From Hebron to Saron: The religious transformation of an Ephrata convent

Winterthur Portfolio

Volumn 32, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 39-63

  Kirschner, Ann ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 55649085352     PISSN: 00840416     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/496699     Document Type: Article

References (118)

1. Felix Reichmann and Eugene E. Doll, eds., "Ephrata As Seen by Contemporaries," in The Pennsylvania German Folklore Society Yearbook, vol. 17 (Allentown, Pa.: By the society, 1952), pp. 38-39.
2. Hoch-Deutsch Pensylvanische Berichte, no. 70 (May 16, 1746)
3. as translated and reprinted in Reichmann and Doll, "Ephrata As Seen by Contemporaries," p. 40.
4. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon Ephratense: A History of the Community of Seventh Day Baptists at Ephrata, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, trans. J. Max Hark (Lancaster, Pa.: S. H. Zahm, 1889), p. 170.
5. Brother Lamech was a Householder who recorded the community events until his death in 1763; Brother Agrippa has been identified as Peter Miller, the successor to founder Conrad Beissel. Miller edited and coauthored the Chronicon, which was printed on the press of the Ephrata brotherhood in 1786. Ezechiel Sangmeister, Life and Conduct of the Late Ezechiel Sangmeister, trans. Barbara M. Schindler (Ephrata, Pa.: Historical Society of the Cocalico Valley, 1986), p. 46.
6. Despite an obvious partiality to Beissel, the Chronicon remains the best history available. See also compilations by James Ernst, "Ephrata, A History," in The Pennsylvania German Folklore Society Yearbook, vol. 25 (Allentown, Pa.: By the society, 1961), pp. 1-343;
7. E. Gordon Alderfer, The Ephrata Commune: An Early American Counterculture (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985). Readers should be cautioned, however, that both contain undocumented material.
8. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, p. 159.
9. G. Edwin Brumbaugh, "Medieval Construction at Ephrata," Antiques 46, no. 1 (July 1944): 20; from 1941 to the 1960s, Brumbaugh, an independent architect hired by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, oversaw the restoration of surviving cloister buildings; for architectural drawings, notes, and correspondence related to cloister restoration, see G. Edwin Brumbaugh collection, Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, Winterthur Library, Winterthur, Del. (hereafter cited as Brumbaugh collection).
10. The most extensive current description of the cloister architecture can be found in Patrick O'Bannon et al., Ephrata Cloister: An Historic Structures Report, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: John Milner Assoc., 1988). Interpretive assessments of the cloister architecture in the report center on the prayerhouse adjoining Hebron-Saron.
11. Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 175-77;
12. James T. Lemon, The Best Poor Man's Country (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), p. 132;
13. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, pp. 44-45.
14. Numerous accounts by visitors to the cloister, dating from the 1740s into the nineteenth century, can be found in Reichmann and Doll, "Ephrata As Seen by Contemporaries." According to the Chronicon, Ephrata encountered interdenominational conflict with some regularity, largely centered on Ephrata's success in conversion, but as the population at Ephrata is known to have remained relatively limited, these conflicts can also be interpreted as a kind of literary device used to reinforce the importance placed on separation from the denominational churches.
15. Philipp Jacob Spener, Pia Desideria, ed. and trans. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964).
16. Dale W. Brown, Understanding Pietism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1978), pp. 17, 21, 27-28;
17. Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1992), pp. 70-71;
18. Donald F. Durnbaugh, ed., The Brethren Encyclopedia, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Brethren Encyclopedia, 1983-84), pp. 1021-22;
19. Peter C. Erb, ed., Pietists: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1983), pp. 4-10.
20. Erb, Selected Writings, pp. 7-8;
21. Noll, A History, pp. 70-71;
22. F. Ernest Stoeffler, ed., Continental Pietism and Early American Christianity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976), p. 9.
23. F. Ernest Stoeffler, German Pietism during the Eighteenth Century (Leiden, Neth.: E. J. Brill, 1973), pp. 174, 179, 214-16;
24. Donald F. Durnbaugh, "Work and Hope: The Spirituality of the Radical Pietist Communitarians," Church History 39, no. 1 (March 1970): 72-90.
25. Puritan devotional literature displayed a similar use of sensual imagery, often drawn from the Bible; see Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth-Century New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), pp. 20, 28.
