Cornelius Becker

BECKER, Cornelius. b. Leipzig, 24 October 1561; d. Leipzig, 25 May 1604. He spent almost his whole life in the city of his birth, studying at the University of Leipzig, becoming a teacher at St Thomas’ School (1588), diaconus of St Nicholas’ Church (1592), and pastor there (1594); he was also Professor of Theology in the University of Leipzig. A convinced Lutheran, he was disturbed by the influence of the Calvinism of the Reformed church, and especially by the popularity of the metrical psalms translated into German by Ambrosius Lobwasser*, Der Psalter dess Königlichen Propheten Davids (1573). Becker’s view of what he called this ‘wasser-dicht’ (playing on the name of Lobwasser but also...