Sebastian Franck
Encyclopedia
Sebastian Franck was a 16th century German
freethinker, humanist
, and radical reformer
.
Franck was born about 1499 at Donauwörth
, Bavaria
. Because of this he styled himself Franck von Word. He entered the University of Ingolstadt
on March 26, 1515, and afterwards went to Bethlehem College, incorporated with the university, as an institution of the Dominicans
at Heidelberg
. Here he met Martin Bucer
and Martin Frecht, with whom he might have attended Luther
's Heidelberg disputation
in October 1518.
Originally ordained as a priest, in 1525 Franck went over to the Reformed party at Nuremberg
and became preacher at Gustenfelden. His first work was a German translation (with additions) of the first part of the Diallage (or Conciliatio locorum Scripturae), directed against Sacramentarians and Anabaptist
s by Andrew Althamer, then deacon of St. Sebald
at Nuremberg. On March 17, 1528 he married Ottilie Beham, supposedly the sister of the "ungodly" painters, Bartholomew and Sebald Behaim, pupils of Albrecht Dürer
and followers of Hans Denck
. In the same year he wrote a treatise against drunkenness. In 1529 he produced a free version of the Supplycacyon of the Beggers, written by the English Protestant Simon Fish
. Franck, in his preface, says the original was in English; elsewhere he says it was in Latin
; the theory that his German was really the original is not warranted.
Advance in his religious ideas led him to seek the freer atmosphere of Strasbourg
in the autumn of 1529. To his translation (1530) of a Latin Chronicle and Description of Turkey (Turkenchronik), by a Transylvanian captive, which had been prefaced by Luther, he added an appendix holding up the Turk as in many respects an example to Christians. He also substituted, in lieu of the restrictions of Lutheran, Zwinglian and Anabaptist sects, the vision of an invisible spiritual church, universal in its scope. To this ideal he remained faithful. At Strassburg began his friendship with Kaspar Schwenkfeld. Here he also published, in 1531, his most important work, the Chronica, Zeitbuch und Geschichtsbibel, largely a compilation on the basis of the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), and in its treatment of social and religious questions connected with the Reformation. In it he exhibited a strong sympathy with "heretics" and fairness to all kinds of freedom in opinion. As a German historian, he is a forerunner of Gottfried Arnold. Driven from Strassburg by the authorities, after a short imprisonment in December 1531, he tried to make a living in 1532 as a soapboiler at Esslingen, removing in 1533 for a better market to Ulm
, where on October 28, 1534 he was admitted as a burgess.
His Weltbuch, a supplement to his Chronica, was printed at Tübingen in 1534. His publication, in the same year, of the Paradoxa brought him into trouble with the authorities. An order for his banishment was withdrawn on his promise to submit future works for censure. Not interpreting this as applying to works printed outside Ulm, he published in 1538 at Augsburg his Guldin Arch and at Frankfort his Germaniae chronicon, with the result that he had to leave Ulm in January 1539. He seems to have had no settled abode from that time. At Basel he found work as a printer, and it was probably there that he died in the winter of 1542–1543. He had published in 1539 his Kriegbuchlein des Friedens, his Schrifftliche und ganz grundliche Auslegung des 64 Psalms, and his Das verbutschierte mit sieben Siegein verschlossene Buch (a biblical index, exhibiting the dissonance of Scripture). In 1541 he published his Spruchwörter (a collection of proverbs). In 1542 he issued a new edition of his Paradoxa and some smaller works.
Franck combined the humanist's passion for freedom with the mystic's devotion to the religion of the spirit. Luther contemptuously dismissed him as a mouthpiece of the devil. Martin Frecht of Nuremberg pursued him with bitter zeal. But his courage did not fail him, and in his last year, in a public Latin letter, he exhorted his friend Johann Campanus
to maintain freedom of thought in face of the charge of heresy. Franck came to believe that God communicates with individuals through a portion of the divine remaining in each human being. He came to dismiss the human institution of the church, and believed that theology could not properly claim to give expression to this inner word of God in the heart of the believer. For example, Franck wrote, "To substitute Scripture for the self-revealing Spirit is to put the dead letter in the place of the living Word..."
