Johann Georg Seidenbusch

Johann Georg Seidenbusch (5 April 1641 – 10 December 1729) was a Bavarian priest, painter, and composer, an influential figure in the religious landscape of the Baroque period.

Born in the Sendlingergasse in Munich, then in the Electorate of Bavaria of the Holy Roman Empire, Seidenbusch was the son of a clothier and was baptized in St Peter's Church.

[2] Some seventy years later, Seidenbusch recalled in his autobiography[3] Even as a small boy, when my mother was spinning and my father was doing needlework, I would get up on the stove or the bench and start preaching, which made my parents happy.

[2] Seidenbusch next served as the Abbot's servant and as a painter at Scheyern Abbey, where, impressed by his painting skills, Joachim von Sandrart invited him to come to his school.

[2] He travelled to Aufhausen by raft on the River Isar, taking with him his mother and his younger siblings, and also his small statue of the Virgin Mary and the Cross from Scheyern.

[3] He gave painting lessons to the former Empress Eleonora[3] and became very popular at the Emperor’s court as a composer, and the imperial family encouraged the printing of the first edition of his sacred hymns.

[2] About 1672, Seidenbusch established a kind of vita communis with his assistant priests,[4] and in 1675 he visited Rome and entered the community of Oratorians founded by Saint Philip Neri at the Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini.

[4] His published work of 1687, Marianischer Schnee-Berg ("Marian Snow-Mountain") included the first form of the Salve Regina song Gegrüßet seist du, Königin ("Greetings to thee, O Queen").

[3] When Seidenbusch died in December 1729, he left behind him a lively community based on the ideal of Saint Philip Neri, and also an active place of pilgrimage.