Illuminating History by Bernard Bailyn

Author:Bernard Bailyn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2020-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

Two buildings in the Ephrata Cloister, Saron, the sisters’ dormitory (1743) and Sall, the meetinghouse (1741), and a cell for the solitaries.

Especially elusive but to Beissel profoundly important were the measurements, the numbers, involved in these constructions. The exact measurements, based on calculations from various biblical and mystical sources, mattered greatly, not so much for their practical use as for their expression of heavenly truths. The expression “40 x 40” as the lineal measurement of a holy house could refer to Adam’s days in paradise or Israel’s days of testing on Mount Sinai, or Jesus’ days in the desert. The number 10 was sacred as the years before Jesus entered his public ministry; “3 x 10” was the completion of the Trinity. The six points of the Star of David united Boehmist, biblical, cabalistic, and alchemical signs and referred also to the days of the work week which, when juxtaposed, constituted 666, the well-known sign of the beast in Revelation. But of more immediate significance were the dimensions of the rooms of his buildings and the individual floor plans, all of which reflected significant spiritual meanings.

Like all of the life at the Cloister, these measurements were in some way modes of worship, in which outward appearances were signs and symbols of truths revealed to Beissel and his followers, just as they had been to Kelpius. So too were personal names, which were transformed “as a sign that they have come into a rare condition, different from that of the great and wicked world.” Beissel adopted the name Friedsam Gottrecht (Peaceable, God-righteous), though he was commonly called Father. His faithful colleague Michael Wohlfahrt became Brother Agonius, while the beautiful and gifted Swiss-born Anna Thomann—singer, choir leader, and painter—became sister Anastasia.

By the late 1740s Ephrata, its physical structures complete and its rituals and way of life fully evolved, had reached its classic state. By the early ’50s erosion in membership if not in zeal had begun to set in, and it was at that stage, a time when the surviving devotes were still confident of their purpose and steeped in what seemed immemorial traditions, that the community was visited by a clear-eyed, knowledgeable outsider who recorded in great detail the life of the Cloister over a day-long cycle.10

The Swedish Reverend Israel Acrelius, pastor of the Lutheran church in nearby New Sweden, had been a student at Uppsala University and maintained a strong interest in theology as well as natural history. He had heard of Ephrata, and what he heard intrigued him. On August 20, 1753, he arrived for a visit. He was met warmly by the Cloister’s most learned scholar, Peter Miller (Brother Agrippa), a graduate of Heidelberg University, who “understands the oriental languages,” Acrelius wrote, “speaks Latin, discusses theological controversies as well as other sciences,” is friendly, open-hearted, and prudent. Acrelius could not have had a better guide than this eighteen-year veteran of Beissel’s holy community, especially since he considered that most of the other brethren he met were “very stupid.”

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