26. Durnbaugh, "Work and Hope," pp. 72-90.
27. F. Ernest Stoeffler, "Pietism, the Wesleys, and Methodist Beginnings in America," in F. Ernest Stoeffler, ed., Continental Pietism and Early American Christianity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976), pp. 184-221.
28. John L. Brooke, The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 42-44, 125-87.
29. Bradford is cited in Jonathan L. Fairbanks and Robert F. Trent, eds., New England Begins, vol. 2 (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1989), p. 122.
30. For Mather and the Reforming Synod remarks, see Hambrick-Stowe, Practice of Piety, pp. 40, 244;
31. David D. Hall, "Literacy, Religion, and the Plain Style," in Fairbanks and Trent, New England Begins, pp. 110, 122;
32. Kevin Sweeney, "Meetinghouses, Town Houses, and Churches: Changing Perceptions of Sacred and Secular Space in Southern New England, 1720-1850," Winterthur Portfolio 28, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 60-61;
33. Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 1-13.
34. Fine studies of the relationship between social organization and religious architecture include Dell Upton, Holy Things and Profane: Anglican Parish Churches in Colonial Virginia (New York: Architectural History Fndn. and M.I.T. Press, 1986);
35. Dolores Hayden, Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1790-1975 (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1976).
36. Recent studies that examine the effect of religious belief and practice on religious architecture include Sweeney, "Meetinghouses";
37. Susan Garfinkel, "Letting in 'the World': (Re)interpretive Tensions in the Quaker Meeting House," in Elizabeth Collins Cromley and Carter L. Hudgins, eds., Gender, Class, and Shelter (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995). It should be noted that, understudied as it is, religious architecture has fared well in comparison to other classes of religious objects, which have received scant attention.
38. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, p. 76. The sites of the Kedar prayerhouse and convent are unknown. An archaeological excavation begun in the summer of 1994, located southeast of Hebron-Saron, may have uncovered a portion of the footings of the Kedar complex.
39. Julius Friedrich Sachse, The German Sectarians of Pennsylvania, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: By the author, 1899), 1:359. Sachse's work on Ephrata - the most exhaustive to date - has been criticized by recent scholars for its "broad brush" and more particularly for its projection of Rosicrucian and Masonic beliefs - Sachse's own affiliations - onto the Ephrata community. Sachse's description of the interior of the Zion convent is the only one extant. Like many antiquarian works, Sachse's evidentiary base is largely uncited, as is the case here. To his credit, Sachse took an early, pioneering interest in the community, collecting many documents and artifacts, most of which are believed to remain in his family's possession.
40. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, p. 80.
41. Jacob Boehme, The Way to Christ, trans. Peter Erb (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), p. 162. The separatist and mystical theosophy of Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) is thought to have profoundly influenced radical Pietism. Other influences include the writings of Gottfried Arnold and Johann Georg Gichtel.
42. See discussions in Peter C. Erb, Pietists, Protestants, and Mysticism (London: Scarecrow Press, 1989), pp. 13, 17, 29-30.
43. Brown, Understanding Pietism, pp. 60-62;
44. Franklin H. Littell, "Radical Pietism in American History," in Stoeffler, Continental Pietism, p. 169.
45. Stoeffler, German Pietism, pp. 178, 180-81.
46. Radical Pietist Gottfried Arnold went so far as to imply that "all human arts and endeavors" were worthless in coming to know God (Erb, Selected Writings, p. 231).
47. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, pp. 61, 64, 127.
48. For examples of the symbolism of the number 40, see Gen. 7, Acts 1, Matt. 4, Mark 1, Luke 4. Dale E. Biever, "A Report of the Archeological Investigations at the Ephrata Cloister, 1963-66," in Four Pennsylvania German Studies, Publications of the Pennsylvania German Society, vol. 3 (Breinigsville, Pa.: Pennsylvania German Society, 1970), pp. 16-23;
49. Wolfgang Braunfels, Monasteries of Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), pp. 11, 58. The works of a tower clock dated 1735 are in the collection of the Ephrata Cloister, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, acc. no. EC 14.65.1080. There is some confusion over whether this clock was the one mounted on Zion's tower. Julius Sachse suggested that the Zion bell and clock were given in 1739 by Peter Miller's father. As suggested by the 1735 date of these works, a clock may have been mounted on Kedar prayerhouse when it was built and removed when the prayerhouse was demolished in 1740. This possibility augments the evidence that Zion became the visual and social center of the community.
