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         Title: John Calvin and the Psalmody of the Reformed Churches
    Creator(s): Benson, Louis Fitzgerald
   Print Basis: Philadelphia: The Presbyterian Historical Society, 1909
        Rights: Public domain.
    LC Call no: BV 467.**
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             JOHN CALVIN AND THE PSALMODY OF THE REFORMED CHURCHES:

   Being the First of the Lectures upon "The Psalmody of the Reformed
   Churches," Delivered on the L. P. Stone Foundation, at Princeton
   Theological Seminary, in February, 1907.

   By Louis P. Benson, D. D.

   Portrait of John Calvin (From an original Painting)

   Portrait of John Calvin From an original Painting
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  I. The Historical Background.

   The subject of these lectures is the origin and development of
   congregational song in the Reformed or Calvinistic branch of the
   Protestant Churches. We are to study a peculiar type of Protestant
   Church Song:--which was introduced into public worship at Geneva in
   connection with the Calvinistic Reformation; which spread, along with
   the Calvinistic doctrines, into France, the Netherlands and other
   continental countries; which became, under Genevan influence, the
   characteristic song of the Reformed Churches of Scotland and England;
   and which finally was carried across the ocean by immigrants from these
   various European countries, and took its place as a part of the cultus
   of American churches, whether Episcopal, Congregational or
   Presbyterian.

   The type of Church Song with which we have to deal consisted in the
   singing by the congregation itself of metrical versions of the songs of
   Scripture, preferably "the Psalms of David." It is therefore
   conveniently designated as Metrical Psalmody. We need, however, to
   understand the precise force and significance of both the words
   composing this designation. There was, of course, no actual novelty in
   making the singing of Psalms a part of church worship. The practice had
   obtained from the beginning, having passed into the Christian Church
   from the Jewish. In the Daily Office of the Latin Church, as contained
   in the Breviary, the Psalter had always held the place of honor.
   Provision was made in the Breviary for the orderly rendering of all the
   Psalms in the course of each week. But the Psalms were not in the
   language of the people, the Latin prose version being exclusively used;
   and they were set to the Gregorian Chant, which could only be rendered
   by trained officiants. In such a Psalmody the people could take no
   part, and in actual life they were hardly even in contact with it. The
   rendering of the Daily Office was practically confined to the choirs of
   monastic establishments. In the parishes it was accounted sufficient
   that the priest should recite the Office as his daily meed of private
   devotion. As over against this historic "Psalmody" of the
   pre-Reformation Church, the distinction of the Calvinistic Psalmody lay
   in its congregational character. The Psalms were rendered into the
   vernacular that the people might understand them, and they were put
   into metrical form so that they might be set to simple melodies which
   the people could sing. To mark this distinction the Calvinistic type is
   designated as Metrical Psalmody.

   But the metrical form into which the Calvinistic Psalmody was thus cast
   was not peculiar to itself. Metrical hymns in the vernacular had been
   composed by Ambrose and given to the people at Milan before the end of
   the fourth century. Gradually and not without opposition the Metrical
   Hymn established itself as a fixed element of the Daily Office
   throughout all Europe, and a great number of such hymns found place in
   the Breviaries. But in the course of this process the language of the
   Hymns, as of the Psalms, had become an unintelligible tongue, and the
   rendition of the Hymnody, along with the Psalmody, was largely
   relegated to the monasteries. The Hussite movement in Bohemia in the
   fifteenth century was marked by a great revival of the composition and
   use of metrical vernacular hymns, the introduction of the
   congregational Hymn-Tune and of the popular Hymnal. Following this, and
   partly based upon it, came the great outburst of popular song in
   connection with the Lutheran Reformation, in which almost every type of
   the metrical hymn was made familiar. As over against this Hymnody,
   whether of the Latin Church or the Hussites or Lutherans, the
   distinction of the Calvinistic Psalmody lay not in its form but in its
   authorship and subject-matter. The Hymn was a religious lyric freely
   composed within the limits of liturgical propriety by anyone who had
   the gift. The Calvinistic Psalm, on the other hand, was simply the Word
   of God, translated and versified in hymn-form, so as to be sung by the
   people. To mark this distinction of the Calvinistic type of
   Church-Song, it is designated as Metrical Psalmody. When the purpose is
   merely to distinguish the two types of congregational song within the
   bounds of Protestantism, it will be sufficient to designate the singing
   of metrical Psalms in the Reformed Churches as Psalmody, as over
   against the freer Hymnody of Lutheran and other bodies.

   The subject presents itself to us as a historic movement having unity
   and completeness within its own limits. The congregational Psalmody of
   the Calvinistic Reformation was, of course, an incident of the general
   movement to establish vernacular worship. Behind the Hussite and
   Lutheran Hymnody and the Calvinistic Psalmody lay the common motives of
   arousing and deepening the religious feelings of the people, of
   teaching them evangelical truth and of giving them the means of
   expressing their own devotions. But with the Calvinistic Reformation
   congregational song entered upon a new phase, and made a new beginning.
   In this, Church usage and Lutheran precedent alike were disregarded.
   The Scriptures were searched to find Apostolic authority on which to
   rest the ordinance of praise, and conformity to Scripture became the
   determining motive. To this supreme test the subject-matter of the
   songs themselves had to be submitted; and a literal adherence to the
   very words of Scripture songs, even though of the old dispensation,
   came to be preferred to any setting forth of gospel facts or truths in
   words of merely human composition. A system of Psalmody so conceived
   and ordered was obviously much more than a mere extension of the
   Lutheran Hymnody; and through all its history, the Psalmody of the
   Reformed Churches constituted a distinct type of Church Song.

   And even less than was the case in the Lutheran Reformation in Germany,
   did the movement to establish Psalmody in the Reformed Church find any
   beginnings of popular religious song on which it could build. The
   movement had no element of spontaneity. It was not even a popular
   movement, but the conception of one man's mind and the enterprise of
   one man's will. It was a carefully planned element of that liturgical
   programme which Calvin prepared to express his ideals of worship, and
   it was the element of that programme for which he found least sympathy
   among his colleagues and least preparation among the people.

   Least of all did the work of Calvin's great predecessor, Zwingli,
   afford any foundations upon which congregational Psalmody could be
   established. It will be remembered that the Reformation in the
   French-speaking cantons of Switzerland, which began at Geneva, formed
   the second period of the Swiss Reformation. The earlier period had been
   confined to the German-speaking cantons, beginning with Zurich. It was
   Zwingli whose mind dominated this earlier period; which, whether
   independent of Luther's influence or not, was characterized by marked
   divergences from the Lutheran model. The ecclesiastical tastes and
   veneration for tradition which led Luther to conserve the altar and
   mass, and as much as possible of the Church ritual, his desire to
   consecrate music and the other arts to divine service, were wanting in
   Zwingli, or if there at all, were sternly repressed. The stripping from
   the Zurich churches of their altars and images and decorations, and the
   covering their frescoes with whitewash, was not actually done by
   Zwingli. He thought it done prematurely; but the results nevertheless
   accorded with his mind. The churches became plain auditoriums, and in
   this they corresponded with Zwingli's conception of the normal attitude
   of the worshiper as that of an auditor of the Word and prayer. The
   essential in worship was the inward receptivity and response of faith
   to the spoken Word. Everything else Zwingli included under
   "ceremonies." "The Holy Supper," he says, "is itself a ceremony--though
   one instituted by Christ himself--which is sufficient:" [1] but it
   should have as few accompanying ceremonies and as little church pomp as
   possible. The extent to which he was prepared to "yield to human
   weakness" in the matter of ceremonies appears from his Order of
   Administration for the Lord's Supper, 1525. It includes some responses,
   and also the Creed, the Gloria in Excelsis and the CXIIIth Psalm, all
   arranged to be recited antiphonally by the minister, men and women of
   the congregation. [2]

   In this service, and in all Zwingli's liturgical programme, music had
   no place. His position as regards music is to be determined both by
   what he did and by what he refrained from doing. With church music as
   he found it--that of choir and organ--he dealt summarily. As early as
   1525 he abolished the singing by the choir, and on December 9, 1527, he
   ordered the organ of the Great Minster broken up, directing similar
   action in the churches of the city and canton. Bullinger justifies this
   action with a reference to St. Paul's objection to strange tongues
   without interpretation and things without life giving sound, whether
   pipe or harp (I Cor. 14:6-9). [3] This doubtless was Zwingli's own
   explanation of his course. In reality it furnishes a motive for
   abolishing the unintelligible Latin in which the choir sang, but not
   for abolishing the choir itself. Zwingli must have been actuated by
   additional motives. He must have felt that there was no office for the
   choir to fill in the Reformed Church; or else that it was as a matter
   of fact so inevitably associated with a ceremonial type of worship that
   expediency demanded its abolition.

   We have also to consider that Zwingli refrained from any steps toward
   substituting congregational singing for the forms of music thus
   abolished: a fact less easy of explanation in view of his personal
   fondness for music and proficiency in it, and his own composition of
   religious songs which he caused to be set to music. That Zwingli did
   not share Luther's deep sense of the indispensable functions of
   congregational song, is obvious enough. The question is rather whether
   Zwingli deliberately contemplated the permanent establishment in the
   Reformed Church of the anomaly of a religion without music. His
   competent biographer, Christoffel, answers confidently in the negative.
   His explanation is that Zwingli did not introduce music, solely from
   want of time, in the pressure of affairs, to select fitting hymns, and
   arrange divine worship for it in a manner consistent with his own
   views. [4] The explanation is somewhat disingenuous. In other parts of
   German Switzerland, at the same date, available materials for
   congregational song were found at hand. Moreover Zwingli did find time
   to arrange worship according to his views, and in so doing, as has been
   seen, he omitted music. His views as to music in worship may fairly be
   gathered from his introduction to the Order for the Lord's Supper, and
   they can hardly be interpreted as implying more than the toleration of
   congregational song. Singing, to Zwingli's mind, is a ceremony. His
   words are: "It has not been our design to set aside for other
   congregations any such ceremonies as have perhaps been promotive of
   devotion among them, such as singing and some others of the same
   nature." [5] Here, then, we appear to have the answer to our question.
   The matter of congregational song had not been postponed by Zwingli for
   a fuller opportunity, but carefully considered and disposed of. It was
   a ceremony, and one he declined to introduce at Zurich, but recognizing
   it as "perhaps promotive of devotion," he had no intention of
   prohibiting it elsewhere. [6]

   So far as Zwingli's influence extended, his attitude in the matter
   proved practically prohibitive. At Zurich itself the Reformed worship
   continued without music for seventy years. As the Reformation spread
   through German-speaking Switzerland, the influence of Luther was more
   felt and that of Zwingli less. And where congregational singing was
   introduced before Calvin's time it may be safely said that the impulse
   came from Lutheranism and that the song was of the Lutheran type.

   We have thus before us the historical background against which the work
   of Calvin is to be set, and we have now to consider the beginnings of
   the Reformed Psalmody at Geneva.
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   [1] Introduction to "Order of Administration for the Lord's Supper,"
   1525. Daniel, Codex Liturgicus, vol. iii. Tr. Mercersburg Review, vol.
   ix, pp. 594 ff.

   [2] The men and women were on opposite sides of the main aisle.

   [3] Bullinger, Reformationsgeschichte, Frauenfeld, 1838-40, vol. i, p.
   418; and see Gieseler, Text Bk. of Church History (N. Y. ed.), vol. iv,
   p. 548.

   [4] Christoffel, Huldreich Zwingli, Elberfeld, 1857. Tr. by Cochran,
   Edinburgh, 1858: p. 150, note.

   [5] Mercersburg Review, vol. ix, p. 595.

   [6] Zwingli's later biographers appear to go beyond the above statement
   of his position. Mörikofer reluctantly admits that he shared the
   opinion of the Anabaptist faction that singing had no rightful place in
   public worship, and that the singing enjoined in the New Testament was
   the silent melody of the heart and not vocal and audible praise. (J. C.
   Mörikofer, Ulrich Zwingli, Leipzig, 1867-69, vol. ii, p. 93.) Stæhelin
   thinks that several causes may have contributed to exclude
   congregational song at Zurich, but that the decisive cause was neither
   Anabaptist opinion nor consideration for Anabaptists' feelings, but
   Zwingli's distrust of fixed forms of devotion and his judgment that
   devotion was not furthered by singing but by prayerful consideration of
   God's Word. (R. Stæhelin, Huldreich Zwingli, Sein Leben und Wirken,
   Basel, 1895-97, vol. ii, pp. 60, 61.)
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  II. The Situation at Geneva and Calvin's Proposals.

   The movement to evangelize the French-speaking parts of Switzerland was
   undertaken by the powerful German-speaking canton of Bern. Having
   considerable dependencies in the French-speaking territory, Bern
   naturally wished them to follow its lead in adopting the Reformed
   faith, and sent to them a band of zealous missionaries, of whom William
   Farel was the chief. In this way the beginnings of reform in
   French-speaking Switzerland bore the impress of the Zwinglian type that
   characterized the movement at Bern, and which Bern itself in its turn
   had received from Zurich. When Calvin came to Geneva, in July, 1536,
   the Reformation was already acknowledged there. Under Farel's
   leadership, the mass had been discontinued, all holy days except Sunday
   abolished, the altars and images, and even the baptismal fonts, removed
   from the churches. But the work of constructing a Reformed Church on
   the ground thus cleared for it had hardly begun. In Calvin's own words:
   [7]

   "On my first arrival in this city, the gospel was indeed preached, but
   things were in the greatest disorder. It was as though Christianity
   consisted in nothing more than the overturning of images."

   Farel was keenly conscious of the situation, and recognized in Calvin
   the constructive gifts which he himself lacked; and when he had
   persuaded Calvin to remain at Geneva, the virtual leadership passed at
   once into Calvin's hands.

   Farel had not, however, come to Geneva quite unprepared in the matter
   of setting up Reformed worship in the French language. He had published
   at Neuchâtel in 1533 his La maniere et fasson quon tient en baillant le
   sainct baptesme ... es lieux que Dieu de sa grace a visités. [8] This
   was the Order of Worship which Farel introduced at Geneva. [9] The
   principal Sunday service consisted of a general prayer closing with the
   Lord's Prayer, and followed by the sermon. After the sermon came the
   commandments, confession of sins, the Lord's Prayer again, the
   Apostles' Creed, with a final prayer and benediction. In this Order the
   most striking feature is the entire absence of church song. This
   reflected the usage of Zurich and of Bern, but it does not necessarily
   imply any personal objection on Farel's part to congregational singing.
   His Order of Worship was nothing more than a diffuse rendering into
   French of the Order already established at Bern. [10] Its introduction
   at Geneva involves no more than Farel's compliance [11] to that extent
   with the well-known desire of the Council of Bern to impress its own
   usages upon all the cantons. [12]

   Coincident with the publication at Neuchâtel, in 1533, of Farel's
   Manière et fasson, which was the first Order of Reformed worship in
   French, there was a movement to provide the French-speaking Swiss with
   Protestant songs. In the same year and from the same Neuchâtel presses
   appeared two song-tracts; the one entitled Chansons nouvelles
   démonstrants plusieurs erreurs et faulsetés, containing five songs, the
   other containing nineteen, entitled, Belles et bonnes chansons que les
   chrestiens peuvent chanter en grande affection de cueur. [13] These
   were followed by a tract of twenty-four songs, entitled simply Noelz
   nouueaulx. [14] There is hardly room to doubt that the same influences
   were behind the songs and the Order of Worship, and that both alike
   emanated from Farel and his circle. These songs may not have been
   introduced into the stated public prayers and preaching at Neuchatel,
   but taken in connection with what followed they strengthen the
   impression that the mind of Farel was predisposed to follow Calvin's
   leadership rather than Zwingli's in the matter of Church Song.

   As to Calvin's own mind we are more fully informed. He had no sympathy
   with the suppression of congregational praise, whether at Bern or at
   Geneva. He had already formed that project of introducing
   congregational singing into the public services which was to become his
   most distinctive contribution to Reformed worship.

