FRANCK, SEBASTIAN. - Protestant historian and philosopher, born at Donauwörth in 1499, died at Basilea in 1542 or 1543.
Having passed from Catholicism to Protestantism in 1527 and moved to Strasburgo in 1529, after his marriage to Otilia Behaim, he led a restless existence, professing and teaching radical doctrines in philosophy and religion, which brought him enmities and persecutions.
He preached a religious-universalistic theism, setting aside even the teachings of the Bible, which he contemptuously called “the paper pope,” and he systematically expounded these theories in the Paradoxa (Ulma 1534-35).
His aversion was also directed against the “theologians of the letter,” advocating an absolute freedom of judgment, outside all theological dogmatism; for this reason Lutero and Melantone censured him.
In the work Chronica, Zeitbuch und Geschichtsbibel (Strasburgo 1531) he maintained the original thesis that the biblical narrative allegorically prefigured the historical development of humanity; he also composed a Cosmographia
(Ulma 1534). But his most important writing is the Germaniae chronicon (Francoforte 1538), composed with a sure knowledge of the sources and with very notable critical acumen, especially in relation to the scientific knowledge of the time.