Genevan Psalter - Background

Background

Before the Protestant Reformation the singing of the Psalms was generally done by a select group of performers, not by the entire congregation. John Calvin understood that the entire congregation was to participate in praising God in the worship service. Already in his famous work Institutes of the Christian Religion of 1536 he speaks of the importance of the singing of Psalms. Later in Articles for the organization of the church and its worship in Geneva, January 16, 1537, Calvin writes the following: "it is a thing most expedient for the edification of the church to sing some psalms in the form of public prayers by which one prays to God or sings His praises so that the hearts of all may be roused and stimulated to make similar prayers and to render similar praises and thanks to God with a common love." For this reason he wanted to create a song book in a form easily accessible to the people.

After being forced to move away from Geneva in 1538, Calvin settled in Strasbourg. He joined the Huguenot Congregation there where he also led numerous worship services. It was in Strasbourg where he got familiar with the German versification of the Psalms written by Martin Luther and others. Calvin took these songs to his French congregation for which he wrote some metrical versifications himself. His own versions of the Psalms were apparently not of sufficient quality and he turned to the French court poet, Clément Marot who already versified most of the psalms in French during the first part of the sixteenth century.