The Calvinist International
On August 1, 1537, Philip Melanchthon wrote a letter to the Lutheran poet Eobanus Hessus intended to serve as prefatory material for his versification of the Psalter, the Psalterium Davidis carmine redditum (David’s Psalter Rendered in Verse), in which Hessus put all 150 Psalms into Latin elegiac couplets. (Martin Luther wrote a letter to Hessus […]
George Buchanan was perhaps the finest Latin poet to write after the close of antiquity. I’ve discussed him previously here, here, and here. One of his most-loved works in verse is his Poetic paraphrase of the Psalms of David (Psalmorum Davidis paraphrasis poetica), the first complete edition of which appeared in 1565/6, the first edition […]
For those who, for whatever reason, don’t like to sing the actual words of the Psalms, metrical psalmody can be a good substitute. But it can also have its difficulties. Probably the best known metrical Psalter in English is the Scottish Metrical Psalter. Anyone who has ever used it knows how torturous and opaque the […]
It is a commonplace of Reformed sacramental theology that the Lord’s Supper cannot be efficacious apart from faith. There is nothing automatically efficacious about ritual action in and of itself. Here is a curious proof for this suggestion from a wider biblical perspective than the texts traditionally used in sacramental discussion: In the messianic second Psalm, […]
Some more on Melanchthon’s poetry, while we’re on the subject. Below is a poem from (perhaps) 1540. “Christ’s Speech (from Psalm 2)” What madness to rouse arms against the heavenly powers! Man’s impiety will not have a happy issue. On Zion’s height God hands me Zion’s royal scepter and grants it to me to bring new […]
Much of what I do on this site is devoted to a kind of ressourcement of what one might call Protestant Christian humanism, though I very rarely use that term here. Such a project involves things I care about deeply and think to be of foundational importance. At the same time, it is critical to remember […]
The first (and only) prayer in Vermigli’s Preces Sacrae from Psalm 5. Translation From Psalm 5. We flee to you daily, Almighty God, with our prayers, and we lay our vows before you in the morning–not ignorant that you hate our iniquity and exceedingly detest our sins. We do not deny that we are held fast […]
Peter Martyr Vermigli’s second and final prayer from the fourth Psalm. As with the rest of the translations in this series from the Preces Sacrae, these should be considered to be in the public domain, should anyone wish to make use of or to distribute them. The man knew how to compose a prayer, and […]
It has been a while since I posted one of Peter Martyr Vermigli’s Preces Sacrae from the book of Psalms. Let’s get back to it. Here is his first prayer from Psalm 4, the eighth in the collection as a whole. Translation From Psalm 4. We call upon you, almighty God, constrained by the greatest distresses […]
Like many other poets of the sixteenth century, George Buchanan wrote classicizing Latin paraphrases of the Psalter. Here is his version of Psalm 117: Omnes ubique gentium quos solis ambit orbita, rerum parentis optimi laudes libenter pangite. agnoscite indulgentiam benignius nos in dies foventis, et constantiam promissa certam reddere. In rather wooden English:1 Everyone, everywhere […]