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:”Introduction to “Order of Administration for the Lord’s Supper,” 1525. Daniel, Codex Liturgicus, vol. iii. Tr. Mercersburg Review, vol. ix, pp. 594 ff. 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.The men and women were on opposite sides of the main aisle.

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).Bullinger, Reformationsgeschichte, Frauenfeld, 1838-40, vol. i, p. 418; and see Gieseler, Text Bk. of Church History (N. Y. ed.), vol. iv, p. 548. 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.Christoffel, Huldreich Zwingli, Elberfeld, 1857. Tr. by Cochran, Edinburgh, 1858: p. 150, note. 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.”Mercersburg Review, vol. ix, p. 595. 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.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.)

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.

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: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.

“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.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. This was the Order of Worship which Farel introduced at Geneva.A. L. Herminjard, Correspondance des réformateurs dans les pays de langue française, etc. Geneva and Paris, 1866 seq., vol. iv, p. 191, note. 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.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. Its introduction at Geneva involves no more than Farel’s complianceSee Doumergue, op cit., vol. ii, p. 498. to that extent with the well-known desire of the Council of Bern to impress its own usages upon all the cantons.See Herminjard, op cit., vol. ii, p. 130.

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.Doumergue, op cit., vol. ii, p. 506. These were followed by a tract of twenty-four songs, entitled simply Noelz nouueaulx.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. 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.Basle, March, 1536. 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.Opera, vol. i, 88.

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:

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.”Opera, vol. xb, 288.

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.Bayle, Dictionary, art. “Marot.”

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.But compare Douen, i, 283. 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 accountVillemadon’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. 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.See Bovet, op. cit., bibliographie, No. 2. It was presumably Alexandre who furnished Calvin with copies of the twelve Psalms for his first Psalm book.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.

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.”Letter of Villemadon, ut supra.

Under such favor, soon to prove fickle enough, Marot printed at Paris, in 1541,O. S. Early in 1542, N. S. See Douen, vol. i, p. 290. 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.Bovet, op. cit., bibliographie, No. 1. 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.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. 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,Hence known as the “Pseudo-Roman Edition.” 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.Bovet, op. cit., bibliographie, No. 4. For full contents, etc., see Douen, ii, 333-347. 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.Opera, vol. vi, prolegomena, xv. 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;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. 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

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

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 PseaumesIn reality forty-nine, the Nunc Dimittis counting as the fiftieth. 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.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.

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.Registres du Conseil, 14 Octobre, 1543: cited Bovet, op. cit., p. 20. 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;”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. 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,Note to Latin Paraphrase of 91st Psalm: Psalmorvm Davidis et aliorvm Prophetarvm Libri Qvinqve; ed. London, 1586, p. 412. 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,Calvin to Viret, 15 March, 1545: Opera, vol. xii, 47. believed that he had found him in the person of Beza. Beza informs us that he undertook the work at Calvin’s instigation,In the dedication of his Latin Psalms, quoted in Bovet, p. 25, note. 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.”Opera, vol. xiv, 27, 28.

Beza quickly responded. On March 24, 1551, he obtained permission of the Council to print the remainder of the Psalms with musical notes,Douen, vol. i, p. 552. 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.”Opera, vol. xiv, 451-454. 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 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.

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,Histoire de l’hérésie; quoted by Bayle, Dictionary, art. “Marot.” “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.See Bovet, p. 249.

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,December 29, 1538. Opera, vol. xb, 438. 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 themPsalms, 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. (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.”For the history of Psalm and tune see Doumergue, vol. ii, appendice viii, “La Psaume des Batailles.”

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,Douen, vol. i, p. 608. 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.”Douen, vol. i, p. 608.

