Thursday, March 19, 2026

It is the 19th of March 2026. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

 

I knew I was playing with fire- years of shows, daily- never missed one, 99% recorded the day before. Friends, the CHA studio has flooded. Is this the 4th house flood in 10 years for us? Yes. Does California water stink for this? Of course, at least insurance is worse. A scramble and a makeshift studio and Gillespie, even on a Lenten Wednesday night, gets the show to you!

Today we have a fascinating story about a lesser-known figure who helps tie together medieval music and the Reformation and Luther and then Bach and all of it with a tip of the hat to our friends, the Brethren- which Brethren… not the Irish- the Czech. We’ll get there in a second.

He was Michael Weisse- it’s got an “eszett” which can scare people and word processors off- W-E-I- Szett (or, double S’s)-E “weisse” and he was born in Silesia in 1488.

Let’s unpack that- Silesia is closest to Southwestern Poland and parts of Czechia and Germany. He went to school in Wroclaw (Vrot-swaf), sometimes called Breslau… think Poland and you’re good. He is a religious guy and decided to join the Franciscans in Poland around 1510.

Around 1517… note the year… he and a few other Brothers in the monastery began to hear about the fuss in Saxony- just West of Wroclaw. Whatever the effect, it was enough that in 1518 Weisse left the monastery and joined the closest group that resembled the Saxon reformers: the Unitas Fratrum, or “United Brotherhood” or Bohemian Brethren. Yes, these folks who came out of Jan Hus and his pre-Reformation movement a century prior.

By 1522, he was elected the preacher and something like a pastor for the German-speaking congregations in the region. As these Brethren continued to grow, it seemed that a union with Luther and the Saxons might be in order.

Along with Jan Horn, Wiesse was considered to be amongst the most “Lutheran leaning” and was sent as a delegation to Wittenberg to meet Luther and others. The meeting did take place between the Brethren and Luther in 1523, as Luther had just returned from the Wartburg, where he was hiding and translating the Bible into German. We don’t have a record of the meeting itself- a bummer for historians who want to know what inter-Protestant dialog was like that early.

We know that there was enough of a crossover between the groups that they would keep each other in mind when they created their hymnals- an interesting place for cross-pollination even when the catechisms didn’t perfectly align. And who was the king of hymnody amongst the Bohemian Brethren? Michael Weisse!

Weisse published his new Hymnbook for the brethren in 1531- a collection of 157 hymns- some medieval songs with amended verses, some medieval tunes put to new words, and about one hundred and thirty of them attributed to Weisse himself. As Weisse got older, his view on the Lord’s supper began to shift more towards “remembrance” than “real presence,” while this would have made Lutherans uncomfortable, it also made the Brethren uncomfortable, who edited his words in subsequent hymnals to reflect more “real presence” doctrine.

But the ubiquity of hymns from Weisse makes him the most famous of early Bohemian hymnwriters, and one in particular was picked up by Catherine Winkworth and translated as “Christ the Lord is Risen Again”- I’ll read some of it for our final reading today.

Johann Sebastian Bach became familiar with many of Weisse’s texts and tunes used throughout his own life in the Lutheran church- he would take the words of “Christus, der und Selig macht”- an older work translated by Weisse and adapt it to his own St. John’s Passion. It was like sampling before sampling, and Bach loved to borrow- stick around for the weekend show- we’ve got Bach and the passion on the brain. Weisse would die on this, the 19th of March in 1534, of food poisoning- apparently, he ate some bad wolf meat. Michael Weisse, the Bohemian Brethren songsmith, was about 46 years old.

 

The Last word for today comes from Weisse in translation from Winkworth:

Christ the Lord is risen again!

Christ hath broken every chain!

Hark, the angels shout for joy,

Singing evermore on high,

Hallelujah

 

He who gave for us his life,

Who for us endured the strife,

Is our Paschal Lamb to-day!

We too sing for joy, and say:

Hallelujah

 

He who slumber’d in the grave,

Is exalted now to save;

Now through Christendom it rings

That the Lamb is King of kings!

Hallelujah

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 19th of March 2026, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who told me he made all his personal links fancy because I keep sending them people- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who is pretty skeptical of all that “Good Neighbor” talk….shout out Olson Plumbing and Restoration One- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.