In 1782, when Comte de Segur visited Philadelphia, it was the religious toleration that excited his admiration rather than the fine proportions of the State House, or the markets along the High Street, or the handsome country houses with gardens dipping down to the Schuylkill. That Quakers, Episcopalians, Mennonites, Dunkards, Lutherans, Reformed, Presbyterians, Moravians, Roman Catholics, Jews, Methodists, and Baptists could all worship amicably together, each had his separate church or meetinghouse, each in his own fashion: that to
him was the miracle.
The religious toleration established by Penn in his colony is in part the explanation of the large number of churches and sects in early Pennsylvania. In the rich soil of Pennsylvania, which produced bountiful crops of wheat and tulip trees nearly two hundred feet high, religions transplanted from Europe struck root and newer sorts of native growth sprang up. Such was the welter of religions in colonial Pennsylvania that Muhlenberg wrote, "There is no sect in the world that has not followers here." From the Sociey of the Woman in the Wilderness in the late seventeenth century to Buchmanism today, Pennsylvania has been blessed with a bumper crop of religions, many of them Pennsylvania Dutch. Undoubtedly the religious freedom of the colony attracted to its forests religions persecuted elsewhere, for at that time persecution on religious grounds was almost invariably the rule. Only in Holland, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania could a man worship as he pleased; and because Pennsylvania afforded greater economic opportunities than such a thickly settled country as Holland or such a small colony as Rhode Island the oppressed of Europe swarmed to it. One cannot but wonder, though, if there may not have been something
in the air of colonial Pennsylvania, something right about the atmosphere- perhaps a sort of celestial yeast-to give rise to bizarre and freakish religions, just as there was in New York State in the nineteenth century and just as there is in southern California today.
The Ephrata Society was in several ways the most curious of the early Pennsylvania Dutch religious groups. This religious order was largely the creation of Johann Conrad Beissel, the posthumous son of a drunken baker of Eberbach in the Palatinate. Beissel became a baker like his father and drifted to Mannheim. There he quarreled with his emlployer's wife, and it was "deeply impressed upon his heart that a man who intends to devote himself to the service of God must, at the beginning of his conversion, renounce Adam's regenerative work," as the Chronicon Ephratense so circumspectly puts it; "for which reason he bade good night to earthly women at the very commencement." At this same period he came into contact with Pietists and was attracted to their ideas. In the Palatinate he went from Mannheim to Heidelberg, where he was arrested and finally banished. Passing from one Rhineland city to another, he at length set sail for America. In Germantown he learned the weaver's trade in the home of a Dunkard elder, then he withdrew to the woods near Conestoga to try the life of a
hermit, only to find such a life unfruitful. His next step was to have himself baptized a Dunkard and become an elder in the Conestoga meeting. In 1732 he broke with the Dunkards to found a religion of his own, the Ephrata Society. Into this new religion he led most of the members of the Dunkard church at Conestoga.
Two main ideas set off the Ephrata Society from the other Pennsylvania Dutch churches. First was the observance of the seventh day as the Sabbath, an idea Beissel borrowed from the Keithian Quakers. This was the chief point of difference between Beissel and the Dunkards. Second was his dislike of marriage and disapproval of the sex relation. Celibacy, though not required, was dccidedly stressed at Ephrata. The two celibate groups, the Order of Spiritual Virgins and the Solitary Brethren, were the backbone of the community. Complete celibacy was the ideal, although it was never attained by the whole community.
Marriage, looked upon as a state far short of perfection, was at best but tolerated. Married couples joining the "Economy" at Ephrata were pledged to continence. Shortly before his death Beissel drew up a list of the many blessings he had received from God, one of the first of which was that God had "preserved him from the allurements of the female sex." At the third religious conference at Oley, where Zinzendorf was attempting to unite the various Pennsylvania Dutch religions, the Ephrata view of marriage was presented by Beissel's followers and vigorously attacked by Zinzendorf. On the surface alone did the two communistic societies of Ephrata and Bethlehem have much in common; fundamentally they were unlike. The Moravians believed in a rich, full life; Ephrata in abnegation.