50. Braunfels, Monasteries, pp. 45-46.
51. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, p. 76. The Chronicon described the sleeping cells in Kedar as "after the manner of the old Greek Church," a possible reference to monasticism under the Rule of St. Basil in the fourth century. The monastic influence was also seen in the special garments of the Solitary Order, which were described as "borrowed from the style of the Order of Capuchins" p. 88).
52. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, p. 121;
53. Madeleine S. Miller and J. Lane Miller, Harper's Bible Dictionary (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), pp. 841-42.
54. On the religious use of bells, see Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith, pp. 111-12.
55. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, pp. 80, 157.
56. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, p. 89.
57. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, p. 139; Deut 14:22-23; Acts 5:32-37.
58. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, pp. 137-40, 171, 193. The negative association with moneylending appears in Matt. 21:12-19 in which Christ cast out those who were buying and selling in the temple.
59. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, pp. 135, 138-40, 190.
60. Weiser letter of resignation is cited in Reichmann and Doll, "Ephrata As Seen by Contemporaries," pp. 35-37.
61. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, pp. 80, 194;
62. Kenneth G. Hamilton, ed. and trans., The Bethlehem Diary, 1743-44 (Bethlehem, Pa.: Archives of the Moravian Church, 1971), p. 99.
63. For additional structural details of Hebron-Saron, see Ann Kirschner, "From Hebron to Saron: The Religious Transformation of an Ephrata Convent" (Master's thesis, University of Delaware, 1995), pp. 14-57;
64. Brumbaugh collection; O'Bannon, Ephrata Cloister, vols. 1-3.
65. On log construction, see Edward A. Chappell, "Acculturation in the Shenandoah Valley: Rhenish Houses of the Massanutten Settlement," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 124, no. 1 (February 1980): 60;
66. Fred Kniffen and Henry Glassie, "Building in Wood in the Eastern United States," Geographical Review 56, no. 1 (1966): 57-59.
67. The analysis of log construction in Lancaster County is from Scott T. Swank, "The Architectural Landscape," in Scott T. Swank et al., Arts of the Pennsylvania Germans (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983), pp. 25-32.
68. Dimensions are based on 1798 direct tax returns for Manor Township; no compilation has been completed across the county. For a discussion of the durability of eighteenth-century construction and its prevalence in domestic vernacular architecture in Berks County, see Philip E. Pendelton, Oley Valley Heritage: The Colonial Years, 1700-1775 (Oley, Pa.: Pennsylvania German Society, 1994), pp. 54-58.
69. Henry Glassie, "A Central Chimney Continental Log House," Pennsylvania Folklife 18, no. 2 (Winter 1968/69): 35;
70. William H. Tishler, "Fachwerk Construction in the German Settlements of Wisconsin," Winterthur Portfolio 21, no. 4 (Winter 1986): 279, 281;
71. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, pp. 119, 157.
72. Construction information is from an unpublished manuscript, Brumbaugh collection. See also October 1, 1941, Minutes of the Ephrata Cloister Advisory Board, Brumbaugh collection, p. 12.
73. G. Edwin Brumbaugh, "Colonial Architecture of the Pennsylvania Germans," Pennsylvania German Society Proceedings 41 (1933): 23-24;
74. O'Bannon, Ephrata Cloister, 2:41-42;
75. William Woys Weaver, "The Pennsylvania German House: European Antecedents and New World Forms," Winterthur Portfolio 21, no. 4 (Winter 1986): 259.
76. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, p. 158.
77. O'Bannon, Ephrata Cloister, 2:30.
78. O'Bannon et al. concluded that Hebron's layout was a two-room plan but identified it as an Oberdeutsches Haus plan. Weaver, "The Pennsylvania German House," p. 253;
79. Robert C. Bucher, "The Continental Log House," Pennsylvania Folklife 12, no. 4 (Summer 1962): 14-19;
80. Glassie, "Central Chimney Continental Log House," p. 38.
81. Weaver, "Pennsylvania German House," pp. 254-57.
82. Weaver, "Pennsylvania German House," pp. 257-58; Luke 18.
83. Miller, Harper's Bible Dictionary, p. 252;
84. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, pp. 2, 115, 152, 158.
