Singing the Bible in Hymns by the Czechs : the Czech Perikopenlieder from the Late Fifteenth Century to the Early Eighteenth Century in a Trans-Cultural and Multi-Confessional Perspective
Abstract
A significant part of early modern hymns in Czech are the de tempore hymns paraphrasing Gospel or Epistle pericopes (called 'Perikopenlieder' in German). This type of a hymn uses vernacular language and it conveys the key passage of the New Testament in song format.
Traditionally, its origin has been associated with the German Lutheran hymnbooks by M. Agricola (1542) and N.
Herman (almost 40 editions in 1560-1630), who are seen as the inspiration for a number of other German Perikopenlieder. However, the hypothesis that ties the origins of the Perikopenlieder to the Lutheran German language milieu should be corrected: the sources prove that Czech-language Perikopenlieder appeared several decades before Herman's and Agricola's hymnbooks - especially from the Utraquist (Hussite) Church.
The oldest known author of the Czech Perikopenlieder is the Utraquist Václav Miřínský (+ around 1492). Thus, the creation of the Czech Perikopenlieder in the sixteenth and seventeenth century can be connected with German Lutheran Perikopenlieder only in some cases and just to a certain extent.
The aim of the paper is to present the Czech Perikopenlieder from the late fifteenth century to the early eighteenth century of various denominations and to analyse them in a trans-cultural (Central European) perspective. We plan to focus primarily on the period in which the Czech Perikopenlieder were composed and well-regarded in parallel with an equally numerous German repertoire.
We will try to identify the variable constellations of 'being together, side by side or against each other' of the Czech and German Perikopenlieder, and will try to determine their similarities and differences.