A Revival in Poland Began with Praying Children

Image: flickr.com

In the early 18th century, a revival took place in middle Europe that has received little attention. It had something most unusual about it: it was a revival among the children.

Lutherans were being increasingly marginalised by the Roman Catholic authorities in Silesia, (the borderlands of Poland and Czech today), but the schoolchildren would not accept this. Some time in 1707, the children of Sprottau (today Szprotawa) started to meet in the field outside the town, two or three times a day, to pray for peace in the land and for freedom of religion. They would read some Psalms, sing hymns and pray. There are reports of them falling on their knees, some even lying prostrate, and repenting of their sins. Then, when the right moment seemed to have come, they would close with a blessing.

The old town of Sprottau with the fields where the children prayed

The movement spread through the mountain villages of Upper Silesia and into the towns. Not all adults were happy about this, fearing the consequences; some tried locking their children in the house, but they would climb out of the windows! In some villages, Roman Catholic children joined the Lutheran children to pray. Reports began to circulate in local newsletters, spreading ever wider until the news was known in England and Massachusetts. To some it became known as the Kinderbeten (children’s prayer) Movement.

Some adults were drawn to the move of God. They would form a circle around the praying children. In some places, the combined number might reach 300 souls. Magistrates brought pressure to bear to disperse these meetings. One bailiff came with a whip, but when he heard the prayers, he could not use it.

Children at prayer in Africa

Out of this “children’s revival” grew a movement of renewal that touched the area. In time, it found its centre in the Lutheran Jesuskirche church in Teschen (now Cieszyn), which opened in 1750. Here, so many attended services that hundreds had to stand outside the building. Sunday services began at 8 a.m. and continued through the day, in several languages. In turn, the Teschen church provided some of the original members of Count Zinzendorf’s community and fellowship at Herrnhut, known in the English-speaking world as the Moravians.

Simon the Magician: the Making of a Popular Early Church Villain

At the west door of Peterborough Cathedral, in England, the visitor is greeted by this graphic medieval pillar base. It depicts St Peter conquering the magician, Simon Magus, who had offered him money if he would empower him to transmit the Holy Spirit like the apostle did (Acts 8:9-24). From here we get the sin of “simony” (the buying or selling of ecclesiastical privileges). The strategic placement of such a sculpture at Peterborough was a statement: as you enter these holy precincts, abandon all thought of selfish human gain.

But why is Simon represented in the sculpture as being cast head first into hell? The account in Acts 8 makes no mention of it. Looking at other literature from the Early Church period, it seems that Simon’s mystique grew with the years. [I must express my gratitude here to Gilbert Markus for giving me a number of leads, not least other pictures. See also an informative blog post here.]

The 1^st century Jewish historian Josephus records a Simon from Cyprus, who was a friend of Felix, the Roman governor of Judea (before whom St Paul appeared), and who claimed to be a magician. Wind forward almost 100 years and Justin Martyr writes that Simon was from Gitta (modern Nablus) in Samaria and ‘taught a wicked and deceitful doctrine’. Also, that he was venerated as a god in Rome and elsewhere because of his magic powers.

A Pictish representation from St Vigeans in Scotland, showing two godly priests and one descending head first. This image may well derive from the Simon Magus story.

There are passing references to Simon in other texts, but it is in the 4^th century that he really ‘took off’ – in more ways than one! Cyril of Jerusalem (313-386) in his Catechetical Lecture 6: 14-15 writes: ‘This man, after he had been cast out by the Apostles, came to Rome, and gaining over one Helena, a harlot, was the first that dared with blasphemous mouth to say that it was himself who appeared on Mount Sinai as the Father, and afterwards appeared among the Jews, not in real flesh but in seeming, as Christ Jesus, and afterwards as the Holy Spirit whom Christ promised to send as the Paraclete. And he so deceived the City of Rome that Claudius set up his statue, and wrote beneath it “To Simon the Holy God”.’

The Apostles Peter and Paul having come to Rome, they opposed Simon, who ‘promised to rise aloft to heaven, and came riding in a demon chariot on the air. But the servants of God fell on their knees and… launching the weapon of their concord in prayer against Magus, struck him down to the earth,’ [where he died of his injuries].

Raising the stakes further is a work from Syria of c.350, the anonymous Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions, which reconstructs a lengthy and wholly fictitious debate over several days between St Peter and Simon Magus, less as a sorceror than as a founder of heresies. Noteworthy here is the evident nervousness that Simon was able to produce in the Apostle.

The Kells market cross in Ireland, showing the same stylised warning from the Simon story. This may be 10th century.

