ABSTRACT
Religious life in seventeenth century Germany was coloured by the war and the natural catastrophes associated with it, the effect of which was to make God, mortality and the hereafter of much more constant and immediate concern that they were to later generations. The history of the different religious orders, which played so vital a role in the Counter-Reformation and which helped to sustain religious life in wide areas throughout the rest of the life of the Holy Roman Empire, has been studied in detail. The movement encouraged self-analysis through diary and letters, hence its importance in literary history in Germany. It is still more difficult to write an informed account of the Catholic Church and Catholic life in Germany than it is of the Protestant churches. The rationalism and religious scepticism which was characteristic of the age of the Enlightenment later provoked in its turn a resurgence of religious feeling but also of charitable activities associated with Pietism.
