“History of The Tranquebar Mission” is different from the date given by Beyrenther in his “Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg” who says it was June 10, 1682.³⁵ Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg was of tender health even from the beginning. His father Bartholomaeus was a rich corn merchant and his mother was Catharina. There were four sisters before him and a brother who had a fleeting worldly existence. Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg’s mother died while he was still a child. The death of his long-suffering mother left a perpetual impression on him and her dying words were never forgotten. As Catharina lay dying, she summoned her weeping children and said, “Dear children, I have accumulated a great fortune, a very great fortune..... Search the Scriptures, my dear children, there you find it for there I have wet every page with my tears.” Ziegenbalg’s father died soon after leaving young Ziegenbalg, to be cared for by his eldest married sister. The sister detected in the young man “the future man of learning” and “kept him diligently to a regular attendance at school and to reading the Bible.” He was often meditative and Heaven and Hell were his great problems. He was painfully sensitive and not infrequently did he reproach himself for his follies. Time and again during his lonely hours he prayed imploring God to grant him wisdom.

In 1694, Ziegenbalg at the young age of 12, entered the famous school at Kamenz. When he was about 16 years old, a pious student came to him one day and expressed his opinion on music. He said, “Music is indeed a glorious art: at the same time it can be understood by none except by those who stand in spiritual harmony with God and with themselves.” This remark had a profound influence and Ziegenbalg struck up a remarkable friendship with him. This student opened the doors of evangelical mysticism and the flowers of mysticism which had bloomed in the Catholic Middle Ages, blossomed in Ziengenbalg’s heart. He sternly believed now that deliverance must come from within.

35. J. Ferd Fenger. History of the Tranquebar Mission, (worked out from the original papers) Second (Bicentenary) edn. Madras, 1906. S.G. Lang & H.W. Gensichen. Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg. First Edn.; 1955.