The lyric church poetry and music began with the "Kyrie Eleison" and "Christe Eleison,"
which passed from the Greek church into the Latin as a response of the people, especially on the
high festivals, and was enlarged into brief poems called (from the refrain) Kirleisen, or Leisen, also
Leichen. These enlarged cries for mercy are the first specimens of German hymns sung by the
people. The oldest dates from the ninth century, called the "Leich vom heiligen Petrus," in three
stanzas, the first of which reads thus in English: —
"Our Lord delivered power to St. Peter,
That he may preserve the man who hopes in Him.
Lord, have mercy upon us!
Christ, have mercy upon us!"^638
One of the best and most popular of these Leisen, but of much later date, is the Easter hymn,
"Christ is erstanden
von der marter alle,
des sul [sollen] wir alle fro sein,
Christ sol unser trost sein.
Kyrie leyson."^639
Penitential hymns in the vernacular were sung by the Flagellants (the Geisslergesellschaften),
who in the middle of the fourteenth century, during a long famine and fearful pestilence (the "Black
Death," 1348), passed in solemn processions with torches, crosses, and banners, through Germany
and other countries, calling upon the people to repent and to prepare for the judgment to come.^640
Some of the best Latin hymns, as the "Te Deum," the "Gloria in excelsis," the "Pange
lingua," the "Veni Creator Spiritus," the "Ave Maria," the "Stabat Mater," the "Lauda, Sion,
Salvatorem," St. Bernard’s "Jesu dulcis memoria," and "Salve caput cruentatum," were repeatedly
translated long before the Reformation. Sometimes the words of the original were curiously mixed
with the vernacular, as in the Christmas hymn, —
"In dulci jubilo
Nun singet und seit fro!
Unsres Herzens Wonne
Leit in praesepio
Und leuchtet wie die Sonne
In matris gremio
Alpha es et O."^641
A Benedictine monk, John of Salzburg, prepared a number of translations from the Latin
at the request of his archbishop, Pilgrim, in 1366, and was rewarded by him with a parish.^642(^638) Wackernagel, II. 22, published the whole hymn from a manuscript in Munich.
(^639) Wackernagel, II. 43 sq., gives several forms. They were afterwards much enlarged. In a Munich manuscript of the fifteenth century,
a Latin verse is coupled with the German:—
"Christussurrexit,
mala nostratexit,
et quos hicdilexit
hos ad coelumvexit
Kyrie leyson."
(^640) See specimens in Koch, I. 194 sq., and in Wackernagel, II. 333 sqq.
(^641) Several forms in Wackernagel, II.
(^642) Wackernagel (II. 409 sqq.) gives forty-three of his hymns from several manuscripts in the libraries at Munich and Vienna.