Origin First held at Herrnhut on Easter morning 1732, and kept by Moravian congregations every Easter since.
The Easter Morning Litany is the Moravian Church's principal service of the year and, unusually for a liturgical text, it is a full confession of faith rather than a devotional poem. It began at Herrnhut in 1732, when a group of young men went out before dawn on Easter morning to the burial ground and said the confession among the graves, and Moravian congregations have kept it every Easter since. The service begins in the church in darkness and moves in procession to the burial ground, which Moravians call God's Acre, where the second half is said at sunrise. It is accompanied by brass rather than by organ, because it is held out of doors, and the names of the congregation's dead of the past year are read within it.
Facts
Practice
Who Performs ItAll adherents of the tradition 2 Practitioner DetailMinister and congregation in alternation, with the brass choir. The names of the congregation's dead of the past year are read within the service. 2 Solitary or CommunalPerformed by a gathered group 2 Social Form DetailAccompanied by a brass ensemble rather than an organ, because the service is held out of doors, and the Moravian trombone choir exists largely for it. 2 Origins
Origin PeriodFirst held at Herrnhut on Easter morning 1732, and kept by Moravian congregations every Easter since. 1 Language DetailGerman at Herrnhut, and thereafter the language of each province, the service having travelled with Moravian missions to the Caribbean, Labrador, South Africa and Central America. 1 Attributed Author / CompilerAnonymous; began communally at Herrnhut in 1732 rather than with a named author. 1 Form
Form of the TextConfession of faith, recited processionally at dawn rather than a devotional litany in the usual sense. 1 Use
What It Is Used ForConfession of faith: states what the reciter holds 2 Liturgical Function DetailThe litany is the service, not an item within one: a responsive confession begun in the church before dawn and completed in the burial ground at sunrise. 2 Status
Canonical Status Canonical Status DetailA full confession of faith rather than a devotional text, so the church revises it rarely and deliberately, and it functions as one of the places Moravian doctrine is actually stated. 1 Learn More
A Confession Said Among the Graves
On Easter morning in 1732 a group of young men from the Herrnhut community walked out to the burial ground before first light and said their confession of faith there among the graves. What began as their own devotion became the congregation's, then the church's, and Moravian congregations across the world have kept it every Easter morning since without a break.
The service has two halves and a walk between them. It opens inside the church while it is still dark, with the minister and congregation answering one another through the first part of the litany. Then everybody goes out, in procession, to the burial ground, and the second half is said there as the sun comes up. The physical movement is the argument: the confession about resurrection is not made in a building but standing on top of the people the claim concerns.
Two details give the service its character. The dead of the congregation from the past year are named, so the litany is always about particular people and not only about a doctrine. And the burial ground itself is laid out flat and uniform, with identical stones set level with the ground, because Moravian practice holds that the dead should be indistinguishable from one another in the ground whatever they were above it. A visitor who arrives expecting a sunrise service of the general Protestant kind finds instead a doctrinal statement made in a graveyard, at speed, by a whole town.
Brass, Bands and a Text That Is Doctrine
An organ cannot be carried to a burial ground. That practical fact is a large part of why the Moravian Church has a brass tradition at all. Moravian settlements maintained trombone choirs, ensembles of brass instruments playing chorale melodies, and the Easter morning service is the occasion those ensembles exist for above all others. In the older settlements the band also played from the church tower before dawn to wake the town, so the service began for many people as sound heard from bed.
The text is the other unusual thing. Most liturgical texts of this kind are prayers or hymns, and a church may revise them for language without anyone thinking a doctrine has moved. The Easter Morning Litany is a confession of faith, and Moravians treat it as one. Revisions have accordingly been deliberate, infrequent and argued, because changing a clause changes what the church states that it believes, and the service is one of the places where Moravian doctrine is actually to be found rather than merely referred to.
The combination has proved portable. Moravian missions carried the service to the Caribbean, to Labrador, to South Africa and to Central America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and it is kept in those provinces in their own languages with their own bands. Anyone who has attended it in more than one place reports the same thing: the language differs, the tunes differ a little, and the shape, the darkness, the procession, the names of the dead and the sunrise, does not.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
The principal service of the Moravian year, kept unbroken since 1732.
Element Of
The Easter Morning Litany is the Moravian Church's own service and its principal statement of faith, kept in every province since 1732.
Originates in Language
Matches its own already-established language enum value (german).
Sources
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