The literary work of Bishop Hans Adolph Brorson represents an enduring Danish tradition of hymnology and religious poetry. His work is strongly influenced by the Pietist movement that emanated from Germany northward through Slesvig and Holsten in the early eighteenth century and came into contact with the official Lutheran Church of Denmark. Brorson is the most gifted religious poet of eighteenth-century Denmark, and he serves as a striking contrast to his contemporary Ludvig Holberg, the greatest secular writer of that century. Brorson eventually gained recognition as one of the four greatest Danish hymn writers alongside Thomas Kingo of the seventeenth century and N. F. S. Grundtvig and B. S. Ingemann of the nineteenth century. His major contributions to Danish hymnology are Troens Rare Klenodie (Rare Jewel of Faith, 1739), which includes several hymns known by nearly all Danes today, and a sophisticated collection of religious lyrics from his later...