Hymns of the Christian Church
Assigned by 1 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 4th to 19th centuries, collected 1910
- Form
- Lyric poetry
- Language
- English
- Length
- Short · 100 ppunder 120 pages
- Difficulty
- Approachable1 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendThe Harvard Classics, Volume 45: Sacred Writings IIP. F. Collier and Son, 1910The selection as Eliot assembled it, out of copyright and freely available online.
These links go straight to Amazon and Bookshop.org and earn this site nothing today. Prices are the same either way. How this works.
The hymn section of the Harvard Classics, an anthology rather than a single work. It opens with metrical versions of the Psalms, then gives Greek hymns of the early Church, Latin hymns from Ambrose through the medieval sequences such as Dies Irae and Stabat Mater, and modern hymns in English by Luther, Watts, Wesley, Newman and others, mostly in nineteenth-century translations. Together they show how Christian worship has been sung across sixteen centuries.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns Hymns of the Christian Church are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.