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
freethinker, humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
, and radical reformer
Radical Reformation
The Radical Reformation was a 16th century response to what was believed to be both the corruption in the Roman Catholic Church and the expanding Magisterial Protestant movement led by Martin Luther and many others. Beginning in Germany and Switzerland, the Radical Reformation birthed many radical...
.
Franck was born about 1499 at Donauwörth
Donauwörth
Donauwörth is a city in the German State of Bavaria , in the region of Swabia . It is said to have been founded by two fisherman where the Danube and Wörnitz rivers meet...
, Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
. Because of this he styled himself Franck von Word. He entered the University of Ingolstadt
University of Ingolstadt
The University of Ingolstadt was founded in 1472 by Louis the Rich, the Duke of Bavaria at the time, and its first Chancellor was the Bishop of Eichstätt. It consisted of five faculties: humanities, sciences, theology, law and medicine, all of which were contained in the Hoheschule...
on March 26, 1515, and afterwards went to Bethlehem College, incorporated with the university, as an institution of the Dominicans
Dominican Order
The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...
at Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
. Here he met Martin Bucer
Martin Bucer
Martin Bucer was a Protestant reformer based in Strasbourg who influenced Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican doctrines and practices. Bucer was originally a member of the Dominican Order, but after meeting and being influenced by Martin Luther in 1518 he arranged for his monastic vows to be annulled...
and Martin Frecht, with whom he might have attended Luther
Luther
As a German surname, Luther is derived from a Germanic personal name compounded from the words liut, "people", and heri, "army". As a rare English surname, it means "lute player" . Luther is also derived from the ancient Greek eleutherius, a liberator...
's Heidelberg disputation
Heidelberg Disputation
The Heidelberg Disputation was held at the Meeting of the Augustianian order on April 26, 1518. It was here that Martin Luther, as a delegate for his order, began to have occasion to articulate his views. In the defense of his theses, Luther defended the doctrine of the depravity of man and the...
in October 1518.
Originally ordained as a priest, in 1525 Franck went over to the Reformed party at Nuremberg
Nuremberg
Nuremberg[p] is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, it is located about north of Munich and is Franconia's largest city. The population is 505,664...
and became preacher at Gustenfelden. His first work was a German translation (with additions) of the first part of the Diallage (or Conciliatio locorum Scripturae), directed against Sacramentarians and Anabaptist
Anabaptist
Anabaptists are Protestant Christians of the Radical Reformation of 16th-century Europe, and their direct descendants, particularly the Amish, Brethren, Hutterites, and Mennonites....
s by Andrew Althamer, then deacon of St. Sebald
St. Sebaldus Church
St. Sebaldus Church is a medieval church in Nuremberg, Germany. Along with Frauenkirche and St. Lorenz, it is one of the most important churches of the city, and also one of the oldest. It is located at the Albrecht-Dürer-Platz, in front of the old city hall...
at Nuremberg. On March 17, 1528 he married Ottilie Beham, supposedly the sister of the "ungodly" painters, Bartholomew and Sebald Behaim, pupils of Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...
and followers of Hans Denck
Hans Denck
Hans Denck was a German theologian and Anabaptist leader during the Reformation.Denck was born in 1495 in the Bavarian town of Habach. After a classical education, he became headmaster at the St. Sebaldus school in Nuremberg in 1523...
. In the same year he wrote a treatise against drunkenness. In 1529 he produced a free version of the Supplycacyon of the Beggers, written by the English Protestant Simon Fish
Simon Fish
Simon Fish was a 16th century Protestant reformer and English propagandist. Fish is best known for helping to spread William Tyndale’s New Testament and for authoring the vehemently anti-clerical pamphlet Supplication for the Beggars which was condemned as heretical by the Roman Catholic Church...
. Franck, in his preface, says the original was in English; elsewhere he says it was in Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
; the theory that his German was really the original is not warranted.