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,29 May, 1545. Doumergue, vol. ii, p. 513. 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.Art. “Marot.” 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,Recherches sur les psaumes de Marot et de Bèze, reprinted in Œuvres de Baulacre, Geneva, 1857, vol. i, p. 410; quoted in Douen, vol. i, pp. 609, 610. 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.”Opera, vol. xi, 412. 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.Douen, vol. i, p. 612. 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.Douen, vol. i, p. 610. 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 prefaceReprinted in Bovet, note v, and Douen, vol. i, p. 611. 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.
The melody at the right is that commonly called “The Old Hundredth.”

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;Viret to Calvin, 21 July, 1542. Opera, vol. xi, 412. at Grandson, in the Pays de Vaud, not until 1549.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. In 1553, according to Garnier of Strassburg, the Psalms were sung in all the French speaking evangelical churches.Douen, vol. i, p. 557; vol. ii, p. 514 (bibliographie No. 47).

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 FontainebleauDecember 11, 1547. See H. M. Baird, The Rise of the Huguenots of France, N. Y., ed. 1896, vol. i, p. 275. 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,Baird, op. cit., vol. i, p. 279-281. 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,G. H. Putnam, Books and their makers in the Middle Ages, vol. ii, N. Y., 1897, pp. 8, 9. there appeared an edition which included the melodies, evidently printed with a view of competing with Geneva for the Protestant market,Ibid, pp. 93, 94. 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.Bulletin de la Soc. de l’Histoire du Protest., vol. v, p. 90: See Bovet, pp. 53, 54. The situation is even more clearly revealed by a well-authenticated incident occurring in the heart of Paris itself in the spring of 1558.Histoire Ecclésiastique, vol. i, p. 90: quoted by Bayle, Dictionary (art. “Marot”): and see Baird, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 314, 315.

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.Bovet, p. 55. The Chronique du Langon relates how the curé Moquet accommodated the services to the new taste for congregational Psalm-singing;Ibid, pp. 55, 56. 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.Ibid, p. 56, note. 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.W. Moeller, History of the Christian Church, Eng. tr., vol. iii, p. 193. 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.”Baird, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 418, 419. 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.Douen, vol. i, p. 571.

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.Douen, vol. i, p. 564. 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.Certificate in edition of 1564. 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.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.”Quick, Synodicon, vol. i, p. xliii.

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

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.See Doumergue, vol. ii, p. 515. 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.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.”

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;Institutio, Bk. iii, chap, xx, § 32. 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.”Opera, vi, 171, 172.

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,Book iii, chap, xx, § 31. “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.”Vol. i, p. 387.

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,”i, 663. disregarded their unique services and treated them with negligent disdain,ii, 9, and passim. until they were compelled to leave Geneva, the victims of Calvin’s “rancour.”i, 663. 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.”The National Music of America, Boston, 1900, p. 18.

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.Commentaries on Genesis, iv, 20. “All the arts,” Calvin says, “come from God and are to be esteemed as inventions of God.”Commentaries on Exodus, xxi, 2. 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.”“Church-Song” in Lectures before Y. M. C. A. in Exeter Hall, 1861-1862. London, n. d., p. 304.

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.”Preface of 1543. “We doubt if there is any thing in this world which can more powerfully turn or bend hither and thither the morals of men.”Ibid. 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.”Ibid.

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.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.

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.Institutio, Book iii, ch. xx, § 32. 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.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. 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.Institutio, Book iii, ch. xx, § 31. “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.”Institutio, Book iii, ch. xx, § 32.

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.”Ibid. 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.Confessions, Book x, ch. 33. 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 showVol. ii, p. 375. 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.Book iii, ch. xx, § 32. Opera, vol. iv, 420. 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.Doumergue, vol. ii, p. 520. Compare B. B. Warfield, “The Literary History of Calvin’s ‘Institutes’,” Pres. and Refd. Review, April, 1899, p. 209. 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.On this last point consult Kuyper, Calvinism, pp. 226-230.

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,New York, 1902, p. 362. 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.Doumergne, vol. ii, p. 519. Bovet, p. 67.

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.”Exeter Hall Lectures, 1861-1862, p. 304. 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.See Doumergue, vol. ii, p. 513. 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

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.