CHAPTER V.
Caspar Weiss: The Originator of the Schwenkfelder Hymn-Book.
We have already seen that the first Schwenkfelder hymn-book printed in America was not an isolated production but a member of a series of hymn-books, of which the earlier numbers remained in manuscript. The collection of hymns which stands at the head of this series bears the date of 1709. It was made by Caspar Weiss, a devout Schwenkfelder, who lived in the town of Harpersdorf, Principality of Liegnitz, Silesia. Our knowledge of this early Schwenkfelder hymn-collator, must unfortunately remain limited. The year of his birth is not known. His death occurred in Harpersdorf in 17 12, a few years before the period of the strenuous though fruitless effort of the Jesuit mission in Silesia to stamp out the Schwenkfelders as a sect. For the following conclusions, however, we have ample documentary testimony : First, that Caspar Weiss was an ardent devotee of the faith of the great Reformer for whom he was named; and, second, that by reason of his familiarity with the various creeds represented in Protestantism at the opening of the Eighteenth Century, he was admirably qualified for the work of compiling the hymn-collection which, in a direct line of de- velopment, became the original ancestor of the first printed hymn-book of the Schwenkfelders in America, three generations later. He possessed the additional qualifications of being talented musically, and of having a wide familiarity with the church hymn. He knew the Latin hymns of St. Augustine, St. Ambrosius, St. Hieronymus and others of the church fathers, the hymns of Luther, the earliest German hymn-books of the Bohe- mian Brethren or Moravians (called by Weiss the Picards), the hymns of the Schwenkfelder hymn-writers of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, and the well-known Nümbergisches Gesang-Buch of 1690.
