Metrical Psalms
The stir and revival of intellectual life that arrived with the Reformation found its first expression in the composition of Psalms. The earliest printed collection appeared at Antwerp in 1540, under the title of Souter-Liedekens ("Psalter Songs") and was dedicated to a Dutch nobleman, Willem van Zuylen van Nieuvelt, by whose name it is usually known. This collection, however, was made before the Reformation in the Low Countries really set in. For the Protestant congregations, Jan Utenhove printed a volume of Psalms in London in 1566; Lucas de Heere and Petrus Datheen translated hymns of Clement Marot. Datheen was not a rhetorician, but a person of humble origin who wrote in unadorned language, and his hymns spread far and wide among the people.
Read more about this topic: Dutch Renaissance And Golden Age Literature
Famous quotes containing the word psalms:
“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalms 90:10.
The Book of Common Prayer (1662)