ABSTRACT
Leipzig's inhabitants had considerable leeway in their everyday religious activities. When a small group of University students and ordinary inhabitants who came to be called Pietists gathered in burghers' homes and students' rooms for prayer meetings called collegia pietatis. In Fall 1689 and from March to August 1690 the city council and University interrogated participants; further meetings were forbidden; and the leading students left Leipzig. But the collegia were depicted as a major form of protest, a disruption of proper status and gender relations, and a threat to social and political order generally. The collegia did emerge from various forms of early modern religious association and conflict that took place outside the space of the church. Most directly, they were rooted in traditional forms of sociability among students and burghers, especially student conversations with and counselling of burghers and their servants in the homes where they roomed and boarded.