   The position Calvin was to take was clearly foreshadowed in the first
   edition of his Institutio, published before coming to Geneva. [15] The
   third chapter dealt with Prayer. He gives equal recognition to two
   types of public prayer, the one in which the words are spoken, the
   other in which they are sung. Neither type has any value unless it
   proceed from the deep affection of the heart. But, on the other hand,
   neither is to be condemned so long as it follows the affection of the
   mind and is subservient to it. [16]

   After a few months' observation of the Genevan situation Calvin drew up
   certain Articuli de regimine ecclesiæ, setting forth the things most
   essential to a rightly ordered church. These Articles were presented to
   the "Small Council" by Farel, and, with its approval, came before the
   "Council of the Two Hundred" on January 16, 1537. This document has the
   special interest of revealing the reforms Calvin had most at heart. It
   constitutes also the fundamental documentary source for the history of
   Psalmody in the Reformed Churches.

   The earlier part of the Articles deals with the Holy Supper of our Lord
   and with the establishment of such discipline as should safeguard its
   purity. The Articles then proceed:

   "The other part concerns the psalms, which we desire to be sung in the
   church, after the example of the ancient Church, and according to St.
   Paul's testimony, who said that it was a good thing to sing in the
   assembly with mouth and heart. We cannot conceive the improvement and
   edification which will come from this until after we have tried it. In
   our present practice, certainly, the prayers of the faithful are so
   cold as to reflect much discredit and confusion. The psalms would move
   us to lift up our hearts to God, and excite us to fervor in invoking
   him and in exalting by our praises the glory of his name. By this
   means, moreover, men would discover of what benefit and what
   consolation the pope and his partisans have deprived the Church, in
   that they have appropriated the psalms, which ought to be true
   spiritual songs, to be mumbled between them without any understanding
   of them." [17]

   Calvin had thought out the most practicable method of proceeding toward
   an end so desirable. The succeeding paragraph of the Articles suggested
   that a beginning should be made with the children. They were to be
   trained in some sober ecclesiastical song, and were to sing it loudly
   and distinctly while the people listened, following it in their hearts,
   until little by little they should grow accustomed to sing together as
   a congregation.

   The entire unpreparedness of the people thus becomes evident, and we
   are made to feel how radical, then and there, the simple proposal to
   sing Psalms really was.

   The "Council of the Two Hundred" expressed a general approval of the
   Articles, but it is unlikely that Calvin was allowed to proceed in his
   Psalmody project. His influence was being undermined by Caroli's
   charges of heresy, and his own views and methods rapidly produced
   discontent and strife, and brought him into strained relations with
   both the people and the government.

   Moreover the institution of Psalm singing at Geneva would involve, as
   has been said, a definite departure from the Bernese model of Reformed
   worship; and for that the time was unfavorable. Bern, which had aided
   Geneva to gain her independence, was anxious to bring the city within
   the scope of her own authority, and as a step to closer political
   union, sought to bring the Genevan church into closer conformity. While
   Calvin wished to develop the worship of the Genevan church on its own
   lines, the Council of Bern and a large party of sympathizers within
   Geneva urgently pressed the importance of uniformity of worship in both
   churches. The issue was framed in a demand of Bern that Geneva should
   join with all the French-speaking cantons in conforming to certain
   liturgical usages which prevailed at Bern, but which the somewhat more
   radical reformation by Farel at Geneva had rejected. [18]

   In the end the Council of Geneva resolved (March 11, 1538) to introduce
   the usages of Bern into the Genevan church. The step was taken without
   even consulting Calvin or Farel, and left them in a difficult position.
   To accept the liturgical usages imposed by the Council involved their
   assent to the proposition that the Church had no voice in the
   regulation of its own ritual, but must accept it from the hands of the
   civil authorities. For this the reformers were not ready, and their
   refusal to conform immediately was made the occasion of banishing both
   from Geneva (April 23, 1538), whose people found the yoke of their
   strict discipline intolerable, and welcomed an opportunity to rid
   themselves of the disciplinarians.

   Calvin and Farel appealed their case to the Synod which met at Zurich
   on April 29, 1538, and presented a paper drawn up by Calvin, under
   fourteen heads, of the terms upon which they were willing to return to
   Geneva. [19] In the matter of ecclesiastical discipline they were not
   prepared to yield very much. But the matter of the liturgical usages of
   Bern was more indifferent. The use of the font in baptism, the use of
   unleavened bread and the observance of festival days might be conceded,
   but on two points they stood firm: First, that the Holy Supper should
   be administered more frequently; second, that the singing of Psalms
   should be made a part of public worship. [20]

   The second of these provisos in such a connection is surely noteworthy.
   We have to remember that liturgical uniformity had only just been
   attained; that Psalm-singing had so far no precedent in French-speaking
   churches; and that the way for making it practicable had not been
   cleared, the materials for employing it were not at hand. It excites a
   certain surprise that Calvin should refer to his project at all under
   such circumstances of personal humiliation. But that at such a crisis
   in church affairs he should make the inauguration of Psalmody the sine
   qua non of his return to Geneva and the resumption of his work of
   upbuilding the Reformed Church there--this reveals unmistakably that
   congregational Psalmody, which to Zwingli was a mere ceremony at the
   best to be winked at, was in the judgment of Calvin an ordinance
   essential to the right ordering of the Church of Christ. The
   earnestness of this conviction in Calvin's mind was the foundation of
   the Psalmody of the Reformed Churches, and in spite of all difficulties
   he at once proceeded to build upon it.
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   [7] Calvin's Farewell Address to the Ministers of Geneva. Th: Beza,
   Vita Calvini: in Ioannis Calvini Opera, ed. Baum et al., 1863 seq.,
   vol. xxi, col. 167. Cf. Opera, vol. ix, 891.

   [8] Reprinted by J. W. Baum, Strasburg, 1859. For full title in
   facsimile see Emile Doumergue, Jean Calvin: les hommes et les choses de
   son temps. Paris, 1899 seq., vol. ii, 154.

   [9] A. L. Herminjard, Correspondance des réformateurs dans les pays de
   langue française, etc. Geneva and Paris, 1866 seq., vol. iv, p. 191,
   note.

   [10] In a letter undated, but before May, 1837, Calvin wrote to Gaspard
   Megander, a minister at Bern: "We have compared your little liturgical
   directory (libellum tuum cæremonialem), translated by Merelet at our
   request, with our own, and we discover no difference except that it is
   more concise." Opera, vol. xb, 87.

   [11] See Doumergue, op cit., vol. ii, p. 498.

   [12] See Herminjard, op cit., vol. ii, p. 130.

   [13] Doumergue, op cit., vol. ii, p. 506.

   [14] F. Bovet, Histoire du Psautier des Eglises Réformées, Neuchâtel,
   1872, p. 322, (but cf. Doumergue, ut supra). For specimens of these
   early songs, see O. Douen, Clément Marot et le Psautier Huguenot,
   Paris, 1878, 1879, vol. i, pp. 274-277.

   [15] Basle, March, 1536.

   [16] Opera, vol. i, 88.

   [17] Opera, vol. xa, 12.

   [18] The usages in question were, the use of fonts, placed at the
   entrance of churches, in baptism; the use of unleavened bread in the
   Holy Supper; and the observance annually of four festival days.
   Herminjard, vol. iv, p. 413.

   [19] Opera, vol. xb, 190-192.

   [20] "Alterum ut ad publicas orationes psalmorum cantio adhibeatur."
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  III. Inauguration Of The Calvinistic Psalmody At Strassburg.

   Banished from Geneva, Calvin went to Strassburg early in September,
   1538, and found congregational singing an established ordinance among
   the German churches. Becoming pastor of the congregation of French
   refugees in that city, Calvin was now quite free to inaugurate the
   singing of Psalms among his own countrymen. The great difficulty in the
   way was the practical one of finding material suitable for the purpose.
   But within two months of his arrival he had his congregation singing
   French Psalms after some fashion, as appears from a letter of Zwick,
   dated November 9, 1538:

   "A church has been given to the French at Strassburg in which they hear
   sermons from Calvin four times a week, but also celebrate the Lord's
   Supper, and sing psalms in their own tongue." [21]

   The printed material then available for such a purpose was of the
   slightest. [22] Two or three songs based on Psalms were included in the
   earlier Neuchâtel Noelz nouueaulx, but if Calvin employed them, such
   use has left no traces. He had begun to gather together such manuscript
   Psalm versions as he could find, and, because he was much pleased with
   the tunes sung by the German congregations in Strassburg, he set about
   composing French Psalms in metres adapted to these tunes. [23]

   It is possible that the actual effect upon Calvin of the congregational
   singing at Strassburg may have been to convince him that to make
   congregational Psalm singing practicable and effective required not
   only a translation into the vernacular but also into metrical form; and
   that his original thought had been merely to have the prose version of
   the Psalter set to the simpler Gregorian chants. This is consistent
   with the language of the Articles of January 16, 1537, and would
   explain Calvin's proposal to start congregational singing at Geneva at
   a time when metrical Psalms hardly existed. It may be added that prose
   as well as metrical pieces were included in the first issue of Calvin's
   Psalm book when it appeared. From this point, in any case, Calvin's
   project is that of metrical Psalmody, and contemplates a complete
   version of the Psalter.

   By the end of December, 1538, Calvin's manuscript materials had
   sufficiently accumulated to justify his announcing to Farel, then at
   Neuchâtel, his purpose of printing them forthwith for the use of his
   congregation. [24] The actual date at which this purpose was
   accomplished, marking as it would the appearance of the first
   Calvinistic Psalter, was for long an object of interested inquiry. The
   available data were these: On June 28, 1539, Pierre Toussain, pastor at
   Montbeliard, wrote to Calvin: "I pray you to send me the French
   Psalms." [25] There was also this passage in a letter of Calvin himself
   to Farel on October 27 of the same year:

   "I have not been able just now to write to Michael. Do you, however,
   urge him to write by the first messenger what has been done about the
   psalms. I had given orders that a hundred copies should be sent to
   Geneva. Now for the first time I am made to understand that this has
   not been attended to. It was certainly very negligent to delay so long
   to inform me." [26]

   The question was whether these (with one or two later) references
   implied the appearance in that year, 1539, of a printed Psalter.
   Herminjard maintained that they did. [27] The learned editors of
   Calvin's works had doubted it, thinking that the hundred copies were to
   be made by hand from Calvin's draft. [28] Bovet also held that the
   Psalms were not yet in print. [29] The question was settled finally by
   the discovery in the Royal Library of Munich of a copy of the long-lost
   Psalm book. [30] It is a little book of sixty-three pages, without name
   of editor or printer, with the title: Aulcuns pseaulmes et cantiques
   mys en chant. A Strasburg. 1539. "Here is the first Reformed Psalter:
   let us greet it," says Calvin's enthusiastic biographer, "with the
   respect it deserves;" [31] and he quotes appropriately a remark of
   Zahn: [32]

   "This novel book is the source from which the whole literature of the
   [metrical] psalms has issued; those psalms which for four centuries
   have resounded in all the world."

   The book contains twenty-one pieces in all, each having its melody
   printed with the first verse. Eighteen are Psalms; seventeen in verse,
   one in prose. There are also the Nunc Dimittis and the Commandments in
   verse, and the Apostles' Creed in prose. The melodies are some of those
   used by the German congregations of Strassburg, with which Calvin had
   been so much pleased. Of the metrical Psalm versions, two we know to be
   the work of Calvin's own hand, from his own testimony. [33] Three
   others, as well as the Nunc Dimittis and Commandments, are in all
   probability his. [34] The twelve Psalms remaining are the work of
   Clement Marot, the most accomplished French poet of his time.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [21] Opera, vol. xb, 288.

   [22] As to Psalms in French already existing, see Herminjard, vol. iv,
   p. 163, n.; but compare Bovet, pp. 15, 16.

   [23] "Quia majis arridebat melodia germanica": Calvin to Farel, 29
   December, 1538. Opera, vol. xb, 438.

   [24] Opera, xb, 438. "Statuimus enim brevi publicare." For the correct
   date (December 29, 1538) see Herminjard, v, 452, n.

   [25] Opera, vol. xb, 357.

   [26] Opera, vol. xb, 426.

   [27] Op. cit., vol. v., p. 452, n.

   [28] Opera, vol. vi, prolegomena, xxi.

   [29] Op. cit., p. 15.

   [30] For an account of the discovery and full description of the book,
   see Douen, vol. i, pp. 301-303: for the title page in facsimile, see
   Doumergue, vol. ii, p. 511.

   [31] Doumergue, vol. ii, p. 511.

   [32] Ad. Zahn, "Calvin als Dichter": Zeitschrift für kirchliche
   Wissenschaft, 1889, vol. vi, pp. 315-319.

   [33] "Two Psalms, xlvi and xxv, are my first attempts; the others I
   added afterwards." Calvin to Farel, December 29, 1538. Opera, xb, 438.

   [34] See Bovet, "Sur les Psaumes de Calvin," op. cit., pp. 211-224. For
   the text of all the verse attributed to Calvin, see Opera, vi, 211-224.
     __________________________________________________________________

  IV. Clement Marot And The Court Psalmody.

   Marot was to play a great part in Reformed Psalmody; a part best
   explained by saying that Providence raises up its own instruments for
   its own ends. His whole career was that of a pensionnaire of the great
   and a free lance in religion and in letters. Beginning as page to a
   nobleman, he sought through courtly verse to win the patronage of the
   house of Valois. In 1518 he gained a place in the household of
   Marguerite, duchesse d'Alençon, patroness of the new learning and
   sister of Francis I. He followed Francis to Italy in the campaigns of
   1520 and 1525, was wounded and taken prisoner. Returning to France in
   the following year, his free speech and satirical gift brought upon him
   the suspicion of being a Protestant. Marot denied the charge, but was
   imprisoned for heresy. Francis secured his release in 1527, and gave
   him a post in his household. He gained a wide popularity upon the
   publication of his collected poems in 1532. But his enemies also were
   watching him and waiting for a turn in the political situation that
   would encourage a new attack upon him. In 1535 the Parliament of Paris
   summoned him to appear and answer the charge of heresy. He fled from
   France and for a while found refuge with the duchess Renee of Ferrara,
   where he did considerable poetic work.

   Marot was permitted to return to France in 1536, and was established
   under the direct patronage of Francis in a residence in the suburbs of
   Paris. Here he at once entered upon the project of a translation of the
   Psalter into French verse. He had made his poetical reputation neither
   by sustained power nor by sounding depths of feeling, but by vivacious,
   witty and graceful lyrics and ballads, rondeaux, epigrams, satires and
   the like--light-hearted and decidedly free in their morals. What turned
   Marot to the Psalms can only be surmised. The contrast between his
   offensive epigrams and his Psalms gives a certain plausibility to the
   opinion that both alike were poetical exercises of a facile pen which
   worked as readily at the one class of themes as at the other. According
   to Florimond de Raemond, Marot's project was rather born of the spirit
   of the new learning then so active, and took its impulse from his
   contact with the scholars of the Royal University lately established in
   Paris by the king. The learned Vatable there expounded the Hebrew
   Scriptures, and according to De Raemond, engaged Marot to translate the
   Psalter, furnishing him with a corrected text. [35]

   Marot's gay spirit and free ways have caused hesitation in giving
   credit to a religious motive from within. But he had room in his heart
   for genuine religious feeling. He loved the new gospel, as well as the
   new learning, and he had already suffered for his faith. He must have
   entered upon the translation of the Psalms well aware, to say the
   least, that the private interpretation of Scripture and the spread of
   vernacular translations among the people was an enterprise sure to
   excite suspicion and likely to involve personal danger.

   It is not necessary to assume that Marot was a secret Huguenot or that
   he aimed at a direct contribution to the Reformed cultus. [36] There is
   more ground for holding that he designed to make Psalm singing
   fashionable by producing versions that would be welcomed as songs. It
   is certain that he used his position to introduce them at court,
   putting autograph copies of the Psalms, as he composed them, into the
   hands of king and queen, courtiers and fair ladies, in the hope that
   they might replace the frivolous and often objectionable songs then in
   vogue. In this he succeeded, largely through the delight which his
   Psalms afforded the Dauphin, afterwards Henry II. Villemadon has left a
   graphic account [37] of the enthusiasm of the Court over the new
   Psalmody. The Dauphin sang Marot's Psalms, and gathered musicians to
   accompany them on the lute and viol. Those about him felt or feigned a
   share in his delight, and, to please him, begged him to choose for each
   a Psalm. This he did, until each member of the court had his or her own
   special Psalm. The Dauphin kept the CXXVIIIth to himself and composed a
   tune for it. Generally the Psalms seem to have been set to light
   melodies from the vaudevilles. The Psalms having thus become
   fashionable, were in the position most favorable to a wider
   distribution and adoption.