Joined to Beissel's suspicion of sex was a disapproval of the human body. Both sexes wore a monastic garb designed to "muffle the mortal, body," to conceal "that humiliating image revealed by sin"-white for the Spiritual Virgins and the Solitary Brethren-linen or cotton in summer and wool in winter. The men wore a long gown, to which was fastened a pointed monk's hood, over shirt, trousers, and vest; women wore a rounded cowl and long skirts. Both men and women went barefoot m summer and wore shoes of wood and hide in winter. The secular members with families wore gray instead of white. Both sexes were tonsured,' and the men were bearded. The garb adopted was almost precisely that of the Capuchins or White Friars, which Ephrata chose to regard as a coincidence. "The Solitary at Ephrata felt flattered that they should have the honor to dip water from " same well with so venerable, famous, and ancient an Order." The white-garbed Protestant monks working in the fields or moving about the austere gabled buildings must have been one of the stranger sights of colonial Pennsylvania.
The first buildings at Ephrata were erected on Mount Zion, a hill rising above the Cocalico, a site soon abandoned for the meadow. Two of the strange, severe structures built by Beisscl and his followers still remain: Saron, the sisters' house built early in the 1740's, and Saal, the chapel. Bethania, the brethren's house, to which there was a chapel attached, was torn down during the last century. Even earlier was Kedar, a three-story structure for the brethren on Mount Zion. On the first floor of Kedar was a refectory and on the second a curious circular room with no windows but only a light in the center.
Around this lamp the brethren slept on pallets placed like the spokes a wheel. On the third floor was a room to which brethren retired for forty days and nights of prayer and study in an effort to gain for themselves, through various mystical experiences, a limited immortality of 5,557 years. Sustained only by dry bread and rain water that fell during the month of May, many of them saw visions; some even took leave of their senses and had to be flogged to restore them to their right minds.
Ephrata had smaller buildings as well, among them an almonry, a granary, and a bakehouse in back of Saron, and here and there cottages for the married couples in addition to the barns and mills of several kinds. As Beissel had scruples about the use of iron, the brethren substituted wood for iron wherever possible. Saal was built without any iron, wooden pegs being used in place of nails. This was in obedience to the injunction given by Moses in Deuteronomy 27:5:Thou shalt not lift up any iron tool upon them." Furthermore, iron
is symbolic of evil and darkness. The trenchers from which they ate were naturally of wood, but so were the knives and spoons and even the Communion goblets. Blocks of wood were used to iron their clothes.
Much importance was attached to symbolism. In determining the size of one of the larger buildings, they were guided by the symbolism of the numbers designating the length of the building. They believed that in any number a circle represented God and the downstroke man. The number 66 was rejected because in each of the 6's man was put before God; 100 was rejected because there man was put before God. Finally 99 was approved because in each 9 God was put above man.
The monks and nuns at Ephrata occupied tiny cells, with only one small, high window to a cell. There were two monks or two nuns to each cell. In Saron the older sisters lived on the lower floors, the younger ones in the upper stories. The doors throughout were low-to teach humility; the passageways were narrow-to bring to mind the straight and narrow way. They slept on wooden planks with smal
wooden blocks for pillows. A bed or even a pillow of goose feathers was
forbidden as contributing to man's luxurious indulgence. A small hanging cupboard for each monk or nun was the only furniture besides the planks on which they slept. Their diet was largely a vegetable one, for in the early years of the community it was considered sinful to kill any animals or eat of their flesh. Although later Beissel left the eating of flesh to the conscience of each disciple, few of them ate meat. Many of their contemporaries remarked on their pale, bloodless faces. Whenever they appeared in public they walked with "a solemn, steady pace," with their eyes fixed upon the ground. On a journey they walked one behind the other. The spectral sight of these strange bearded men from the banks of the Cocalico, dressed in white from head to foot and
walking in Indian file, made a deep impression on all who saw them.
At first the brethren thought it sinful to compel horses to work for them. The monks put the harness on themselves and dragged the plow through the fields or hauled home the wood. In later years they made use of horses and oxen, yet their consciences were troubled because of this and they tried to make it up to the horses and oxen by treating them with extreme gentleness.
