Books from the "Beehive" Manuscript of Francis Daniel Pastorius

Abstract

Books from the "Beehive" Manuscript of Francis Daniel Pastorius Lyman W. Riley* Francis Daniel Pastorius (1651-1719) is best known as the "Founder of Germantown, Pennsylvania" and is celebrated for being one of the four who presented the 1688 condemnation of slavery (written in his hand) to Philadelphia Friends. Pastorius had a good academic background. He wrote a number of pieces, but published only a few. His most substantial work is the still unpublished "Beehive," the name he gave to his folio-sized, two-volume commonplace book, a collection of memorabilia, miscellaneous notes, lists, etc. The "Beehive" is part of the manuscript collection of the University of Pennsylvania Library. Two sections ofthe manuscript are devoted to entries forthe many books Pastorius owned, or at least was very familiar with. The list takes up 23 pages and includes 1022 titles. There is now available a typescript copy of these entries, with references to published catalogues and bibliographies— where these could be found. Copies ofthe typescript have been placed in the Special Collections Department of the University of Pennsylvania Library, the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College, and the Quaker Collection of Haverford College. Personal libraries can be considered significant evidence about an individual's outlook on life. And the painstaking way in which Pastorius recorded the books indicates the importance he gave to them. Approximately one-halfare by Quaker authors. Pastorius was an active member of the Quaker meeting in Germantown. This was a natural result of his religious contacts in Europe and his coming to William Penn's town. A page inthe manuscript is headed: "No Quakers *Anonymous Pag. 59'stOut of some other Authors, who did not profess (much less possess) the same Truth with us." The Life of Pastorius What follows here is an outline of Pastorius's life (see Learned, Wokeck, and Toms). Included is a brief description of a period that evidently had a significant religious influence upon him that is reflected in some of the books he noted in the "Beehive." Pastorius was born in Sommerhausen, Franconia, Germany, September 16, 1651, son ofMelchiorAdamand Magdalena Pastorius. Melchior, inthe * Lyman W. Riley is the former Curator of Special Collections at the University of Pennsylvania Library. BOOKS FROM THE "BEEHIVE" MANUSCRIPT117 service ofGeorg Friedrich, Count ofLuxembourg, converted in 1649 from Catholicism to Lutheranism soon after coming to Sommerhausen from the university city of Würzburg. He moved to Windesheim in 1658. There Melchior practiced law and filled city posts. But his great love was literature. Four of his works were published, and others have survived in manuscript (Learned 47^19). His son Francis obviously was influenced by the interests of his father. Windesheim is famous in religious history as the center ofthe fifteenthcentury group called "Brothers of the Common Life," of whom Gerard Groóte and Thomas à Kempis are best known, and in whose school Erasmus was educated. Whether Francis Daniel was influenced during his boyhood by the heritage of this town is of course open to question, but in view ofhis later religious development the coincidence is interesting—and he did include in his "Beehive" list two by Thomas à Kempis, "The Imitation of Christ" (an edition entitled "The Following of Christ") and "Rules to live above the world while we are in it." A workby the fourteenthcentury mystic Johann Tauler is in a similar book list in his "Res Propriae" manuscript (Learned 277). He went to the Latin school in Windesheim, from 1668 to 1676 attended lectures at universities in Atldorf, Strasbourg, and Jena, spent some time at the university at Basel, and studied for eight months at Regensburg (Learned 54—79). He received a degree in jurisprudence from Altdorfin 1676 and for two years practiced law, like his father, at Windesheim. He then moved to Frankfurt, in the Rhineland, probably for religious rather than professional reasons. Frankfurt was a center of trade and culture in western Germany. And prominent there during the preceding twelve years (from 1666) had been the preaching of Philip Jacob Spener (1635-1705), leading spokesman for Pietism in Lutheran Germany. Spener was in Frankfurt until 1 686, so Pastorius knew him and his circle during his two years there (Toms 70). For...