The mediaeval hymnody celebrates Mary as the queen of heaven, as the "eternal womanly,"
which draws man insensibly heavenward.^648 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.
To Luther belongs the extraordinary merit of having given to the German people in their
own tongue, and in a 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.^649 He is the Ambrose of German church poetry and church music. He wrote thirty-seven
hymns.^650 Most of them (twenty-one) date from the year 1524; the first from 1523, soon after the
completion of his translation of the New Testament; the last two from 1543, three years before his
death. The most original and best known,—we may say the most Luther-like and most
Reformer-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: —
"Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott."
(A tower of strength is this our God.)^651
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 disastrous
year 1527 (not 1521, or 1529, or 1530), and appeared first in print in 1528.^652(^648) I allude, of course, to the mystic conclusion of the second part of Goethe’s Faust:—
"Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan."
(^649) According to Koch (I. 470), Luther is certainly the author of the tunes to "Ein 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.
(^650) Wackernagel, III. 1-31, gives fifty-four Luther-poems, including the variations, and some which cannot be called hymns, as the
praise of "Frau Musica," and "Wider Herzog Heinrich von Braunschweig."
(^651) Carlyle’s translation,—
"A 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.
(^652) The hymn appears in Joseph Klug’s Gesangbuch of 1529 (and in a hymn-book of Augsburg, 1529), and to that year it is assigned
by Wackernagel (III. 20), Koch, and also by Köstlin in the first ed. of his large biography of M. Luther (1875, vol. II. 127), as a protest
against the Diet of Speier held in that year. But since the discovery of an older print apparently from February, 1528, Köstlin has changed
his view in favor of 1527, the year of the pestilence and Luther’s severest spiritual and physical trials. He says (I.c. II. 182, second and
third ed.): "Aus jener schwersten Zeit, welche Luther bis Ende des Jahres 1527 durchzu-machen hatte, ist wohl das gewaltigste seiner
Lieder, das ’Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott,’ hervorgegangen." Schneider (1856) first fixed upon Nov. 1, 1527, as the birthday of this hymn
from internal reasons, and Knaake (1881) added new ones. The deepest griefs and highest faith often meet. Justinus Kemer sings:—
"Poesie ist tiefes Schmerzen,
Und es kommt das schönste Lied
Nur aus einem Menschenherzen,