Juan Bautista Cabrera Ivars was born in Benisa, Spain, April 23, 1837. He attended seminary in Valencia, studying Hebrew and Greek, and was ordained as a priest. He fled to Gibraltar in 1863 due to religious persecution where he abandoned Catholicism. He worked as a teacher and as a translator. One of the works he translated was E.H. Brown's work on the thirty-nine articles of the Anglican Church, which was his introduction to Protestantism. He was a leader of a Spanish Reformed Church in Gibraltar. He continued as a leader in this church when he returned to Spain after the government of Isabel II fell, but continued to face legal difficulties. He then organized the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church and was consecrated as bishop in 1894. He… Go to person page >
VESPER HYMN appeared in John A. Stevenson's Selection of Popular National Airs (1818) as a setting for Thomas Moore's "Hark! The Vesper Hymn Is Stealing." A footnote in that hymnal explained that Stevenson had added what is-now the first line of the retrain to a "Russian Air." Some later hymnals att…