On
Buildings
Finally, the Hebrew
Tetragrammaton or a Latin equivalent appeared on buildings and in churches. The
new palace of Friedrich IV (1592–1610) at Heidelberg had (in Hebrew and Latin)
a text from Psalm 118:20 (English 119): Haec est Porta Jehovae Iusti
Intrabunt Per Eam. The Poortwachte in Calvinist Dordrecht decorated with
the arms of the Reformation in 1614 faced the Spaniards and prayed Custos
esto mihi Deus Iehova. In Denmark Christian IV built himself a Renaissance
castle, Schloss Frederiksborg, some thirty-odd kilometres north of Copenhagen,
between 1602 and 1620. The castle now houses a museum. The ceiling in Room 31
has a radiate Jehova along with the text In domo Patris mei multa
mansiones sunt. The observatory built by the king near the Holy Trinity church
in Copenhagen has an inscription of 1642 which combines Latin and Hebrew and
rebuses into a petition that “the righteousness of Yhwh might dwell in the
heart of the King.” The king also placed a Hebrew Tetragrammaton on the
Holmenkirche in Copenhagen (1619–1620).
The 13th-century Alte Dorfkirche
in Berlin-Dahlem, used by the Reform, has the text of Jeremiah 1:17 at the
entrance to the chancel over-topped with Iehova. A sandstone Hebrew
Tetragrammaton crowns the side-door in the Nikolaikirche in Berlin-Mitte. A
grave stone in the graveyard of the destroyed Sorbenkirche in Bautzen, Eastern
Saxony, has Ieho.
The commemorative plaque set up
after the plague year of 1629 in the Dorfkirche Morsum (Insel Sylt) in the
North Sea seems to have the distinction of creating a new form of the Latin
name of God. I assume Ihehovah Benedictio Summa at the end is simply an
error.
In Switzerland the entrance to
the Reformed Dortkirche in Sils Domletsch from 1619 commemorates Jehove.
A stove presented by two brothers from Winterthur to the Council in Zurich in
1698 has Jehova and a Hebrew Tetragrammaton. One could go on. Little
will be achieved in listing further. The point is the ubiquity of the name. And
the tradition has become enduring. The municipal Coat of Arms of Plymouth in
southwest England, where I spend part of every year, is only a century old. The
Latin legend is Turris Fortissima est Nomen Jehova. (Robert J.
Wilkinson, Tetragrammaton: Western Christians and the Hebrew Name of God—From
the Beginnings to the Seventeenth Century [Studies in the History of
Christian Traditions 179; Leiden: Brill, 2015], 381)
