ABSTRACT
In the Holy Roman Empire, Pietist clergy were in the vanguard of the international campaign waged on behalf of the Salzburg exiles. In addition to mobilizing financial support for the Salzburgers, Pietist pastors produced a remarkable volume of sermons and pamphlets that condemned the expulsions and described with appropriate pathos the courage and piety of the exiles.2 They organized welcoming committees to greet the emigrants as they passed through the empire en route to Prussia and other destinations, and lobbied Protestant rulers inside and outside Germany to find a new home for the exiles. Pietists were able to take particular advantage of their close relationship with the Prussian crown, which welcomed the refugees and by the end of 1734 had settled around ten thousand of them on East Prussian farmsteads. Not that Frederick William I needed much convincing: not only were the exiles a valuable economic asset in resettling an area depopulated in the previous century by war and more recently by plague; as Walker showed, they also offered the Hohenzollerns a major public-relations coup. Pamphlets and sermons, poems and iconography celebrated the dynasty's actions on behalf of the persecuted Salzburgers. Such propaganda helped legitimate the
* I wish to thank Barbara Lawatsch-Melton, whose assistance was indispensable in helping me render the neo-Latin Jesuit sources cited in this article. For his helpful comments and suggestions, I am also grateful to my Emory colleague Jonathan Strom.
