German Pietism

Researchers have long questioned how debunked myths such as the blood libel – the notion that Jews used Christian blood in their ceremonies – were able to persist for so long. This essay explains the social function of such myths in one context by presenting a public debate on Judaism carried out in the pages of the two leading Christian periodicals of the early eighteenth century in Germany. One journal put forth the orthodox Lutheran viewpoint, the other that of “Pietist” reformers. Through these journals, a battle took place for control of the Lutheran church, and thus for much of public life in Protestant Germany. Because Pietists believed Jews to hold a special place in God’s plan, they sought to rehabilitate Jews to their Christian readers and to argue for better conditions for Jewish communities. Orthodox Lutheran leaders quickly identified Pietists’ “Jew-friendly” policies as an Achilles’ heel. To attack Pietists, the orthodoxy dredged up and re-publicized centuries-old anti-Judaic propaganda, negative images that the orthodoxy linked to Pietists. Representatives of the Lutheran orthodoxy thus deployed anti-Judaic stereotypes in order to shore up their own church-political hegemony. Through this media manipulation, the Lutheran state church was able to seed fear among Christian readers and to argue that Pietist reformers and Jews were pollutants that needed to be cleansed from church and society.

In the 1690s, a series of enthusiastic episodes rocked Pietist circles. Scholars have often pointed to Pietism's "heart religion" to explain these events. This essay demonstrates, however, that such experiences belonged to an older, firmly established cultural pattern in an Early Modern Europe in which a magical world view prevailed. Martin draws on dozens of texts, most previously overlooked by historians of Pietism, that document the continuity of this tradition from the sixteenth century into the Pietist era . She traces the integration of ecstatic events into Pietist conventicles and shows how Pietists adapted and transformed these older patterns to fit the new context of Pietism.

A critical analysis of the claim that Pietists had a view of the Bible that allowed for errors in historical matters or matters other than for spiritual life and faith. This study focuses on the preeminent Pietist, J. A. Bengel, and his comprehensive commentary, his Gnomon, and finds Bengel's view of the Bible as God's word written, true in all it affirms.

This article explores the socio-linguistic innovations of eighteenth-century German Pietists, a register that they themselves referred to as the "Language of Canaan." This unique sociolect (group language) was but one of many esoteric models of knowledge taken up by Pietists, who styled themselves as "true" Christians and thus adepts who – in contrast to "worldly" contemporaries – could understand the deeper (esoteric) significance of Scriptures and indeed, the semiology of the world itself. The article outlines the cultural and social functions that language fulfilled for the group before tracing Pietists' esoteric views on language back to the literature of Johann Arndt, a Lutheran pastor who was a follower of Paracelsus. Finally, the article presents one case study of Pietists' use of the Language of Canaan to argue for radical social and theological positions.

The article analyzes the media logic of urban acts of communication in early modern German cities. As is demonstrated by Cologne and Hamburg in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the growing use of print (particularly pamphlets) moved local conflict away from face-to-face confrontation into progressively more multifaceted modes of communication, increasingly expressed in both manuscript and print. In highlighting the mediality of early modern urban culture, the changing relationship between the urban community, public opinion, and forms of communication is addressed. The resulting effect from the interplay and complementation of oral, written, and printed means of communication is described as echoes that formed an urban resonating box—a constant polyphonic state including both the literate and illiterate.

Ottilie Wildermuth war eine der meistgelesenen deutschsprachigen Schriftstellerinnen des 19. Jahrhunderts. Der Aufsatz beleuchtet ihre Stellung zum Pietismus. Er zeigt, dass Wildermuth, wenn sie auch nicht direkt zu erweckten Kreisen gehörte, vielfach von Pietismus und Erweckungsbewegung beeinflusst war und sich diesen Strömungen verbunden wusste.

Am 8. Mai 2016 wurde meine Dissertation "Novalis und die negative Theologie - Träume und Abgrund in der europäischen Romantik" (in französischer Sprache) mit dem Novalis Preis 2016 in Jena ausgezeichnet. Am Vorabend durfte ich bei einem wissenschaftlichen Symposium meine Arbeit synthetisch vorstellen.

