Hearing the Thirty Years War through the Psalms

Abstract One of the best examples of a biblical text that became political during the Thirty Years War is Psalm 83, “Gott schweige doch nicht also” (“God, keep not silent”). Lutherans consistently interpreted it as ecclesial, seeing it as a prayer voiced by the persecuted church. Its contemporary significance can be illustrated by a famous sermon on the psalm by the Saxon Senior Court Preacher, Matthias Hoë von Hoënegg, delivered at the Leipzig Convention in 1631 during the high-water mark of confessional conflict. Hoë brought an otherwise obscure psalm to the forefront of Protestant debates about potential war with Catholics. It can be no coincidence that the handful of elaborate musical settings of Psalm 83 from the seventeenth century all come from central Germany and date from the most religiously divided years of the Thirty Years War. Three pieces—by Tobias Michael, Samuel Scheidt, and an anonymous composer—date securely from the 1630s and might have even been inspired by Hoë’s sermon at the Leipzig Convention. Beyond Saxony, another group of settings from Breslau in the 1640s also owe their existence to religious upheaval in Silesia. These pieces, moreover, are remarkable for the way they deliberately alter or paraphrase the psalm text to highlight its polemical nature.