Here rests offspring of the love of God, Friedsam a Solitary

Ephrata Cloister
Ephrata, Pennsylvania
September 29, 2007

My churchgoing plans for the last weekend in September were upended when it turned out that I needed to spend Saturday and Sunday in Lancaster, Pennsylvania taking care of my grandchildren. So I took the train from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia after work on Friday, and arrived in lovely Lancaster about an hour later. I wasn’t sure if I would manage to get to any church service at all with a 10-year-old boy and 4-year-old girl as my worship companions. Sure, I used to go to church all the time with three young children, but those days were long gone. Plus, my three children had been sitting through church services since they were a few months old, whereas Anthony and Bernadette were not nearly so accustomed to churchgoing. Would I be able to visit a new church under these circumstances?

I had wanted to visit Ephrata Cloister ever since I first heard of it. When I arrived in Lancaster I bought a local newspaper, and learned that there was a fair in Ephrata that Saturday. This gave rise to a plan. I decided to take Ant and Bern to the Cloister, and then to the fair afterwards as a reward for good behavior. If all went well, perhaps I would be able to judge how well they would do as church visitors.

Ephrata Cloister is now a National Historic Landmark, but it was once a thriving community of unconventional religious folks -- one of those peculiar groups that spring up everywhere in the world, but perhaps may be more common in the United States (or the colonies, as the area was then) because religious nonconformists often found a more hospitable climate in the New World.

Almost anywhere may have seemed more hospitable than the Germany of the early 1700s seemed to Conrad Beissel, a young baker who studied and worshiped with the Pietists, a group that seems to have been persecuted by Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists – apparently just about every Christian in Germany opposed them at some time or other.

At any rate, Beissel decided to emigrate to America to join the “Society of the Woman in the Wilderness,” a group founded by Johannes Kelpius. Kelpius, a native of Transylvania, had earned a master’s degree in theology and had published several works by the age of 16. Kelpius’ teacher, in turn, was Johann Jacob Zimmerman, a Lutheran minister and astronomer who was removed from his church post partly because of his defense of the theories of Copernicus and partly because of his interest in astrology and the occult. Zimmerman, in his turn, had been influenced by Jacob Boehme, the Protestant mystic. The Wikipedia description of Boehme’s famous vision of 1600 describes how he saw “the exquisite beauty of a beam of sunlight reflected in a pewter dish. He believed this vision revealed to him the spiritual structure of the world, as well as the relationship between God and man, and good and evil.”

So – the chronology of these extremely devout late medieval Christians goes something like this: Boehme wrote his influential mystical texts in the early 1600s. He influenced Zimmerman, the astronomer and astrologer and at some point Lutheran minister, who developed elaborate theories predicting the end of the world, an event he believed would occur on “the edge of the wilderness” in 1694. According to Wikipedia, “Zimmermann planned to lead his followers to North America to build a "Society of the Woman in the Wilderness" to greet the dawn of this new world. His group, termed Rosicrucians, were to number 40, and were to lead a largely solitary life practicing astronomy, astrology, geomancy, and a variety of arcane mathematical and magical forms of divination. Zimmermann began negotiations with Pennsylvania Governor William Penn to obtain land for his settlement.”

Perhaps, like me, you sometimes wonder how it is that leaders of all kinds of odd groups are able to attract followers. I don’t know the answer, but any reading of history seems to confirm the fact that you can get at least a small group of people to follow a charismatic person who espouses almost any belief. I remember meeting with a group of Jesus people in the early 1970s, discussing setting up some kind of church. Someone raised the question of whether or not anyone would come to a new church, unaffiliated with any other group. An older man in the group, a college professor, impressed us all by informing us with great conviction that history has shown that the problem is not getting people to come – the problem is, rather, what to do with the kind of people you will inevitably attract.

Zimmerman managed to persuade eleven families to travel to Penn’s colony to set up his apocalyptic society in preparation for the end of the world in 1694. However, the end of world arrived for him a little earlier than for the rest of the group; he died before they set sail.

You would think his death would discourage the group, but no, there was a disciple ready to take over the reins. Kelpius, the theology buff from Transylvania, led the group (including Zimmerman’s widow) to an area near the Wissahickon Creek, in Pennsylvania. (By the way, the Wissahickon Creek area is a stunner. Its beauty has been celebrated by folks both religious and secular for the last several hundred years.) The group set up a little religious community of celibates waiting for the end of the world. Kelpius practiced meditation and prayer, some believe in a spot now called the Cave of Kelpius. (There’s a rumor that Kelpius possessed a philosopher’s stone, that mythical rock that could turn base metal into gold, and that he threw it into the Wissahickon – so if you’re ever visiting the creek, you might find it. Check out every rock!)

Not every member of the little band along the Wissahickon lived as hermits, although some did. Others created a school for neighborhood children, held public worship services, and practiced medicine. In addition, most of them played some kind of musical instrument. It is thought that Kelpius composed the earliest extant musical manuscript compiled in the thirteen British colonies. The tunes are mostly based on German songs, but Kelpius probably wrote the lyrics and worked out the harmonies. It is also said that the Wissahickon mystics possessed the first privately-owned organ in North America. John Greenleaf Whittier, in his poem Pennsylvania Pilgrim, called Kelpius the “maddest of good men.”

