This hymn rose out of the mystical piety of German churches after the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War, first printed as a “new song” in a 1677 Catholic hymnal at Münster and sung to a melody in a plaintive minor mode. In its original form, after four stanzas praising the surpassing beauty of Jesus, it turned suddenly to His coming in the Holy Supper, confessing that all the majesty of God is present in the morsel received in the mouth. A later legend, entirely false, claimed German crusaders sang it on the march, and from that tale the tune still bears the name “Crusaders’ Hymn.” The hymn reached America in 1850 as “Fairest Lord Jesus,” but in 1873 the Philadelphia Lutheran pastor Joseph A. Seiss recast it as “Beautiful Savior, King of creation,” and so Lutherans sing “Beautiful Savior” while most others keep “Fairest Lord Jesus.” The tune SCHÖNSTER HERR JESU, long thought a Silesian folk song, has been traced by the musicologist Folke Bohlin to music written by Johan Helmich Roman for a Swedish royal wedding in 1744.
Sung at Our Saviour
2026