Advance in his religious ideas led him to seek the freer atmosphere of Strasbourg
Strasbourg
Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...
in the autumn of 1529. To his translation (1530) of a Latin Chronicle and Description of Turkey (Turkenchronik), by a Transylvanian captive, which had been prefaced by Luther, he added an appendix holding up the Turk as in many respects an example to Christians. He also substituted, in lieu of the restrictions of Lutheran, Zwinglian and Anabaptist sects, the vision of an invisible spiritual church, universal in its scope. To this ideal he remained faithful. At Strassburg began his friendship with Kaspar Schwenkfeld. Here he also published, in 1531, his most important work, the Chronica, Zeitbuch und Geschichtsbibel, largely a compilation on the basis of the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), and in its treatment of social and religious questions connected with the Reformation. In it he exhibited a strong sympathy with "heretics" and fairness to all kinds of freedom in opinion. As a German historian, he is a forerunner of Gottfried Arnold. Driven from Strassburg by the authorities, after a short imprisonment in December 1531, he tried to make a living in 1532 as a soapboiler at Esslingen, removing in 1533 for a better market to Ulm
Ulm
Ulm is a city in the federal German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the River Danube. The city, whose population is estimated at 120,000 , forms an urban district of its own and is the administrative seat of the Alb-Donau district. Ulm, founded around 850, is rich in history and...
, where on October 28, 1534 he was admitted as a burgess.
His Weltbuch, a supplement to his Chronica, was printed at Tübingen in 1534. His publication, in the same year, of the Paradoxa brought him into trouble with the authorities. An order for his banishment was withdrawn on his promise to submit future works for censure. Not interpreting this as applying to works printed outside Ulm, he published in 1538 at Augsburg his Guldin Arch and at Frankfort his Germaniae chronicon, with the result that he had to leave Ulm in January 1539. He seems to have had no settled abode from that time. At Basel he found work as a printer, and it was probably there that he died in the winter of 1542–1543. He had published in 1539 his Kriegbuchlein des Friedens, his Schrifftliche und ganz grundliche Auslegung des 64 Psalms, and his Das verbutschierte mit sieben Siegein verschlossene Buch (a biblical index, exhibiting the dissonance of Scripture). In 1541 he published his Spruchwörter (a collection of proverbs). In 1542 he issued a new edition of his Paradoxa and some smaller works.
Franck combined the humanist's passion for freedom with the mystic's devotion to the religion of the spirit. Luther contemptuously dismissed him as a mouthpiece of the devil. Martin Frecht of Nuremberg pursued him with bitter zeal. But his courage did not fail him, and in his last year, in a public Latin letter, he exhorted his friend Johann Campanus
Johann Campanus
Johann Campanus was an Flemish religious reformer of the sixteenth century. In his Autobiographical Letter to Johann Campanus , a public Latin epistle, Sebastian Franck exhorted Campanus to maintain freedom of thought in face of the charge of heresy.As a preacher, Campanus knew the Anabaptist...
to maintain freedom of thought in face of the charge of heresy. Franck came to believe that God communicates with individuals through a portion of the divine remaining in each human being. He came to dismiss the human institution of the church, and believed that theology could not properly claim to give expression to this inner word of God in the heart of the believer. For example, Franck wrote, "To substitute Scripture for the self-revealing Spirit is to put the dead letter in the place of the living Word..."
Writings
- Autobiographical Letter to Johann Campanus (1531)
- Weltbuch (1534)
- Chronicle of Germany (1538)
- Golden Arch (1538)
- A Universal Chronicle of the World's History from the Earliest Times to the Present
- Book of the Ages
- Chronicle and Description of Turkey
- Paradoxa (1534)
- Preface and Translation into German of Althamer's Diallage
- Seven Sealed Book (1539)
- The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
- Translation with Additions of Erasmus' Praise of Folly
- The Vanity of Arts and Sciences
External links
- Sebastian Franck in Strasbourg — by Geoffrey Dipple
- http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/franck_sebastian_1499_1543 Entry in The Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online