The traditional understanding of the scientific revolution as beginning with Nicolaus Copernicus’ De revolutionibus (1543) and ending with Isaac Newton’s Principia mathematica (1687) still lingers on, and later debates on the acceptability of the Copernican world system have received only scant attention. This paper sets out on the premise that, even around 1700, the die had by no means been cast in favour of heliocentrism: the new cosmology but slowly spread across Europe, giving rise to new debates in different regions. In this long-term process, Johann Jacob Zimmermann (1642–93) was one of the forgotten proponents of Copernicanism in Lutheran Germany, a small-scale Galileo Galilei and provincial Giordano Bruno who escaped the stake by dying en route to Pennsylvania: the condemnation of Zimmermann’s views only took place almost fifteen years after his death. In paying close attention to the criticisms voiced by Zimmermann’s contemporaries, it becomes possible to identify the interpretive principles that set him apart from Lutheran orthodoxy.
Zimmermann was born in a small town in Wurttemberg, and after completing Latin school, he obtained a scholarship to be trained as a future minister of the Lutheran church at the University of Tübingen. There he discovered his lifelong passion for the mathematical arts, and astronomy in particular. After a number of years, during which he served as mathematics tutor to younger students, Zimmermann was called to serve the church and eventually established as deacon, or assistant pastor, in Bietigheim. In the course of the 1670s, he met Ludwig Brunnquell, a pastor removed from office for his radical views, and was exposed to the controversial writings of the ‘Teutonic Philosopher’, Jacob Boehme (d. 1624). Zimmermann was repeatedly interviewed on his relationship to Brunnquell by local church authorities though he was able to maintain a low profile for the time being. These events laid the foundation for Zimmermann’s radical Pietism.
Yet Zimmermann’s astrological investigations of the great comet of 1680/81 and the lesser one of 1682 led him to develop his own outspoken criticism of the established church and a millenarian scheme in which great calamity was to befall the spiritual Babylon of Europe in or around the year 1693. While this might have been more or less acceptable in England, in Lutheran Germany millenarianism was actively persecuted: in 1684 Zimmermann lost his job, was banished from his native country and led an itinerant existence for a number of years until settling in Hamburg in 1689. Around that time, he also increasingly engaged with the cosmological and theological debates on the Copernican system, first in the pseudonymous, Latin Exercitatio theoricorum Copernico-coelestium (1689) and then the vernacular Scriptura S. Copernizans (1691). As in his writings on cometary astrology and millenarianism, he strongly emphasized that God’s two books needed to be read side by side.
Paying lip-service to an instrumentalist understanding of Copernicanism, Zimmermann argued that all of the scriptural passages that were commonly adduced to argue against heliocentrism did in fact, if understood properly, prove that the Bible endorsed and taught the heliocentric system. This applies even to the famous episode in which Joshua (10: 12–14) commanded the sun to stand still, a key argument that all of Zimmermann’s later critics took issue with. In contrast to Galileo, who had actually advanced similar ideas much earlier, Zimmermann ultimately insisted that the Bible did not only teach man how to go to heaven but also how the heavens go. Beyond this, he also argued that Copernicanism reflected Lutheran doctrine much better than the Ptolemaic system, which he associated with the Calvinist teaching on predestination—one of the major theological faultlines that separated these two Protestant confessions.
The first critical reaction to Zimmermann’s endorsement of Copernicanism did not tarry long. In 1693 his former friend, the Hamburg pastor Johann Winckler (1642–1705), showed himself well-informed about all of Zimmermann’s anonymous and pseudonymous writings and attacked his heliocentric views in the context of a local controversy centred around Jacob Boehme. Throughout Winckler referred to Zimmermann as ‘lover of Boehme’ who was accused of bending Scripture according to the whims of human authorities such as Copernicus, Descartes and Boehme. Additionally, he insisted on the literal meaning of the Joshua episode. Though he died later in the same year, Zimmermann was still able to react and basically ridiculed Winckler’s complete lack of astronomical insight, insisting that God’s two books mutually shed light on one another.
In the eighteenth century, Elias Camerarius (1673–1734), professor of medicine at Zimmermann’s own alma mater in Tübingen, wrote the longest refutation of Scriptura S. Copernizans: a point-by-point summary with running commentary and constant critical remarks that is easily the most scientifically informed engagement with Zimmermann’s work. Arguing that there was yet no decisive empirical proof of heliocentrism, Camerarius favoured the Tychonic system and held that Zimmermann was taking on a straw-man by criticizing the old and already rejected Ptolemaic system. Furthermore, Camerarius pointed out that Zimmermann’s animate cosmology (indebted to alchemical philosophy and Boehme’s theosophy) and mechanistic Cartesianism mutually contradicted each other. As he perceived the pantheist and emanationist implications of Zimmermann’s system, Camerarius also used every opportunity to affirm the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.
Three years later, in March 1717, the otherwise unknown student Christian Ehregott Ficke (dates unknown) graduated at the University of Wittenberg with a disputation refuting Zimmermann: Pro Scriptura S. non Copernizante. Presided over by Heinrich Klausing (1675–1745), professor of mathematics, it was held from the very lectern of Martin Luther. As it was furthermore dedicated to the elector of Saxony, Friedrich August, this was not just a student’s homework but rather a symbolic condemnation of Copernicanism backed by political and religious authorities. Wittenberg was traditionally the stronghold of orthodox Lutheranism, and Saxony was one of the most important Lutheran powers, and had Zimmermann lived to see this day, it would have turned him into a small-scale Lutheran Galileo or Bruno of sorts. In this as well as earlier critiques, Zimmermann’s joint reading of Scripture and Nature was rejected. Even as asserted the authority of the Bible, his creative readings subverted it in the eyes of his near-contemporaries.

