Martin Luther

Today is the birthday of Martin Luther, German theologian and reformer who rebelled against the abuses of the medieval Catholic Church and (the legend goes) began the Protestant Reformation by nailing his Ninety-Five Theses to a church door in Wittenburg.

You can read many more learned articles on Luther and his historic and theological importance than I could provide, so I'll confine myself to his hymns.

Luther had some musical training in his youth and played both the lute and the flute. He composed many of the tunes sung with his hymn texts, which numbered about three dozen and were published intermittently during his lifetime. Since each of his hymns have been translated into other languages numerous times, it sometimes seems that there are many more.

This is undoubtedly his most famous hymn (taken partially from Psalm 46) sung across nearly all Christian denominations -- even Catholic hymnals include it now -- and 1t also has its own separate Wikipedia entry.

A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing;
Our helper 'mid the raging flood
Of mortal ills prevailing:
For still our ancient foe
Doth seek to work us woe;
With craft and power great,
And, armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not an equal.

Did we in our own strength confide,
Our striving would be losing;
Were not the right one on our side,
The One of God’s own choosing:
Dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, verily;
Anointed One by name,
From age to age the same,
And Christ shall win the battle.

And though this world, with devils filled,
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed
The truth to triumph through us:
The powers of evil grim,
We tremble not for them;
Their rage we can endure,
For lo, their doom is sure,
One little word shall fell them.

That word above all earthly powers,
No thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours
Through God who with us sideth:
Let goods and kindred go,
This mortal life also;
The body they may kill:
God’s truth abideth still,
This truth shall last forever.

Martin Luther, 1529; tr. Frederick F. Hedge, 1853; alt.
Tune: EIN FESTE BURG (8.7.8.7.6.6.6.6.7.)
Martin Luther, 1529

This is the version most familiar to American singers. There are reportedly more than seventy different translations from Luther's German text into English, though most of them are not regularly sung. A popular translation used in the UK is by Thomas Carlyle:
A safe stronghold our God is still

Industrious translator Catherine Winkworth contributed
A sure stronghold our God is he

Henry J. Buckoll took a crack at it:
A tower of strength our God doth stand

and Richard Robinson Whittingham gave us
A mountain fastness is our God

Elizabeth Wordsworth (daughter of hymnwriter Christopher Wordsworth) translated it as
God is a stronghold and a tower

and Godfrey Thring, writer of many hymn texts, came up with
A fortress sure is God our King

These seven were all nineteenth century translations, developed to meet a growing demand for hymns -- editors probably wanted unique translations for their new hymnals before the Hedge and Carlyle versions became the standards. Supposedly there are ten times as many more out there! And that's not counting the many translations into other languages (click on the flags).

Saint Bartholomew

Today is the feast day of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle. If you ever had to memorize the names of the twelve disciples, he's among them. But do you remember anything else in particular about him?

Probably not.

As it happens, the only specific mentions of him in the New Testament occur when the twelve disciples are listed. Presumably he was at some of the important events recounted, but was never mentioned by name. Some scholarship claims that Bartholomew (meaning “son of Tolomai”) might be the person named Nathaniel who appears in John's Gospel. But maybe not. I guess it's appropriate that the picture here is a little blurry.

If you Google “St. Bartholomew” he doesn't even come up first -- you get St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church on Park Avenue in New York City. They are marking this day today, you'll see.

So you'd think it would be hard to write a hymn about him. Noted hymnwriter John Ellerton (who wrote quite a number of saint's-day hymns) skillfully turns the very fact of his obscurity into a broader theme that brings us all into this hymn of praise.

Jesus Christ, to whom the number
Of thy starry host is known,
Many a name, by earth forgotten,
Lives forever round thy throne;
Lights, which earth-born mists have clouded,
There are shining full and clear,
Nobles in the court of heaven,
Nameless, unremembered here.

In the roll of thine apostles
One there stands, Bartholomew,
He for whom today we offer,
Year by year, our praises due;
How he toiled for thee and suffered
No one here can now recall;
All his saintly life is hidden,
All to him that did befall.

Was it he, beneath the fig tree
Seen of thee, and guileless found;
He who saw the good he longed for
Rise from Nazareth’s barren ground;
He who met his risen Savior
On the shore of Galilee;
He to whom the word was spoken,
“Greater things thou yet shall see”?

None can tell us; all is written
In the Lamb’s great book of life,
All the faith, and prayer, and patience,
All the toiling, and the strife;
There are told thy hidden treasures;
Number us, O Christ, with them,
When thou makest up the jewels
Of thy living diadem.

John Ellerton, 1871; alt.
Tune: RUSTINGTON (8.7.8.7.D.)
Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1897

This tune by C.H.H. Parry seems well-suited to the text, though if you've just sung it on August 15 for Sing we of the blessed Mother (and what other tune could you possibly use for that text?) it might be too soon to use it again. Other possibilities would be LUX EOI, or REX GLORIAE if you are allergic to overly-chromatic lines.

August 14 is also the anniversary of the beginning of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572, when over 5000 people died in and around Paris in mob violence against French Calvinist Protestants (the Huguenots). This historical event has been depicted in a wide variety of artistic forms, from plays, novels and paintings, to an episode of British sci-fi TV show Doctor Who, to the French grand opera Les Huguenots by Giacomo Meyerbeer (who didn't write any hymn tunes as far as I know - though that opera uses Martin Luther's famous tune EIN FESTE BURG more than once).