Ah, holy Jesus, how have you offended

The pioneer Silesian hymnwriter Johann Heermann claimed that his 15-stz text Herzliebster Jesu, was hast du verbrochen was based on Augustine; but the Meditationes he used was actually (unknown to him) an 11th-c work by Jean de Fécamp. Like other enduring hymns, his work emerged from the disasters of the Thirty Years War; it was published in Breslau in 1630 with a heading ‘The cause of the bitter sufferings of Jesus Christ, and consolation from his love and grace’. It was acknowledged by Robert Bridges as his main source. But Bridges’ English text is virtually a new hymn, as he sat light to the original and added many lines which are purely his own. It appeared in Hymns in Four Parts with English Words for Singing in Churches, Pt II 1897, soon to be incorporated into the 1899 Yattendon Hymnal, and then included in EH. The result of such mixed ingredients is, however, a tour de force, expressing the singer’s personal shame and responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus, which we discover is also ‘our atonement’. Isaiah 53, read in NT terms, is never far away.

The first tune, HERZLIEBSTER JESU, is based on Johann Schein’s Geliebten Freund of 1627, and similar to the Genevan Psalter’s 23rd Psalm tune (c1543) as used by Lutherans in 1613. But Johann Crüger, whose own words were set to J S Bach’s arrangement of the tune, gave the melody something like its present shape. Bach used the music several times in other works, and his St John Passion version is one of two used (slightly adapted) by EH. The second tune, INTEGER VITAE, is another adaptation, this time of the work of Friedrich F Flemming, and is sometimes called FLEMMING after him. The Lat name comprises the opening words of Horace’s Ode (23BC) for which the music was composed, c1800. It comes in the Congregational Psalmist of 1875: a year later the Bristol Tune Book (followed by others) set it to the Löwenstern/Pusey hymn Lord of our life, and God of our salvation.

b Walmer, Kent 1844, d Boars Hill, nr Oxford 1930. After his country squire father died when Robert was 10, his mother remarried and the family moved to Rochdale, from where RSB was sent to Eton Coll; then Corpus Christi Coll Oxford where his friendship with Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89) began. He trained as a doctor at St Bartholomew’s Hosp, London (MB 1874, and for a time its casualty physician), and while holding various hospital appointments he wrote much verse, the first of many published vols appearing in 1873 as Shorter Poems. In 1882 he changed course to concentrate on literature and music, in both of which he excelled. He lived at Yattendon (where from 1885 he trained the choirboys), a village nr Newbury, Berks, from 1882 to 1904, and at Boars Hill, Oxford, from 1907 until his death. His early ‘catholic’ leanings merged in later life to a broader view, combining an emphasis on beauty and excellence in the arts with a deep affection for what was historic, even archaic. Contemporaries noted his ‘extraordinary personal charm’ and called him one of the most remarkable figures of his time; ‘there is no company in which he would not have been distinguished’. Others point to the audacity, ‘opinionated brusqueness’ and worldly substance without which his achievements would have been impossible.

In 1913 he was appointed Poet Laureate, co-founding The Society for Pure English, and for many years advised the Oxford Univ Press on style, spelling, typography etc. The Testament of Beauty (1929) was a philosophical poem wedding contemporary science and Christian faith, a kind of mature credo published a year before his death and widely acclaimed. The 100 hymns and tunes in the 4 parts of The Yattendon Hymnal, which he compiled between 1895 and 1899 with the artist and musician Prof Harry Ellis Wooldridge, (who also helped to compile the ill-fated 1904 A&M at around the same time), were not intended as a commercial best-seller. Most of the texts were his own; most of the music pre-1750. But the ideals the book embodied both in its selection of words and tunes and by its editorial comments had a profound influence on the EH of 1906 and the Oxford Hymn Book of 1908; ‘good melody is never out of fashion’. In 1979 Erik Routley chose 5 of these texts for his A Panorama of Christian Hymnody. Bridges’ wife Monica provided many of the harmonies. He had, however, resigned from his post as precentor at Yattendon in 1894 because of his growing dislike of the vicar’s sermons.

Among other publications were plays, essays such as A Practical Discourse on some Principles of Hymn-Singing, further lyrics, and the first collected edn (in 1918) of the poems of Hopkins. His prose was collected and reissued between 1927 and 1936. Some of his work was consciously archaic even in its time; hymn-book editors differ in recent approaches to his language. 19 of his hymns are found in Songs of Praise (1931 edn); 13 appeared in EH (whose committee he declined to join); 10 in the 1950 Congregational Praise, the same number in the New English Hymnal of 1986, and 8 in Common Praise (the 2000 A&M). He is represented by two 4-line poems in the current (1999) Oxford Book of English Verse (a ration reflecting changes in literary taste), but is treated more generously in many other anthologies. As well as the hymns included here, other favourites include Happy are they, they that love God; Rejoice, O land, in God thy might; and The duteous day now closeth. See also Hymnwriters 3 by Bernard Braley, 1991, and Robert Bridges: a biography by Catherine Phillips, 1992. Bridges was also responsible for the preservation and later publication of the ground-breaking poems of his friend Gerard Manley Hopkins. Nos.412, 775.

b Raudten, Silesia 1585, d Lissa, Possen 1647. Born in poverty, he was his parents’ 5th and only surviving child whose mother vowed that he would be dedicated to God if he lived. After schooling and college at Wohlau, Fraustadt, Breslau and Brieg, and assisted by several gifts, he also earned money as a private tutor in order to pay his fees at the Univ of Strasbourg. Poor eyesight compelled him to return home, but after some school-teaching posts he was accepted for the Lutheran ministry and pastored the church at Köben from 1611 onwards, with the Thirty Years War as its background. Here he was four times robbed, losing most of his possessions at least twice, usually in danger and often coming close to death. His eyes continued to give trouble, but it was an illness of the throat which brought his preaching to an end in 1634. He was regarded in his day as second only to Paulus Gerhardt (qv) as a hymnwriter, leaning towards a devotional and personal mode of expression in his 400-odd hymns. 10 of these, some substantial, are translated in the N American Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary (1996), 6 of the English versions being by Catherine Winkworth. No.412.