Entrada divulgativa publicada en la página web "XVII.es. Historia y Arte" (https://xvii.es/el-pietismo/), el 8 de julio de 2020.

Divulgation article published on the website "XVII.es. History and Art" (https://xvii.es/el-pietismo/), on the 8th of July, 2020.

Founded in 1732 by Conrad Beissel, the Ephrata Cloister was a celibate, ascetic, German-speaking, Sabbatarian commune in the wilderness of Pennsylvania. Its residents produced a large corpus of hymns and motets, and also published the third music treatise written in what is today the United States of America. Because Ephrata produced no heirs, its documents were scattered and its traditions were forgotten over the course of the nineteenth century. Although significant strides have been made in recent years to understand Ephrata’s theology, substantial lacunae remain in the study of its music.
This dissertation accomplishes four research tasks associated with Ephrata music. First, it provides a thorough descriptive catalog of all extant available Ephrata music manuscripts. This catalog is the first of its kind in this field, organizing music manuscripts according to their content. Next, the dissertation translates and analyzes the Ephrata music treatise, situating it within the history of music theory. It also examines Ephrata’s unorthodox use of a pedagogical tool for composition known as the règle de l’octave. Third, the study focuses on Ephrata music, discussing its content, style, and practice, proposing that hymns and motets were written in a workshop format, based on a set procedure of group composition. Finally, the dissertation explores the topic of authorship, and demonstrates that Ephrata music manuscripts provide evidence of America’s first female composers.

Mein Aufsatz sucht die Spuren der Rezeption des Werkes von Johann Christoph Gottsched in der Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts in Niederungarn. Einige Stammbucheintragungen der Schüler des Ödenburger Lyzeums weisen darauf hin, dass die Schriften von Johann Christoph Gottsched und Christian Wolff von den Lehrern und Schülern des Gymnasiums rezipiert wurden.

This paper explores the lives, thought, and contributions of important seventeenth and eighteenth century female Pietists such as Anna Maria Van Schurman (1607-1678) Johanna Eleonora Petersen (1644-1724), Anna Nitschmann (1715-1760) and many other lesser known female Pietist figures. Attention is given to how male leadership of the Pietist movement understood the place of women within the community and the unique spiritual/theological contributions of women to Pietism. Finally, this paper seeks to explain why Pietism created space for women to lead and minister and suggests that several uniquely Pietist spiritual/theological emphases, as well as larger cultural factors, helped create an environment that was remarkably open to female spiritual expression and leadership.

Pietism and Enlightenment have some similarities and differences in their theological or ideological point of view. In this essay I would like first to present different types of enlightenments, second I will stress their similarities and third I will discuss their differences in term of theology and ideology.

"Mi az, hogy pietista?" -tette fel a kérdést Joachim Feller, az ún. lipcsei pietista zavargások idején (1689)(1690). "A pietista" szó és képződményei valóban csak ekkor váltak köznyelvivé, az egész társadalomban ismertté. Feiler persze nyomban meg válaszolta kérdését, de ugyanebben az időben más válaszok is születtek. Közülük hármat ismertet egy előadásában Johannes Wallmann, hogy bemutassa: a ma jellem ző fogalmi tisztázatlanság a 17. századra is visszavezethető.

