 1528, soon after the completion of his translation of the New Testament; the last two from 1548, three years before his death. The most original and best known, — we may say the most Luther-like and most Re-_ former-like —is that heroic battle- and victory-hymn of the Reformation, which has so often been reproduced in other languages, and resounds in all German lands with mighty effect on great occasions : —
“ Hin’ feste Burg ist unser Gott.”’ (A tower of strength is this our God.) ὃ
This mighty poem is based upon the forty-sixth Psalm (Deus noster refugium et virtus) which furnished the key-note. It was born of deep tribulation and conquering faith, in the
1 According to Koch (I. 470), Luther is certainly the author of the tunes
ο * Hin feste Burg,’’ and to “ Jesaja dem Propheten das geschah,’’ and
probably of six more; the tunes to the other Luther-hymns are of older or of uncertain origin.
2 Wackernagel, III. 1-31, gives fifty-four Luther-poems, including the variations, and some which cannot be called hymns, as the ore of ‘‘ Frau Musica,’’ and ‘‘ Wider Herzog Heinrich von sithen aes te es
3 Carlyle’s translation, —
“Α safe stronghold our God is still,’’
is upon the whole the best because of its rugged vigor and martial ring. Heine called this hymn the Marseillaise of the Reformation; but it differs as widely from the Marseillaise as the German Reformation differs from the godless French Revolution.