The historical importance of the chorale can scarcely be overestimated. Musically speaking, it forms the basis of a large and significant portion of the literature of German music, both vocal and instrumental; religiously speaking, it was the effective instrument through which the intensely devout faith of the German people found its readiest and most expressive voice for their emotions of joy and thanksgiving in the newly-found office of direct communion with God; politically speaking, it was recognized by friend and foe alike as the most powerful agency for the spread of the new doctrines. Whole towns were said to have been won over to Protestantism by Luther’s hymns. An irate priest exclaimed: ‘Luther’s songs have damned more souls than all his books and speeches.’ Furthermore, the Protestant hymn exercised an immediate and wholesome influence on the Roman Catholic hymn. Realizing the popularity and devotional value of the Lutheran hymn-singing, the Catholic authorities reversed their traditional attitude toward the congregational hymn and strove to stem the inroads made by this alluring propaganda on their congregations by providing hymn-books of their own in the language of the people. The first German Catholic collection (_Ein New Gesangbüchlin Geystlicher Lieder_) appeared in 1537 in Leipzig, the work of the Dominican monk, Michael Vehe, of Halle. It contained fifty-two hymns and forty-seven melodies, many of which, in altered form, were borrowed from the Protestant hymn-books, as Luther had borrowed from the best Catholic hymns. Thus these religious opponents sought to square musical accounts by freely appropriating each other’s treasures of sacred song. The second Catholic hymn-book (_Geistliche Lieder und Psalmen_) did not appear until 1567. It was edited by Johann Leisentrit of Bautzen and comprised 147 melodies and 250 texts, among which were no less than sixty-six hymns by Protestant poets, four, indeed, by Luther himself! Thereafter similar hymn-books multiplied rapidly, and the history of the development and subsequent decline of the Catholic German hymn coincides quite largely with that of the Lutheran hymn and with nearly the same contributing causes, political and religious. It is of interest to note that about 1600 the hymn found its way for a time even into the office of the Holy Mass. In the eighteenth century the Catholic hymn sank back into its pre-Reformation status of unimportance in public worship, but retained its position in the parochial schools, where it was permanently placed early in the seventeenth century. II