Johann Georg Gichtel
Johann Georg Gichtel (14 March 1638 – 21 January 1710) was a
Biography
Gichtel was born at Regensburg, where his father was a member of senate. Having acquired at school an acquaintance with
The movement in its beginnings provoked at least no active hostility; but when Gichtel began to attack the teaching of the Lutheran clergy and church, especially upon the fundamental doctrine of justification by faith, he exposed himself to a prosecution which resulted in sentence of banishment and confiscation (1665). After many months of wandering and occasionally romantic adventure, he reached the Netherlands in January 1667, and settled at Zwolle, where he co-operated with Friedrich Breckling (1629–1711), who shared his views and aspirations.
Having become involved in the troubles of this friend, Gichtel, after a period of imprisonment, was banished for a term of years from Zwolle, but finally in 1668 found a home in Amsterdam, where he made the acquaintance of Antoinette Bourignon, and in a state of poverty (which, however, never became destitution) lived out his life of visions and day-dreams, of prophecy and prayer. He gathered a community of the "Brethren of the Angelic Life".
He became an ardent disciple of Jakob Böhme, whose works he published in 1682 (Amsterdam, 2 vols); but before the time of his death, he had attracted to himself a small band of followers known as "Gichtelians" or "Brethren of the Angels," who propagated certain views at which he had arrived independently of Böhme. Seeking ever to hear the authoritative voice of God within them, and endeavouring to attain to a life altogether free from carnal desires, like that of "the angels in heaven, who neither marry nor are given in marriage," they claimed to exercise a priesthood "after the order of Melchizedek," appeasing the wrath of God, and ransoming the souls of the lost by sufferings endured vicariously after the example of Christ.
While, however, Böhme "desired to remain a faithful son of the Church," the Gichtelians became separatists.[1]
Works
Gichtel's correspondence was published without his knowledge by Gottfried Arnold, a disciple, in 1701 (2 vols.), and again in 1708 (3 vols.). It has been frequently reprinted under the title Theosophia practica. The seventh volume of the Berlin edition (1768) contains a notice of Gichtel's life.
See also
- Behmenism
- Esoteric Christianity
- German mysticism
- Rosicrucianism
Notes
- ^ cf. J. A. Dorner, History of Protestant Theology, ii. p. 185.
References
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. This work in turn cites:
- G. C. A. von Harless, Jakob Böhme and die Alchimisten (1870, 2nd ed. 1882)
- Christiaan Sepp (1879), "Gichtel, Johann Georg", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 9, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 147–150