ABSTRACT
In 1596, Heinrich Heshusius published a carefully written funeral sermon based on the text of Psalm 90 for Asca von Holle (1529-94), a successful financier and colonel (obersten) who had worked for Geörg Friedrich of Brandenburg and town governments throughout the Harz region.1 Heshusius had a personal relationship with the man that he was eulogizing; Asca von Holle had visited Heshusius in Hildesheim and the successful entrepreneur was also well-known to the Hildesheim mayor and members of the town council.2 In his sermon, Heshusius praised von Holle’s valiant accomplishments in the Turkish wars while lamenting, through the words of the psalmist, that all men’s days fly away quickly and are soon gone; only God and his eternal countenance are everlasting. For readers who have just surveyed the catechetical preaching of Heshusius in Chapter 4, it will come as no surprise that the Lutheran pastor selected a psalm as the preaching text for his funeral sermon. But despite the familiar exegesis that Heshusius often brought to sermons based on the psalter, there are important differences between how a typical Lutheran pastor preached catechetical sermons in the late sixteenth century and the sermons that they constructed for funerals and weddings.
