RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Pietism
copied by many, and also distrusted by many. [But while Spener hoped that the small bands of earnest Christians thus formed within the general congregation would serve as a spiritual leaven for the larger body, they possessed from the start the two inherent dangers of separatistic tendencies and, as being composed preponderatingly of laymen associated on the theory of the universal priesthood of all believers, of opposition to the clergy proper. Both these dangers proved real perils; and as early as 1677 complaints were lodged against the collegia pietatis by the police of Frankfort, while on Jan. 26, 1678, the Darmstadt consistory warned all pastors under its jurisdiction against them.] Spener defended his innovations, however, in his Das geistliche Priestertum (Frankfort, 1677), and finally transferred the meetings from his house to the church, only to be confronted with fresh difficulties. His assertion that conversion and regeneration were indispensable for the right study of theology was contested by Georg Konrad Dilfeld in his Theologia Horbio-Speneriana in 1679, only to be easily refuted by Spener in his Allgemeine Gottesgelehrtheit alter glaubigen Christen und rechtschaffenen Theologen (Frankfort, 1680).
Spener now hoped to proceed unmolested in his work, but his plans were abruptly frustrated in 1682 by the secession of a number of his most zealous friends and adherents from all connection with the Church. With the utmost reluctance Spener broke with the separatists for love of his church and his pastoral office, and even opposed them openly in his Der Klagen uber das verdorbene Christentum Missbrauch und rechter Gebrauch (Frankfort, 1685). A portion of these Frankfort separatists emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1683; and Spener's position was still further complicated by misunderstandings with the municipal council, which proved little disposed to comply with his wishes in combating public offenses, regularly inspecting catechetical examinations, and effecting a better organization of the parishes and of the practise of confession.
Under these circumstances Spener decided, in the summer of 1686, to accept a call to Dresden as first chaplain to Elector John George III. of Saxony. Still greater conflicts awaited him here. 5. Stormy The morals at the Saxon Court were Career at crude and licentious, and Spener fell Dresden, into disfavor with the elector by reproaching him, as his confessor on a fast-day, for his intemperance. The Saxon clergy, moreover, received Spener with distrust as a stranger, and his Dresden colleagues were offended when he began catechetical exercises in his house, deeming such a course beneath the dignity of a first court chaplain. In addition to all this, Spener alienated the Saxon universities of Leipsic and Wittenberg by his criticism of university conditions and the defective training of theological students in his De impedimentis studii theologici (1690). The conflict between the old orthodoxy and the new spirit represented by Spener became acute at Leipsic in 1689, when Spener's friends and pupils, who included August Hermann Francke and Paul Anton (qq.v.), organized, for purposes of edification, the so-called collegia biblica. [Three years previous, on
July 18, 1686, at the instance of Johann Benedikt Carpzov (q.v.), their subsequent opponent, Francke and Anton had established a similar institution, the collegium philobiblicum, an association of eight masters who met at the house of Valentin Alberti (q.v.) for the study of the Bible. Gradually, under the influence of Spener, the devotional element gained ascendency over the technical theology that had been the purpose of the original society; but no open disturbance was created until Francke started the collegia biblica. His pietistic lectures now caused such a sensation among the students, however, as well as among the townsmen of Leipsic, that "doubtful conventicles and private assemblies " were forbidden by an electoral edict on Mar. 10, 1690, and Francke was eventually obliged to leave the university.]
A lively literary controversy now began concerning the merits of Pietism, but in 1691 Spener, who was deemed the spiritual leader of the Pietists, who were themselves opposed as sectaries, accepted a call to Berlin as provost of the Nikolaikirche. At Berlin, unlike Saxony, Spener and 6. Call Pietism were to a certain extent pro-
to Berlin; tected by Elector Frederick III. (King
Real Rise Frederick I. of Prussia after 1701);
of Pietism, for the Reformed elector, desiring to establish peace in his land between Lutherans and Reformed was opposed to strict Lutheranism, and perceived in the practical and unionists trend of Pietism an ally to his plans. In Brandenburg, accordingly, Spener exercised a profound influence over ecclesiastical conditions through his powerful patrons. He utilized this influence, after 1692, primarily to further the creation of a theological school after his own liking at the new University of Halle, its first significant exponent being A. H. Francke (q.v.).
Meanwhile the Pietistic movement had attracted wide circles and divided Lutheran Germany into two camps, organizing itself into a kind of party which, though claiming to be entirely orthodox and repudiating all attributes of heresy or sectarianism, was forced to struggle for existence against orthodoxy. The situation was still further complicated by the incorporation, after 1691-92, of certain chiliastic, enthusiastic, and ecstatic phenomena with the Pietistic movement. [As early as 1691 an unnamed opponent of Spener (probably C. A. Roth of Halle), in his Imago Pietismi, brought essentially the same charges against Pietism which were afterward constantly repeated in polemics against it.] Between 1691 and 1698 Spener alone exchanged some fifty controversial treatises with his antagonists. His chief opponents were Carpzov and Alberti in Leipsic, and such Wittenberg theologians as Johann Deitschmann (q.v.) and Johann Georg Neumann, the former of whom, in his Christlutherische Vorstellung (1695), written in behalf of the Wittenberg theological faculty, charged Spener with 283 erroneous teachings. Besides these opponents, there were Johann Friedrich Mayer (q.v.) in Hamburg, Samuel Schelwig (q.v.) in Danzig, and August Pfeiffer in Lubeck, the latter especially charging Spener with heterodox chiliastic views because of the Behauptung der Hoffnung kunftiger besserer
Pietism