Guldberg's hymnal
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Guldberg's hymnal (published as Psalme-Bog eller En Samling af gamle og nye Psalmer 'Hymnal or A Collection of Old and New Hymns') is a hymnal that was created by Bishop Ludvig Harboe and Ove Høegh-Guldberg and was authorized for use in 1778.[1][2]
On behalf of King Christian VII of Denmark, Denmark's de facto prime minister, Ove Høegh-Guldberg, appointed a two-person committee, consisting of himself and the bishop of Zealand, Ludvig Harboe, to prepare a new hymnal.[3] They sought to modernize Kingo's hymnal, primarily by removing the hymns that lacked the requisite "correctness, dignity, and strength" or whose poetic quality was too weak. To replace the hymns that would be removed from the authorized hymnal, Birgitte Cathrine Boye received royal funding to write and translate hymns.[4][5]
Content
The hymnal contains 438 hymns taken from various sources:
- 32 from Thomissøn's hymnal
- 101 from Kingo's hymnal
- 144 from Erik Pontoppidan's hymnal
- 161 new hymns, of which 24 were from Germany,[5] 133 from Denmark, and two from Norway.
Birgitte Cathrine Boye wrote 124 of the 133 new Danish hymns in the volume. The two Norwegian hymns were written by Johan Vibe.[6][7]: 469 Boye also translated some hymns, so overall 146 hymns, or one-third of those in the volume, can be credited to her.[4]