ABSTRACT
The main evolution of the English metrical psalter from its Edwardian to its Elizabethan shape occurred in the successive editions published in Geneva between 1556 and 1560. The Prayer Book congregations of the Marian diaspora adopted metrical psalmody as a part of their confessional identity. In Geneva, William Whittingham and others actively revised and expanded the psalter to help create a distinctively English Calvinist Church. Whittingham’s Frankfurt paraphrases are a part of the effort to use the psalms to shape the congregation’s response to their circumstances. As we have already seen, One and Fiftie Psalmes added unison tunes, prose arguments, verse numbers, and marginal annotations, in addition to new psalms. Through changes to the Edwardian psalm paraphrases themselves and by, over three editions, nearly doubling the number of metrical psalms to 87, English writers in Geneva created a hymnal that could articulate a range of godly prayers and affirmations. The full Anglo-Genevan religious project, however, used the psalms as an integral part of a community of texts that included the church order, catechism, private prayers, and new translations of scripture to form a Church based on biblically pure belief.1
