but he was now about to prove his title to something more. A revival of his early oratorio, Ruth, had brought his name again before the public, and this was followed by the production of Rédemption, a work for solo, chorus and orchestra, given under the direction of M. Colonne on the 10th of April 1873. The unconventionality of the music rather disconcerted the general public, but the work nevertheless made its mark, and Franck became the central figure of an enthusiastic circle of pupils and adherents whose devotion atoned for the comparative indifference of the masses. His creative power now manifested itself in a series of works of varied kinds, and the name of Franck began gradually to emerge from its obscurity. The following is an enumeration of his subsequent compositions: Rebecca (1881), a biblical idyll for solo, chorus and orchestra; Les Béatitudes, an oratorio composed between 1870 and 1880, perhaps his greatest work; the symphonic poems, Les Éolides (1876), Le Chasseur maudit (1883), Les Djinns (1884), for piano and orchestra; Psyche (1888), for orchestra and chorus; symphonic variations for piano and orchestra (1885); symphony in D (1889); quintet for piano and strings (1880); sonata for piano and violin (1886); string quartet (1889); prelude, choral and fugue for piano (1884); prelude, aria and finale for piano (1889); various songs, notably “La Procession” and “Les Cloches du Soir.” Franck also composed two four-act operas, Hulda and Ghiselle, both of which were produced at Monte Carlo after his death, which took place in Paris on the 8th of November 1890. The second of these was left by the master in an unfinished state, and the instrumentation was completed by several of his pupils.
César Franck’s influence on younger French composers has been very great. Yet his music is German in character rather than French. A more sincere, modest, self-respecting composer probably never existed. In the centre of the brilliant French capital he was able to lead a laborious existence consecrated to his threefold career of organist, teacher and composer. He never sought to gain the suffrages of the public by unworthy concessions, but kept straight on his path, ever mindful of an ideal to be reached and never swerving therefrom. A statue was erected to the memory of César Franck in Paris on the 22nd of October 1904, the occasion producing a panegyric from Alfred Bruneau, in which he speaks of the composer’s works as “cathedrals in sound.”
FRANCK, or Frank [latinized Francus], SEBASTIAN (c.
1499–c. 1543), German freethinker, was born about 1499 at
Donauwörth, whence he constantly styled himself Franck von
Wörd. He entered the university of Ingolstadt (March 26,
1515), and proceeded thence to the Dominican College, incorporated
with the university, at Heidelberg. Here he met his
subsequent antagonists, Bucer and Frecht, with whom he seems
to have attended the Augsburg conference (October 1518) at
which Luther declared himself a true son of the Church. He
afterwards reckoned the Leipzig disputation (June-July 1519)
and the burning of the papal bull (December 1520) as the beginning
of the Reformation. Having taken priest’s orders, he held in
1524 a cure in the neighbourhood of Augsburg, but soon (1525)
went over to the Reformed party at Nuremberg and became
preacher at Gustenfelden. His first work (finished September
1527) was a German translation with additions (1528) of the first
part of the Diallage, or Conciliatio locorum Scripturae, directed
against Sacramentarians and Anabaptists by Andrew Althamer,
then deacon of St Sebald’s at Nuremberg. On the 17th of March
1528 he married Ottilie Beham, a gifted lady, whose brothers,
pupils of Albrecht Dürer, had got into trouble through Anabaptist
leanings. In the same year he wrote a very popular treatise
against drunkenness. In 1529 he produced a free version
(Klagbrief der armen Dürftigen in England) of the famous Supplycacyon
of the Beggers, written abroad (1528?) by Simon Fish.
Franck, in his preface, says the original was in English; elsewhere
he says it was in Latin; the theory that his German was
really the original is unwarrantable. Advance in his religious
ideas led him to seek the freer atmosphere of Strassburg in the
autumn of 1529. To his translation (1530) of a Latin Chronicle
and Description of Turkey, by a Transylvanian captive, which
had been prefaced by Luther, he added an appendix holding up
the Turks as in many respects an example to Christians, and
presenting, 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 intimacy with Caspar Schwenkfeld, a congenial
spirit. Here, too, he published, in 1531, his most important
work, the Chronica, Zeitbuch und Geschichtsbibel, largely
a compilation on the basis of the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493),
and in its treatment of social and religious questions connected
with the Reformation, exhibiting a strong sympathy with
heretics, and an unexampled fairness to all kinds of freedom in
opinion. It is too much to call him “the first of German
historians”; he is a forerunner of Gottfried Arnold, with more
vigour and directness of purpose. Driven from Strassburg by
the authorities, after a short imprisonment in December 1531,
he tried to make a living in 1532 as a soapboiler at Esslingen,
removing in 1533 for a better market to Ulm, where (October 28,
1534) he was admitted as a burgess.
His Weltbuch, a supplement to his Chronica, was printed at Tübingen in 1534; the publication, in the same year, of his Paradoxa at Ulm 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 his Guldin Arch (with pagan parallels to Christian sentiments) and at Frankfort his Germaniae chronicon, with the result that he had to leave Ulm in January 1539. He seems henceforth to have had no settled abode. At Basel he found work as a printer, and here, probably, it was that he died in the winter of 1542–1543. He had published in 1539 his Kriegbüchlein des Friedens (pseudonymous), his Schrifftliche und ganz gründliche Auslegung des 64 Psalms, and his Das verbütschierte mit sieben Siegeln verschlossene Buch (a biblical index, exhibiting the dissonance of Scripture); in 1541 his Spruchwörter (a collection of proverbs, several times reprinted with variations); in 1542 a new edition of his Paradoxa; and some smaller works.
Franck combined the humanist’s passion for freedom with the mystic’s devotion to the religion of the spirit. His breadth of human sympathy led him to positions which the comparative study of religions has made familiar, but for which his age was unprepared. Luther contemptuously dismissed him as a “devil’s mouth.” Pastor 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 friend John Campanus to maintain freedom of thought in face of the charge of heresy.
See Hegler, in Hauck’s Realencyklopädie (1899); C. A. Hase, Sebastian Franck von Wörd (1869); J. F. Smith, in Theological Review (April 1874); E. Tausch, Sebastian Franck von Donauwörth und seine Lehrer (1893). (A. Go.*)
FRANCKE, AUGUST HERMANN (1663–1727), German Protestant divine, was born on the 22nd of March 1663 at Lübeck. He was educated at the gymnasium in Gotha, and afterwards at
the universities of Erfurt, Kiel, where he came under the influence of the pietist Christian Kortholt (1633–1694), and Leipzig. During his student career he made a special study of Hebrew and Greek; and in order to learn Hebrew more thoroughly, he for some time put himself under the instructions of Rabbi Ezra Edzardi at Hamburg. He graduated at Leipzig, where in 1685 he became a Privatdozent. A year later, by the help of his friend P. Anton, and with the approval and encouragement of P. J. Spener, he founded the Collegium Philobiblicum, at which a number of graduates were accustomed to meet for the systematic study of the Bible, philologically and practically. He next passed some months at Lüneburg as assistant or curate to the learned superintendent, C. H. Sandhagen (1639–1697), and there his religious life was remarkably quickened and deepened. On leaving Lüneburg he spent some time in Hamburg, where he became a teacher in a private school, and made the acquaintance of Nikolaus Lange (1659–1720). After a long visit to Spener,