40 essays by Ronnie Hsia, Ulrich Leinsle, Marius Reiser, Thomas Marschler, Trent Pomplun, Jean-Louis Quantin, William O'Brien SJ, Stefania Tutino, Carl Trueman, Andreas Beck, Willem van Asselt, Eric Carlsson, Stephen Hampton, Benjamin Mayes, Robert Kolb, Risto Saarinnen, Ola Tjorholm, Sarah Mortimer, Jeff Bach, Keith Stanglin, Hartmut Lehmann, Jonathan Strom, Craig Atwood, Stephen Burnett, Emanuele Colombo, Aza Goudriaan, Carolina Armenteros, Eric Watkins, Maria Rosa Antognazza, Stephen Gaukroger, Jonathan Israel, John Henry.

This lecture examines three Protestant paradigms: the Reformation Paradigm of Luther and Calvin; the Renewal Paradigm of the Pietists and the Wesleys; and the Evangelical Paradigm of today. By the year 1700, Protestant Christianity had developed significantly new practices and understandings of the Christian faith that focused upon Christian renewal, conversion, new birth, and the coming millennial kingdom. These new practices and understandings were a dramatic departure from the original Reformation convictions of Martin Luther and John Calvin some one hundred and fifty years earlier. Evangelical Christianity today is the contemporary expression of the Pietist Renewal Paradigm. Most Evangelicals are unaware that their Christian experience and piety are far removed from Reformation Protestant beginnings of Luther and Calvin. Evangelicals would do well to recover their lost heritage.

Philipp Jakob Spener was a patriarch of classical Pietism, a renewal movement within post-Reformation German Lutheranism which influenced the development of today’s evangelical Christianity. Among historians of Christianity, Scripture is widely acknowledged as a vital aspect within Spener’s vision for church reform. Seldom examined, however, is the function of the important Reformation-era doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture within Spener’s practical theology. This aspect of Spener’s doctrine of Scripture is especially relevant given his pastoral and practical concern to see the church of his day revitalized in faith and life. After locating Spener within his historical and religious context, careful theological exposition of Spener’s primary texts will be used to discern distinctive aspects of Spener’s practical doctrine of Scripture. It will be seen how Spener advocated for Christians to be saturated with the “divine means” of the Word. This included an appeal for all believers to take up Scripture for personal growth and mutual edification as required by their calling as spiritual priests to God. Spener believed that, if the people dedicated themselves to the Word, God would increase faith and holy living in many believers, and thus the church would be visibly reformed.

Diese MTh-Dissertation ist eine missionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung. Sie beschäftigt sich mit der Entstehung der Erweckung in Wales (1904/05), indem sie diese zunächst in den Kontext weltweiter Erweckungen in jenem Jahrzehnt setzt, die gesellschaftlichen und kirchlichen Entwicklungen in Wales vor der Erweckung darstellt und anhand von Primär- und Sekundärliteratur die Entstehung der Erweckung untersucht. Es werden biografische Meilen- steine im Leben von Evan Roberts, der herausragenden Persönlichkeit jener Erweckung, bis zum Höhepunkt seines Wirkens nach seiner ersten Missionsreise kritisch beleuchtet. Menschen aus der Schweiz sind nach Wales gereist, um die Erweckung zu erkunden. Parallel zu den Ereignissen sind zahlreiche Artikel und Schriften entstanden, um eine Erweckung in der Schweiz anzufachen. Die Arbeit untersucht die Auswirkungen der Erweckung von Wales auf die deutschsprachige Schweiz und deren Rezeption im historischen Kontext. Aus den Quelltexten wird in missiologischer Perspektive eine wegweisende Richtung für heute eröffnet.

