Spener’s Pia Desideria and the Rise of Pietism

Philipp Jakob Spener was preacher and senior of the Lutheran clergy at Frankfurt on the Main (Spener, Pia Desideria title page). In 1675 a publisher asked him for a preface to a new edition of the sermons of Johann Arndt, and he put into it what had long grieved him about the state of the church (Spener, Pia Desideria prefatory address to the pastors, unnumbered leaves). Readers asked for the preface by itself (Spener, Pia Desideria prefatory address to the pastors, unnumbered leaves), and it was issued as a small book under the title Pia Desideria, “pious wishes” (Spener, Pia Desideria title page).

The last part of Spener’s text makes six proposals. The word of God should be brought more richly among the people: Scripture should be read at home and aloud in church, and besides the sermon there should be meetings of the kind Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 14, where under the preacher’s direction members of the congregation read the Bible and talk over its meaning together (Spener, Pia Desideria pp. 94–99). The spiritual priesthood of all Christians should be set up and practised, for studying the word and teaching, warning and comforting one’s neighbour belong to every Christian and not to the clergy alone (Spener, Pia Desideria pp. 104–106). People should learn that Christianity consists not in knowing but in practice, and that love is the mark of Christ’s disciples (Spener, Pia Desideria pp. 110–111). In disputes about religion believers should first strengthen one another in the truth and then remember what they owe to those in error (Spener, Pia Desideria pp. 113–114). Pastors must themselves be true Christians, and the schools and universities must train them so (Spener, Pia Desideria pp. 125–126). Sermons should aim at faith and its fruits in the hearers, not at a show of learning (Spener, Pia Desideria pp. 149–150).

Twenty years later August Hermann Francke, minister at Glaucha outside Halle, fixed a box for the poor in his parlour. About a quarter of a year afterwards, he writes, someone put in a sum that his English translator reckons at eighteen shillings and sixpence, and he took it as the fund for a charity school, which began about Easter 1695 (Francke, Footsteps of Divine Providence ch. 1, sections 5–8, pp. 12–16). Finding that what the children learned in school was undone outside it, he resolved to keep and educate some of them himself, and the first he took in were orphaned sisters (Francke, Footsteps of Divine Providence ch. 1, section 13, pp. 19–20). In July 1698 the foundation of a large orphan house was laid, although, he says, he had not money enough to put up a small house and waited from week to week for what God would send (Francke, Footsteps of Divine Providence ch. 1, section 28, pp. 30–31).

The movement that took up Spener’s proposals is called Pietism. The two missionaries who landed at Tranquebar in India in 1706 had been sent to the university at Halle (Ziegenbalg, Propagation of the Gospel in the East, preliminary discourse, sections 42–43), and gifts for their mission were passed on through Francke (Ziegenbalg, Propagation of the Gospel in the East, preliminary discourse, section 47, p. xxxvi); see the Tranquebar Mission. The young Nikolaus von Zinzendorf was a pupil at Halle and heard reports of that mission in Francke’s house (Memorial-Days of the Renewed Church of the Brethren, pp. 134–135); see the Moravians at Herrnhut.