Johannes Schneesing › Hymnals

Schneesing, Johannes, sometimes called Cnionmsus or Chyomusus, was a native of Frankfurt-am-Main. He was appointed, sometime before 1524, assistant to Johann Langenhayn, pastor of St. Margaret's church, in Gotha, who had begun, in 1522, to preach the doctrines of the Reformation. Subsequently he became pastor at Friemar, near Gotha; and in the records of the Visitation in 1534, he is described as a "learned, diligent, pious, and godly man." He died at Friemar, in 1567. (Koch, i. 376, &c.)

During Sehneesing's early years at Friemar, his energies were greatly exercised in combating the Anabaptist doctrines promulgated in the neighbourhood by Nicolaus Storch, of Zwickau. Throughout his incumbency, he greatly interested himself in the children of his flock, for whom he prepared a Catechism, taught them in school, catechised them in church, and, as his pupil, Marx Wagner declares, taught them to sing many hymns and tunes which he had himself composed. He also possessed some skill as a painter.

The only hymn which has been ascribed to Schneesing, with any certainty, is—
Allein zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ. Penitence. The earliest hymn-book to which this has yet been traced, is the (Low German) Magdeburg Gesang-Buch, 1542, where it begins, "Alleyn tho dy," and is entitled, "A Hymn of Penitence." Wackernagel, iii., pp. 174-177, gives this, and three other forms (the oldest being from an undated Nürnberg broadsheet, circa 1540), and ascribes it to Schneesing. It was included by Luther in V. Babst's Gesang-Buch, 1545; and this text, in 4 stanzas of 9 lines, is repeated in many later collections, as in the Unverfälschter Liedersegen, 1851, No. 361. Bunsen, in his Versuch, 1833, p. 85, calls it "an immortal hymn of prayer of a confident faith."

Its rhymes show that it was evidently written in High German, and, therefore, apparently, earlier than 1542. In the earliest broadsheets and hymnbooks, it appears without name…. The translations of Schneesing's hymn are:—
1. In Thee alone, 0 Christ, my Lord. A good tr. of st. i.—iii.- by A. T. Russell, as No. 194, in his Psalms & Hymns, 1851.
2. Lord Jesus Christ, in Thee alone. A good and full tr., by Miss Winkworth, in her Lyra Germanica, 2nd Ser., l858, p. 129. Repeated, slightly varied in metre in her Chorale Book for England, 1863, No. 112.
Other translations are:—
(1) "In Thee, Lord Christ, is fix'd my hope." By J. C. Jacobi, 1725, p. 20. (2) “In Thee alone, Lord Jesus Christ." This is No. 308, in pt. i, of the Moravian Hymn Book, 1754. (3) " In Thee, O Christ, is all my Hope." This is based on Jacobi's tr., and is No. 539, in pt. i., of the Moravian Hymn Book, 1754 (1886, No. 284). Included in the 1780 and later eds. of Lady Huntingdon's Selection. (4) “According to Thy mercy, Lord." This is a translation of st. iii., by J. Swertner, as st. i. of No. 720, in the Moravian Hymn Book, 1789 (1886, No. 711). [Rev. James Mearns, M.A.]

--Excerpts from John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)