What carols owe to Martin Luther

00:00 02:59

Lisa Haseldine has narrated this article for you to listen to.

It’s 500 years since Martin Luther, along with the preacher Paul Speratus, put together the first Protestant hymn book, the Achtliederbuch, literally the ‘book with eight songs’. Collections of liturgical chants and songs had existed before, but they had never been meant for the congregation – just for choirs.

Luther believed collective sung worship in German (as opposed to Latin) was key to spreading the Reformation’s ideas and inspiring converts. What better way to engage worshippers than to include them in the church services they were attending? A catchy, simple melody and words everyone could understand, regardless of status or ability to read, helped too. The Achtliederbuch was very popular around Europe, prompting Luther’s critics to worry, not without cause, that ‘people are singing themselves into his doctrines’.

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Luther followed up the Achtliederbuch with an expanded hymnal later the same year. The Erfurt Enchiridion was printed in two competing editions – one containing 25 hymns, the other 26, 18 authored by Luther. With these hymns, the book’s preface declared, the days of church clergy ‘roaring like wild donkeys to a deaf god’ would be over. Hymnology blossomed with Lutheranism. It’s apt that Bach was born in Eisenach, the small Thuringian town where Luther went to school, because he was particularly inspired by Luther’s hymns. He incorporated many of them into his own chorales and cantatas, such as ‘Christ lag in Todes Banden’, transforming Luther’s staid tunes with florid, elaborate melodies for voice and orchestra.

The spread of the Reformation also brought Luther’s hymnals to England, and the Enchiridion was partially translated into English in 1555.