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An Oxford scholar, Reginald Heber was ordained into the Anglican Church, and became known as a man of "rare refinement and noble Christian character" (Osbeck, 129). When he was not able to locate Cowper's "Olney Hymns", he decided to formulate a new hymnal, and was the first to compile a hymn book which organized the hymns according to the church calendar. "Holy, Holy, Holy" was written specifically for "Trinity Sunday", which occurs eight weeks following Easter. The tune, composed by John Dykes, was titled "Nicaea" after the Council of Nicaea held in Asia Minor in 325 A.D. at which time the Trinity was upheld as an essential doctrine of the Christian faith.
In 1823, when Pastor Heber was 40 years old, he was sent to India to serve as Bishop of Calcutta where he provided oversight for Ceylon and Australia as well as India. Due to the climate and the pressures of his work, Heber's health became poor, and he died suddenly in 1826. One account is that one Sunday morning, after preaching against the evils of their caste system to a large outdoor crowd, he suffered a sun-stroke. A year later a book of his hymns was published by his widow and friends.
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