   It was the echoes of this Court Psalmody which reached Calvin at
   Strassburg; and through some one of the doubtless numerous channels of
   distribution, twelve of these Psalms of Marot reached him in time to be
   included in his first Psalm book of 1539. At that date Marot had put
   none of his Psalms into print, other than his early version of Psalm
   VI, appearing in his Le miroir de treschrestienne princesse Marguerite
   de France (Paris, 1533). And there is no reason to believe that he
   furnished Calvin with manuscript copies of the twelve Psalms. Their
   text in Calvin's book of 1539 does not agree with Marot's own text when
   he soon afterwards printed them, but it does agree with an altered text
   which Pierre Alexandra made and printed in a Psalm book published by
   him at Antwerp in 1541: Psalmes de Dauid, translatez de plusieurs
   autheurs, et principallement de Cle. Marot. Veu recongneu at corrigé
   par les theologiens. [38] It was presumably Alexandre who furnished
   Calvin with copies of the twelve Psalms for his first Psalm book. [39]

   Marot in his home at Paris had gone forward in his work of translation
   with the approval of the king, and when Charles V came to Paris in
   1540, Marot by the king's desire, presented to Charles the thirty
   Psalms which he had up to that time translated. Charles

   "received the said translation graciously, highly valued it, and
   presented him with two hundred Spanish pistoles, and also encouraged
   him to finish the said work by translating the rest of the said Psalms,
   and desired him to send him, as soon as he could, the Psalm Confitemini
   Domino, quoniam bonus, because he particularly loved it." [40]

   Under such favor, soon to prove fickle enough, Marot printed at Paris,
   in 1541, [41] his Trente Pseaulmes de Dauid, mis en francoys par
   Clement Marot, valet de chambre du Roy, with a courtier-like dedication
   to the king and a "priuilege" granted after seeing the "certification
   of three doctors in theology" that the book contained nothing contrary
   to the faith, the Scriptures or the usage of the Church. [42] A certain
   air of levity which Marot had thrown upon his enterprise so far may
   have successfully veiled his deeper meaning from the king. It was not
   so with Marot's old enemies, the Faculty of the Sorbonne, who at once
   condemned the book in spite of the certification of the "three
   doctors." The Parliament of Paris issued a writ for Marot's arrest.
   Francis after some hesitation determined to join in the repression of
   heresy, and withdrew his protection from Marot. No course was open to
   Marot except flight; he left France, and toward the close of 1542 found
   a refuge in Geneva.

   In this work of translating the Psalms, however heretical, Marot had
   acted up to this point quite independently of the leaders of the
   Reformed churches, with whom he was not even in correspondence. But his
   Psalms, on the face of them, were intended to be sung. And his
   completion of the Trente Pseaulmes afforded an opportunity to enlarge
   the slim Reformed Psalter which was utilized even before they were
   actually in print.

   Their first appearance in this way was in the Psalter of Pierre
   Alexandre, already referred to as printed at Antwerp in 1541, and which
   represented an effort to extend the new Psalmody among the
   French-speaking people of the Low Countries. [43] Alexandre's position
   at the Hungarian court no doubt put him in the way of securing an early
   manuscript copy. His freedom in altering the text proves that he was
   acting without the knowledge of Marot himself.

   It was again through Alexandre that the new instalment of Marot's
   Psalms came into Calvin's hands, and probably not until after he had
   left Strassburg. Their next appearance, so far as now known, was in an
   Order of Worship and Psalter purporting to be printed at Rome, [44]
   February 15, 1542, by order of the Pope, with the following title: La
   manyere de faire prieres aux eglises francoyses, tant deuant la
   predication comme apres, ensemble pseaulmes et canticques francoys quon
   chante aus dictes eglises, etc. [45] The pretended "privilege," which
   might seem to be a mere jest, was in fact a device of the printer, by
   which he hoped to delay sequestration of his wares until they could be
   marketed. [46] The book was in reality printed at Strassburg, and was a
   new edition of Calvin's Psalter of 1539, with the new Psalms of Marot
   and four by other translators, taken from Alexandre's Antwerp Psalter.
   It did not appear until after Calvin had left Strassburg. It opens with
   a short preface in justification of Psalmody. The preface is in
   Calvin's manner and probably by his hand. It leaves an impression of
   having originally appeared as the preface to an earlier edition of
   Calvin's service-book and Psalter, in 1540 or 1541, but now lost.

   As things are this edition of 1542 is the earliest we have of the Order
   of Worship introduced by Calvin into the French church at Strassburg.
   It is substantially a translation of the German Order of Worship
   observed at Strassburg when Calvin came there, as framed by Bucer; [47]
   but it bears marks of Calvin's personality, and probably better
   represents his liturgical views than the modified form of it he
   afterwards introduced at Geneva.

   Portrait of Clement Marot

   Portrait of Clement Marot
     __________________________________________________________________

   [35] Bayle, Dictionary, art. "Marot."

   [36] But compare Douen, i, 283.

   [37] Villemadon's letter to Catherine de Médicis is in Douen, vol. i,
   p. 284-287, and in Bayle, art. "Marot." Florimond de Raemond, in his
   Histoire de la naissance, progrèz, et décadence de l'hérésie de ce
   siècle (Paris, 1610), used the same data to show the unchurchly origins
   of Reformed Psalmody.

   [38] See Bovet, op. cit., bibliographie, No. 2.

   [39] There is evidence that soon after Calvin left Geneva Jean Gérard,
   a printer there, printed some of Marot's Psalms from copies which had
   come into his hands. (Douen, vol. ii, pp. 645-647.) This lost
   publication was perhaps Alexandre's source.

   [40] Letter of Villemadon, ut supra.

   [41] O. S. Early in 1542, N. S. See Douen, vol. i, p. 290.

   [42] Bovet, op. cit., bibliographie, No. 1.

   [43] The book contained no tunes, but in the case of some Psalms, the
   name of an air was mentioned, to which the Psalm might be sung.

   [44] Hence known as the "Pseudo-Roman Edition."

   [45] Bovet, op. cit., bibliographie, No. 4. For full contents, etc.,
   see Douen, ii, 333-347.

   [46] Opera, vol. vi, prolegomena, xv.

   [47] The subject is fully elucidated by Alfred Erichson, Die
   Calvinische und die Altstrassburgische Gottesdienstardnung, Strassburg,
   1894. Calvin's principal Sunday service in full is in Douen, vol. i,
   pp. 335-339. See also Doumergne, vol. ii, pp. 488-497.
     __________________________________________________________________

  V. Inauguration Of Psalmody At Geneva.

   The date of Calvin's return to Geneva, upon being recalled from his
   exile, was September 13, 1541. In the church reorganization that
   ensued, he was now the dominating influence, and he gave immediate
   attention to the public worship, which during his absence had continued
   unchanged on the lines originally established by Farel. Calvin brought
   with him his little Strassburg Psalm book and the Order of Worship he
   had there observed. In adapting the latter to Genevan use he made
   numerous modifications. Of these the most important were the omission
   of the declaration of absolution following the confession of sins and a
   loosening of the rubrics so as to encourage free prayer. These
   modifications are not necessarily indicative of change in Calvin's own
   liturgical views. Some were plainly concessions to the somewhat extreme
   notions of liturgical simplicity prevailing at Geneva. [48] But,
   nevertheless, the Order of Worship as established at Geneva rather than
   that established at Strassburg was henceforth regarded as
   representatively Calvinian. Under the authority of his name it became
   the general model of Reformed worship, and it largely determined the
   worship of all branches of English-speaking Presbyterians.

   While thus willing to accommodate himself to local conditions in all
   matters not regarded by him as essential, Calvin abated nothing of his
   earlier insistence upon the establishment of congregational Psalmody.
   Two months after his arrival he obtained permission from the Council to
   introduce Psalm singing into the public worship. [49] This was on
   November 20, 1541. At that time he had apparently no materials for the
   purpose except his own scanty collection. But in February, 1542, or
   very soon after, he received the enlarged edition of the Strassburg
   Psalter published in that month. He at once availed himself of its
   contents, and published later in the year the first Genevan edition of
   his Psalter as La forme des prieres et chantz ecclesiastiques, auec la
   maniere d'administrer les Sacremens, & consacrer le Mariage, selon la
   coustume de l'Eglise ancienne. [50] The volume opened with an unsigned
   "Epistre au lecteur," which, with additions made in 1543, remains the
   fullest presentation of Calvin's view on Psalmody. [51] Besides the
   Form of Prayers, etc., now commonly known as "Calvin's Liturgy," this
   edition contained all the thirty Psalms of Marot, the five Psalms and
   two canticles of Calvin himself, with Marot's metrical Lord's Prayer
   and Creed. The text of Marot's Psalms is that of Alexandre's Antwerp
   Psalter, showing that Calvin had not yet seen Marot's own publication
   of the Trente Pseaulmes, for, when he did see it, he greatly preferred
   Marot's original text. Calvin, very likely, had not seen even the
   Antwerp Psalter. He took his material directly from the Strassburg
   edition of February, 1542, of which, excepting the omission of five
   versions there copied from the Antwerp Psalter, and the substitution of
   the metrical for the prose Creed, Calvin's first Genevan edition is a
   reproduction. The musical contents of this edition are more
   distinctive, the Strassburg melodies, where here employed, having been
   subjected to revision, and twenty-two melodies added, which here first
   appear.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [48] See, contra, Douen, op. cit., vol. i, p. 350. But compare
   Doumergue, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 502, note; and, more fully, the same
   author's Essai sur l'histoire du culte réformé, Paris, 1890, pp. 101
   ff.

   [49] Douen, op. cit., vol. i, p. 347. See also pp. 354, 355.

   [50] One copy survives, found by Wackernagel in the library of
   Stuttgart. The services are printed in full in Calvini Opera, vol. vi,
   161-210, with some of the Psalms; for a full description see Douen,
   vol. i, pp. 347-351.

   [51] The full text of Calvin's preface as printed in 1542 is in Ph.
   Wackernagel, Bibliographie sur Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenliedes
   im. XVI. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt, 1855, pp. 575, 576; and with the
   additions of 1543, in Opera, vi, 165-172. Wackernagel's description of
   this edition (from the copy which he discovered) now requires
   modification. For a translation of the greater part of Calvin's
   preface, see J. W. Macmeekin, History of the Scottish Metrical Psalms,
   Glasgow, 1872, pp. 98-100.
     __________________________________________________________________

  VI. The Genevan Psalter: Calvin, Marot And Beza.

   The singing of Psalms had established its place in the public worship
   of Geneva when Marot arrived, toward the end of 1542, but to him and
   the other French refugees it was a novelty indeed. The sight of the
   great congregation gathered in St. Peter's, with their little Psalm
   books in their own hands, the great volume of voices praising God in
   the familiar French, the grave melodies carrying holy words, the fervor
   of the singing and the spiritual uplift of the singers,--all of these
   moved deeply the emotions of the French exiles now first in contact
   with them, and, most of all, Marot, for he recognized the songs the
   congregation sang as being his own. His work of Psalm translation thus
   gained a new meaning, and he was more easily persuaded by Calvin and
   his associates to proceed in it with a view of putting the complete
   Psalter before the congregation.

   This work involved the personal coöperation of Calvin and Marot. Marot
   would object to the changes Alexandre had introduced in the text of his
   Psalms as sung at Geneva; Calvin would insist upon certain amendments
   in the old work and the new in the interests of fidelity to Scripture.
   Altogether during the period of his sojourn at Geneva, Marot added
   nineteen to the number of his versions of Psalms. These, together with
   an improved text of his earlier versions, he printed at Geneva in
   August, 1543, as Cinquante Pseaumes [52] en francoys par Clement Marot,
   introduced by his famous "Epistle to the Ladies of France." This
   publication was literary, and not liturgical, the Psalms not being set
   to music. There can hardly be a question that Calvin at once proceeded
   to have this done, and that in 1543 or 1544 he printed a new edition of
   his Psalter containing the forty-nine Psalms; but no copy of such
   edition has come to light. [53]

   This coöperation of Calvin and Marot at Geneva is one of the most
   curious episodes in the history of Psalmody. All that is known of it
   argues a spirit of accommodation and devotion to a common cause which
   redounds to the credit of both men. The familiar charge of cruel
   treatment on Calvin's part, and gross misconduct on Marot's, may be
   alike dismissed as unsupported. It is especially to Calvin's credit
   that he recognized so frankly the superiority of Marot's work, that he
   accepted the poet's own text as against that previously adopted, in
   spite of the practical inconvenience of such a change, and that he
   suppressed his own Psalm versions, and substituted Marot's, because
   better. Anxious for the completion of the Psalter, he requested the
   Council to make a grant to Marot, that he might stay and proceed in his
   work. This was refused. [54] Soon after, Marot quitted Geneva, and died
   at Turin in August, 1544. The action of the Council no doubt
   disappointed him; and Beza is formally correct in saying that Marot
   "had been bred up in a very bad school, and could not submit his life
   to the reformation of the Gospel;" [55] but justice demands that the
   reformation of the Gospel referred to should be explained as meaning
   the Calvinistic discipline as then imposed upon Geneva.

   The refusal of the Council to engage Marot to complete the Psalter,
   whether caused by prejudice or parsimony, was a blow to Calvin as well
   as to the poet; and Marot's death quenched any reasonable expectation
   of completing the Psalter on the same level of poetic excellence.
   Marot's success raised up a number of imitators, but so far as the
   Calvinistic Psalter was concerned, his death arrested its progress for
   several years.

   In the autumn of 1548, four years after Marot's death, Theodore Beza
   arrived at Geneva in the enthusiasm of his new faith. Out of the old
   life of prosperous gayety which he renounced he brought with him a
   considerable equipment of Renaissance scholarship and literary
   accomplishment. On attending the public worship for the first time, he
   heard Marot's XCIst Psalm sung by the congregation, and, as he himself
   has told us, [56] received an impression so deep that it remained with
   him all his life. It is likely that Beza, with his literary instincts
   and confirmed habit of verse making, felt a disposition to try his hand
   at Psalm translation. It is certain that Calvin, who had been seeking
   some one capable of assuming Marot's unfinished work, [57] believed
   that he had found him in the person of Beza. Beza informs us that he
   undertook the work at Calvin's instigation, [58] but he did not begin
   it until after going to Lausanne as professor of Greek at the end of
   1549.

   Beza's progress was not rapid enough for Calvin, who wrote Viret on
   January 24, 1551:

   "If he has any of the Psalms ready, they need not be kept waiting for
   company. Ask him to send at least some of them by the first messenger."
   [59]

   Beza quickly responded. On March 24, 1551, he obtained permission of
   the Council to print the remainder of the Psalms with musical notes,
   [60] and during that year the first instalment appeared from the
   Genevan press of his friend, John Crespin, as Trente-quatre pseaumes de
   Dauid, nouuellement mis en rime francoise au plus pres de l'hebreu, par
   Th. de Besze de Vezelay en Bourgogne. In this the Psalms were
   introduced by a lengthy "Epistle to the Church of our Lord," evidently
   designed to replace Marot's "Epistle to the Ladies of France" with
   deeper notes of encouragement to the "little flock" under persecution,
   and which long continued to be reprinted as an introduction to the
   Psalters.

   Calvin was entirely satisfied with the new Psalm versions of Beza, whom
   he had come to hold in the deepest affection. He sent a copy of them to
   Madame de Cany early in 1552, that she might see for herself what Beza
   was doing for the Church, and be led to intercede for his relief
   against the pecuniary pressure of his enemies; in order "that he may
   follow out this work, and better things beside." [61] These other
   demands evidently diverted Beza's hand from Psalm translation. His
   thirty-four Psalms and Marot's forty-nine were gathered together and
   printed at Geneva in 1552 as Pseaumes octante-trois de Dauid, but no
   new material was added till the reprint of 1554, under the same title
   but appending six new versions of Beza. One more appeared in an edition
   of 1554 or 1555. It was not until 1562, sixteen years after Marot's
   death, and twenty-three years after the publication of Calvin's first
   collection, that the complete Psalter appeared at Geneva, under the
   designation afterwards so familiar: Les Pseaumes mis en rime francoise
   par Clement Marot et Theodore de Beze (Geneue, Antoine Dauodeau et
   Lucas de Mortiere, pour Antoine Vincent.)

   The Genevan Psalter, Facsimile of Title Page.