Even though 1694 turned into 1695 and the world continued on its weary, wicked way, the little group of religious devotees along the banks of the Wissahickon did not abandon their practices. It took the death of Kelpius in 1708 to finally cause most of the group to give up their quest, although a few of Kelpius’ group of hermits continued to live by themselves until the 1740s. Perhaps once a person becomes used to the life of a hermit, it’s difficult to go back to living with people. It also seems possible that living as a hermit may, in fact, be an enjoyable sort of existence, and these particular hermits didn’t want to abandon it just because the rest of the group had scattered.

Finally – did you think I had forgotten about Conrad Beissel? – Beissel arrived in Pennsylvania in the early 1720s with the goal of joining Kelpius’ group. He was no doubt dismayed to learn that the group had disbanded about twenty years earlier. For a while Beissel joined a German Baptist Brethren congregation in Germantown (today a Philadelphia neighborhood).

The German Baptists in Germantown were called Dunkers, because they were linked to the Schwarzenau Brethren, a religious group from Germany that baptized people using three complete immersions, or dunkings. The term was applied to their group in mockery, like so many church group names (ie, Methodists, Quakers, Shakers). Some people think the term Christian was originally used derisively, the way we might nowadays call someone who is overly religious a Christer or a Christianist.

The term Dunker distinguished this group from the sprinkling Lutherans, pouring Methodists, and even the “single dunk” Baptists. Among the Dunkers, Conrad Beissel was baptized (by means of a thorough threefold dunking), and he also assumed a new name (Friedsam Gottrecht). He decided to withdraw into the woods and become a hermit. Perhaps, if he had known there were still a few of Kelpius’ hermits living along the Wissahickon, he would have headed in that direction and looked for them, but instead he set up camp in the area of the Cocalico Creek, near Ephrata.

Beissel was another one of those charismatic mystics who could somehow attract followers to an amazingly difficult lifestyle. People began to come out to the woods to talk to him and seek his counsel, and before he knew it he was a hermit surrounded by lots of other people, most of whom wanted to spend time with him. This in spite of (or because of) the fact that he was preaching a stern gospel of celibacy, vegetarianism, sleeplessness, and hard work. He also decided that the Christian day of worship should be Saturday, not Sunday.

I didn’t know all this about the Ephrata Cloister colony when I went there, though. I just knew that it had been the home of one of America’s religious experiments. (At first I wrote “one of America’s more unusual religious experiments,” but then thought better of it. Actually, the Ephrata Cloister colony seems to follow the pattern for most experiments in building celibate religious communities, and these communities have been much more common than I had supposed before looking into it a little. Monastic communities practicing severe discipline seem to appear with some regularity in almost every culture and civilization, and are obviously meeting some kind of human need. And who among us, even if most of the time we think we wouldn’t be able to endure the rigors of that way of life, can’t see the attraction at some point in our lives?)

We drive into the Ephrata Cloister parking lot on a pleasant autumn day. This place is lovely! I can see groups of old buildings spread out over several acres of gently sloping wooded land. Anthony and Bernadette and I walk into the Visitor’s Center and I purchase two tickets (Bern doesn’t need a ticket, as she is under five years of age.) The woman working at the desk tells us that there will be a guided tour in about an hour, gives me a map and some general directions, and points out the museum in the adjacent room.)

The museum has exhibits of Ephrata Cloister clothing, utensils, and industry. The people who lived on site lived in either the Brothers’ House or the Sisters’ House, and all wore the same type of clothing – long white robes with pointy hoods that look (unfortunately) rather like Klu Klux Klan outfits. Men and women wore the same clothing and followed the same basic schedule, although work was divided by gender.
An apple orchard occupies one part of the area, and the trees are loaded with ripe apples, the boughs nearly touching the ground. This is an extremely attractive site for the kids – even a four-year-old can just walk up and pick a ripe apple off a tree, an activity that Bernadette finds enchanting. In addition, the lawns and paths are covered with walnuts, most still encased within their large green hulls. In places they are so thick on the ground that it is slippery, like trying to walk across a field of marbles. To Anthony this signifies riches -- fields of weaponry free for the picking. I have to threaten him fairly strongly to dissuade him from peppering his sister with walnuts.

The buildings are well-preserved, and quite interesting in the way lots of eighteenth-century buildings are interesting to me – I walk around musing about how difficult life was not so long ago.

The Ephrata Cloister brothers and sisters not only grew their own food and cooked it, they found time to spin their own thread, weave their own cloth, and make their own clothing, operate a sawmill, gristmill, and linseed oil mill, tan leather, build their houses and furniture, and create lots of art. That’s right – living in a way that would seem to require every ounce of strength just to feed and clothe themselves, they not only managed to provide for the basics, but also sustained a lively tradition of music and art. I am impressed.

