Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/93

Rh p I E P I E 83 singular. He used to work assiduously from clay models swathed in real drapery. Luca Signorelli was his pupil, and probably to some extent Perugino ; and his own influence, furthered by that of Signorelli, was potent over all Italy. Belonging as he does to the Umbrian school, he united with that style something of the Sienese and more of the Florentine mode. PIETISM. Pietism is the name of an exceedingly influential, instructive, and interesting movement in the Lutheran Church which arose towards the end of the 17th and continued during the first half of the following century. The name of Pietists was given to the ad herents of the movement by its enemies, as a term of ridicule, like that of &quot; Methodists &quot; somewhat later in England. The origin and nature of the movement itself may be both traced to defects in the Lutheran Church of the time and to isolated efforts to correct them. That church had in the 17th century become a creed-bound theological and sacramentarian institution, which orthodox theologians ruled with almost the absolutism of the papacy. Correctness of creed had taken the place of deep religious feeling and purity of life. Christian faith had been dismissed from its seat in the heart, where Luther had placed it, to the cold regions of the intellect. The dogmatic formularies of the Lutheran Church had usurped the position which Luther himself had assigned to the Bible alone, and as a consequence they only were studied and preached, while the Bible was neglected in the family, the study, the pulpit, and the university. Instead of advocating the priesthood of all believers, so powerfully proclaimed by Luther, the Lutheran pastors had made themselves a despotic hierarchy, while they neglected the practical pastoral work of caring for the moral and spiritual welfare of their flocks. One of the consequences, as the Pietists believed, of all this was that immorality, irreli- gion, and heathenish ignorance of Christianity abounded in the land, and cried to heaven against an unfaithful church. As forerunners of the Pietists in the strict sense, not a few earnest and powerful voices had been heard bewailing the shortcomings of the church and advocating a revival of practical and devout Christianity. Amongst them were Jacob Boehme (Bemen), the theosophic mystic; Johann Arndt, whose principal devotional work on True Christianity is universally known and appreciated ; Heinrich Miiller, who described the font, the pulpit, the confessional, and the altar as the four dumb idols of the Lutheran Church ; the theologian Johann Valentin Andrea, the court chaplain of the landgrave of Hesse ; Schuppius, who sought to restore to the Bible its place in the pulpit ; and Theophilus Grossgebauer of Rostock, who from his pulpit and by his writings raised &quot; the alarm cry of a watchman in Sion.&quot; The direct originator of the move ment was Philip Jacob Spener. Born in Alsace January 13, 1635, as a child trained in piety under the influence of a devout godmother and books of devotion recommended by her, particularly Arndt s True Christianity, accustomed to hear the sermons of a pastor who preached the Bible more than the Lutheran creeds, he was early convinced of the necessity of a moral and religious reformation of the German church. He studied theology, with a view to the Christian ministry, at Strasburg, where the professors at the time were more inclined to practical Christianity than to theological disputation. He afterwards spent a year in Geneva, and was powerfully influenced by the strict moral life and rigid ecclesiastical discipline prevalent there, and also by the preaching and the piety of the Waldensian professor Antoine Leger and the converted Jesuit preacher Jean de Labadie. During a stay in Tiibingen he read Grossgebauer s Alarm Cry, and in 1666 he entered upon his first pastoral charge at Frankfort-on-the-Main, profoundly impressed with a sense of the danger of the Christian life being sacrificed to zeal for rigid orthodoxy. Pietism, as a distinct movement in the German church, was then origin ated by Spener by religious meetings at his house (collegia pietatis), at which he repeated his sermons, expounded passages of the New Testament, and induced those present to join in conversation on religious questions that arose. These meetings were largely attended, produced a great sensation, and were soon imitated elsewhere. They gave rise to the name &quot;Pietists.&quot; In 1675 Spener published his Pia Desideria, or Earnest Desires for a Reform of the True Evangelical Church, the public literary exposition and defence of his position and aims. In this publication Spener made six proposals as the best means of restoring the life of the church : (1) the earnest cultivation of a more general and thorough familiarity with the Holy Scriptures by means of private meetings, ecdesiolse. in ecclesia; (2) a practical carrying out of the principle of the universality of the Christian priesthood by a participation of the laity in the spiritual government of the church and by the holding of family worship ; (3) a serious laying to heart of the fact that a knowledge of Christianity must be attended by the practice of it as its indispensable sign and supplement ; (4) the conversion of the habit of making merely didactic, and often bitter, attacks on the heterodox and unbelievers into a treatment of them instigated by genuine affection and animated by the simple desire of doing them good ; (5) a reorganization of the theological training of the universities, in such a way that young divines should be urged not only to diligence in their studies but above all to lead devout lives; and (6) a different style of preaching, namely, in the place of pleasing rhetoric, the implanting of Christianity in the inner or new man, the soul of which is faith, and its effects the fruits of life. This work produced a great impression throughout Germany. Although large num bers of the orthodox Lutheran theologians and pastors were deeply offended by it, its complaint and its demands were both too well justified to admit of their being point- blank denied. A large number of pastors at once practi cally adopted Spener s proposals. In 1686 Spener accepted an appointment to the court-chaplaincy at Dresden, which opened to him a wider though more difficult sphere of labour. He succeeded in reviving the catechetical instruc tion of the young in religious truth in Saxony. In Leipsic, where Scriptural exegesis had almost wholly disappeared, a society of young theologians was formed under his influence, for the learned study and devout application of the Bible. Three magistri belonging to that society, one of whom was August Hermann Francke, subsequently the founder of one of the noblest works of Pietism the orphanage at Halle commenced courses of expository lectures on the Scriptures of a practical and devotional character and in the German language, which were zealously frequented by both students and townsmen. The lectures aroused, however, the ill-will of the other theologians and pastors of Leipsic, and their promoters, charged with having slighted the established worship of the land as well as true learning, were ordered to discon tinue them. Francke and his friends left the city, and with the aid of Christian Thomasius and Spener founded the new university of Halle, which became the chief home of the Pietists, and the object of the jealousy and unspar ing attacks of the older universities of Wittenberg and Leipsic. The theological chairs in the new university were filled in complete conformity with Spener s proposals. The main difference between the new Pietistic school and the orthodox Lutherans was not one affecting doctrine directly, inasmuch as Spener adhered in every point to the Lutheran faith. The difference arose from his conception of Christianity as chiefly consisting in a change of heart and consequent holiness of life, while the orthodox Lutherans