ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study is to highlight the geography of radical Pietism by observing the migratory experience of two leading Pietist figures, and to assess how their experience is reflected in their theological outlook. Harmut Lehmann has pointed to the need for studies that examine the worldview and mentalität of the Pietists, their mobility between Pietist centers, and their migration to other territories.1 In her dissertation on Pietist conventicles in northern Germany,2 Ryoko Mori investigated the “second wave” of Pietism that came about with the dispersion of young Leipzig theology students after the Leipzig conventicle edict of March 1690. A similar edict in Erfurt the following year caused a further migration of Leipzig students who had settled there.3 Mori mapped out the “bustling traffic” of thirty-four leading Leipzig Pietists, noting their migrations and the networks created among them. Successive
1 Hartmut Lehmann, ‘Vorüberlegungen zu einer Sozialgeschichte des Pietismus im 17./18. Jahrhundert’ Pietismus und Neuzeit 21 (1995): 69. Pietist notions of time and space, and inner and outer worlds must be explored according to Lehmann. In promoting God’s kingdom “traditional notions of space were extended: it was obvious to Pietists that they would keep in contact with those of like-mind in other villages and cities, in other territories and countries.” (p. 74). See also Jonathan Strom, ‘Problems and Promises of Pietism Research’, Church History 71/3 (2002): 550.
