In order to comprehend the connections between the basic religious ideas of ascetic Protestantism and the maxims of everyday economic life, it is necessary above all to draw upon those theological texts that can be recognized as having crystallized out of the practice of pastoral care. In this [sixteenth- and seventeenth-century] epoch, everything depended upon one’s relationship to the next life, and one’s social position depended upon admission to the sacrament of communion.¹ Moreover, through pastoral care, church discipline, and preaching, the clergy’s influence grew to such an extent (as any glance in the collected consilia, casus conscientiae, and other church documents will indicate²) that we today are simply no longer capable of comprehending its broad scope. Religious forces, as they became transmitted to populations through these regular practices of the clergy and became legitimate and accepted, were decisive for the formation of “national character.”³