But first prize has to go to the 4th century Acts of Peter and Paul. Here we find elements from all the other accounts, woven together in the setting of a supposed debate between Simon and the apostles Peter and Paul, in the presence of the Emperor Nero, no less. One detail shows that the story has been transposed: a reference to ‘the prefect Agrippa’. No such person held that rank in Rome at that point, but there was Herod Agrippa II, client king of territories bordering Judea, who also examined St Paul (Acts 26). This strongly suggests that Simon Magus’s power and influence was limited to Palestine and did not extend to Rome.

Even so, it is an exciting read. Nero makes the Campus Martius available for Simon’s solo flight and invites crowds. When Simon falls, he lands in a street known as ‘Sacra Via’ (sacred way) and his body breaks into four parts. Nero, who believed in Simon’s power, waits for the corpse to revive after three days. When it doesn’t, Nero’s anger is turned on the Christians (who tell him it isn’t going to work for him).

It certainly seems that Simon Magus, with his wizardry and evident charisma, was a popular character in stories over the first Christian centuries – a kind of bedtime story, a moral tale to children, perhaps, a warning against flying high and turning against God (Acts 8 is clear that Simon believed the gospel at first). And carved in stone, his partly apocryphal story became a useful ‘fire and brimstone’ admonition against self-interest and simony for the first millennium.

 

 

 

God’s ‘Wise Woman’? The Pipe-Smoking Prophetess who Enabled a Move of God in Cornwall

In my reading of Church history, I regularly find colourful characters who didn’t fit the usual pattern but whom God used in surprising ways. Perhaps it was always so? As early as Genesis 20, King Abimelech of Gerar talks with God and behaves uprightly, yet the patriarch Abraham cannot see the possibility of good in anyone in Gerar.

One of these “oddballs” – outsiders who were, in God’s view, very much “in” – was an unnamed woman from Cornwall, England, in the 1850s. We meet her in William Haslam’s autobiographical From Death Into Life (download free here). Haslam was greatly used by God in a revival in Cornwall, with many conversions and amendment of lives. Yet it almost never happened, because Haslam nearly died – but for the pipe-smoking prophetess. We read:

[There was] ‘a tall, gaunt, gypsy kind of woman, whom they called “the wise woman.” She had a marvellous gift of healing and other knowledge, which made people quite afraid of her. This woman took a great interest in me and my work, and often came to church and house meetings.

‘One day she visited the parsonage and said “Have you a lemon in the house?” I inquired and found that we had not. “Well then,” she said, “get one, and some honey and vinegar, and mix them all together. You will need it. Mind you do, now.” Then she put the bowl of her pipe into the kitchen fire and, having ignited the tobacco, went away smoking. The servants were much frightened by her manner.’

[Later that day, Haslam was caught in a thunderstorm and held house meetings in wet clothes all evening.]

‘At three o’clock in the morning I awoke, choking with a severe fit of bronchitis. I had to struggle for breath and life. After an hour or more of the most acute suffering, my dear wife remembered the lemon mixture, and called the servant to get up and bring it. It was just in time. I was black in the face with suffocation, but this compound relieved, and, in fact, restored me. I was greatly exhausted with the effort and struggle for life, and after two hours I fell asleep. I was able to rise in the morning, and breathe freely, though my chest was very sore.

‘After breakfast, the “wise woman” appeared outside the window of the drawing-room, where I was lying on the sofa. “Ah, my dear,” she said, “you were nearly gone at three o’clock this morning. I had a hard wrestle for you, sure enough. If you had not had that lemon, you know, you would have been a dead man by this time!”

‘That mysterious creature, what with her healing art, together with the prayer of faith and the marvellous foresight she had, was quite a terror to the people. One day she came, and bade me go to a man who was very worldly and careless, and tell him that he would die before Sunday. I said, “You go, if you have received the message.” She looked sternly at me, and said, “You go! That’s the message!” So I went. The man laughed at me, and said, “That old hag ought to be hanged.” I urged him to give his heart to God, and prayed with him, but to no effect. The following Saturday, coming home from market, he was thrown from his cart and killed.

‘She was not always a bird of evil omen, for sometimes she brought me good news as well as bad. One day she said, “There is a clergyman coming to see you, who used to be a great friend of yours, but since your conversion he has been afraid of you. He is coming; you must allow him to preach; he will be converted before long!” Sure enough, my old friend W. B. came as she predicted. He preached, and in due time was converted, and his wife also. Her sayings and doings would fill a book; but who would believe these things?‘

It should be pointed out that Cornwall has a long tradition of village ‘wise women’, an ancient line of pagan folk medicine and healing in the Celtic tradition. This was usually opposed and denounced as witchcraft by the Church, but it seems from the Haslam episode that some wise women were at home with Christianity – and their spirituality at times welcomed by the converted.