Here is your opportunity
to own a beautiful fraktur art print or note cards
commemorating the 500th anniversary of Menno Simons, 1496-1561

This 15" by 18" Menno Simons Commemorative Fraktur, commissioned by the Historical Committee of the Mennonite Church, is printed on durable, acid-free paper and is ready for framing. Prints are available from our office. Each is signed and numbered by the artist, Roma J. Ruth, Harleysville, Pa., well-known for her fraktur folk art.

Prints are $25 each, plus $3.00 for shipping and postage (Add $0.50 for each additional print).

Note cards feature the Menno quotation on peace from the fraktur print. Send them as thank you cards, congratulations, or give a pack as a hostess gift. The cards are blank inside for your message. $3 for a pack of 4 cards. Add $1 for postage.

Call (219) 535-7477 or click here to e-mail your order.  An invoice will be sent with the print(s) and/or cards ordered.

About the Art of Fraktur and the Artist

Fraktur is a form of German calligraphic folk art that flourished among schoolteachers in Colonial Pennsylvania communities until about 1850. Living in the Mennonite community and congregation of one of fraktur's best-known practitioners, Christopher Dock, Roma Ruth has interwoven several quotations from Menno's writings with an inscription from the monument to him at Witmarsum in Friesland. Modifying the traditional fraktur style are sketches of the church of Menno's first priestly charge at Pingjum and the "cottage" near Lubeck in northern Germany where his books were printed in his last years.

Having created nearly 250 citations, certificates, rewards and posters in fraktur style for over two decades, artist Roma Ruth has generally held close to actual surviving models from the rich Mennonite traditions of Montgomery and Bucks Counties in Pennsylvania.

This commemorative fraktur is a spiritual reminder linking the 16th-century beginnings of Anabaptism via a Mennonite folk tradition of the eighteenth century with present-day needs for spiritual identity and inspiration. The keynote of the main quotation from Menno's writings is his Christian vision of peace -- a concern that has followed Mennonites around the globe.

More on Menno

Born in 1496 at Pingjum in Friesland, just north of the Province of Holland, Menno, son of Simon was ordained a priest, probably in the Norbertine Order at Utrecht, in 1524 at the age of 28.

To his dismay, an inner questioning of his understanding of faith led him to search the Scriptures, and to conclude that they called for voluntary adult baptism for those who would follow Christ.

Fanatic and violent excesses of early Anabaptists led him to the deep conviction that Christians must relinquish all use of force. At the plea of Anabaptists in northern Netherlands he gave up his priestly status to serve as an unpaid shepherd of a persecuted fellowship. After a quarter century of strenuous preaching and writing, he died a natural death in his adopted home northeast of Hamburg, in present-day Germany.

  
Last updated 2 November 1999