Author

Johann Rist

1607–1667 · Ottensen, near Hamburg · Germany

Pastor of the village of Wedel on the Elbe from 1635 until his death, he turned down every offer of a bigger post. The Thirty Years' War shaped his student years, including a bout of plague at Rostock. Emperor Ferdinand III crowned him poet laureate and later ennobled him. He wrote roughly 680 hymns, among them "Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light."

Text

1

Lived

1607–1667

Hymnal

1