Johann Jacob Zimmermann (1642–1693) is a forgotten proponent of heliocentrism in seventeenth-century Lutheran Germany. In "Scriptura Sacra Copernizans" (1690), he located himself within an unusual genealogy of Copernicanism, in which the usual heroes of the scientific revolution were missing. And in a pseudonymous work, "Exercitatio theoricorum Copernico-coelestium" (1689), there was no holding back for theological speculations. Zimmermann’s cosmology carried metaphysical and especially religious significance. Always interpreted morally and spiritually as well, light and darkness were responsible for the matter and fundamental physical forces of his world. In spite of Zimmermann’s appeal to Italian philosophers of the Renaissance, he was much more influenced by Johann Arndt and Jacob Boehme. Their contemplation of nature, and the sun in particular, was taken up by Zimmermann and carried further. According to him, light had Trinitarian properties because of which it was even identified with God. This latent cosmotheism can be placed in the context of contemporary debates on Boehme’s orthodoxy and Pietist enthusiasm.

Moravian ideas on sexuality have been studied in depth in recent years. Most of these studies, however, are written from a theological perspective and do not necessarily deal with questions as to how these ideas were implemented in Moravian communities, or how ordinary Moravians experienced the sexual practice propagated by their leaders. A careful reading of Moravian texts as well as of the writings of non-Moravians, combined with letters written by Moravians about their first sexual experiences, will help answer these questions. This article will give insight into what ordinary Moravians thought of the marital theology into which they were instructed and how they perceived the church's control over their sexual activities. " On September 8, Sunday night, we had intercourse with each other. The Savior was very near and merciful to us. We felt very well. We have a sacred respect for one another. " These are the words of Georg Ohneberg, a young colonist destined for Pennsylvania, reporting on the first time he and his wife, Susanne, had sex together. 1 Such a letter written by Ohneberg the morning after his first sexual encounter with his bride was not unusual for the religious group to which the Ohnebergs belonged. For eighteenth-century Moravians religion played a central role in the interpretation and practice of sexuality. Among Moravians, sex between husband and wife was seen as a holy, sacramental act, and they believed newlyweds were to be carefully instructed and guided in their sexual activities. Ohneberg's letter is part of a series of letters written to Johann Nitschmann (1713-72), Moravian bishop, who had the special assignment to oversee marital matters. 2 These letters, preserved in the Unity Archives at Herrnhut, Germany, have not been studied before. They will give us insight into how members of the church reacted and responded to the teachings of their leaders. Religious history is not only about the ideas of

A minor figure undeservedly forgotten, Wilhelm Christoph Kriegsmann (1633–1679) has received only limited attention from historians of alchemy and church historians. He is known chiefly either for his idiosyncratic Phoenician reconstruction of the Tabula Smaragdina, a foundational text of alchemy attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, or alternatively for writing one of the earliest sustained defenses of Pietist conventicles to appear in print. In an attempt to bridge this unsatisfactory segregation, this paper argues that the notion of ancient wisdom (prisca sapientia) provided a crucial link between these seemingly disparate areas. First, Kriegsmann’s largely philological works on alchemy published between 1657 and 1669 are discussed, with particular emphasis on how they framed the relationship between alchemy and religious piety. As Kriegsmann joined the cause of the first Pietists in the early 1670s, he was inspired to announce a whole range of books, some of which were never published. In the year 1676, he made the transition from an occult reading group to a Pietist conventicle. In its explicit combination of complete knowledge and practical piety, Kriegsmann’s call to restore the Bible wisdom (bibliosophia) of the ancient Jews is considered and placed in the context of other spiritualist and Pietist appropriations of ancient wisdom.