It was an ascetic life from start to finish. On joining the order they
left behind their worldly names and adopted new ones, some fantastic
and others biblical or classical: Beno, AmelIa, Zephamah, Obed, Keturah, Agabus, Iphigenia, Jonadab, Syncletica, Euphrosina, Jael, Flavia, Persida, and others of a like nature. The sloughing off of the names they had borne ever since they were christened was but a minor change that marked the new life they led on entering the Cloisters life of complete regimentation. At midnight the bell rang for prayer. In the early years of zeal and enthusiasm many of the families dwelling in the surrounding countryside rose up at the sound of the bell to hold
family prayers. In the first flush of enthusiasm the midnight vigil lasted from twelve to four until they were forced to admit that lack of sleep was an obstacle that even enthusiasm could not surmount. Then the vigils were cut to two hours and finally to one. This was only one part of the constant battle against the body and its demands. After a vigil let us say, from twelve to two, the Ephrata monk or nun rose at five for an hour of meditation; then followed three hours of work and a fourth of rest, at which time he or she might eat a frugal breakfast if food was necessary to keep body and soul together. Then there was another hour of work and still another hour of meditation. At noon a light lunch was eaten. The afternoon was given over to work, with supper, the main meal of the day, at six. The two hours after supper were occupied by reading, writing, or singing, with bedtime at nine. Every Friday each member had to present to Beissel a written confession of his or her spiritual state. These were read to the whole meeting on Saturday.
It was a life of hard labor to which these monks and nuns sentenced themselves. Ephrata was a workshop as well as a religious community.
There was a flour mill, a sawmill, a paper mill, a fulling mill, a flaxseed-oil press, a printing press, and a book bindery. The printing press was one of the most noted of colonial America. The Mennonite Martyr Book of this press was the most remarkable accomplishment of colonial printing. During the Revolution, when Philadelphia was occupied by the British, it was this press that printed the Continental dollars for the Congress then sitting at York. The nuns copied hundreds of volunes of music and spent hours illuminating texts-the famous Fraktur of Ephrata. Oddly enough, they made sulphur matches, paper lanterns and artificial flowers too; and especially during the Revolution, when the Cloisters became a hospital, they nursed the sick. Furthermore, the community conducted a school that attracted pupils from as far away as Philadelphia and Maryland. Latin was taught with enough skill to enable teachers and pupils to write to one another, in that language. In addition to all this there was the everyday work essential for the well-being of any community: the felling of timber, the construction of buildings, the tilling of fields; or even such lesser tasks as
gathering wood for the fireplaces, spinning flax and weaving cloth and fashioning it into garments, making shoes, cooking food, and washing clothes. As the two sexes were kept apart as much as possible, to each sex fell work ordinarily performed by the other. The men washed their own clothes and kept their quarters clean as well as cooking and baking for themselves. The women split their own firewood. It is amazing how much so few people accomplished, for Ephrata never had more than eighty monks and nuns. In 1740 there were thirty-five brethren and thirty-four sisters; in 1770 these had decreased to fourteen brethren and twenty-eight sisters; and in 1785 there were only seven men and nine women.
Ephrata was a communistic venture with Beissel as the manager. All property, whether of the monks and nuns or the families that joined the community, was at Beissel's disposal. Everything belonged to the community; everyone worked for the good of the whole group. Economically Ephrata was a success. There were even branch monasteries at Germantown and Snow Hill in Franklin County, though Ephrata was always the center of the society. But so far were they from materialism that surplus money was given away.
There can be no doubt that Beissel was in many ways an extraordinary man. He had great personal magnetism. According to the Chronicon Ephratense he was followed through the streets by women enthusiasts singing hymns as they went, some so exhausted they had to be carried, "so that people ran to the street to behold the wonder." It is ironic that a man with the ascetic views of Beissel should have been so successful in drawing women to him. A number of women were
infatuated that they had to be forcibly restrained by their husbands. A few such who outlived their husbands joined Beissel as soon as they became widows. One young woman of Oley was so moved that she left her bridegroom to follow Beissel and become a nun at Ephrata. These women with ardent temperaments often gave Beissel trouble, although as a rule a vegetable diet and midnight vigils helped to tame them. One especially spirited nun, Anna Thomin, fell so madly in love with a handsome young redemptioner whom Beissel had acquired that she was permitted to marry him. Beissel, however, did not give up hope. At the very wedding he persuaded her to return to the convent, where she repented with vigor. Later the world attracted her once more, and she left Ephrata to marry John Wister, a prosperous merchant of Philadelphia. The most prominent of the women drawn to Ephrata by Beissel was Maria Sauer, the wife of Christopher Sauer, the printer. As Sister Marcella she served for a time as subprioress. At length, however, her sons persuaded her to return home. Her desertion of his bed board undoubtedly helped to make Sauer one of Beissel's bitterest enemies. Beissel's relations with these women were purely platonic. His hatred of sex was so extreme that when one of the women of the community fell into sin he had the house in which she had lived torn down and the wood chopped up for firewood.
Beissel also attracted men. His two most famous converts were Peter Miller, the Reformed clergyman of Trinity Church at Tulpehocken, and Conrad Weiser, the province's negotiator with the Indians. John Peter Miller was one of the most learned theologians in the colony. He was a linguist of note who was later employed by the Continental Congress to translate the Declaration of Independence into several European languages. Miller not only joined the Ephrata community but he brought ten families from his congregation with him. For the rest of his life he labored long and earnestly at Ephrata, finally succeeding Beissel as prior. The translation of The Martyr Book and printing of it, a task almost superhuman, rested chiefly on his shoulders. Some indication of the measure of the man is shown by his appeal-and a successful one--for the life of his bitterest enemy, Michael Widman, a Tory who had been sentenced to death by the patriots. Conrad Weiser was even more eminent then Miller. Fascinated by religion, he passed easily from one denomination to another. For a time he tried resolutely to submit himself to Beissel's views and live an ascetic life; but the constant sight of his wife was too much for the call of the flesh. His wife gave birth to four children while they were members of the Ephrata community. Beissel's despotism and extravagant ideas also alienated Weiser, who had too sturdy an independence and too much common sense to fit into so fantastic a society as Ephrata.
The extreme asceticism at Ephrata led quite naturally to fanaticism. The desires of the Ephrata virgins were so repressed that their only outlet was in fervent songs of union with the Redeemer in which the love described sometimes passed beyond the bounds of the purely spiritual into the realms of the erotic. The printing of these hymns had been entrusted to Christopher Sauer. One day a printer's devil who was at work on them asked Sauer if he didn't think that the Redeemer mentioned in the hymns was Beissel rather than Christ. Sauer at once
wrote asking if this was true, whereupon Beissel flew into a rage but failed to answer to Sauer's satisfaction. Sauer replied to the insults with the accusation that Beissel had the effrontery to portray himself as purist. To this charge Beissel answered with such fury and vituperation that Sauer declared that he got "from Mars his strength, from Venus his influence over women, and from Mercury his comedian tricks." There is some truth to Sauer's criticism. Some of the Ephrata disciples did look on Beissel as divine. Although he never made this claim himself, it was not one he took pains to discourage. Very clearly it appealed to his vanity.
This was but one of the extravagant fancies entertained at Ephrata. Another was baptism by proxy to save the souls of the dead, a rite later adopted by the Mormons. Emmanuel Eckerling was thus baptized by Beissel on behalf of his mother. No wonder that the country people believed that Prior Onesimus walked at midnight on the ceiling of the Saal, where his footprints are still pointed out. Some notions were even more extreme. The Chronicon Ephratense mentions an A. W.
and D. C. of Oley who circumcised each other and blasphemed against Paul because he did away with circumcision. Most absurd of all were those Ephrata disciples who attempted to follow the doctrines of Jakob Bohme, who declared that Adam before he ate of the apple had not performed the grosser physical functions. These foolish people believed that if they could hit upon the proper diet the body would absorb everything. Their valiant efforts to check the action of the bowels only resulted in dire cases of constipation.
The half-baked ideas of Ephrata were a product of the religious ferment of the times, of the fantastic notions adopted by a number of religious sects in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. So many of the fancies with which Ephrata flirted were so lacking in realism that the community left little mark on American life and thought. Though we are grateful to Ephrata for its printing press, its Fraktur and its care of the wounded during the Revolution, we look upon this strange order as one of the oddities of colonial America.
Quite as curious as the experiment at Ephrata was the earlier colony on the Wissahickon, the Contented of the God-Loving Soul. This was better known as the Society of the Woman in the Wilderness because of its belief that the Woman in the Wilderness, mentioned in Revelation 12:14- 17 , foretold the second coming of Christ. Led by Johannes Kelpius, a mystic of the University of Altdorf, the Contented of the God-Loving Soul reached Bohemia Landing on the Chesapeake on
the 12th of June, 1694. Clothed in coarse pilgrim garb or in the dress of German university students, they struck out for Philadelphia, arriving there the 23rd. That night, only a short way out of Penn's new city, they built a bonfire on a hill to celebrate Midsummer Night's Eve and scattered the burning brands down the hillside. The next morning they went on to Germantown, there to await the millennium. On the Ridge, a wooded hill above the Wissahickon, they built a log structure forty feet square, with a large room to serve as a chapel and small cells as bedrooms for the brethren. On the top of the building was an observatory equipped with a telescope or perspective glass. There each night one of the brethren watched the heavens for some celestial sign of the Bridegroom's coming "that their lamps might be trimmed and burning." Near-by, in a small cave to which he could retire and meditate, Kelpius set up his hermitage. In a small clearing by the monastery they planted a garden of medicinal herbs, possibly
the first botanical garden in America.
Theirs was a monastic settlement; the brethren took vows of celibacy.
Many of the votaries were learned men who had been driven from the German universities because of their unorthodox religious views. A smell of alchemy hung about this colony in which horoscopes were cast and the use of the divining rod was not unknown. When the year 1700 came and went, and the millennium on which they had counted did not take place, some of the brethren lost heart. Yet the following year they felt for a short time that their hopes were about to be realized. In this particular year they attached great importance to their celebration of Midsummer Night's Eve because it was their seventh Midsummer
Night's Eve in America. According to a legend recorded later at Ephrata, the brethren saw a vague white moving figure in the air just as they were about to light their fire. As it came closer to them they saw that it was an angel, gloriously fair. Receding for a moment into the deep shadows of the hemlocks that towered above, it reappeared so that again they were able to see that it was an angel, "the fairest of the lovely," before it melted away into the forest. The enthralled votaries fell to their knees, feeling certain that the Heavenly Bridegroom was about to appear. Prayers were held until midnight, when the fires were lighted. Then with incantations the brethren flung the fiery embers down the hill. Throughout the rest of the night the brethren prayed. On the third night the apparition was seen once more and then it vanished forever.
After this the brethren lost hope, and the community began to diminish until Kelpius's death in 1708 at the early age of thirty-five brought it to an end. Kelpius was buried in the garden at sunset to the chanting of De Profundis. As his body was lowered into the grave there was let loose a white dove that flew to the heavens and vanished over the hemlocks. Within a few years the abandoned monastery fell into ruins. Today the Society of the Woman in the Wilderness is only a memory.
There were other curious plants in the German hotbed of religion in early America. The Neu-gebornen, or Newborn, who settled in the Oley Valley in Berks County early in the eighteenth century, were one of the most fantastic of all these groups. Declaring that they were like Adam before the Fall, they believed themselves to be free of sin and even incapable of sinning, an advantage Adam never possessed. The Newborn left little mark on the religious life of their day: few people were simple-minded enough to take them seriously.
Other groups such as the small band near Ephrata known as the New Mooners, who believed that for prayers to be effective they must be made during the new moon, or the Inspirationalists, who thought themselves gifted with prophecy, left equally little impress on the times.
The Millerites of the nineteenth century gained adherents in many
parts of the country. Their faith rested on the belief that the year one thousand eight hundred forty-three would usher in the millennium. In
Pennsylvania a hundred or more of them from Middletown gathered on Hill Island in the Susquehanna on the designated night to await the Bridegroom's coming. When dawn came and with it no millennium, an uncertain and somewhat sheepish band of people made their way back to the mainland. This was but one of many such incidents. In many parts of the state people went forth that night to meet their God only to find themselves on the morrow in the same old workaday
world.
Most extraordinary of the nineteenth century enthusiasts were the followers of a New England prophet, Theophilus R. Gates. Preaching views on sex far from orthodox, Gates gained some adherents among the Dutch farmers in the country back of Pottstown. No wife, he declared, should lack a husband brisk in bed; no husband should lack an "attentive" wife. The emphasis was on sexual satisfaction rather than marriage, for if a woman came upon a man unhappily married it was
her right to offer herself to him to console him. This was a religion suited to strongly sexed people with inhibited spouses. Tied in with this was "planned parenthood," no doubt a wise precaution in a religion in which sex relations were so free. In addition there was a measure of communism in that all worldly goods were to be shared. A colony called Free Love Valley, where both free love and nudism could be' practiced, was established not far from Pottstown. As soon as the local authorities discovered what was up, they arrested Gates and his followers, charging them with adultery. Apparently religious fanaticism could be carried too far, even in Pennsylvania.
The only Pennsylvania Dutch religion of the twentieth century-
Buchmanism, or, as some prefer to call it, the Oxford Group movement.
The latter term may lend some kudos to the religion; but it makes it difficult to distinguish from the Oxford Movement of the nineteenth century. Why the movement should have borrowed the name of Oxford is not entirely clear, for it is the child of a Pennsylvania Dutchman, Frank N: Buchman, born in Pennsburg in the Dutch section of Montgomery County and educated at the Lutheran college of Muhlenberg. Few of its adherents are Pennsylvania Dutch; for the most part they
are the wealthy and socially prominent of Europe and America.