   THE GENEVAN PSALTER.
   Facsimile of Title Page of one of the complete editions of 1562.
   (Douen, bibliographie, No. 106, bis.)
   Size of original page, 5-5/8 x 3-5/8 inches.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [52] In reality forty-nine, the Nunc Dimittis counting as the fiftieth.

   [53] The Ecclesiastical Registers of Geneva, 16 June, 1543, show the
   publication of another lost edition of "The Psalms of David, with the
   Prayers of the Church," to which the date affixed to Calvin's preface
   (10 June, 1543) corresponds. But that edition could hardly have had
   Calvin's supervision or approval, as the printer inserted in it the Ave
   Maria, which canticle, when seen by the consistory, was ordered to be
   expunged. There seems to have been another edition that summer, for
   which Calvin prepared the enlarged preface of 10 June, 1543. This must
   have been a reprint of the Psalms already in use. See Douen, vol. i, p.
   448.

   [54] Registres du Conseil, 14 Octobre, 1543: cited Bovet, op. cit., p.
   20.

   [55] Histoire Ecclésiastique, Antwerp, 1580, vol. i, p. 33 (quoted in
   H. Morley, Clement Marot and other Studies, London, 1871, vol. ii, p.
   62). For Beza's relation to this book, see H. M. Baird, Theodore Beza,
   N. Y., 1899, pp. 310 ff.

   [56] Note to Latin Paraphrase of 91st Psalm: Psalmorvm Davidis et
   aliorvm Prophetarvm Libri Qvinqve; ed. London, 1586, p. 412.

   [57] Calvin to Viret, 15 March, 1545: Opera, vol. xii, 47.

   [58] In the dedication of his Latin Psalms, quoted in Bovet, p. 25,
   note.

   [59] Opera, vol. xiv, 27, 28.

   [60] Douen, vol. i, p. 552.

   [61] Opera, vol. xiv, 451-454.
     __________________________________________________________________

  VII. The Melodies of the Genevan Psalter.

   An essential part of the Genevan Psalter was the melodies to which the
   Psalms were set. From its beginnings in 1539 the Psalter was not a book
   of poetry, but a song book in which every piece had its proper tune.

   As has already appeared, the singing of Marot's Psalms began, not among
   the Huguenots, but at the French court, which set the fashion of
   adapting them to popular airs. The Psalms, says Florimond de Raemond,
   [62] "were not then set to music, as they are now, to be sung in
   churches; but everyone gave them such a tune as he thought fit, and
   commonly that of a ballad." These tunes, Raemond says, were popular
   because they were pleasant and easy to learn. The example of the court
   was followed by Pierre Alexandre in preparing his Antwerp Psalter of
   1541. It contained no tunes, but a number of the Psalms were preceded
   by the opening words of some familiar song, as indicating the melody to
   which they were adapted. [63]

   Calvin's course was different. He held pronounced views as to the
   character of music which was suitable to the house of God. In his
   preface of 1543 he said:

   "It has always to be seen to that the singing be not light and
   frivolous, but that it have weight and majesty, as Saint Augustine
   says: so that the music made to amuse people at dinners and at home
   differs widely from the Psalms sung in church in presence of God and
   the angels."

   In order to carry out these views Calvin from the beginning supervised
   the music of his Psalter with the same zeal and pains he gave to its
   literary upbuilding. The melodies he heard in the German congregations
   at Strassburg became his starting point; he preferred them, as he wrote
   Farel, [64] to the French tunes. Some of them he adapted to the
   manuscript Psalms in his possession, and to make others available he
   made Psalm versions of his own, as we have already seen. These
   melodies, embodied in Calvin's Strassburg Psalter of 1539, became the
   basis of the Genevan music. Eleven of them [65] (though with one
   exception modified more or less by musical editing) retained their
   places through all the subsequent development of the Genevan Psalter.
   One of them (the XXXVIth), in connection with Beza's version of the
   LXVIIIth Psalm, to which it was afterwards set, was destined to have a
   great career as the "Huguenot Battle-Psalm." [66]

   When Calvin secured the introduction of Psalm singing at Geneva in
   November, 1541, the first step was to familiarize the people with the
   tunes; and his original proposal to begin with the children was now
   carried out by the Council. William Franc, a refugee from Rouen, who in
   June of that year had been licensed to establish a singing school, was
   appointed to teach the children "to sing the Psalms of David," with a
   salary of ten florins, [67] and on June 6, 1542, was made precentor at
   St. Peter's. On April 16, 1543, the Council resolved that:

   "Whereas the Psalms of David are being completed, and whereas it is
   very necessary to compose a pleasing melody to them, and Master
   Guillaume, the precentor, is very fit to teach the children, he shall
   give them instruction for an hour daily; and that Master Calvin be
   conferred with concerning his salary." [68]

   The salary of fifty florins proposed by the Council was raised through
   Calvin's urgency to one hundred. Franc retained his position till 1545,
   when he informed the Council that he could not live at Geneva on a
   hundred florins, and, upon their refusal to augment his salary, [69] he
   resigned and went to Lausanne.

   It does not appear that Franc had any part in the musical editing of
   the Genevan Psalter of 1542. The Order of Council just quoted contains
   no intimation that he was employed to compose as well as to teach the
   new tunes. The persistent claim that Franc composed and arranged these
   melodies is not supported by the evidence. It rests upon a letter of
   David Constant, professor at Lausanne at the end of the seventeenth
   century, which Bayle published in his Dictionary. [70] Constant wrote
   that he had seen a testimonial signed by Beza, dated November 2, 1552,
   declaring that it was Franc who set the Psalms to the melodies sung in
   the churches, and that he (Constant) owned a copy of the Psalms printed
   at Geneva under Franc's name, and also a magistrate's license of 1564
   in which Franc is named as the composer of the tunes. Constant's
   statements were investigated by Léonard Baulacre, who reported in the
   Journal Helvétique, [71] in 1745, that he could find no reference to
   the composition of tunes in Beza's testimonial of 1552, and that the
   Psalter seen by Constant, although printed at Geneva, was not the
   Genevan Psalter, but an independent one prepared by Franc for use at
   Lausanne.

   Franc established himself at Lausanne in 1545, and was made precentor
   in the cathedral. He found Marot's Psalms in use there, but the
   melodies were not those he had been accustomed to at Geneva. In this
   little matter of the tunes, Lausanne had pleased itself by asserting
   its independence of Geneva. On July 21, 1542, Viret wrote Calvin: "We
   have resolved to sing at once the music of the Psalms composed by
   Gindron," a canon of the cathedral, "which is easier and more agreeable
   than yours." [72] Franc's coming to Lausanne, with none too kindly
   recollections of Geneva, doubtless acted as an encouragement to prepare
   a complete Psalter on the same musically independent lines. In 1552 the
   minister of Lausanne applied to the Council of Geneva for permission to
   print the Psalms with the Lausanne tunes, there being no printers at
   Lausanne. [73] The Council saw no objection and granted a license. No
   Psalter of that date has been discovered, but in 1565, three years
   after the appearance of the complete Genevan Psalter, there was
   published at Geneva the complete Psalter edited by Franc, under the
   title, Les psaumes mis en rime francoise par Clement Marot et Theodore
   de Beze, auec le chant de l'Eglise de Lausanne. [74] This Psalter
   itself, and the "privilége" of the Genevan authorities to print it,
   dated December 1, 1564, were those seen by Constant, and account for
   the error into which he was led as to Franc's connection with the
   Genevan Psalter. In the preface [75] to his Psalter Franc disclaims any
   rivalry of "those who have done their work faithfully" or any wish "to
   correct what they have done so well"; but he neither intimates nor
   implies that his own hand had shared in their work. Franc's Psalter
   contains some twenty-seven compositions or adaptations of his own. He
   explains that these were called for to accompany recent translations of
   Psalms to which hitherto no proper tunes had been set. As for the rest,
   he claims the right to choose the best of those already in use in
   Lausanne or other Reformed churches.

   An opening of the GENEVAN PSALTER, 1562.

   An opening of the GENEVAN PSALTER, 1562.
   The melody at the right is that commonly called "The Old Hundredth."

   Franc's tunes in the Lausanne Psalter are of small merit, [76] and were
   soon superseded even in Lausanne itself. Their present interest lies in
   the internal evidence they afford that the man who wrote them could not
   also have been the composer of the Genevan melodies; for the particular
   distinction of the Genevan tunes lies in their unsurpassed excellence.
   They were composed, to quote Robert Bridges, [77] by an "extraordinary
   genius" in that grave type of melody best adapted to congregational
   praise.

   There is no reasonable doubt that they were the work of another French
   musician, for fifteen years a resident of Geneva, Louis Bourgeois. He
   had come there in 1541, with Calvin or soon after him, and probably by
   his invitation. Calvin recognized his ability, at once engaged him as
   musical editor of the 1542 edition of his Psalter, and became his
   sponsor and advocate before the Council. In 1545 the Council divided
   Franc's office and emoluments between Bourgeois [78] and William Fabri.
   In 1574 they granted him the freedom of the city, "because he is a good
   man and willing to teach the children," and exempted him from guard
   duty that he might give himself more closely to his studies. In the
   license of 1552 to print the Lausanne Psalter, which has been already
   referred to, it is distinctly stated that it was Bourgeois who had
   arranged the melodies of the earlier editions of the Genevan Psalter,
   and who had set to music the Psalms of Beza more lately added to it.
   [79]

   In return for this service, which after events were to prove so great,
   the Council treated Bourgeois with ill-judged parsimony and worse. In
   1551, at the very height of his best work, they cut his salary in half.
   Then followed a series of petitions from Bourgeois, who "desired to
   live and die in their service," and asked only enough to live on.
   Calvin intervened, and pleaded the musician's poverty, but in vain; the
   Council would "speak no more of money." Meantime Bourgeois was
   constantly at work to perfect the music of the Psalms, and the Council,
   wearied of his petitions, made this an occasion of silencing him. On
   December 3, 1551, they arrested and imprisoned him, because without
   their permission he had made alterations in certain of the melodies of
   the earlier printed editions of the Psalter, thus causing confusion in
   public worship. Calvin again intervened and secured his release after
   twenty-four hours. Calvin had more difficulty in recommending the
   alterations to the Council, but in the end they were allowed to stand.
   [80]

   The limits of Bourgeois' work in preparing melodies for the Genevan
   Psalter include the editions from 1542 to 1551. The whole number of
   melodies from his hand is eighty-three, set to the original thirty
   Psalms of Marot, nineteen later Psalms of Marot and thirty-four of
   Beza. [81] Most, possibly all, of these are constructions from melodic
   material already extant, even to the adaptation of current secular
   melodies. [82] Bourgeois left Geneva and returned to Paris in 1557. The
   melodies of the additional Psalms of Beza incorporated in the edition
   of 1562 were undoubtedly by another hand whose identity has not been
   established, but which has proved to be an inferior one both in
   practice and in the judgment of musicians.

   Claude Goudimel has been confidently proclaimed as the composer of the
   Genevan melodies in whole or in part by De Thou, Florimond de Raemond,
   and even by John Quick in his Synodicon in Gallia Reformata. [83] But
   Goudimel never came to Geneva, and remained in the Roman Church until
   after the Genevan Psalter was well advanced. [84] His work upon the
   Psalms began with the recently recovered Premier livre, contenant huyct
   Pseaulmes de David, traduictz par Clement Marot et mis en musique au
   long (en forme de mottetz) par Claude Goudimel, published at Paris in
   1551. [85] Goudimel's work ultimately covered the entire Psalter, but
   it consisted then and later in furnishing harmonies to the already
   existing melodies. The beauty and wide diffusion of his settings
   attached his name to the Genevan Psalter and gave ground for the
   tradition that it was he who composed the melodies.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [62] Histoire de l'hérésie; quoted by Bayle, Dictionary, art. "Marot."

   [63] See Bovet, p. 249.

   [64] December 29, 1538. Opera, vol. xb, 438.

   [65] Psalms, 1, 2, 15, 36, 91, 103, 104, 114, 130, 137, 143. The
   original melodies of 1539 may be recovered by means of chapter xxi of
   M. Douen's work.

   [66] For the history of Psalm and tune see Doumergue, vol. ii,
   appendice viii, "La Psaume des Batailles."

   [67] Douen, vol. i, p. 608.

   [68] Douen, vol. i, p. 608.

   [69] 29 May, 1545. Doumergue, vol. ii, p. 513.

   [70] Art. "Marot."

   [71] Recherches sur les psaumes de Marot et de Bèze, reprinted in
   OEuvres de Baulacre, Geneva, 1857, vol. i, p. 410; quoted in Douen,
   vol. i, pp. 609, 610.

   [72] Opera, vol. xi, 412.

   [73] Douen, vol. i, p. 612.

   [74] Douen, vol. i, p. 610.

   [75] Reprinted in Bovet, note v, and Douen, vol. i, p. 611.

   [76] Specimens are given by M. Douen.

   [77] "A Practical Discourse on some Principles of Hymn Singing":
   Journal of Theological Studies, October, 1899, p. 55; and separately,
   Oxford, 1901, p. 29.

   [78] The Registres du Conseil are the source of our knowledge of
   Bourgeois' career. As such they were explored and reported upon by M.
   Th. Dufour in the Revue critique, 1881. The important entries are in
   Bovet, pp. 60, 61; Douen, vol. i, pp. 615, 616, and Doumergue, vol. ii,
   pp. 514 ff.

   [79] The license is reprinted in Douen, vol. i, p. 612, and Grove,
   Dictionary of Music, art. "Franc," note.

   [80] See a full account of this incident, so suggestive of Calvin's
   concern for the music and musician, in Doumergue, vol. ii, pp. 514,
   515.

   [81] Douen, vol. i, p. 649; but compare Doumergue, vol. ii, p. 516,
   note 7.

   [82] Donen, chap, xxii, "Origines des mélodies du Psautier."

   [83] London, 1692, vol. i, p. v.

   [84] See Doumergue, vol. ii, appendice ix.

   [85] See Grove, Dictionary of Music, art. "Goudimel," vol. i, new
   edition, 1906. At that date Goudimel was still in the old Church, whose
   members then felt free to use the Genevan melodies.
     __________________________________________________________________

  VIII. Spread of the Genevan Psalmody in France.

   The practice of congregational Psalmody, begun at Geneva in 1542, had
   spread rapidly among the Swiss churches. In Lausanne it was introduced
   almost simultaneously; [86] at Grandson, in the Pays de Vaud, not until
   1549. [87] In 1553, according to Garnier of Strassburg, the Psalms were
   sung in all the French speaking evangelical churches. [88]

   In France, as we have seen, Marot had originally surrounded Psalmody
   with an air of grace and charm. It had spread from court to people
   irrespective of Protestant affiliations, and there remained many within
   the Church who saw no harm in it. But since the condemnation of Marot's
   Trente Pseaulmes, the singing of Psalms in the vernacular had been
   generally regarded by the authorities as an act of defiance and a
   sufficient evidence of heresy. Soon after Henry II had set up "la
   Chambre ardente," the edict of Fontainebleau [89] put the stamp of
   heresy upon the printing of books dealing with Holy Scripture, the
   importation of any books not first approved by the Theological Faculty
   of Paris, and even the possession of books which had been condemned.
   The edict of Chateaubriand, June 27, 1551, [90] was particularly aimed
   at the growing influence of Geneva. Intercourse with the refugees
   there, and importation of books printed there, were especially
   prohibited. The provisions of the edict for searching all packages from
   abroad, for an inspection thrice in a year of the great fairs at Lyons,
   and notably the prohibition of the sale by peddlers of any sort of
   books, serve to reveal the methods by which Psalm books and other
   Genevan publications were scattered through France.

   The Protestants of France were not long wholly dependent upon Geneva
   for their Psalm books. Several reprints of Marot's Psalms had appeared
   both at Paris and at Lyons before the edict of 1547. But in 1549, at
   Lyons, which was conveniently remote from the eyes of the Paris
   theologians, [91] there appeared an edition which included the
   melodies, evidently printed with a view of competing with Geneva for
   the Protestant market, [92] constantly enlarging through the formation
   of new congregations.

   The many printings of Marot's Psalms in varied form in these and the
   following years imply a wide diffusion of them among the Protestants
   and those more or less in sympathy with them. The Protestants did not
   confine their Psalm singing to the congregational meetings and the
   privacy of their homes. They sang in the streets and in other public
   places. At Bourges in the spring of 1559 it became the daily custom for
   a large company to assemble in the evening on the green and sing
   Psalms; the people thronging about them to listen and often to
   participate in the Psalmody. In spite of repeated proclamations by the
   town-crier, this continued through all the summer, the singers
   gathering about a gallows erected on the green to warn them of their
   impending fate. [93] The situation is even more clearly revealed by a
   well-authenticated incident occurring in the heart of Paris itself in
   the spring of 1558. [94]

   A throng of the better classes of Paris was enjoying its customary
   promenade at the "Pré-aux-Clercs," an open ground adjoining the
   university, when some voice, with whatever motive, happened to start
   the melody of one of the Genevan Psalms. At once other voices took it
   up, until the whole body of promenaders, students, ladies and
   gentlemen, and some exalted personages, were united in continuing the
   Psalm. The singular demonstration was repeated during the afternoons
   following, until the matter was taken notice of by the faculty of the
   neighboring college of the Sorbonne, officially investigated by the
   Parliament, and ordered to cease.

   Such incidents show how great a part the Genevan Psalmody was playing
   in spreading the Genevan doctrines in France. The popular sympathy it
   awakened in the stress of the persecutions under Henry II did much
   toward developing the party of reform and toleration within the Church
   itself. In some places the ancient order of the Church worship was
   seriously threatened, as in the churches of Bas-Poitou, where for a
   time the old ritual and the popular Psalmody were intermingled. [95]
   The Chronique du Langon relates how the curé Moquet accommodated the
   services to the new taste for congregational Psalm-singing; [96] and at
   Valence, the bishop, Montluc, whose heart was perhaps with the
   Protestants, was accused of allowing them to sing their Psalms in the
   nave, even while he was saying mass in the choir. [97] It was he who at
   the Assembly of Notables at Fontainebleau in 1560, supported the plea
   for toleration made by the Protestants, henceforward to be known as
   Huguenots. [98] He demanded that the ban upon Psalm-singing be lifted,
   and that the singing of Psalms and daily preaching of the Word be
   introduced into the king's palace as an example to the whole nation.
   "To prohibit the singing of Psalms, which the Fathers extol," Montluc
   urged, "would be to give the seditious a good pretext for saying that
   the war was waged not against men, but against God, inasmuch as the
   publication and the hearing of His praises were not tolerated." [99]
   The spirit of concession advanced so far in this particular direction
   that the young king Charles IX and the Queen Mother, with other
   officers of Church and State, united in a memorial praying that the
   singing of Psalms in the vulgar tongue be introduced into all the
   churches of France, and this they placed in the hands of the Cardinal
   of Lorraine for presentation to the Council of Trent. [100]

   In reality no compromise of any sort between the Church and the
   Protestants was at all practicable. This became evident at the Colloquy
   of Poissy in the autumn of 1561, where Beza, who had been recalled to
   France, appeared as the leader and spokesman of the Huguenot
   delegation. But it became also evident, in view of the number of the
   Protestants and the friends they had gained at court, that there must
   be for a time some cessation of the hitherto relentless policy of
   repression and extermination. The Reformed cause had won a temporary
   footing in France. Beza had now finished his translation of the Psalms,
   and took advantage of the situation to secure on October 16, 1561, its
   approbation by the examiners. [101] The royal "privilége" for the
   publication of "tous les Pseaumes du Prophete Dauid, traduits à la
   verité Hebraique, & mis en rime Françoise & bonne Musique," was
   executed on October 29th, and issued on December 26, 1561. [102] It
   vested the sole right to print the Psalms for a term of ten years in
   Antoine Vincent, a publisher of Lyons who had embraced the Reformed
   faith.

   The long-pent-up eagerness of many to read and to own the Psalms at
   once expressed itself in a demand for the new Psalter that must have
   been unprecedented in the annals of French printing, and which is very
   striking even now. Vincent farmed out his right among numerous
   applicants, and "a veritable avalanche of Psalters" covered France,
   Switzerland and the Pays-Bas. Twenty-five editions are known to have
   appeared within 1562, the year of first publication. In Geneva itself
   there were nine editions, or rather issues, bearing the imprint of six
   different printing houses; seven editions at Paris, three at Lyons, one
   at St. Loo, and five that bear no indication of the place of issue.
   Fifteen editions of 1563 are known, eleven of 1564 and thirteen of
   1565: a total of sixty-four issues within four years of publication.
   [103]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [86] Viret to Calvin, 21 July, 1542. Opera, vol. xi, 412.

   [87] A. Ruchat, Histoire de la Réformation de la Suisse. Genève, 1727
   seq., vol. vi, p. 452. For an error in the date as given in Vulliemin's
   later ed. see Bovet, p. 47, note.

   [88] Douen, vol. i, p. 557; vol. ii, p. 514 (bibliographie No. 47).

   [89] December 11, 1547. See H. M. Baird, The Rise of the Huguenots of
   France, N. Y., ed. 1896, vol. i, p. 275.

   [90] Baird, op. cit., vol. i, p. 279-281.

   [91] G. H. Putnam, Books and their makers in the Middle Ages, vol. ii,
   N. Y., 1897, pp. 8, 9.

   [92] Ibid, pp. 93, 94.

   [93] Bulletin de la Soc. de l'Histoire du Protest., vol. v, p. 90: See
   Bovet, pp. 53, 54.

   [94] Histoire Ecclésiastique, vol. i, p. 90: quoted by Bayle,
   Dictionary (art. "Marot"): and see Baird, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 314,
   315.

   [95] Bovet, p. 55.

   [96] Ibid, pp. 55, 56.

   [97] Ibid, p. 56, note.

   [98] W. Moeller, History of the Christian Church, Eng. tr., vol. iii,
   p. 193.

   [99] Baird, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 418, 419.

   [100] Douen, vol. i, p. 571.

   [101] Douen, vol. i, p. 564.

   [102] Certificate in edition of 1564.

   [103] The fullest list is in Douen, vol. ii, bibliographie: a few
   issues then unknown have since turned up. The first edition of the
   completed Psalter seems to have been that printed at Geneva for Antoine
   Vincent, whose title has already been given. No doubt the numerous
   Genevan editions of 1562 were issued mainly to meet the demand from
   France. There is some variance in the title of the 1562 editions; a few
   appearing as Les Pseaumes de Dauid; a few more as Les cent et cinquante
   (or CL.) Pseaumes de Dauid. The names of Marot and Beza appear in all.
     __________________________________________________________________

  IX. The Psalmody of the Reformed Churches of France.

   The Genevan Psalter, words and tunes, became the authorized praise book
   of "The Reformed Churches of France." With the organization of French
   Protestants into congregations with regular worship and administration
   of sacraments, the singing of Psalms was everywhere a recognized
   feature of the cultus. In 1559 these congregations ventured to hold a
   general synod at Paris, adopting a confession of faith of the Genevan
   type, and effecting their church organization under the Presbyterian
   form. The order of worship adopted was that of Calvin's La forme des
   prieres. In the church discipline formulated at the first and
   subsequent synods, Psalmody was given constitutional recognition. Of
   chapter x, "of Religious Exercises performed in the Assemblies of the
   Faithful," canon ii reads:

   "Singing of God's praises being a divine Ordinance, and to be performed
   in the Congregations of the Faithful, and for that by the use of Psalms
   their hearts be comforted and strengthened; Every one shall be
   advertised to bring with them their Psalm-Books unto those Assemblies,
   and such as through contempt of this holy Ordinance do forbear the
   having of them, shall be censured, as also those, who in time of
   singing, both before and after sermon, are not uncovered, as also when
   the Holy Sacraments are Celebrated." [104]

   The gesture of outward respect and the individual Psalm books here
   inculcated became characteristic of the Reformed Psalmody in general.
   The little books containing the words and notes, brought forth from his
   garments by every member of the congregation at the announcement of the
   Psalm, were remarked as a striking feature by more than one observer of
   the early Reformed worship; the token of each believer's active part in
   the exercises. [105]

   The singing by the congregation, led by a precentor, was without
   instrumental accompaniment. The Psalms were sung in their order, and
   the practice was to sing right through the Psalter from beginning to
   end, without selection or omission, within a given period. Before
   leaving Geneva Bourgeois devised a table distributing the Psalms into
   suitable portions, and from which the Psalm or Psalms appointed for the
   day could be determined. For this he was rewarded by the Council, and
   printed copies of the table were ordered to be posted in the churches.
   [106] Such tables of distribution of the Psalms came frequently to be
   printed in the Psalm books, and where the end of the daily portion came
   before the ending of the Psalm itself, the point of division was
   indicated by the word "PAUSE." No thought of any discrimination in the
   use of the Psalms was in the minds of either the framers or the early
   users of the French Psalter, or was required by the robust faith of the
   sixteenth century.

   To the early French Protestants the Psalm book was a unit--the Word of
   God in the personal possession of the humblest, the symbol as well as
   the vehicle of their new privilege of personal communion with God. To
   know the Psalms became a primary duty; and the singing of Psalms became
   the Reformed cultus, the characteristic note distinguishing its worship
   from that of the Roman Catholic Church.

   The familiar use of Psalms in worship only emphasized the power of
   their appeal to the individual experience, and made Psalmody as much a
   part of the daily life as of public worship. The family in the home,
   men and women at their daily tasks, were recognized as Huguenots
   because they were heard singing Psalms. The Psalter became to them the
   manual of the spiritual life. It ingrained its own characteristics deep
   in the Huguenot character, and had a great part in making it what it
   was. A character nourished and fed by Old Testament ideals must
   inevitably have the defects of its qualities. But to the Huguenot,
   called to fight and suffer for his principles, the habit of Psalm
   singing was a providential preparation. The Psalms were his confidence
   and strength in quiet and solitude, his refuge from oppression; in the
   wars of religion they became the songs of the camp and the march, the
   inspiration of the battle and the consolation in death, whether on the
   field or at the martyr's stake. It is not possible to conceive of the
   history of the Reformation in France in such a way that Psalm singing
   should not have a great place in it. [107]

   Under such conditions the inextinguishable hatred of the Genevan
   Psalter felt by the enemies of the Reformation is easily understood;
   and the peculiar vindictiveness with which Psalm singing was proscribed
   and hunted out and punished [108] becomes natural to the point of view.
   The Roman Catholic position was that Psalms inspired by the Holy Ghost
   and committed to the church, were not to be rashly put forth for
   promiscuous use by the people in connection with secular surroundings
   and thoughts. They should be reserved for the holy offices and
   congenial surroundings of the established worship, and confined to the
   utterance of holy persons thereto appointed. It is worthy of note that
   even to a contemporary skeptic, Montaigne, this position seemed not
   only reasonable but profitable. He says:

   "It is not without very good reason, in my opinion, that the church
   interdicts the promiscuous indiscreet, and irreverent use of the holy
   and divine psalms, with which the Holy Ghost inspired King David. We
   ought not to mix God in our actions, but with the highest reverence and
   caution; that poesy is too holy to be put to no other use than to
   exercise the lungs and to delight our ears; it ought to come from the
   conscience and not from the tongue. It is not fit that a prentice in
   his shop, among his vain and frivolous thoughts, should be permitted to
   pass away his time and divert himself with such sacred things. Neither
   is it decent to see the Holy Book of the holy mysteries of our belief
   tumbled up and down a hall or a kitchen; they were formerly mysteries,
   but are now become sports and recreations." [109]

   To these objections against Psalm singing in private life Church
   writers alleged others equally strong against congregational Psalmody.
   They fouled the memory of Marot as its author, and ridiculed the Psalm
   tunes as carnal songs; they accused the young men and maidens of
   singing to each other rather than to God, and contended that the
   efforts of an ordinary congregation were not endurable as a musical
   performance. In spite of the atmosphere of contempt thus thrown around
   Psalmody by its opponents, and in spite of continued legislation,
   penalty, persecution and death visited upon the singers by the church
   authorities, the new Psalmody covered France, spread from country to
   country, and was transplanted into the new world as an established
   institute of Reformed worship.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [104] Quick, Synodicon, vol. i, p. xliii.

   [105] See Doumergue, vol. ii, p. 490, and Dickinson, Music in the
   History of the Western Church, N. Y., 1902, p. 361.

   [106] See Doumergue, vol. ii, p. 515.

   [107] For ample illustration of this phase of the subject consult
   Douen, chap. i, "Rôle du Psautier dans l'église réformée"; Bovet,
   chaps, vi, ix; and R. E. Prothero, The Psalms in Human Life, London and
   New York, 1903, chaps. vii, viii, "The Huguenots."

   [108] Consult Bovet, pp. 126 ff, and note viii, "Arrêts contre le chant
   des Psaumes."

   [109] Essays, book i, chap. lvi, tr. by Cotton.
     __________________________________________________________________

  X. Calvin: His Relations to Metrical Psalmody and Church Music.

   Behind this whole movement--the establishment of Psalm singing in
   French Switzerland, its spread through France and the other countries
   in Europe--stands the great figure of John Calvin. There is no more
   difficulty in assigning the leadership to him than in assigning to
   Luther the leadership in establishing hymn singing in Germany and its
   spread from there into other Lutheran countries. From this point,
   indeed, the two figures stand as independent sources, from which flow
   two parallel streams of Protestant church song--the Lutheran Hymnody on
   the one hand and the Reformed Metrical Psalmody on the other. And the
   streams were not to be fully united till after two centuries had
   passed. They are not in fact merged into unity even to-day, when the
   Calvinistic precedent of Psalm singing still furnishes the ground for
   maintaining denominational integrity among exclusive Psalm singers.

   Calvin's work thus becomes of great import to Psalmody, and marks an
   epoch in the history of the Hymn. Calvin did not, of course, invent or
   even introduce the metrical Psalm. Metrical Psalms were by no means
   excluded from Lutheran Hymnody. But the Lutheran Psalm was in motive a
   hymn rather than a version of Scripture. It might be literal, and, on
   the other hand, might give merely a suggestion of the subject or manner
   of some canonical Psalm. But the Calvinistic Psalm took its authority
   and its appropriateness from its divine inspiration. It must be Holy
   Scripture, first of all; and then it became metrical merely to
   facilitate its congregational rendering. Calvin had determined to make
   the Psalter the praise book of the Reformed Church, and to that end
   never rested till the praise book was complete. The excellence of that
   praise book, both literary and musical, carried Metrical Psalmody
   through France by its own impulse; and the Genevan tunes spread
   Metrical Psalmody more widely through Europe. Calvin's great authority
   made Geneva the center of the Reformed world, and the Genevan Psalmody
   became the inspiration and the model for the Reformed Churches in
   England and Scotland. In this process of extension the practice of
   singing metrical Psalms hardened into the rigidity of an established
   custom. The Calvinistic precedent became the Calvinistic principle; the
   metrical Psalm became the norm and rule of praise throughout the whole
   Reformed Church, to the virtual exclusion of all hymns of human
   composition.

   It becomes, therefore, of interest to discover just what were Calvin's
   own views as to the proper subject-matter of praise. And these should
   be taken from his own words. Calvin's choice of the canonical Psalms,
   and his ignoring of the Latin hymns of the church, was, of course, in
   accord with his views of the supremacy of Scripture in worship and his
   complete indifference to such liturgical stores as the church had
   accumulated since primitive times. He wished to get back to primitive
   simplicity, and his establishment of congregational singing rested upon
   his conviction that it was an apostolic institute of which the people
   had been unjustly deprived; [110] the Latin hymn indeed being the very
   instrument by which the deprivation had been effected. At the same time
   Calvin is not to be counted among those who before and after him
   maintained the exclusive right of the Psalms or the hymns of Scripture
   as the only divinely authorized subject-matter of praise. Such a view
   demands the interpretation of the "Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs"
   in Ephesians, 5:19, and Colossians 3:16, as being merely different
   names for canonical Psalms. Calvin's exegesis is quite different. In
   his Commentary on Colossians he holds that under these terms St. Paul
   includes "all kinds of song," and adds the word "spiritual" to indicate
   that he would have Christian songs to be of that character, and not
   made up of frivolities and worthless trifles. The choice, then, before
   the church is very wide, and why from among all these songs Calvin
   himself chose the Psalms for his church at Geneva clearly appears from
   his preface of 1542-43. After referring to the need of songs that are
   pure and holy, and the need of receiving from God Himself power to
   write songs worthy of Him, he adds:

   "Wherefore, when we have sought on every side, searching here and
   there, we shall find no songs better and more suitable for our purpose
   than the Psalms of David, dictated to him and made for him by the Holy
   Spirit. But singing them ourselves we feel as certain that God put the
   words into our mouths as if He Himself were singing within us to exalt
   His glory." And again: "Only let the world be well-advised, that
   instead of the songs partly vain and frivolous, partly dull and
   foolish, partly filthy and vile, and consequently wicked and hurtful,
   which it has hitherto used, it should accustom itself hereafter to sing
   these divine and heavenly songs with good King David." [111]

   Calvin here offers his Psalter to the church, and commends it to the
   world on account of its divine excellency. His words convey no
   implication of any divine prescription, and might have been uttered by
   any Psalm-loving Lutheran. It was, moreover, quite foreign to Calvin's
   mind to set up a formula of praise, or to find any efficacy in the use
   of it as prescribed. "Neither words nor singing," he said in his
   Institutio, [112] "are of the least consequence or avail one iota with
   God unless they proceed from deep feeling in the heart."