In 1712, an Arab Christian from Damascus living in Rome was planning his escape.1 Originally called Sulaymān b. Yaʿqūb and known in Europe by his adopted name Solomon Negri, he had been sent to Paris in 1683, aged eighteen, at the initiative of Jesuit missionaries.2 The Jesuits had expected him to join their order and return to Syria to spread the Catholic faith. Instead, he had stayed on, becoming one of the many 'trans-imperial subjects' hailing from the Ottoman Empire who were roaming Western Europe at the time.3 Negri had come to Rome after living in London, the Netherlands, Halle, Venice, and Constantinople. He now worked as a professor and translator of Arabic and Syriac for the papal Università la Sapienza and the Collegio Urbano of the Propaganda Fide congregation, the missionary arm of the Roman Catholic 1 I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer, Cornel Zwierlein, Simon Mills, Abdulhamit Kırmızı, Markus Berger, Simon Leese, David Landau, and Aakriti Mandhwani who all read an earlier draft of this article and offered invaluable feedback. Mathieu Grenet, Eva Johanna Holmberg, Nicholas Kontovas, Cesare Santus, and Stefano Saracino have generously advised me on a number of details. The transcriptions of the German letters and documents preserved in Halle and Berlin were made by Oliver Kruk or are provided by https://digital. francke-halle.de. Lilli Werner has assisted with editorial matters. All translations are mine, as are all remaining shortcomings. Research for this article was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) priority programme SPP 2130 "Early Modern Translation Cultures". The article expands on some points I made in Manstetten P., "Kultureller Vermittler, homme de lettres, Vagabund? Zur Selbstdarstellung arabischer Christen in Europa am Beispiel Salomon Negris (1665-1727)", in Toepfer R.-Burschel P.-Wesche J. (eds.), Übersetzen in der Frühen Neuzeit-Konzepte und Methoden / Concepts and Practices of Translation in the Early Modern Period (Stuttgart: 2021) 427-453. Original quotes from Latin and Italian have been kept in their original form and accentuation; the French has been slightly modernised for tonic/ atonic vocalisation at the end of words, and some obvious errors have been corrected (C. Z., cf. http://theleme.enc.sorbonne.fr/cours/edition_epoque_moderne/edition_des_textes). 2 He had been baptised in 1665. On the Jesuits in Syria, see e.g. Heyberger B., Les chrétiens du proche-orient au temps de la réforme catholique: Syrie, Liban, Palestine, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles (Rome: 1994). 3 Rothman coined this term for the émigrés, redeemed slaves, converts, merchants, and diplomats who 'straddled and helped broker linguistic, religious and geo-political boundaries' between the Ottoman Empire and the Venetian domains (Rothman E. N., Brokering Empire: Trans-imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul [Ithaca: 2012] 3).

The controversy between Friedrich Hoffmann and Georg Ernst Stahl is recorded in many texts on the history of medicine, which, however, have neither cited any documents nor ever illustrated its dynamics. Using both published and unpublished sources, this book is an attempt to shed light on some aspects of the dispute, which, though its seeds were sown in discord during the Jena years, erupted in Halle over the difference between a rapid pulse-rate and a frequent one. Its acrimonious tones eventually required the intervention of the Berlin Court.

With a new Study Translation by Katherine Firth and a Preface by N. T. Wright
This Theological Commentary is the first full-length work in English to consider Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion in its entirety, both the words and the music. Bach’s oratorio is a globally popular musical work, and a significant expression of Lutheran theology.

The commentary explains the Biblical and poetic text, and its musical setting, line by line. Bach’s Passion is shown to be the work of a master craftsman and trained theologian, in the collaborative and cultural milieu of eighteenth-century, Lutheran Leipzig.

For the first time, this work makes much German scholarship available in English, including archival sources, and includes a new scholarly translation of the libretto. The musical and theological terms are explained, to enable an interdisciplinary understanding of the Passion’s meaning and continued significance.

This article argues that mid-eighteenthcentury Moravian religious discourse produced unique forms of self, desire, and community. It uses queer theory to reframe previous scholarship on Moravian masculinity, homoeroticism, marriage, and social structure in order to emphasize aspects of Moravian cultural difference that have been elided in such debates as whether Moravian men were effeminate and whether the choir was a threat to the family.

This paper builds on Graham Jefcoate's "Deutsche Drucker und Buchhändler in London, 1680-1811" [German Printers and Booksellers in London, 1680-1811] by providing a more comprehensive historical context for the information Jefcoate provided. I identify four German-funded 'active measures' espionage cells operating in London's publishing industry during 1705-1811. Influence on Lord Byron is explored.

Freedom of religion generally resonates in the collective mind as a prized legacy of the European Enlightenment alongside most individual liberties and modern values. This assumption, however, is flawed as it tends to downplay centuries of religious pluralism and cohabitation. Tolerance, in other words, was a practice long before it became a theory. This article considers tolerance not as an idea, but as a religious belief and a practice in the early Enlightenment. Drawing from rare manuscript sources scattered over several countries, it argues that tolerance was a grassroots Christian belief primarily promoted by those who needed it the most: persecuted radical dissenters. It shows how the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 sparked a tolerationist spur in Protestant countries, ‘refuges’ that often offered only a limited level of freedom. By contrast, more radical forms of tolerance existed among underground millenarians and ecumenical societies of this period. These refuges and milieus made a significant contribution to the Enlightenment debate on tolerance and deserve to be acknowledged for it.