Valentin Triller was the editor of a hymn-book published at Breslau, 1555.[1] It contained 145 hymns, most of which were products of his own pen. It was reprinted 1559, under a new title.[2] Triller's hymns include many revisions of old German hymns and some translations of Latin hymns. Wackernagel reprints 111 hymns which are credited to him. Up to the time of his banishment from Silesia, in 1573, Triller steadfastly maintained that the persecution which he suffered, as a Schwenkf elder by reputation, was wholly unjust, inasmuch as he held religious views which were altogether peculiar. However, previous to the appearance of the first edition of his hymn-book, some of his hymns had been printed as Schwenkfelder hymns. Again, the early manuscript collections contain hymns by Triller, and these are retained in the larger collections compiled in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Saur edition, also, contains fifteen of Triller's hymns.
Daniel Sudermann,[3] in whom the cause of the Middle Way received both a fresh, a timely and powerful impetus, was the scion of an old and honored family. One of his ancestors, Hendricus (Heinrich) Sudermann, who lived in the 14th century, was a knight and a patron of the Order of St. Alexius. In the year 1432, and subsequently, Katharina Sudermann and other members of the Sudermann family, who had taken the veil, lived in the cloister of St. Gertrude at Koln, where they were occupied with the transcribing of religious books. Many of these manuscripts came into the possession of Daniel Sudermann, and one of them, written in 1469, was taken as the model for his handwriting—the artistic engrossing hand of his numerous manuscripts, which has always received unvarying high praise for its symmetry and grace. Sudermann's father (1514-
- ↑ "Ein Schlesich singebuchlein aus Gottlicher schrifft. * * * Durch Valentinum Triller von Gora." (Cf. Wackernagel, loco citato, IV, 19f.
- ↑ "Ein Christlich Singebuch, fur Layen und Gelerten, Kinder und alten, daheim und in Kirchen zu singen. * * * Durch Valentinum Triller von Gora."
- ↑ Cf. Schneider, loco citato, p. gff. Koch, II. Allgemeine detitsche Biographic
