Kelpius, Johann b. (Exact date unknown) 1673; Schassburg, Siebenburgen d. (Exact date unknown) 1708; Roxborough, Pennsylvania
An eminent pietist who engaged in the creation of a utopian settlement in Pennsylvania. As a young student Kelpius learned Hebrew, Ancient Greek, and Latin to study theology in Tubingen, Leipzig, and Altdorf, where he was influenced by the theology of Philipp Jakob Spener.
He founded and led the “Chapter of Perfection,” a radical pietist society, considerably influenced by Johann Jakob Zimmermann. During his journey to America, Kelpius met Jean Leade, John Pordage, and Alexander Mack in London and became familiar with the “Masonic Rite of Perfection.” During his travels, he kept a diary that has become a primary source of information on pietism. He also wrote the famous tract, “A Method of Prayer,” first published in 1756 in German.After arriving in 1694 in Maryland, he founded another society, Women in the Wilderness, in which the land agent and surveyor Daniel Falckner and a former Lutheran pastor and later Quaker, Heinrich B. Koester, took part. They established some communal houses, an observatory, and a school in Roxborough near Germantown, Philadelphia. Daily life in that utopian settlement was in sharp contrast to the outside world. Social behavior was strict, and religious life was pietistic with strong mystical and esoteric influences.
The settlers called themselves “brothers,” lived as monks in cells, and remained celibate. Deprivation and self-denial affected Kelpius’s health, and he died of tuberculosis sometime prior to May 1708 in Rox- borough. After his death the society disintegrated, with most of the brothers joining Konrad Beissels’s cloister in Ephrata.
Claus Bernet
See also Ephrata; Germantown, Pennsylvania; Pietism
References and Further Reading
Fisher, Elizabeth W. “Prophesies and Revelations. German Cabbalists in Early Pennsylvania.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography CIX, no. 3 (1985): 299—333.
Versluis, Arthur. Wisdoms Children. A Christian Esoteric Tradition. Albany: State University of New York, 1999.
Willard, Martin. Johannes Kelpius and Johann Gottfried Seelig. Mystics and Hymnists on the Wissahickon. PhD thesis. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University, 1973.