Thursday, March 19, 2026

0:00It is the 19th of March, 2026. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I'm Dan VanVoris. I knew I was playing with fire. Years of shows daily, never missed one. 99% of them recorded the day before. But friends, the CHA studio has flooded. Is this the fourth house flood in 10 years for us? Yeah. Does California water stink for this? Of course. At least the insurance situation is worse, but a scramble and a makeshift studio, and Gillespie, even on a lint in Wednesday night, is going to get the show to you on Thursday morning, and today we have a fascinating story about a lesser-known figure who helps tie together medieval

1:01music in the Reformation and Luther, and then Bach, and all of it with the tip of the hat to our friends, the brethren, which brethren you ask, not the Irish, the Czech, will get there in a second. He was Michael Weissa. It's got an SZ, which can scare people and word processors off, spelled W-E-I-S-Z, or double S's, E. Weissa. He was born in Celizia in 1488. Let's unpack that. Celizia is closest to southwestern Poland and parts of Czechia and Germany. Weissa went to school in Vrotsof, spelled W-R-O-C-L-A-W. Very difficult. Sometimes we call it Breslau, just think Poland and you're good. He's a religious guy, and he decides to join the Franciscans there in Poland around the year 1510. Around 1517, note the year, he and a few others,

2:04begin to hear about the fuss in Saxony, just west to them. Whatever the effect, it was enough that in 1518 Weissa left the monastery, and joined the closest group that resembled those Saxon reformers, in his case, the Unitas Fratrum, or United Brotherhood, or Bohemian Brethren. Yes, these folks who came out of Jan Huss and his pre-reformation movement about a century prior. By 1522, he was elected the preacher and something like a pastor for the German-speaking congregations in the region. As these brethren continued to grow, it seemed that union with Luther and the Saxons might be in order. Along with Jan Horn, Weissa was considered to be amongst the most Lutheran leaning, and was sent as a delegation to Vittenburg to meet Luther and others. We know that the meeting did take place between the brethren and Luther in 1523, just as Luther

3:06had returned from the Vartburg, where he was hiding and translating the Bible into German. We don't have record of the meeting itself, a bummer for historians who want to know what inter-protestant dialogue was like that early. We do know that there was enough of a crossover between the groups, that they would keep each other in mind when they created their hymnals, an interesting place for cross-pollination even when catechisms didn't perfectly align. And who was the king of himnity amongst the Bohemian brethren? That's our Michael Weissa. Weissa published his new hymn book for the brethren in 1531, a collection of 157 hymns, some medieval songs with amended verses, some medieval tunes, put to new words, and about 130 of them attributed to Weissa himself. As Weissa got older, his views on the Lord's Supper began to shift more towards remembrance than real presence, more towards Zvingle than Luther. And well, this would have made Lutherans

4:10uncomfortable, it also made the brethren uncomfortable, who edited his words in subsequent hymns to reflect more real presence doctrine. But the ubiquity of hymns from Weissa make him the most famous of early Bohemian hymnwriters, and one in particular was picked up by Catherine Winkworth and translated, as Christ the Lord is risen again. I'll read some of that for our final reading today. Johann Sebastian Bach became familiar with many of Weissa's texts and tunes, and he would take the words of Christus Dauoune Seligmacht, an older work translated by Weissa, and adapt it into his own St. John's Passion. It was like sampling before sampling, and Bach loved to borrow. Stick around for the weekend show we've got Bach and the Passion on the Brain. Weissa would die on this, the 19th of March and 1534 of food poisoning, apparently he had some bad wolf meat. Michael Weissa, the Bohemian brethren's song Smith,

5:16was about 46 years old. The last word for today comes from Weissa in translation from Catherine Winkworth from Christ the Lord is risen again. Christ the Lord is risen again. Christ hath broken every chain, hark the angels shout for joy, singing evermore on high, hallelujah. He who gave for us his life, who for us endured the strife, is our Paschal Lamb today. We to sing for joy and say, hallelujah, he who slumbered in the grave is exalted now to save, now through Christendom at rings, that the Lamb is King of Kings. This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 19th of March, 2026, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. This show is produced by man who told me he made all

6:21his personal links fancy now, because I keep sending people there. He is Christopher Gillespie, the show is written and read by a man who's pretty skeptical of all that good neighbor talk, but shout out to Olsen Plumbing and Restoration One. I'm Dan Van Vores, you can catch us here every day and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true. Everything is going to be okay.