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Sebastian Franck (20 January 1499Donauwörth,Swabia – c. 1543Basel,Switzerland) was a 16th-centuryGerman freethinker,humanist, andradical reformer.
Franck was born in 1499 inDonauwörth,Swabia. Because of this he styled himselfFranck von Wörd. He entered theUniversity of Ingolstadt on 26 March 1515, and afterwards went to Bethlehem College, incorporated with the university, as an institution of theDominicans atHeidelberg. Here he metMartin Bucer andMartin Frecht, with whom he might have attendedLuther'sHeidelberg disputation in October 1518.
Originally ordained as a priest, in 1525 Franck went over to theReformed party atNuremberg and became preacher atGustenfelden. His first work was a German translation (with additions) of the first part of theDiallage (orConciliatio locorum Scripturae), directed against Sacramentarians andAnabaptists byAndrew Althamer, then deacon ofSt. Sebald at Nuremberg. On 17 March 1528 he married Ottilie Beham, supposedly the sister of the "godless" painters, Bartholomew andSebald Beham, pupils ofAlbrecht Dürer and followers ofHans Denck. In the same year he wrote a treatise against drunkenness. In 1529 he produced a free version of theSupplycacyon of the Beggers, written by the English ProtestantSimon Fish. Franck, in his preface, says the original was in English; elsewhere he says it was inLatin; the theory that his German was really the original is not warranted.
Advance in his religious ideas led him to seek the freer atmosphere ofStrasbourg in the autumn of 1529. To his translation (1530) of a LatinChronicle 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 withKaspar Schwenkfeld. Here he also published, in 1531, his most important work, theChronica, Zeitbuch und Geschichtsbibel, largely a compilation on the basis of theNuremberg 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 ofGottfried Arnold. Driven fromStrassburg by the authorities, after a short imprisonment in December 1531, he tried to make a living in 1532 as a soapboiler atEsslingen, removing in 1533 for a better market toUlm, where on 28 October 1534 he was admitted as a burgess.
HisWeltbuch, a supplement to hisChronica, was printed at Tübingen in 1534. His publication, in the same year, of theParadoxa 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 hisGuldin Arch and at Frankfort hisGermaniae 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 hisKriegbuchlein des Friedens, hisSchrifftliche und ganz grundliche Auslegung des 64 Psalms, and hisDas verbutschierte mit sieben Siegein verschlossene Buch (a biblical index, exhibiting the dissonance of Scripture). In 1541 he published hisSpruchwörter (a collection of proverbs). In 1542 he issued a new edition of hisParadoxa 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 friendJohann 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 thehuman 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..."[1][verification needed]
Franck’s comment “God is an unutterable sigh, lying in the depths of the heart,” quoted byJulius Wilhelm Zincgref[2] was described byLudwig Feuerbach as “the most remarkable, the profoundest, truest expression of Christian Mysticism”.[3]
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This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Alexander Gordon (1911). "Franck, Sebastian". InChisholm, Hugh (ed.).Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. This work in turn cites: