The Great Cloud of Witnesses · The Puritans & Pietists
August Hermann Francke
1663–1727GermanLutheran
Started an orphan school with a coin dropped in a poor-box and built a town of charities on it.
Summary
- Lived 1663–1727, German.
- Stood in The Puritans & Pietists (1600–1730).
- Hangs on The Puritans & Pietists.
- Tradition: Lutheran / Pietist.
The life
August Hermann Francke was a young professor at Halle when he put a poor-box in his parsonage and, one day in 1695, found enough money in it to start a school for poor children. What grew from that is still standing: an orphanage, free schools, a teacher-training program, a pharmacy whose profits funded the rest, a bookshop and a printing house, an entire quarter of Halle given over to charity and education.
The Canstein Bible Institute, founded under his wing, kept type standing so Bibles could be printed continuously and sold at a price a working family could pay; it turned out them by the hundreds of thousands. Halle-trained men became the first Protestant missionaries to India when Ziegenbalg and Plutschau sailed for Tranquebar in 1706. Francke funded all of it by asking God rather than donors and keeping written accounts of what came in, a practice George Muller later read about and deliberately copied in Bristol.
What was happening while he lived6 moments · 1600–1730
- 1675Spener's *Pia Desideria*Philipp Jakob Spener, a pastor in Frankfurt, publishes six plain proposals: more Bible in laypeople's hands, believers meeting in small groups, faith that shows up in life, gentler argument, ministers trained for godliness, preaching aimed at the heart. The book names a movement: Pietism.
- 1678*The Pilgrim's Progress* is publishedBunyan had spent twelve years (1660–1672) in Bedford jail rather than promise to stop preaching, making shoelace tags to feed his family, including a blind daughter. Out of those years came the dream of a man with a burden on his back, running toward a distant light.
- 1679–1688Scotland's Killing TimeCovenanters who kept preaching in open fields after outdoor worship was outlawed are hunted across the moors of the southwest. Richard Cameron falls at Airds Moss in 1680; James Renwick, the last of them executed, dies in 1688.
- Oct 1685The Edict of Nantes is revokedLouis XIV cancels the protection French Protestants had held since 1598. Estimates vary, but somewhere around 150,000 to 200,000 Huguenots flee France for England, Holland, Prussia, Switzerland, the American colonies, and the Cape.
- 1698Francke's orphanage opens at HalleAugust Hermann Francke had started a school for poor children in 1695 with a few coins left in a parish box. Halle grows into orphanage, schools, hospital, and a Bible press.
- 1707Watts publishes *Hymns and Spiritual Songs*Isaac Watts, a dissenting pastor with a weak body and an enormous ear, argues that Christians may sing new words and not only metrical Psalms. The book carries "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" and effectively begins English hymn-singing.
In their own words
“When I took this into my Hands, I said in full assurance of Faith: This is now a considerable Fund, worthy to be laid out in some important Undertaking, wherefore I'll even take this for the foundation of a Charity-School.”
Pietas Hallensis, section VII, The beginning of a Charity-School, page 13 · on 2 Corinthians 9:8
“And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”
“I took the Bible, and as it were by accident did light on these words: 2 Cor. 9. 8. God is able to make all Grace abound towards you, that ye always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.”
Pietas Hallensis, the English printed at London (about 1705), pages 142 to 143 · on 2 Corinthians 9:8
“And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”
“As the whole Affair was never Undertaken upon any settled Provision, but in singleness of Heart and entire Dependance upon God Almighty, so I had not as much now as would suffice to Erect a small House, much less a Large and Publick Hospital.”
Pietas Hallensis (London: J. Downing, 1705), section XXVIII, page 29 · on Matthew 6:33
“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.”
Go further
Read them yourself. Public-domain works are free to read in full; the rest open where the book can be found.
Search August Hermann Francke at the Internet Archive · every work MannaFest cites
Why this one hangs here
Built an orphanage, schools and a Bible press at Halle by praying for the money and writing down every answer.
Hangs on The Puritans & Pietists: The examined heart: the century that asked whether the opened Bible had opened you.
Standing beside himThe Puritans & Pietists · 17 on this stretch of wall
Gave refugees his estate and got back a hundred-year prayer meeting and the first Protestant missionary wave.
Wrote Pilgrim's Progress in the Bedford jail rather than promise the court he would stop preaching.
The Puritans' deepest thinker, who warned that you must be killing sin or it will be killing you.
Preached Christ's tenderness toward weak believers, in a small book that changed Richard Baxter's life.
Banned from preaching, he wrote his congregation letters so full of Christ that people still read them.
Asked what Christ feels toward struggling believers right now, and wrote a whole book answering from Scripture.