AROUND the English-speaking world on Easter morning, after two Covid-dominated years, churches and chapels will resound once again with the festal hymn “Jesus Christ is risen today”. Despite its familiarity and established liturgical status, the provenance of this Easter hymn has been a bit of a mystery.
It is known that it is the translation of a translation: an English rendering of the early Lutheran chorale Erstanden ist der heil’ge Christ, published in Nuremberg in 1544, which in turn was taken from a 14th-century Latin carol, Surrexit Christus hodie.
The English hymn is often associated with Charles Wesley, who adapted it in 1739 as “Christ the Lord is risen today”, or else attributed erroneously to a publisher, John Walsh.
Anglican worshippers, however, retain the first verse and roughly follow the musical setting of the earliest known version, which appeared with the title “The Resurrection” in the anonymous Lyra Davidica, published by Walsh in 1708: a collection of sacred songs including translations from Lutheran and Bohemian originals, as well as fresh compositions. The author of Lyra Davidica has been elusive.
In an article published in the journal Eighteenth-Century Music in 2007, the music historian Tom Dixon made a connection between Lyra Davidica and the manuscript diaries of a remarkable poet, prophet, and clergyman, Richard Roach, who recorded his progress on the hymns in the years before the collection’s publication.
References in Roach’s diaries to specific titles, and to the preparation of a “Choice Manual of Hymns” in collaboration with a small circle of German Pietists living in London, clearly indicate that he was the primary composer and editor of the volume.
His brief daily reports of having “wrote”, “corrected”, “alterd”, “sorted”, “tryd”, “performd”, and “finisht” particular hymns indicate that he was working on the collection from December 1706 to October 1707, when he “Finisht 2 last songs for Engraving” and experienced “Great Peace.”
My own research has yielded corroborating evidence of Roach’s authorship in another volume of his papers among the Rawlinson manuscripts at the Bodleian Library. A handwritten “Catalogue of Books written by ye Philadelphian Society” lists Lyra Davidica: A Collection of Hymns & Spiritual Songs as one of Richard Roach’s titles.
Together, the evidence seems to establish that Roach was the musician and editor behind the Lyra Davidica, including the first English lyrics and the musical setting of the Easter hymn “Jesus Christ is risen today”.
ONE of the striking features of this hymn is its lively tune (livelier in Lyra Davidica than in later versions), with tripping groups of semi-quavers, corresponding to the festive repetition of “Halle- Halleluiah”. This is certainly not the German chorale tune, which was altogether more sedate.
The Musical Times reported in July 1914 that the melody of the Easter hymn had been discovered as the tune of a hymn for Ascension Day in a hymnbook dating from 1684, published in the Lower Engadine region of the Swiss Alps, and written in the Romansh language.
This volume, apparently then up for sale by a Fleet Street printer, has remained obscure, and the connection with the Lyra Davidica tune has never been verified. Whatever the earliest provenance of the musical setting may have been, in its recognisable form it was defined by Lyra Davidica; we may confidently name its principal composer as Richard Roach.
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Roach was Rector of St Augustine’s, Hackney, and a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford (he never married). He was also a leading figure in the Philadelphian Society, a female-centred circle of mystic-visionaries who met to prophesy, sing spontaneously, and communicate revelations in the City of London in the 1690s and 1700s.
The society was an ecumenical group with links to Jacobite mystics in the north, Dutch and German Pietists, and the Quietist followers of François Fénelon and Madame Guyon. Its dominant personalities included two aged prophetesses, Jane Lead and Ann Bathurst, and the group drew its inspiration from a range of early Christian, medieval, and Reformation mystical and esoteric writings, not least those of the Lutheran cobbler-mystic, Jacob Boehme.
Briefly notorious in Augustan London, the Philadelphians inspired the cynical satire one might expect from that climate, including that of the third Earl of Shaftesbury, who, in 1702, wrote of his encounter with an “Angelick Sect” presided over by “adept ladys”.
A contemporary satirical woodcut depicts the “English prophets” in periwigs around a table, waving their arms and beaming ecstatically.
THE music-making of the Philadelphians was not restricted to the translation or formal composition of metrical hymns. A contemporary reported that the Philadelphians “keep up much Mirth and Jollity, sing Hymns of their own making, and would make the World believe they are extraordinarily gifted above others”.
This is borne out by Ann Bathurst’s diaries, that include short formless songs which are more like meditations: “O Love fire burn, O Love fire burn That I in you and you in me May always be but one.”
Roach’s diaries record gatherings where the prophetic manifestations included “Laughter in the Spirit”: after dinner one evening, the group “cryd & Laught together extremely for I believe above a quarter of an hour”. On another occasion, at a birthday dinner in Holborn, Roach recalls that the party “Sung free”, and “Sudden P[owe]r came” with the message “Sing Sing a New Song”.
Spiritual singing was such a feature of Roach’s life that, when he hired a new maid, she was asked first, “Could she like a Holy Retird Life?”; and, second, “Could she sing?”
