Now thank we all our God

Now thank we all our God. Martin Rinckart* (1586-1649), translated by Catherine Winkworth* (1827-1878). Rinckart’s text, ‘Nun danket alle Gott’*, is one of the most famous of German hymns. It was first published in Johann Crüger*’s Praxis Pietatis Melica (1647), and probably before that in Rinckart’s Jesu Hertz-Büchlein (1636), of which no copies are known. In the third edition of Rinckart’s book (1663), it is entitled ‘Tisch-Gebetlein’, a ‘Table-Grace’, and may well have originated in the intimate circumstances of the Rinckart family meal. Its use on great public occasions is a later development, but one that is well documented (see JJ, p. 963). Winkworth’s translation, in Lyra Germanica...