4, is a collection of forty pieces of vocal sacred music on Latin texts, composed by Heinrich Schütz and first published in 1625.

The general title Cantiones sacrae was common at the time and was used by many composers, including Palestrina, Byrd and Tallis (1589 and 1591) and Hans Leo Hassler (1591).

[6] In his foreword, he notes that the publisher "wrested" (extorsit) the accompaniment from him, while he regarded a bassus ad organum as "vain and clumsy" (vanum atq[ue] inconcinnum).

[6] The composer has been described as "universal" (katholikos), and Cantiones sacrae as his "opus ecclesiasticum primum" (first sacred work), also his first publication on Latin texts.

Musicologist Volckmar-Wasch identifies the 13th piece, Heu mihi Domine, as especially sad (tristis) and the 29th, Cantate Domino (Sing to the Lord), as happy (laetus).

Matteo Messori, who has been conducting recordings of the complete works by Schütz, regards the counterpoint of Cantiones as "superlative and unmatched among the sacred vocal works of the 17th century",[6] comparable only to the madrigals alla maniera italiana (in the Italian manner) from Fontana d'Israel, Israelis Brünnlein, published in 1623 by the composer's friend and Thomaskantor Johann Hermann Schein.

[6] Musicologist Stephen Rose terms the Cantiones "the composer's "most impassioned pieces" and notes: "They set first-person devotional texts to avant-garde madrigalism", evoking the crucifixion by extreme harmonies and "joy in Christ by dance rhythms".

Craig Smith notes: "In richness of harmony, intensity of expression, and most importantly, the exploration of the vague, the ambiguous, and the contradictory, they are without equal," and compares them to the drama, light and shade in paintings by Caravaggio.

[6] A sequence of three more Passion motets is positioned in the middele of the collection, beginning with Aspice pater piissimum filium (Consider, Father, your most pious son).

A thesis by Anna Amalie Abert was published in 1935, another by Heide Volckmar-Waschk in 2001, dedicated to the work's history, texts and analysis.