Johann Kolross

Kolross, Johann (called Rhodanthracius), is said to have been a pastor at Basel, and to have died there in 1558. In his Encheridion, Nürnberg, 1529 (later ed., 1534. It is a manual of orthography), he calls himself teacher of German (Teutsch Lehermayster) at Basel; and so in his Scriptural play (Ein schön spil von Fünfferley betrachtnussen den menschen zur Buss reytzende. It is on the motives of the Dance of Death at Basel), performed at Basel on the 1st S. after Easter, 1532, and printed at Basel, 1532 (Goedeke's Grundriss, 1886, ii. 181, 337, 343, &c). The only hymn by him translated into English is:—
Ich dank dir lieber Herre. Morning. First published separately at Nürnberg, c. 1535, and thence in Wackernagel, iii. p. 86, in 9 stanzas of 8 lines.Included in V. Schumann's Gesang-Buch, Leipzig, 1539, the Berlin Geistlicher Lieder Schatz, ed, 1863, No. nil, &c. It has been characterised as containing "all the leading thoughts of the Reformation." The translations are from the greatly altered form in 6 stanzas, beginning "Das walten deine Wunden," given as No. 1800 in Appx. xii., c. 1744, to the Herrnhut Gesang-Buch, 1735, and in the Brüder Gesang-Buch, 1778, No. 1509. They are, (1) "Thy Wounds, Lord, be my Safeguard," as No. 324 in pt. i. of the Moravian Hymn Book, 1754. In the edition of 1849, 2 stanzas are repeated, st. v. beginning "Lord Christ! I give Thee praises," as No. 1006, and st. iv. beginning "Amidst this world's profaneness," as No. 610.
To Kolross has also been ascribed (as in the Zürich Gesang-Buch, 1570) a version of Ps. cxxvii., which 1st appeared in the Zwickau Enchiridion, 1525, and begins "So (Wo) Gott zum Haus nicht giebt sein Gunst." A rendering of Ps. cxxvii. is given under this first line in J. C. Jacobi's Psalmodia Germanica, 1722, p. 35 (1732, p. 60), but it is not from the Ger¬man, and is simply the L.M. version of this Psalm by Isaac Watts. A hymn also ascribed to Kolross is noted under Magdeburg, J.
[Rev. James Mearns, M.A.]

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)