Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (10 July 1682 – 23 February 1719) was a member of the Lutheran clergy and the first Pietist missionary to India.
Early life
Ziegenbalg was born in Pulsnitz, Saxony, on 10 July 1682 in a devout Christian family. His father Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg Sr. (1640–1694), was a grain merchant, and his mother was Maria née Brückner (1646–1692). Through his father he was related to the sculptor Ernst Friedrich August Rietschel, and through his mother's side to the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He showed an aptitude for music at an early age. He studied at the University of Halle under the teaching of August Hermann Francke, then the center of Pietistic Lutheranism. Under the patronage of King Frederick IV of Denmark, Ziegenbalg, along with his fellow student, Heinrich Plütschau, became the first Protestant missionaries to India. They arrived at the Danish colony of Tranquebar on 9 July 1706.
Missionary work
A church of the Syrian tradition was probably born in South India as far back in history as the third century, at least. KP Kesava Menon, in his foreword to Christianity in India (Prakam, 1972), described a church typical of that tradition as "Hindu in culture, Christian in religion, and oriental in worship."
Robinson laments the failure of the further forward moment of this potential dialogue between the two religions. He notes that even such supportive sympathisers of the European missionary's endorsement of Hinduism as Roberto de Nobili and Ziegenbalg, despite their enthusiasm for this foreign faith, could never shake their conviction of the superiority of their own faith.
The propagation of the Gospel, despite Danish zeal, remained inchoate till the dawn of the eighteenth century. Frederick IV of Denmark, under the influence of Dr. A. H. Francke, (1663–1727), a professor of divinity in the University of Halle (in Saxony), proposed that one of the professor's eminently skilled and religiously enthusiastic pupils, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, be appointed to kindle in "the heathen at Tranquebar" the desired holy spark.
Tranquebar Mission
"Though the piety and zeal of Protestants had often excited an anxious desire to propagate the pure and reformed faith of the gospel in heathen countries, the establishment and defence against the Polish adversaries at home, together with the want of suitable opportunities and facilities for so great a work, combined during the first century after the Reformation, to prevent them from making any direct or vigorous efforts for this purpose."
Ziegenbalg brought Lutheranism and a printing-press to Tanjore court by ship. But what were the Danes already doing there? After an abortive excursion to Sri Lanka, where there was no room left to be conquered and seized, they made their way to Tranquebar circa 1620. Ove Gjedde who, in 1618, had commandeered the expedition to Lanka, initiated a treaty with the king of Tanjore to rent an area no more than "five miles by three in extent", resulting in the setting up of a fort, which still stands, though the Danes relinquished control of Tranquebar in 1845 to the British.
Printing and India found each other serendipitously. In 1556, a Portuguese ship bound for Abyssinia stopped in Goa to obtain provisions; the ship carried a printing press and 14 Jesuits, one of whom was João de Bustamante, the "Indian Gutenberg". The clergy in Goa hungered for the printing press far more vehemently than their counterparts in Abyssinia and, ultimately, the press was unloaded in Goa, and Bustamante stayed to set up the press at the College of St. Paul, a seminary that still exists.
The arrival of the first press in Goa was rejoiced at by St. Francis Xavier who had been preaching the gospel in Goa and in Tranquebar since 1542. Then inexplicably, and, significantly, all presses died out in India. Tamil printing seems to have stopped after 1612. Records show that the last books in Latin and Portuguese were printed in Goa in 1674.
Ziegenbalg responded to the King of Denmark's request for the bequest of a Christian mission to spread the vision of the Gospel in India, and in 1706, Ziegenbalg and his colleague Heinrich Plütschau reached the region of Tranquebar, thus becoming the first Protestant missionaries to arrive on the Indian sub-continent and began their revisionary project. After initial conflict with the East India Company, which even led to a four-month incarceration of Ziegenbalg, the two established the Danish-Halle Mission. They laboured intensively, despite opposition from the local Hindu and Danish authorities in Tranquebar, baptizing their first Indian converts on 12 May 1707.