   It was not merely the example of Calvin, but also the conditions of the
   time, that kept the Reformed Churches to the Psalter. They found in it
   a well opened in the desert, from which they drew consolation under
   persecution, strength to resist valiantly the enemies of their faith;
   with the assured conviction that God was fighting for them, and also
   (it must be added) would be revenged against their foes. There was at
   the same time an inevitable narrowing and loss involved in the drying
   up of those springs of spiritual song which come from within the heart
   itself; and a greater loss in so far as the lyrics of an earlier
   dispensation hindered the fullness of Gospel song from reaching the
   heart. Even in Calvin's time there was criticism that Marot and Beza's
   Psalms did not recognize the fulfillment of prophetic Psalmody in
   Christ.

   Both the spirit and the method of Calvin's work in Psalmody have been
   greatly disparaged by modern students, and it is worth while to inquire
   if they have accorded deliberate justice. M. Douen, in his Clément
   Marot et le Psautier Huguenot, has done more than anyone else to
   elucidate the origins of the Calvinistic Psalmody; and yet he brings to
   his researches a rigid preconception of Calvin's personality to which
   all that he discovers in the record, and much besides, not discernible
   there, is forced to contribute. To M. Douen, Marot not unjustly
   represents the modern spirit and Bourgeois the art of music. Opposed to
   them stands Calvin as "the type of dogmatism imposed by authority,
   antiliberal, antiartistic, antihumane and antichristian." [113]

   According to M. Douen, Calvin made use of the poet and musician as long
   as they consented to work in subjection to his despotic will. But when
   the poet failed in entire conformity to Calvin's rule of life, and the
   musician ventured to arrange harmonies to the Psalm melodies in
   disregard of Calvin's wishes, Calvin turned against both. He regarded
   "their independence as a revolt against God himself," [114] disregarded
   their unique services and treated them with negligent disdain, [115]
   until they were compelled to leave Geneva, the victims of Calvin's
   "rancour." [116] It can hardly be claimed that this alleged hostility
   of Calvin to his colaborers rests on any sure basis of evidence.
   Several instances of Calvin's kindly regard for them and his
   intervention in their behalf have already been cited. It may be noted
   that in Bourgeois' case Calvin's interventions continued for several
   years subsequent to the date of his publication in 1547 of the Psalms à
   quatre parties; to which publication Calvin had in all probability no
   objection, the harmonies not being designed for use in church services.
   M. Douen's charges, which color his whole work, are to be regarded
   rather as hypothetical; as what must inevitably have happened when his
   preconceived Calvin was confronted with the modern spirit and the
   feeling for art. Even were they true in whole or in part they would not
   change or even affect the results of Calvin's work for congregational
   song. They would only cause regret that a work so successful and
   wide-reaching could have been prosecuted in a spirit so malevolent.

   But the side of Calvin's work which has subjected it to the most
   widespread criticism and even condemnation is the musical side. This
   criticism has been directed against the Genevan Psalmody itself on the
   ground that it reduced congregational song to its most rudimentary
   form, in that all the people sang the melody in unison without
   accompaniment and without other leadership than that of a precentor.
   But criticism has gone much further than this, because the question
   raised by the Genevan Psalter is much broader than any relating merely
   to the method of administering the ordinance of congregational praise.
   It is the question of what part music is to have in worship; and the
   Genevan Psalter proposes an answer to this question by offering
   Psalmody in lieu of all other forms of church music. For it must be
   acknowledged that the Genevan Psalter embodies Calvin's ideals and
   expresses Calvin's whole purpose in regard to the proper function of
   music in church worship. In his liturgical scheme for the Reformed
   Church, music had no other place than that of furnishing melodies for
   singing the metrical Psalms.

   The mere statement of the fact thus acknowledged constitutes the
   gravamen of the main charge laid against Calvin by historians of the
   art of music. One of the latest of these, Mr. Louis C. Elson, will
   serve as a sufficient instance. Having referred to Luther as "an ardent
   musician, who desired to approach the beauty of the Catholic ritual in
   the music of the Protestant Church," he proceeds to say:

   "At the other extreme we find John Calvin, a bitter opponent of the
   fine arts, a man who desired that the music of the church might attract
   no attention to itself, but merely become a peg whereon to hang the
   rhythmic recitation of the Psalms." [117]

   Mr. Elson's presentation of the critical attitude will serve our
   present purpose, because, though unguarded and unsympathetic, it
   approaches more nearly than most to the actual facts. But his
   designation of Calvin requires much qualification. In Calvin's writings
   certainly there is nothing entitling anyone to call him an opponent of
   the fine arts. He dealt with them appreciatively, and his numerous
   references to them are thoroughly consistent. We may take as typical
   his dealing with Jubal, the inventor of the harp and organ, in the
   earliest reference to art in the Scriptures. Calvin calls Jubal's art
   faculty a rare endowment, an excellent gift, so much of good amid the
   evil proceeding from the family of Cain, an evidence of God's bounty in
   diffusing the excellent gifts of the Holy Spirit through the whole
   human race. [118] "All the arts," Calvin says, "come from God and are
   to be esteemed as inventions of God." [119] Calvin's theology found
   room for the artistic endowment of the human race under his doctrine of
   "common grace," and his scheme of life found room for the liberal arts;
   they are to minister to our pleasure and comfort, and are to be used as
   God's gifts and to His praise.

   Calvin was not, then, in theory at least, hostile to the arts. But was
   he, nevertheless, hostile or even indifferent to the specific art of
   music? According to Dr. Henry Allon:--

   "Calvin was utterly destitute of musical sensibility, as every page of
   his works and every element of his character indicate; he was too much
   of a theological formula to have much of the genius of song. And this
   unhappy defect has deprived his writings of the broad human sympathy
   which characterizes Luther's, and has entailed upon all the churches
   that bear his name such musical asceticism and poverty." [120]

   It is true that Calvin was no musician as Luther was, and that being
   undeveloped on the musical side, he failed of the full understanding
   that comes by participation. But in warmth of sympathy and appreciation
   he failed not at all:--"Among other things which are suitable for men's
   recreation and for giving them pleasure, music is either the foremost,
   or, at least, must be esteemed one of the most prominent; and we must
   esteem it a gift of God to us with that purpose." [121] "We doubt if
   there is any thing in this world which can more powerfully turn or bend
   hither and thither the morals of men." [122] As to his own
   "sensibility," Calvin has testified: "Our own experience shows a secret
   and almost incredible power of music to move hearts one way or the
   other." [123]

   Throughout his writings Calvin recognizes music as a divinely appointed
   instrument to enrich and ennoble life and even to minister legitimately
   to the entertainment of the masses; and this with no other restrictions
   than would be insisted upon by anyone of an equal ethical seriousness.
   [124]

   It is true, nevertheless, that Calvin opposed any encroachment of the
   fine art of music within the sphere of worship; that he wished, in Mr.
   Elson's phrase, "that the music of the church might attract no
   attention to itself," and should be employed only in strictest
   subordination to the ends of spiritual edification and the glorifying
   of God. The end of aesthetic gratification had with him no relation at
   all to worship. Worship is the response of heart and mind to the Word
   of God. Its outward actions should have dignity and grace, but not
   adornment. [125] The attempt to adorn it with the music of the organ is
   foolish. Things without life giving sound are incapable of
   understanding, without which there is no praise. The organ music of the
   Papal Church was imitated from the Jewish, in which instrumental music
   was tolerated because God dealt with the Jews as with spiritual
   children needing to be entertained. [126] The tongue is the special
   instrument by which God's praise is to be declared and proclaimed, and
   that by singing as well as speaking. [127] "If singing is tempered to a
   gravity befitting the presence of God and angels, it both gives dignity
   and grace to sacred actions, and has a very powerful tendency to stir
   up the mind to true zeal and ardor in prayer." [128]

   The singing thus favored is that of the body of believers, "proceeding
   from deep feeling in the heart"; the singing of a choir, whether on
   behalf of the people or to them, finding no recognition or place. The
   whole range of art forms in which music can reach the congregation only
   by impressing them as auditors was excluded. And even, in
   congregational singing, "we must carefully beware, lest our ears be
   more intent on the music than our minds on the spiritual meaning of the
   words." [129] Augustine had been so conscious of the encroachment of
   sensuous charm upon spirituality in the church Psalmody of his time as
   to consider the expediency of having the Psalms rendered merely by a
   modulated recitation. [130] Calvin, with the same end in view, did not
   go so far. He provided a full repertory of grave yet beautiful
   melodies, but he arranged that in worship they should be sung in unison
   by all, disregarding the harmonic parts. M. Douen characteristically
   attempts to show [131] that Calvin's objection to four-part singing in
   worship was merely an item of his antipathy to beauty, and quotes the
   following passage from the Institutio:

   "The songs and melodies which are composed to please the ear only, as
   are all the fringots and quaverings of Papistry, and all which they
   call trained music, and tunes in four parts, are by no means suitable
   to the majesty of the church, and cannot be otherwise than greatly
   displeasing to God."

   But the words here printed in italics are not Calvin's. They occur only
   in the French version of 1560. [132] They are one of numerous glosses
   added to the text by the hand of an unknown translator, and there is no
   reason to believe that they even passed under Calvin's eye. [133]
   Calvin's objection to employing four-part song in worship was simply
   the fear that attention to the music might divert the mind from the
   words.

   It would be idle to attempt to reconcile Calvin's canons of worship
   with a theory of art for art's sake. If his temperament had been
   artistic, his canons would in all probability have been different;
   certainly their application would have been less severe.

   And yet one who will try to put himself in Calvin's situation is not
   likely to feel that he was playing the part of a music hater or of a
   mere iconoclast. Facing on one side the religious music of his time he
   found nothing except the venerable system of Gregorian plain-chant as
   used in the old Church. It was historically and inextricably interwoven
   with the doctrines and ceremonies which the Reformation had renounced.
   It was a music removed from the people with a curious ingenuity--so
   complicated that they could not have performed it if permitted, and in
   fact kept entirely in the hands of an official class, set exclusively
   to words of a foreign tongue the people could not understand, and, when
   performed in their hearing, probably heard with dull indifference by a
   people whose natural taste it did not appeal to and whom no one had
   cared to train to an appreciation of it. Facing the music of the people
   he found it rude and untaught, but left free to flow in more natural
   channels and to mingle with life. He found it also contaminated by the
   contact, fouled by the impurities of life and degraded to become too
   often the instrument of immodesty and the inciter of dissoluteness.

   In a similar situation Luther resolved to provide religious songs for
   the people, and also to conserve the interest of plain song in
   Protestant worship. In the first resolution he succeeded and in the
   second he failed. Calvin set his heart on fashioning the Word of God
   itself into songs for the people, and he turned his back upon the
   traditional ecclesiastical music, making popular song a part of the
   cultus of a democratic church. Those who condemn him for the latter
   course have not yet shown just how Calvin could have succeeded where
   Luther failed, or how the Gregorian music should have adapted itself to
   express Calvin's ideals and to extend his Reformation. They seem to
   imply a neglected opportunity to organize and maintain a full musical
   establishment at Geneva, where, in fact, he struggled to introduce
   music at all, and could not wrest from the Council a living wage for
   his single precentor. They fail on the one hand to give Calvin credit
   for providing a popular song that stirred the heart of nations, and
   they neglect on the other to record the services of his musical
   associates to the development of the modern art of music. [134]

   It must be remembered also that the iconoclastic side of the changes at
   Geneva did not fall to Calvin's hands. All that pertained to Roman
   ceremonial had been swept away before his coming. The practical
   question was not how much of the Roman worship he should retain, but
   whether he should follow Zwingli's lead in renouncing all religious use
   of music in worship. So that Calvin's work in establishing
   congregational song was a purely constructive work. His critics should
   begin by giving him credit for his purpose to restore music to a place
   in Reformed worship, in which prior to his coming it had no place at
   all. And even though the spiritual triumphs of the new Psalmody be
   accounted as beyond the ken of the musical critic, he ought in fairness
   to acknowledge the loving care given to secure its musical excellence
   within its admittedly narrow limits. That Professor Dickinson, in his
   Music in the History of the Western Church, [135] should devote so much
   space to the Lutheran chorals, and dismiss the Genevan melodies with a
   reference to them "as unemotional unison tunes," suggests that the
   demands of fairness are not always complied with. It might, moreover,
   be argued that in having the melodies sung in unison Calvin consulted
   the best interests of congregational song. Both the plain song and the
   Lutheran Hymnody furnished ample precedent for his course, of which his
   own very competent musicians seem to have approved, as have many since.
   [136]

   Whether for good or for ill the musical ideals and example of Calvin
   long dominated the worship of the Reformed Churches. He must be held
   responsible, without doubt, for what Dr. Allon, in the lecture already
   referred to, describes as "the musical asceticism and poverty" of "all
   the churches that bear his name." [137] But Dr. Allon surely goes
   rather far in holding Calvin responsible for the indifference and
   neglect into which the performance of Psalmody afterwards fell in more
   than one branch of the Reformed Church. He goes on to say:

   "In no Calvinistic country--American, Scotch, Dutch, and, so far as it
   is Calvinistic, English--is there a church-song. The musical Luther has
   filled Germany with rich church-hymnody: the unmusical Calvin has so
   impoverished Puritan and Presbyterian worship, that the rugged,
   inartistic, slovenly psalmody has become a by-word and a needless
   repulsion; for surely there is no piety in discords, nor any special
   devoutness in slovenliness; our nature craves something better than the
   traditional psalm-singing of the inharmonious meeting-house."

   Now Calvin did in fact provide a church song for France, and provision
   for its continued well-being was made in all the colleges established
   by his influence, in each of which music and training in Psalm singing
   constituted a part of the curriculum, with regularly allotted hours in
   every week's calendar. [138] Presumably, therefore, what Dr. Allon
   means is that Calvin's principle of severing worship from the fine art
   side of music tended ultimately toward complete musical indifference
   and consequent slovenliness in the performance of Psalmody. And, if the
   matter is so stated, the tendency in that untoward direction may be
   freely admitted, provided that Calvin be not held responsible for the
   fact that the people of the Netherlands and Scotland, and other lands
   into which his doctrine spread, had less musical sensibility and gift
   than the countrymen of Luther.

   In the course of time the constraint of Calvin's ideals has gradually
   come to be less felt in the worship of the Reformed Churches. A
   modification of view as to the relations of art and worship has
   permitted the harmonization of congregational song, its instrumental
   accompaniment, and also the introduction of the music of impression
   whether of the choir or organ. On the other hand, the free spirit of
   evangelism has brought within the sanctity of worship the light and
   frivolous melody which Calvin would have repudiated as "unbecoming the
   majesty of the church and displeasing to God." But through all changes
   there continues to be felt in all Reformed Churches the force of his
   insistence upon congregational praise still asserting itself against
   the encroachments of choir music, and the restraining hand of his ideal
   of art held strictly in subjection to spiritual ends.

   Note.--The study of the Psalmody of the Calvinistic Reformation ends
   here; but it is proposed to add an appendix tracing the decline of
   Psalmody in French-speaking churches.

   Portrait of Theodore Beza

   Portrait of Theodore Beza
     __________________________________________________________________

   [110] Institutio, Bk. iii, chap, xx, § 32.

   [111] Opera, vi, 171, 172.

   [112] Book iii, chap, xx, § 31.

   [113] Vol. i, p. 387.

