The Hymn Writers

Put Christian teaching into rough, singable Latin verse so working people could carry it in their heads.

Preached the oldest Easter sermon we still possess and made the first surviving list of the Old Testament books.

Made a Roman emperor stand outside the church door until he repented of a massacre.

Preached five sermons in a tiny borrowed chapel that settled how the whole church speaks about the Trinity.

Turned the book of Acts into Latin verse and read it aloud in Rome to crowds who kept asking for more.

Fought false teaching with hymns, training whole choirs of women to sing the true faith back at it.

Wrote hundreds of verse sermons in Syriac and was called the flute of the Holy Spirit.

A bishop-poet of Pavia who left hymns, letters, and the life of the man he succeeded.

Preached to the tribes along the Danube and is the likeliest author of the Te Deum.

A Roman senator who gave away an enormous fortune and wrote a poem every year for his friend's feast day.

Retired from imperial service at fifty-seven and became the finest Latin poet the church has produced.

Wrote the sung sermons that still carry Christmas and Easter through the Eastern church.

Preached with such fire that Europe followed him, and wrote 'Jesus, the very thought of Thee.'

Wrote the Great Canon, a long hymn of repentance the East still sings through Lent.

John of Damascus's foster-brother, who wrote the hymns sung at the great Eastern feasts.

Defended Christian images while emperors were burning them, and summed up the whole faith of the East in one book.

Called the teacher of Germany, and the likely author of 'Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire.'

Handed over Jerusalem's keys in 637 and negotiated protection for the Christians he was leaving behind.

Abbot of Reichenau, who wrote on the Psalms, on church worship, and a poem about tending his own garden.

Sent ninety-five theses against indulgences to his archbishop, and later, before the emperor, would not take back a word of what he had written.

Complained that church singing was dull, was dared to do better, and gave English Christians about 750 hymns.

Rode a quarter of a million miles on horseback to preach in open fields, because the churches had locked him out.

Believed for the last twenty-seven years of his life that God had cast him off, and kept writing the hymns that have comforted everyone else.

Wrote about six thousand hymns so that people who could not read a page of doctrine could still sing it.

Captained a slave ship, spent the rest of his life undoing it, and wrote 'Amazing Grace' for a village prayer meeting.

Savaged John Wesley in print with a bitterness his friends still apologize for, and wrote one of the tenderest hymns in the language.

Wrote 'it is well with my soul' on the deck of a ship crossing the exact water where his four daughters had drowned.

Blind since infancy, she wrote over eight thousand hymns and spent her royalties on the Bowery missions where she worked.

Wrote 'take my silver and my gold' and then mailed her jewelry away so the line would not be a lie.

Escaped the burning wreck at Ashtabula, went back in for his wife, and died with her - his last hymn text arriving safe in a trunk.

Sent his records to anyone who asked for whatever they could pay, told sleeping churches so, and died at twenty-eight with two of his children.