(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

Unlike lyric poetry, where even if I don't know much about the author's biography, I have a strong sense of the poems as existing as items in a corpus, hymns for me tend to exist in a sort of limbo, unless the hymnwriter is already known to me for other reasons. And at times it can be jarring to find out about the writer concerned. It certainly was rather disconcerting to be informed by the Bishop of Buckingham that the author of "How shall I sing that majesty", which I have always liked, chiefly for the last verse - or rather, the last verse in modern hymnals - was not only a Puritan divine, but went completely mad in later years,prophesied the imminent end of the world, and thought that he would rise from the dead three days after his death. Which was rather a nuisance for his successor, as Mason's followers simply wouldn't give up and go home, and he had them camping outside the church for fifteen years.

Still, he had his moments as a hymnographer:

How great a being, Lord, is Thine,
Which doth all beings keep!
Thy knowledge is the only line
To sound so vast a deep.
Thou art a sea without a shore,
A sun without a sphere;
Thy time is now and evermore,
Thy place is everywhere.

Still more mindboggling is the realisation that one of his descendants is a very different Anglican cleric and hymnwriter, John Mason Neale, Anglo-Catholic, supporter of Anglican sisterhoods, thorn in the side of the authorities, and author of a series of translations of Orthodox or Catholic hymns and liturgies, including 'O Come, O Come, Emmanuel' - and, come to that, the author of 'Good King Wenceslas'. Two Anglicans who, one would have thought, couldn't be more different, though I suppose they do have a certain common ground in that they were clearly natural members of the Awkward Squad.

Peculiarly, poking about on Wikipedia indicates that some branches of the Lutheran church commemorate JM Neale in the liturgical calendar, which I find slightly odd. Although the list Wikipedia gives is decidedly eclectic, and certainly doesn't confine itself to some specific individuals whom it believes to have been particularly devoted to spreading the Lutheran faith, since as it includes, alongside obvious people like Luther and Melanchthon, vigorous rivals like John Calvin, a number of Roman Catholics including John XXIII and Chief Seattle, a number of Protestants of various flavours including Jan Hus, John Donne, Martin Luther King and the Wesleys, not to mention Job.

On the other hand, I really shouldn't have taken quite so long to work out that 'Katherina Luther' was Katherina von Brora. She did, after all, marry the man.

Comments

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

This part is just fabulous:

Thy Bright Back-parts, O God of Grace,
I humbly here Adore;
Shew me thy Glory and Thy Face,
That I may praise Thee more.

Because there just aren't that many hymns that praise the divine posterior. Or God's "Nether Springs."

...why am I in this handbasket?

[tree_and_leaf]

Actually, I have a feeling there are more than you think. They've just been all cut out, because of the evil way moderns are likely to take them....

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

Reading John Mason's ODNB entry (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18282?docPos=5), I wonder whether his belief that he was in a prophetic lineage descending from Noah had anything to do with his living being Water Stratford? It also says that some of his followers stayed on beyond the dispersal of 1710 and gives an end date for the movement of c.1740.

[tree_and_leaf]

Thanks for the link - fascinating. And you might be right about Noah.