85. Brown, Understanding Pietism, p. 69;
86. Erb, Selected Writings, pp. 21-22.
87. Johann Conrad Beissel, Some Theosophical Maxims; or, Rules of the Solitary Life, ed. Nadine A. Steinmetz and trans. Michelle S. Long (Ephrata, Pa.: Ephrata Cloister Assoc. and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1991), p. 26;
88. Sangmeister, Life and Conduct, p. 45.
89. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, pp. 77, 158.
90. James Ernst described Peniel as being oriented at a "mystic angle" to Kedar but cited no primary evidence for his claim (Ernst, "Ephrata, A History," p. 191).
91. His description is otherwise nearly word for word derived from Sachse, German Sectarians, 1: 389. Sachse suggests that Peniel's 40-foot dimensions symbolized religious perfection but does not comment on the building's physical location. Kedar's exact location is as yet unknown.
92. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, p. 158.
93. It was not until the 1790s that the first large public hospital or almshouse was built in Lancaster County; Sachse, German Sectarians, 1:469, 249.
94. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, pp. 89, 121, 159.
95. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, pp. 89, 158, 200. Eckerlin's father is described in the Chronicon as a town councilor in Strasbourg, whereas Beissel's father was an alcoholic baker;
96. Lemon, Best Poor Man's Country, pp. 5, 40, 43.
97. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, pp. 171-73.
98. Lamech and Agrippa, p. 191; Miller, Harper's Bible Dictionary, p. 669. See also Song of Sol. 2:1 and Isa. 35:2.
99. Die Rose, oder der angenehmen Blumen zu Saron geistliche Eheverlobnis [Schwester Chronic], 1745, Abraham Cassel collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Partial translations are available in Peter Erb, Johann Conrad Beissel and the Ephrata Community: Mystical and Historical Texts (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985), pp. 267-92,
100. and Sachse, German Sectarians, 2:176-206.
101. Wall chart, Ephrata Cloister, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, acc. no. EC14.65.743.
102. Erb, Johann Conrad Beissel, pp. 271-72, 281, 285; "School exercises" should be understood as a form of spiritual rather than intellectual edification. The Sisters refer to Beissel and themselves as students in the "Leidensschul" (school of suffering) in their chronicle. The Sisters' highly regulated daily schedule was also a component of European monastic orders;
103. Reichmann and Doll, "Ephrata As Seen by Contemporaries," p. 53.
104. The sixth class, consisting of Sisters Paulina and Athanasia, may have been responsible for leading the Sisters' singing activity. The Chronicon described Athanasia as an accomplished singer who helped Beissel to lead the Solitary in a singing school that had dissolved by 1745. The Sisters' chronicle suggested a similar vocation for Paulina. The chronicle otherwise offers no explicit indication that the classes were occupational in nature, contrary to what several scholars have reported. Erb, Johann Conrad Beissel, pp. 277-79, 281, 285;
105. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, pp. 168-69;
106. Beissel, Some Theosophical Maxims, pp. 2, 7.
107. Beissel, Some Theosophical Maxims, p. 7;
108. on illuminated manuscripts, see Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, pp. 168-69.
109. Beissel, Some Theosophical Maxims, pp. 2, 7, 13, 16, 22.
110. Conrad Beissel, "A Dissertation on Man's Fall," in Charles Evans, ed., Early American Imprints, 1639-1800 (New York: Readex Film Corp., 1983), pp. 1, 2, 17, 26.
111. Beissel, Some Theosophical Maxims, pp. 11, 22, 26, 29.
112. Johann Conrad Beissel, "Deliciae Ephratenses," in Evans, Early American Imprints, pp. 276, 291;
113. Erb, Johann Conrad Beissel, pp. 280, 284;
114. Beissel, Some Theosophical Maxims, pp. 16, 18, 21-22, 26, 32;
115. Carl F. Bowman, Brethren Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 47.
116. Lamech and Agrippa, Chronicon, pp. 193-95, 210-11;
117. Miller, Harper's Bible Dictionary, p. 67.
118. Reichmann and Doll, "Ephrata As Seen by Contemporaries," pp. 39-41.