   [114] i, 663.

   [115] ii, 9, and passim.

   [116] i, 663.

   [117] The National Music of America, Boston, 1900, p. 18.

   [118] Commentaries on Genesis, iv, 20.

   [119] Commentaries on Exodus, xxi, 2.

   [120] "Church-Song" in Lectures before Y. M. C. A. in Exeter Hall,
   1861-1862. London, n. d., p. 304.

   [121] Preface of 1543.

   [122] Ibid.

   [123] Ibid.

   [124] Comm. on Genesis, ut supra. Compare Abr. Kuyper, Calvinism, N.
   Y., etc., n. d. [1899], pp. 206 ff, and Doumergue, vol. ii, chap, iv,
   1st part.

   [125] Institutio, Book iii, ch. xx, § 32.

   [126] Homilia in I Lib. Samuel cap. xviii. Opera, xxx, 259. Doumergue's
   effort (vol. ii, p. 521) to show that Calvin may have had merely the
   abuse of the organ in mind is hardly successful.

   [127] Institutio, Book iii, ch. xx, § 31.

   [128] Institutio, Book iii, ch. xx, § 32.

   [129] Ibid.

   [130] Confessions, Book x, ch. 33.

   [131] Vol. ii, p. 375.

   [132] Book iii, ch. xx, § 32. Opera, vol. iv, 420.

   [133] Doumergue, vol. ii, p. 520. Compare B. B. Warfield, "The Literary
   History of Calvin's Institutes'," Pres. and Refd. Review, April, 1899,
   p. 209.

   [134] On this last point consult Kuyper, Calvinism, pp. 226-230.

   [135] New York, 1902, p. 362.

   [136] Doumergne, vol. ii, p. 519. Bovet, p. 67.

   [137] Exeter Hall Lectures, 1861-1862, p. 304.

   [138] See Doumergue, vol. ii, p. 513.
     __________________________________________________________________

  XI. Appendix: The Decline Of Psalmody In French-Speaking Reformed
  Churches. [139]

   We have considered thus at length the Genevan Psalmody in Switzerland
   and France, because in it we are dealing with the source and spring of
   the Reformed Psalmody in general. And the logical course would be to
   proceed at once to follow the several streams of its advance into other
   countries until we shall have gained a connected history of the whole
   movement to establish Metrical Psalmody, and then to follow that with a
   similar study of its general decline. But the actual materials hardly
   admit such an arrangement. We have to deal not with the Psalmody of the
   Reformed Church, but with that of national Reformed Churches, mutually
   connected with Geneva, but severally independent; subject to common
   influences, but separated by national boundaries. The materials for our
   study insist in grouping themselves along these national lines, and the
   only practicable way to a complete account of the development and
   decline of Reformed Psalmody is to take up the national Churches
   consecutively, and in each case to follow the history of the Psalmody
   from its rise to its transition into modern Hymnody, noting as we
   proceed those common principles and influences which gave unity to the
   whole movement.

   Our next step, therefore, is to carry forward the story of the Genevan
   Psalmody in its original home and in France to the point of its
   ultimate displacement.

   For more than a century after its completion the Genevan Psalter,
   without alteration, continued in universal use among French-speaking
   Reformed churches. But during a considerable part of that period
   several causes were coöperating to produce marked changes both in the
   spirit and practice of the Psalmody.

   (1) The first of these was the waning of the enthusiasm characteristic
   of the early Psalm singing. As French Protestantism gradually lowered
   its aggressive ideal of winning France to that of establishing itself
   within effective lines of defense against outside interference, so the
   tone of its worship also was lowered, and it had to be defended against
   that spirit of indifference lurking at the gate of every church. This
   indifference, naturally, was especially conspicuous in the Psalmody,
   because congregational song depends upon the good will of the greatest
   number of people.

   In 1579 the national Synod of Figeac advised "Churches that in singing
   Psalms do first cause each verse to be read,... to forbear that
   childish Custom, and such as have used themselves unto it shall be
   censured." [140] This early introduction of what came to be known as
   "lining the Psalm," plainly marked a decadence. Two years later the
   Second Synod of Rochelle dealt with current indifference to Psalmody as
   follows:

   "Forasmuch as there is a notorious contempt of Religion visible in all
   places, yea also in our Religious Meetings, we advise that Notice be
   given to all Persons, to bring with them their Psalm-Books into the
   Churches, and that such as contemptuously neglect the doing of it,
   shall be severely censur'd; and all Protestant Printers are advised not
   to sunder in their Impressions the Prayers and Catechism from the
   Psalm-Books." [141]

   The lessened interest in Psalm singing continued to manifest itself in
   spite of these ecclesiastical censures. Some of the churches found it
   tedious to sing through the whole of the allotted portions ("pauses")
   of the Psalter, and undertook to skimp them. In 1617, the Second Synod
   of Vitré dealt with this practice as follows:

   "Whereas Complaints are made us, that in some Churches before Sermon
   they sing part of the Psalm, and reserve the last Verse for conclusion
   of the Exercise. This Assembly injoins all the Churches to sing out the
   whole pause, and to conform themselves as much as may be to the ancient
   Order." [142]

   The succeeding Synod of Alez, in its "Observations made on Reading the
   Acts of the last National Synod held at Vitré," thought that the
   practice had been dealt with too leniently, and ordered that:

   "These words, as much as may be, shall be razed out of that Canon which
   had enjoyned the Churches to sing full parts of Psalms, and so conform
   themselves into that Antient Custom in use with us ever since the
   Reformation." [143]

   These successive actions of Synod show a real desire and effort to
   maintain the Reformation Psalmody in its integrity. All the practices
   condemned were actual breaches of the established church discipline,
   and capable of correction. But the waning of the earlier enthusiasm was
   beyond the reach of any process of discipline.

   (2) Partly a cause and partly an effect of this changed attitude toward
   the Psalmody was a dissatisfaction with the canonical Psalter itself as
   the subject-matter of praise. In the first enthusiasm at receiving and
   singing the Word of God in their own tongue, one Psalm was as good as
   another, and to the bold and aggressive spirit of the early Huguenots
   the imprecatory Psalms were far from unwelcome. The colder spirit of
   later generations felt the need of discrimination, and this they
   exercised in the way most feasible, the way of selecting from the
   Psalter the Psalms they thought best adapted to public worship. By the
   end of the sixteenth century [144] the custom of singing through the
   Psalter in course was generally given up in France, and the choice of
   the Psalms for the day was recognized as being in the pastor's hands.
   In Switzerland the old custom obtained somewhat longer; in some parts,
   as at Neuchâtel, it lingered till well toward the middle of the
   eighteenth century. [145] And in France, even to our own day, there
   have been voices of earnest protest against eliminating from actual use
   any part of the Psalter as being an unwarranted tampering with God's
   Word. [146]

   (3) Parallel with the desire to eliminate parts of the Psalter was the
   desire to supplement it by adding other songs of Scripture. In this
   there was nothing inconsistent with Genevan principles; and the Genevan
   Psalter of 1562 already contained Marot's version of the Song of Simeon
   and the versified Ten Commandments. The project was in fact committed,
   in 1594, by the national Synod of Montauban to Beza himself, then
   residing at Geneva in his honored old age. Beza responded in 1595 by
   publishing at Geneva sixteen versions of Scripture songs as Les saincts
   Cantiques recueillis tant du Vieil que de Nouueau Testament, mis en
   rime Françoise par Theodore de Besze. [147] In 1598 the national Synod
   of Montpellier directed that "they shall be received and sung in
   Families, thereby to dispose and fit the People for the Publick Usage
   of them in the Churches, until the next National Synod." [148] Beza's
   collection was reprinted in 1597 and 1598, but very soon fell out of
   sight. It may be that Beza's versions did not appeal to the popular
   taste. Or it may be that the real demand was already for a more
   distinctively evangelical Psalmody, and that Beza's versions, which
   with two exceptions were passages from the Old Testament, did not meet
   the demand, or even add materially to the resources furnished by the
   Book of Psalms.

   (4) The great changes in the vocabulary, syntax and prosody of the
   French language in the latter half of the sixteenth and first half of
   the seventeenth century contributed greatly to the dissatisfaction with
   the Psalmody. The language and versification of the Genevan Psalter
   became at first antiquated and then uncouth. Ultimately it became even
   unintelligible to the common people. The revision of the Psalter was
   felt to be a necessity, lest the Reformed Church should share the
   reproach of the Latin Church of singing the Psalms in a dead and
   unknown tongue. [149]

   It was not, however, until the last quarter of the seventeenth century
   that the revision of the Genevan Psalter was officially undertaken. A
   number of provincial synods united in requesting Valentine Conrart, the
   eminent secretary of the French Academy, to revise Marot and Beza's
   work in the original metres, retaining so much of the language as was
   practicable. The first fifty-one Psalms with melodies, and accompanied
   by the prose version, appeared in 1677 as Le livre des Psaumes, en vers
   françois, par Cl. Ma. et Th. de Bè. retouchez par feu Monsieur Conrart,
   Conseillor Secretaire du Roy,... Première partie. [150] It was twice
   reprinted in the same year. The complete Psalter appeared in 1679 as
   Les Psaumes en vers François, retouchez sur l'ancienne version. Par feu
   M. V. Conrart, Conseillor, etc., [151] with the approbation of several
   synods. Though claiming to be only a revision, Conrart's is
   substantially a new version. Gilbert, the author of a rival version,
   endeavored to deprive the new Psalter of the distinction of Conrart's
   name. Conrart had died in 1675, and left his MSS. to his friend M. A.
   de La Bastide to be prepared for the press. Gilbert claimed that
   Conrart's work had been so largely rewritten that the printed book
   should not bear his name. [152] There are grounds for thinking that
   Gilbert underestimated Conrart's part in the new version, [153] which
   continued to be known by his name.

   Conrart's Psalter appeared at a time when, under Louis XIV, the
   Reformed Church was under constraint and distress, soon to culminate in
   the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). No national council could
   be held, and any official authorization of changes of worship was
   impracticable. The new version was used independently in some
   congregations, but more, so far as they remained unscattered, went on
   in the old way.

   It was the refugee congregation at Zurich which again brought forward
   the project of revision, overturing to Geneva, as the head of Reformed
   Churches, to take up the matter. The reply of the Venerable Company of
   Pastors was favorable. They appointed a committee of three of their
   number to examine Conrart's version, with special instructions to
   eliminate any expression of the imprecations of the Jews against their
   enemies. [154] The work of the committee, largely performed by Benedict
   Pictet, was complete in 1693. The new rescension was probably printed
   in 1695, but no copy of the original edition is known to have survived.
   The title of the 1701 edition reads: Les pseaumes de David mis en vers
   françois. Revus de nouveau sur les précédentes editions, approuvés par
   les Pasteurs et Professeurs de l'Eglise et de l'Academie de Genéve. It
   was introduced at Geneva in October or November, 1698, and after a
   year's trial of it, a circular letter was sent to the other
   French-speaking Reformed churches, explaining the motive and method of
   the new rescension of Conrart, and inviting its general adoption. [155]

   The responses of the churches showed anything but unanimity. [156] In
   Switzerland the new Genevan Psalter was adopted by many of the French
   refugee churches and by the national churches of Erguel and Neuchâtel;
   at Berne it was rejected. The French churches at London, Copenhagen,
   Hamburg and Frankfurt either rejected it or postponed its examination.
   The church at Berlin adopted it with qualifications, and issued an
   edition with amendments of its own. [157] The Church of the United
   Provinces ("Synode Wallon") resented the primacy assumed by Geneva in
   issuing without consultation a new Psalter, and offering it for general
   adoption. This was pronounced an act of schism, and the bitterness thus
   aroused continued through years of controversy and alienation. [158]
   The "Synode Wallon" undertook ineffectually a revision of its own; most
   of its churches falling back on Marot and Beza. Eventually Conrart's
   version was accepted as a basis, and was subjected to a fresh
   rescension, which appeared at The Hague in 1720 as Les Pseaumes de
   David, mis en vers François, et revus et approuvez par le synode wallon
   des Provinces-unies. [159] This was authorized by the States General in
   1729, and was very frequently reprinted.

   Upon the adoption of this Psalter the version of Conrart in its three
   rescensions, that of Geneva, that of Berlin and this of the "Synode
   Wallon," was in possession of the entire field. But the new version
   never attained anything like the position of the old. All the sacred
   associations of the Psalms with the sufferings of the fathers were
   enshrined in Marot and Beza. The new version depended for its welcome
   upon the fact that it restored the text of the Psalms to a shape
   practicable for general use. But metrical Psalms had lost their
   authority in French-speaking churches. The curious zeal for revision
   which made the Psalms an object of contention, and which brought forth
   further proposals for elimination and still new versions, had its roots
   not in a common zeal for the purest text, but rather in dissatisfaction
   in the use of Psalms. Behind was a growing desire among the churches
   for a Hymnody that should be frankly evangelical. Psalm singing
   continued for a long time in spite of the raillery of Voltaire; [160]
   dissatisfaction within the churches expressing itself by continually
   narrowing the selection of Psalms actually employed. The
   dissatisfaction extended also to the music of the Psalter. Early in the
   eighteenth century a disposition to add the vocal parts to the melodies
   showed itself, and was followed by various schemes of modifying or
   replacing them. The first definite effort to substitute new tunes for
   the old was made by Jean Pierre le Camus of Geneva. In 1760 he
   published an edition of the Genevan rescension of the Psalter with
   tunes of his own composition in two parts, [161] and in the preface
   characterized the old melodies as "fatiguing and insipid." [162]

   The actual transition from the old Psalmody, thus invalidated in many
   ways, into the new Hymnody, was a gradual one, proceeding through the
   eighteenth century. It was effected not by a formal displacement of the
   metrical Psalter, but by the admission of the Hymn Book to an equal
   status and the churches' preference of the hymns.

   (1) In Geneva itself the desire for an evangelical Hymnody had been
   recognized and partly met at the opening of the century. In 1703,
   within five years of the introduction of the rescension of Conrart's
   version he had helped to make, Benedict Pictet, with others, proposed
   to the Venerable Company as "a happy innovation" to supplement the
   Psalms with New Testament hymns, after the example of the Lutheran
   Church, which, they said, "is a good one to follow." [163] Pictet was
   duly commissioned to prepare the hymns, and in 1705 published
   Cinquante-quatre cantiques sacrez pour les principales solemnitez.
   Twelve of these, paraphrasing or closely following Scripture, were
   selected by the Company and authorized for public use, and from that
   date generally printed in the Psalters as an appendix. In principle,
   this project, except for its emphasis on the New Testament, hardly went
   beyond the apparently forgotten project of the French Synod at the end
   of the sixteenth century. But it took its impulse from Lutheran
   precedent, and it marks the beginning of the new period of "Psalms and
   Hymns" on equal footing. The number of hymns in use increased, and
   broadened in character, later in the century. In the new edition of Les
   cantiques sacrés, as attached to the Genevan Psalter of 1778, they
   numbered fifty-four.

   The period of selected Psalms and hymns continued till the rise of
   modern French Hymnody in connection with the "Réveil" of the early
   nineteenth century. Its leader, César Malan, whose work inaugurated the
   new Hymnody, endeavored quite vainly to revive the interest in Metrical
   Psalmody, publishing both an "evangelized" [164] and a literal version
   [165] of the Book of Psalms.

   (2) In France, from the persecutions under Louis XIV to the Edict of
   Toleration of Louis XVI, congregational Psalmody was practiced, if at
   all, only under great difficulties. The churches lay prostrate, and the
   assembly of the faithful who still remained was prohibited. Psalms were
   sung in the household, and in "the assemblies of the wilderness" there
   was an attempt to maintain under rude conditions the simple liturgical
   order of the Reformed Church. [166] In many of the congregations formed
   abroad the history of the Psalmody followed that of Geneva, to which
   they looked for supplies of Psalm books as needed. In the last quarter
   of the century, in a number of refugee churches, notably those with
   Lutheran surroundings, the complete Psalters gave way to selections of
   Psalms accompanied by fuller collections of hymns. That made in 1771
   for the church at St. Gall [167] had sixty Psalms, and in the second
   edition only thirty. That made in 1775 for the church in Leipzig
   appeared as Cantiques tirés en partie des Pseaumes et en partie des
   poésies sacrées, [168] and in its preface Dumas, the pastor, exhorted
   the Reformed to imitate their brethren of nearly all churches who were
   wiser in that they sang hymns expressive of Christian thought and
   feeling. The Reformed church at Frankfurt, upon gaining permission to
   depart from the Lutheran cultus, published in 1787 its Nouveau recueil
   de psaumes et de cantiques, which remained in use for thirty years.
   [169] In 1791 the church at Berlin published its collection of selected
   and modified Psalms with hymns, [170] prefaced by the statement that
   their Psalmody had long since ceased to satisfy their hearts. These
   collections, in their manner of dealing with the Psalms and in their
   free use of hymns, expressed the general sentiment entertained by the
   majority of Reformed people in France.

