In the war-torn middle decades of the seventeenth century, the highways and byways of Europe were clogged with all variety of characters. Among the most curious of these was the figure of Ludwig Friedrich Gifftheil (1595–1661), who stands at the center of Leigh T.I. Penman’s new book. Penman has written widely on heterodox religious and cultural history in early modern Europe and his deep learning and knowledge of the themes shines through in this well-researched study. Though Gifftheil was a figure on the margins, Penman considers how this militant, singularly wanderlusting prophet illuminates key shifts in Protestant religiosity and practice in the period, as orthodoxy faltered in the face of internecine conflict, social dislocation, and intellectual foment. Well-grounded in the historiography on seventeenth-century Europe’s bumptious religious fringes—from lay prophets (e.g., Jürgen Beyer) to theosophy (e.g., Antoine Faivre) to apocalyptic violence (e.g., Michael Driedger)—Penman’s story reflects wide learning and exhaustive archival research.
Gifftheil’s story is presented in seven chapters (though chapter 1 is rather more an introduction) and an epilogue that recapitulates the book’s main points. Fittingly for a biography, Penman begins chapter 2 by uncovering the Gifftheil family’s roots in sixteenth-century Bohemia and the family’s transformation into an incipient clerical dynasty in the duchy of Württemberg in the two generations prior to Ludwig Friedrich. Things took a turn in Gifftheil’s youth when his father and later brother, both Lutheran clergymen, met with professional scandal and ministerial dishonor for their questionable positions. These events unsettled Ludwig Friedrich deeply, placing him on a path that led to a life as an itinerant lay prophet. Inspired by Paracelsus, Johann Arndt, and others, Gifftheil was soon in open confrontation with clerical and ducal authorities. Possessed of the family trait of obstinance and fractiousness, Gifftheil attacked the duchy’s Lutheran Church and the duke’s authority itself, resulting in his imprisonment in 1624.
In chapter 3, Penman then follows Gifftheil from his mysterious escape from prison that same year and travels north to Bremen, where he experienced a spiritual rebirth. So began Gifftheil’s new career as a “new Elijah,” initiating a decade of dizzying travels across battle-scarred Europe in efforts to secure peace for Germany’s suffering people. Gifftheil shuffled tirelessly from one place to another, somehow securing for himself an improbable number of audiences with many of Europe’s rulers, calling for thoroughgoing religious reform while trying (and failing) to convince political elites to end the war in Germany. Along the way, Penman shows Gifftheil arousing curiosity, annoyance, and occasional admiration. Yet, Gifftheil’s sense of wounded family honor remained and was at the heart of Gifftheil’s confrontation with Lucas Osiander the Younger in 1634, which resulted in a second period of incarceration.
Chapter 4 charts the second part of Gifftheil’s public career, one in which he adopted a more radical, militant self-presentation, calling for a holy war as a second “King David,” as he called himself. As before, Gifftheil managed, amazingly, to secure protection, financial support, and encouragement among a small but far-flung network of followers from Silesia to England. As Penman shows, Gifftheil managed to brush up against nearly every spiritualist, theosophical figure of the period. Still, his efforts at “establishing God’s kingdom … or a future New Jerusalem” (94) fell flat. Chapter 5 details the fall-out after Gifftheil’s militant turn, at a time when spiritualists in Protestant Europe were reckoning with the implications of militant immoderation. Chapter 6 explores Gifftheil’s final years as he settled down in Amsterdam and sought to salvage his legacy. In the end, Gifftheil’s militant stance was out of step with the trends of the day. Many one-time adherents apostatized from Gifftheil or were penalized for their association with him. Gifftheil had become largely passé. As Penman writes, in the end, “Gifftheil and his writings had been transformed from terrifying omens of God’s judgement to fodder for toothless theorising” (124).
What can the reader take from this unusual figure’s story? Born when “audiences were predisposed to hearing the words of prophets” (10), Gifftheil embodied the spiritualist upheavals of the seventeenth century and the obsolescence of his appeal coincides with the decline of more militant tendencies in Protestantism. This Penman shows conclusively. Less conclusively does he show that Gifftheil can offer “deep insight into the religious undercurrents” (6) of the period or that he was ever “on the same level as … Jakob Böhme” (29), for instance. While Gifftheil did rub up against more influential figures—for example, Penman demonstrates that Samuel Hartlib and August Hartmann Francke both knew and valued, on some level, Gifftheil or his thought—Gifftheil never escaped his ultimately marginal position. In contrast to these other figures, Gifftheil was far more an object of curiosity than a figure of influence. Only among Pennsylvania’s Schwenckfelders and, perhaps, among early missionaries from Halle did he avoid condemnation to oblivion. Still, Penman is an evocative narrator and an impressive researcher, and this book will prove pleasurable for many readers interested in the more eccentric corners of seventeenth-century spiritualism.
