Hymn #44: Beautiful Jesus

The anonymous German text “Schönster Herr Jesu” was first published in Münsterisch Gesangbuch (1677), a collection of hymns and tunes issued by Jesuits living in Münster, Westphalia, now part of Germany. Although it was sometimes referred to as the “Crusader’s Hymn,” there is no documentation that it was sung by those twelfth-century pilgrims who journeyed to the holy land.

Madeleine Forell Marshall (b. 1946) created this English translation of the divine love poem “Schönster Herr Jesu” for The New Century Hymnal in 1993. Earlier translations include one beginning “Beautiful Savior” by Joseph Seiss and the anonymous version “Fairest Lord Jesus” from an 1850 hymnal.

This hymn became popular in the United States only after it was published with this tune, SCHÖNSTER HERR JESU, collected from Silesia by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben (1798-1874). It is frequently confused with the original seventeenth-century tune that is the most frequent setting for the text in Germany.

August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben first published this anonymous Silesian folk song in an 1842 collection called Schlesische Volkslieder. The collection contained 277 secular folk songs and twenty-three spiritual folk songs from this area of Germany.

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