Nikolaus von Zinzendorf
A count, schooled at Halle and employed at the Saxon court, on whose estate emigrants from Moravia built Herrnhut. He drew up the statutes to which the settlement pledged itself in 1727, and under him it sent out its first missionaries in 1732.
The Moravian Church’s history says that Nicholas Louis, Count Zinzendorf, was brought up by his grandmother at Great Hennersdorf, studied at the academy of Halle and the university of Wittenberg, took a post as counsellor at the Saxon court in Dresden to satisfy his family, and bought an estate in Upper Lusatia with the aim of winning souls for Christ (Memorial-Days of the Renewed Church of the Brethren, pp. 17–18). He wrote the statutes of Herrnhut and spoke for three hours on the day they were adopted, 12 May 1727, a day on which, he said twenty-one years later, it had been in doubt whether Herrnhut would become a church of the Saviour or a new assembly of sects (Memorial-Days of the Renewed Church of the Brethren, pp. 87–90).
He had resolved while at Halle to work for missions among peoples neglected by others, and on 21 August 1732 he accompanied the first two missionaries on the first stage of their journey and blessed Leonard Dober with the laying on of hands (Memorial-Days of the Renewed Church of the Brethren, pp. 134–135 and 142–143). See the Moravians at Herrnhut.
In the timeline
- 13 August 1727, firm dateThe Moravians at Herrnhut
Emigrants from Moravia settle on Count Zinzendorf’s estate at Herrnhut. In 1727 they pledge themselves to common statutes, and their church dates its renewal from a communion service on 13 August of that year. In 1732 Herrnhut sends two men to the slaves of St Thomas.