   In the early nineteenth century there was still some resistance to the
   prevailing trend. A number of Reformed pastors in France, coöperating
   with some from Geneva, engaged for several years in efforts to rekindle
   the old zeal for metrical Psalmody. It was hoped that a fresh handling
   of the text, with musical settings modified to modern taste or newly
   composed, would insure a renewed welcome to the Psalter in its
   integrity. As a result there appeared at Paris and Geneva in 1823,
   Psaumes de David et cantiques, corregés dans les paroles et dans les
   quatre parties, par Charles Bourrit, pasteur, bibliothécaire, etc.
   [171] But the effort failed of any real influence, and the new Psalter
   was soon forgotten. The attempt of the consistory of the Reformed
   Church of Paris on similar lines and with similar results has been
   already referred to. These ineffective Psalters were followed in turn
   by a series of local collections, notably that of Lyons (1847), of
   Paris (1859) and of Nïmes (1868), each of which may be described as
   "Choix de psaumes et de cantiques sacrés," and each of which has come
   into more or less general use.

   (3) The Church of the United Provinces is the only one of the
   French-speaking Churches whose Psalm book conveyed the canonical
   Psalter in its integrity down to our own time. Some efforts at
   elimination and revision, failing to succeed, were followed in 1781 by
   an equally abortive evangelized Psalter in the manner of Isaac Watts's
   The Psalms of David imitated. It was by Daniel Zachary Chatelain, of
   Maestricht, appearing as Pseautier évangélique. [172] What the Walloon
   churches had "for a long time ardently desired" was that privilege of
   singing hymns in which nearly all the other Protestant churches of our
   language have found peculiar edification. [173] In September, 1797, the
   "Synode Wallon" decided by a very large majority to introduce hymns.
   [174] In June, 1798, a commission was named to compile a hymn book,
   [175] and their work was ratified and approved by Synod in September,
   1801. [176] The hymn book appeared in 1802 as Cantiques pour le culte
   public, recueillis et imprimés par ordre du Synode Wallon. It contained
   one hundred and thirty hymns for public worship set to tunes from the
   old Psalter and from Lutheran books, with some specially composed for
   it; and also three hymns without music for private use. Henceforth it
   appeared bound up with the Psalters.

   The authorization of this book may be regarded as the last step in the
   introduction of hymns into the worship of French Reformed Churches, and
   it rounded out the full circle of change. But this was not accomplished
   until two hundred and thirty-eight years had passed since the death of
   Calvin.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [139] Not delivered in connection with the "Stone Lectures."

   [140] Quick, Synodicon, vol. i, p. 132.

   [141] Ibid, vol. i, p. 139.

   [142] Synodicon, vol. i, p. 499.

   [143] Synodicon, vol. ii, p. 11.

   [144] Douen, vol. i, p. 526.

   [145] See Bovet, p. 48, note.

   [146] See preface to the complete Les Psaumes de David tout en musique
   suivis des continues sacrés, Paris 1840: published by authority of the
   consistory of the Reformed Church of Paris.

   [147] For its contents, see Douen, vol. ii, bibliographie, No. 216.

   [148] Quick, Synodicon, vol. i, p. 196.

   [149] "Avertissement" prefixed to Conrart's revision. As early as 1646,
   Jean Diodati, himself a native of Geneva, declared in the preface to
   his Les Pseaumes de David, en rime, that for a long time, a revision
   had been desired, in order to overcome the distaste felt by many for
   the Psalmody.

   [150] Bovet, bibliographie, No. 192.

   [151] Ibid, No. 195.

   [152] Les Pseaumes en vers François par Mr. Gilbert, Paris, 1780:
   preface, pp. 2, 3.

   [153] See Bovet, pp. 157-159.

   [154] Bovet, p. 164.

   [155] Bovet, pp. 165, 166.

   [156] They were printed in a pamphlet (without date), Récit de la
   manière dont les psaumes de David, retouches par M. Conrart ont été
   introduits dans l'Eglise de Genève. See Bovet, p. 243, and, for a
   summary of the responses, pp. 166, 167.

   [157] H. L. Bennett in Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology, p. 936 dates
   this as 1702; but a London ed. of Les Psaumes de David, retouchez,
   etc., bears in its title the words Revûs a Geneve & á Berlin. The 1702
   ed. (Berlin) claims, however, to be retouchée une derniere fois.

   [158] For the scarce pamphlet literature embodying this controversy see
   Bovet, appendice, note ix, and, for the details of the Walloon
   revision, pp. 169-171.

   [159] This issue, reported by M. Douen, bibliographie No. 439,
   anticipates by two years, the date of publishing the Walloon revision
   given by Bovet, pp. 172, 287.

   [160] Voltaire's well-known characterization of Geneva and its Psalmody
   was published in 1768 in "premier chant" of "La guerre civile de
   Genève" (Oeuvres completes de Voltaire, Basle, 1785, vol. xii, pp. 295,
   296). Disregarding the rhythm, it may be rendered line for line as
   follows:

   "Famous city, rich, proud and cunning,

   Where they all weigh problems, and nobody ever laughs;

   The art of Barême is the only art that prospers.

   They hate the ball and abhor the theatre,

   They are ignorant of the melodies of the great Rameau,

   And for the general diversion Geneva drones out

   The good King David's old-fashioned concerts

   In the faith that God is placated by bad poetry."

   [161] Bovet, bibliographie, No. 254. For a specimen of his tunes, see
   Douen, vol. ii, p. 289.

   [162] In a note to the passage already quoted, Voltaire said: "Ces vers
   sont dignes de la musique; on y chante les commandements de DIEU sur
   l'air: Réveillez-vous, belle endormie." In Voltaire's time the Psalm
   tunes were doubtless not heard at their best. But it seems odd that,
   for the sake of raising a laugh, he should have cared to borrow the
   venerable complaint of Roman Catholics that Calvin's musicians
   appropriated melodic material then current with secular
   associations;--a charge that from their standpoint had some relevancy,
   from his none at all, and which surely had ceased to be a live issue by
   the middle of the eighteenth century. In the particular case of
   appropriation he alleges, Voltaire seems to have been misinformed.

   [163] Registres de la Compagnie, quoted by M. Gaberel, Histoire de
   l'Eglise de Genève, iii, 19.

   [164] Les Chants de Sion, etc., Geneva, 1824. Containing fifty Psalms
   with music.

   [165] Chants d'Israël, Geneva, 1835. For Malan's efforts to
   reinvigorate Genevan Psalmody, see his son's Life, Labours and Writings
   of Caesar Malan, London, 1869, pp. 184, 328, 329: also Bovet, pp.
   197-200.

   [166] Cf. G. de Felice, History of the Protestants of France, Tr.
   Barnes, London, 1853; pp. 367 ff.

   [167] Bovet, bibliographie, No. 256, & see p. 194.

   [168] Bovet, bibliographie, No. 257, and see pp. 194, 195.

   [169] Ibid, No. 259, and see pp. 196, 197, note.

   [170] Ibid, No. 260.

   [171] Bovet, bibliographie, No. 264: as to the music, See Douen, vol.
   ii, pp. 381 f.

   [172] Bovet, bibliographie, No. 258.

   [173] Preface to Cantiques, 1802.

   [174] "Extraits des Articles du Synode," prefixed to Cantiques, 1802.

   [175] Ibid.

   [176] Ibid.
     __________________________________________________________________

  Appendix to this Electronic Text: Provenance

   This material originated in a series of lectures given at Princeton
   Theological Seminary. (The separately-published Syllabus is shown
   below.) The first lecture only, with added material, was published in
   the Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society in three parts:

          Vol. V. No. 1. March, 1909. (sections I.-IV.)
          Vol. V. No. 2. June, 1909. (sections V.-X.)
          Vol. V. No. 3. September, 1909. (section XI.)

   Page numbers are from that serialized publication.

   Substantial parts of the other lectures, with additional material from
   a 1910 series of lectures, were incorporated in The English Hymn, 1915.

   PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.
     __________________________________________________________________

SYLLABUS
OF THE
Lectures on the L. P. Stone Foundation
For 1906-1907.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE PSALMODY OF THE REFORMED CHURCHES
by the
Rev. Louis F. Benson, D.D.

   Editor of "The Hymnal"
   Author of "Studies of Familiar Hymns"
     __________________________________________________________________

   The Lectures will be delivered in the Miller Chapel,
   Monday, Feb. 11, to Friday, Feb. 15, at 5 P. M.
   and Saturday, Feb. 16, at 11 A. M.

LECTURE I.
The Psalmody of the Calvinistic Reformation.

   The object of these lectures is to study the origin and follow the
   practice of congregational song in the Reformed Churches. In its origin
   neither a spontaneous, popular movement, nor a development of Lutheran
   hymnody, but an element of the Calvinistic cultus, and distinct in
   method and principle.

   1. The Genevan Psalter. Calvin's endeavor to establish congregational
   song at Geneva. Conception and development of a metrical Psalter. First
   issue in 1539. Clement Marot's part in it. La Forme des Prieres, 1542.
   Beza and the completed Psalter of 1562. Its spread in France.

   2. The Psalter Music, an essential feature. Pains taken with it. Its
   popularity and great influence in spreading Psalm singing. The Huguenot
   psalmody; and adaptation of the Genevan tunes to many languages.

   3. Calvin as the Founder of the Reformed Psalmody. His personal
   leadership and work. His views (a) as to the subject matter of praise,
   (b) as to the function of music in the cultus. His views and example
   the determining influence in Reformed psalmody.

LECTURE II.
The Psalmody of the English Reformation.

   1. Failure to introduce an English hymnody: (a) along Lutheran lines.
   Coverdale's Goostly Psalmes and Spiritual Songs; (b) by way of
   Englishing the Latin Church hymns. The Primers and Cranmer's efforts
   for vernacular hymnody. The Prayer Books of Edward VI definitely
   establish English worship outside the area of hymnody.

   2. The Calvinistic psalmody introduced into England. Sternhold imitates
   Marot: his Certayne Psalmes (1548-9), Edward's Act of Uniformity (1549)
   as an authorization of metrical psalmody: gives great impulse to
   production and use. The Scripture Paraphrase.

   3. Sternhold and Hopkins' Psalter. The work of the Marian Exiles. Their
   One and Fiftie Psalmes (1556), the basis of English psalmody.
   Completion of Psalter (1562) under moderate' views. The appendix of
   hymns. The period dominated by Puritan predilection for psalms, but in
   time the appended hymns became a resource of the Puritans. The practice
   of psalmody: the tunes and lining the Psalm.'

LECTURE III.
The Psalmody of the Scottish Reformation.

   1. Early (Lutheran) balladry and spiritual song. Ane Compendious Booke.
   The Wedderburns of Dundee. Beginnings of Scottish Psalm singing (1546).

   2. The Scottish Reformation Psalter: based generically on Sternhold and
   Hopkins, and specifically on the 1561 Edition of the Genevan Exiles'
   Forme of Praiers. Completion of Psalter by General Assembly and
   Uniformity Act (1564). The liturgical status of psalmody in Scotland as
   contrasted with England. Principle of Church control and its exercise.
   The controversy as to conclusions.'

   3. The Psalmody of the Old Psalter Period (1564-1650). Contemporaneous
   descriptions. The song-schules, and decay of music. Proper' tunes, and
   rise of the "Common tunes." Efforts to Anglicanize Scottish worship:
   the Psalter of King James.

LECTURE IV.
The Psalmody of the Westminster Assembly.

   Supremacy of Sternhold and Hopkins in England threatened in time of
   James I (a) by the impatience of culture at separation of poetry and
   devotion--e. g., Geo. Wither and his Hymns and Songs of the Church,
   1623; (b) by Puritan demand for a more literal version.

   1. The Westminster Assembly. The Long Parliament and psalmody reform.
   Praise' in the Directory for Worship. Rous' Version as the proposed new
   Psalter. Barton's Version. Rivalry of the two prevents parliamentary
   action.

   2. The Westminster-Psalter period of Scottish Psalmody. Detrimental
   effects of Directory and the new Psalter (revised by General Assembly
   and printed without tunes in 1650). Two types of Restoration psalmody:
   efforts to reconstruct parochial psalmody.

   The absence of hymns and efforts to add them. Simeon's Spiritual Songs.
   Scottish Church becomes legislatively a hymn singing church in 1708.
   New movement toward hymns in 1741, inspired by Dr. Watts. Translations
   and Paraphrases, 1745, 1781. Enlargement of psalmody effected, but with
   disturbance.

LECTURE V.
The Reformed Psalmody in the American Colonies.

   1. The Huguenot Psalmody, of Coligny's colonies, and of New Amsterdam,
   connects American psalmody with the fountain head. The Genevan Psalter
   in America. The barrier of language confines it to narrow limits.

   2. The Pilgrim Psalmody, at Plymouth and Salem. Ainsworth's Booke of
   Psalmes set to the Genevan melodies. It merges (1667, 1692) in the
   Puritan psalmody.

   3. The Puritan Psalmody (1629), an extension of that current in Church
   of England. Sternhold and Hopkins. The Puritan yearning for "purity"
   brings about beginnings of an American psalmody. The Bay Psalm Book,
   1640: characteristics and Presbyterian use. Musical rendering.

   4. The Dutch Psalmody. The Colonists' Psalter (Dathen's) a translation
   of Marot and Beza's with the original Genevan music. Dutch
   characteristics. Attempt to preserve them in English Psalter of 1767.
   The Psalms and Hymns of 1789. The "Rule of Dort" and organization of R.
   P. D. Church as a hymn-singing church.

   5. The Scotch-Irish Psalmody. Rous's Version. The meagre musical
   equipment. Proportions of immigration elevate Rous into commanding
   position. The status of "the subject matter of praise" originally and
   under the Adopting Act.

LECTURE VI.
The Reformed Psalmody in the American Presbyterian Church.

   1. The Change in the type of Psalmody. Influence of the Great Awakening
   on psalmody. Whitefield's part. Isaac Watts and his work. Early use of
   his Psalms Imitated. New York Controversy, 1744. Status as to (a)
   church control of psalmody; (b) subject matter of praise. The
   introduction of Watts slowly proceeding and always supported by Synod.
   The Second Church of Philadelphia case. Synod's position.

   2. The Psalmody a cause of division and controversy. Effects of
   Revolution in worship: low estate of psalmody. Presbyterian union and a
   proposed new version (1785). Barlow's Revision of Watts, 1787. The
   question of hymns. The Psalmody Controversy: in Virginia, North
   Carolina, Kentucky.

   3. The Church as a Hymn-singing Church. The Directory of Worship, 1788.
   Reformed Psalmody passes over to the minor Presbyterian bodies.
   Attempts to conserve metrical psalmody. The first hymn books. Matter of
   Church control. Psalm singing practically banished. Efforts to restore
   it. Concluding reflections.
     __________________________________________________________________
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                                    Indexes
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Index of Pages of the Print Edition

   [1]1  [2]2  [3]3  [4]4  [5]5  [6]6  [7]7  [8]8  [9]9  [10]10  [11]11
   [12]12  [13]13  [14]14  [15]15  [16]16  [17]17  [18]18  [19]19  [20]20
   [21]21  [22]55  [23]56  [24]57  [25]58  [26]59  [27]60  [28]61  [29]62
   [30]63  [31]64  [32]65  [33]66  [34]67  [35]68  [36]69  [37]70  [38]71
   [39]72  [40]73  [41]74  [42]75  [43]76  [44]77  [45]78  [46]79  [47]80
   [48]81  [49]82  [50]84  [51]85  [52]86  [53]87  [54]106  [55]107
   [56]108  [57]109  [58]110  [59]111  [60]112  [61]113  [62]114  [63]115
   [64]116  [65]117  [66]118  [67]119
     __________________________________________________________________

            This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
               Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
                   generated on demand from ThML source.

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