The second stanza of “The Resurrection” celebrates women’s part in proclaiming the resurrection. Perhaps regrettably, the second and third stanzas of the original are no longer in use. Modern hymn-books contain the verses published in John Arnold’s The Compleat Psalmodist (2nd ed., 1749), which disregard the Latin and German antecedents.
Annexed to the Lyra Davidica hymn is a dialogue between Mary Magdalene and the angel, derived from earlier German texts, and perhaps hinting at the survival of a late-medieval Easter-play tradition.
Roach’s personal diaries suggest that, in private meetings, he sang the dialogue together with a female prophet, Sarah Wilshere. An additional, original verse in the Lyra Davidica version of the hymn describes Mary Magdalene as a “Sacred Embassy” — an unusual expression that Roach and the Philadelphians used (along with “ambassadors” or “embassadresses”) to refer to female prophets and preachers of the resurrection.
THERE is a structure and shape to the collection of songs in Lyra Davidica. “The Resurrection” appears early on, alongside other liturgical and sacramental hymns. The collection concludes, however, with a simple refrain to be sung as a canon in seven parts, “The Union Hymn”, consisting of only two lines: “Heav’n on earth, when we agree, in Love and harmony Love, Love and harmony”.
The highest aspiration of the Philadelphian prophets was mystical union in divine love; this heavenly state was not only symbolised but actualised by musical harmony. A renewal of the harmony and balance between female and male was part of their vision, and was not only an aspect of their music-making.
During the heyday of the Philadelphian Society, in August 1697, Roach was summoned to Lambeth by Archbishop Tenison to be questioned about the fact that he had “become a fellow Minister with Women Preachers”.
Roach took the opportunity to mount a comprehensive defence of women’s ministry and preaching. His response synthesises and develops some of the most powerful arguments in favour of women’s preaching which had been made by Quaker apologists in the previous generation, and touched on contemporary biblical criticism and interpretation of contentious passages, such as 1 Corinthians 11.
His decisive argument was, however, eschatological: “The Restoration & Advancement of the Female Sex to the same Freedom and Dignity with the Male, shall prove in the Event, the Glory of this Age; and the Compleatment of our Triumph, & Perfection of our Redemption by Christ Jesus from the Curse & Thraldom of theirs & our First Transgression.”
It is remarkable to reflect that this precocious vision of the restoration of women’s dignity and freedom should form part of the backstory to one of our most traditional liturgical hymns. Prospects for renewal open up out of season.
I would like to think that Roach would rejoice in the union of voices reciting his hymn on Easter Day, in churches where women are equal ministers and “ambassadors” of the resurrection.
Dr Sarah Apetrei is Associate Director of Graduate Studies in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford, and author of Women, Feminism and Religion in Early Enlightenment England (Cambridge University Press).
The full text of the original reads:
The Resurrection
Jesus Christ is Risen today, Halle- Halleluiah
Our triumphant Holy day, Halle- Halleluiah
Who so lately on the Cross, Halle- Halleluiah
Suffer’d to redeem our loss, Halle- Halleluiah
Hast ye Females from your Fright, Hall. &c.
Take to Galile your Flight: Hall.
To his sad Disciples say, Hall.
Jesus Christ is Risen to Day. Hall.
In our Paschal Joy and Feast. Hall.
Let the Lord of Life be blest, Hall.
Let the Holy Trine be prais’d, Hall.
And thankful Hearts to Heaven be rais’d. Hall.
A Resurrection Dialogue. Erstanden ist der Heilige Christ.
To the same Tune.
Christ our Lord is Risen to Day; Hall. &c.
Christ our Life, our Light, our Way, Hall.
Th’Object of our Love and Faith; Hall.
Who but dy’d to Conquer Death. Hall.
Th’ Holy Matrons early come, Hall.
To Bedew their Savior’s Tomb; Hall.
Jesus seek among the Dead, Hall.
Far from those Dark Regions fled. Hall.
Two bright Angels, that appear, Hall.
Thus Salute ’em; He’s not here. Hall.
Banish Sorrow, Shout and Sing, Hall.
Wellcome to your Risen King. Hall.
Mary. Beauteous Angels, say what place, Hall.
Does his charming Presence Grace? Hall.
Bless my Eyes; then bid Rejoyce: Hall.
Then to Praise I’ll tune my Voice. Hall.
Angel: First the Sacred Place behold, Hall.
Did your Breathless Lord infold, Hall.
See the Cloath which bound his Head, Hall.
Proves he’s Risen from the Dead. Hall.
Mary. True ‘tis so: The empty Urn, Hall.
Shall my Grief to Transports turn, Hall.
He’s not here: O tell me where; Hall.
His blest Residence declare. Hall.
Angel. Hast in Faith prepare to see, Hall.
Your lov’d Lord in Galile, Hall.
Blest let his Disciples be, Hall.
With your Sacred Embassy. Hall.
Mary. Heralds of our joy, to you, Hall.
Grateful Thanks and Love is due. Hall.
While our God in Praises high, Hall.
We together Magnify. Hall.
Chorus. The Cross is past, the Crown is won; Hall.
Th’ Ransom paid, and Death’s Sting gone. Hall.