SG Heritage Dictionary

Franck Encyclopedia Britannica

FRANCK. The name of Franck has been given indiscriminately but improperly to painters of the school of Antwerp who belong to the families of Francken and Vranex (see Francken and Vranex). One artist truly entitled to be called Franck is Gabriel, who entered the guild of Antwerp in 1605, became its president in 1636, and died in 1639. Gabriel Franck formed a great number of pupils, amongst whom we notice Abraham Genoels the elder, and Laurent Franck, the master of Francisque. But none of his works are now to be traced....

FRANCK or FRANK, Sebastian (c. 1500-1543), not unfrequently called by the Latinized form of his name Francus, an important German writer of the Reformation period, was born about 1500 at Donauworth, and regularly styled himself Franck of Word. Of his early years nothing is known except by inference. It appears that he studied at Heidelberg, and about 1524 was ordained a Roman Catholic priest. In 1528 he married Ottilia Behaim at Nuremberg; and the same year he produced his German translation of Althamer’s Diallage, or Reconciliation of the Contradictions of the Scriptures, and wrote a treatise against the Horrible Vice of Drunkenness. Two years later appeared, with an introduction by Luther, his translation of a Chronicle and Description of Turkey, written by a Transylvanian who had been Twenty-two Years in Turkish Captivity. In 1531 he was in Strasburg, and published his Chronika, Zeitbuch, und Geschichtbibel, one of the first German works in which an attempt was made to give a survey of universal history. From Strasburg he removed to Esslingen; and there during 1532 and 1533 he attempted to support himself by soap-boiling, but found it on the whole an unprofitable occupation. In hope of a better market for his wares he went to Ulm, where in 1534 he received the freedom of the city. For some time he remained peacefully printing his books, but on the publication of his Parodoxa his privileges were withdrawn, and he was ordered to depart. A promise to submit his writings to censure procured a temporary reprieve of the sentence, but in 1539 he was finally banished, and from that time he appears never to have settled long in one place. He was engaged as a printer and publisher at Basel when he died, in 1543 or 1545. Besides the works already mentioned, he wrote also a collection of proverbs (Spruch-Wörter) in 1532, which appeared in fuller form in 1591, a Germanice Chronicon, 1538, and the Guldin Arch or Arca Aurea, 1538, a collection of Scripture doctrines with proof passages, not only from the Bible itself, but also from pagan writers. Franck’s position as α thinker was a peculiar one. Though associated at first with the Reformers, he soon showed that he was out of sympathy with their dogmatic tendencies, and at length was branded by Luther as a “devil’s mouth.” He was naturally inclined to subjectivity and mysticism, and may to a certain extent be regarded as a forerunner of modern German idealism. His religion was practically pantheistic, and tended to foster a spirit of tolerance that found good in everything. Amid the bitter controveries of contending sects it was rare to find a professed theologian maintaining that the true church consisted of “all pious and good-hearted men in all the world, even among the heathen.” As an historian, while still credulous enough to believe in the Trojan myths of the Middle Ages, he displayed a remarkably modern spirit in the attention he gave to social conditions. The first part of his Chronicon, &c., contains the history of antiquity, the second includes the period from Christ to Charles V., and the third gives account of the popes, councils, heretics, ceremonies, <fcc. His German style is plain, vigorous, and idiomatic, and ranks him high among the founders of German prose.

See Wald, De vita Franci, Erlangen, 1793; Ch. K. am Ende, Nachlese zu Franck's Leben und Schriften, Nuremberg, 1796; Hagen, Geist der Reformatoren und seine Gegensätze, Erlangen, 1844; Heinrich Merz in Herzog’s Real Encyclopädie für Prot. Thcol., 1855; Bischof, Sebastian Franck und die Deutsche Geschichtschreibung, Tübingen, 1857; Hase, Sebastian Franck von Word der Schwarmgeist, Leipsic, 1869; Latendorf in his edition of Sebastian Franck's erste namenlose Spruchwörtersammlung vom Jahre 1532, Pösneck, 1876; and a valuable review of this last work in the Jena Lit. Zeitung, 1877, No. 22. A critical catalogue of the whole literature of the subject appeared in Birlinger’s Alemannia, 1876.

9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 9, p. 701
[91 words — estimated reading time: 1 minute]

Francke Encyclopedia Britannica

FRANCKE, August Hermann (1663-1727), an influential German philanthropist and theologian, was born on the 22d of March 1663 at Lübeck, where his father, a doctor of laws, at that time held a professional appointment. He was educated, chiefly in private, at Gotha (to which his family had removed in 1666), and afteπvards at the universities of Erfurt, Kiel, and Leipsic. During his student career, he busied himself specially with the Hebrew and Greek languages; and in order to acquire the former more thoroughly, he for some time put himself under the instructions of Rabbi Ezra Edzardi at Hamburg, at whose instance he is said to have read through the entire Hebrew Bible seven times within a year. He graduated at Leipsic in 1685, but, having found employment as a “privatdocent,” did not quit the university, until the end of 1687. During the last year of his residence he had, by the help of his friend P. Anton, and with the approval and encouragement of Spener, who was at that time coming into notice, originated the afterwards famous collegium philobiblicum, at which a number of graduates were accustomed to meet for the regular and systematic study of the Bible. He next passed a number of months at Lüneburg as assistant or curate to the learned and pious superintendent Sand-hagen, and there his religious life was remarkably quickened and deepened. His own account of his experience at that crisis in his life, and of the influence of the particular text (John xx. 31) to which he believed he owed his conversion, is very interesting and characteristic. On leaving Lüneburg, he spent some time in Hamburg, where he was engaged as a teacher in a private school, and there also he considered himself to have acquired some experience which proved invaluable in after life. After a ...

9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 9, p. 701
[1,426 words — estimated reading time: 9 minutes]

Francken Encyclopedia Britannica

FRANCKEN. Eleven painters of this family cultivated their art in Antwerp during the 16th and 17th centuries. Several of these were related to each other, whilst many bore the same Christian name in succession. Hence unavoidable confusion in the subsequent classification of paintings not widely differing in style or execution. When Franz Francken the first found a rival in Franz Francken the second, he described himself as the “elder,” in contradistinction to his son, who signed himself the “younger.” But when Franz the second was threatened with competition from Franz the third, he took the name of “the elder,” whilst Franz the third adopted that of Franz “the younger.” It is possible, though not by any means easy, to sift the works of these artists. The eldest of the Franckens, Nicholas of Herenthals, died at Antwerp in 1596, with nothing but the reputation of having been a painter. None of his works remain. He bequeathed his art to three children. Jerom Francken, the eldest son, after leaving his father’s house, studied under Franz Floris, whom he afterwards served as an assistant, and wandered, about 1560, to Paris. In 1566 he was one of the masters employed to decorate the palace of Fontainebleau, and in 1574 he obtained the appointment of court painter from Henry III., who had just returned from Poland and visited Titian at Venice. In 1603 when Van Mander wrote his biography of Flemish artists, Jerom Francken was still in Paris living in the then aristocratic Faubourg St Germain. Among his earliest works we should distinguish a Nativity in the Dresden Museum, executed in co-operation with Franz Floris. Another of his important pieces is the Abdication of Charles V. in the Amsterdam Museum. Equally interesting is a Portrait of a Falconer, dated ...

9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 9, p. 702
[966 words — estimated reading time: 6 minutes]