The three of us wander into the little walled cemetery. Most of the gravestones are very old, but a few seem surprisingly new. Some are just little worn nubs of stone poking out of the ground, and might be mistaken for ordinary rocks if they were not so clearly set in a line of gravestones. Conrad Beissel’s grave is covered with a large, flat horizontal stone inscribed with German text, and this is protected from the elements by a plexiglass case. A plaque next to the grave gives the English translation of the inscription: “Here rests offspring of the love of God, Friedsam a Solitary, but later became leader, guardian and teacher of Solitary and of the Congregation in Christ in and about Ephrata. Born at Eberbach in the Palatinate, called Conrad Beissel: fell asleep, July 6th Anno 1768: Aged according to his spiritual age 52 years, but according to his natural 77 years and four months.”

It’s time for the guided tour. We walk back to the visitors’ center and sit down in a little theater area with about twenty other people. There is a short film in which actors dressed as Ephrata brothers and sisters portray the lives of the Cloister settlers. It’s a good film, except for the wigs and beards, which strain my credulity. On the walls of the theater are some examples of elaborately designed illustrated manuscript pages produced on the Cloister printing press, another of their artistic activities.

After the film we all follow our guide, who is dressed in the white robe of the colony, and walk into the main room of the sisters’ house. It is a three-story dormitory, and each floor has a kitchen and dining room with two fireplaces, a work room (weaving), and numerous sleeping cells. The low, narrow doorways and low ceilings were probably designed that way not because the people were extremely short but as a means of retaining heat more easily in the winter, our guide informs us.

Each resident had his or her own sleeping cell, but they didn’t do much sleeping. In fact, community life was designed to keep both eating and sleeping to the bare minimum necessary to sustain life. Our guide tells us that the practice was for everyone to rise at 6:00 am and begin a round of prayer and work. There was one meal each day, around 5:00 pm, and it was usually bread, barley soup, pumpkin mush, beets, vegetable greens, fruits, and sometimes cheese. Meat was eaten only when Communion was celebrated, and at that time lamb was consumed as part of the re-enactment of the Passover meal.

The bedrooms are the big attraction. The Ephrata brothers and sisters slept on wooden benches only 15 inches wide, using a wooden block as a pillow. The idea was not to get too comfortable. And they slept for only three hours at a time, waking at midnight to get together for a three-hour stint of prayer in the meeting house. Beissel thought that Christ would return soon. He didn’t know the date, but he had figured out from his reading of Scripture that the big event would occur during the hours between midnight and 3:00 am. The faithful who were awake and prepared for His return would be taken to heaven to be joined with God, and so they needed to watch and wait every night. If 3:00 am rolled around and Christ hadn’t come, they could go back to their benches and blocks for another three hours of uncomfortable sleep before beginning another day of work.

No, it doesn’t sound attractive to me, either. But by 1750 there were about three hundred people gathered around Beissel, and many of them were in the celibate, pumpkin-mush-eating, wooden-bench-sleeping group. There were others who didn’t keep to the strict lifestyle, but lived more ordinary lives with their families in nearby homes, and supported the community. These people worshipped with the Ephrata celibates on Saturdays, and helped out in other ways.

It wasn’t all wooden pillows and physical labor, of course. The community was very musical, like Kelpius’ group. Beissel wrote nearly 500 hymns, and the group had their own printing press, upon which they produced America’s first entirely original hymnal, The Songs of the Lovely and Forsaken Turtledove. (This must be the best title for a hymnal ever.) The community had a singing school with some unique teaching methods: singers practiced by sitting with bowed heads, mouths partially open, producing ethereal sounds without words. They also sang in four or five part harmonies. Beissel was an outstanding though amateur musician, the composer of over 1,000 hymns, of which 441 were printed.

In addition, some of the community members were fraktur artists. Fraktur is a type of German pen-and-ink drawing and writing, often used for birth and marriage certificates. The artists at Ephrata created elaborate manuscripts, including the most famous, the Christian ABC of 1750. The printing press, operated by male celibates only, turned out books of essays, hymnals, histories, religious broadsides, and pamphlets. Their biggest job was the printing of The Martyrs’ Mirror, a history of the persecution of the saints, particularly Anabaptists. This book was published at the request of American Mennonites, who wanted a German translation of the Dutch text. The prior of the Ephrata cloister, Peter Miller, undertook the job of translation, and fourteen brothers worked on the project for three years: six in the paper mill, four as type setters, and four as printers. (Just writing that last sentence, while effortlessly typing away at a computer, makes me thankful again for the immense labors of all the spreaders of literacy and books who came before me – and once again aware that religious impulses were enormously important in the spread of literacy and the creation of a culture of reading.)

The Martyrs Mirror is the largest book published in the colonies before the Revolution.
What a group these Ephrata solitaries were! Who would guess that celibate religious oddballs, raising their own food and making their own clothing and implements, praying hours and hours day and night, sleeping on stone beds and wooden pillows, would be able at the same time to create some of the New World’s earliest music, art, and libraries?

Actually, anyone who has studied monastic communities might guess this – once you begin to look into what the world owes to the efforts of various religious communities, you begin to be very thankful for some of the more extreme manifestations of the religious impulse.

Photo courtesy Flickruser Allie Caulfield