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.Not only were the new translationscheap enough for all parishioners to afford, which in itself was a breakthrough inProtestant culture, but in the cosseted surroundings of the collegia and the intimatedevotional meetings in the home, the Bible became an open text for the first time sincethe rise of the Reformation.One of the corollaries of this embodied biblicism was thechange in the practice of prayer.With this turn towards a religion of the heart, there wasno longer a place for the formulaic prayers of the confessional age.Arndt hademphasized the virtues of using prayer as a means of establishing a direct relationshipwith the divine.Spener too preached the need for more spontaneity in the act ofpraying, and as if on cue, sales of prayer books plummeted after 1675.61One of the distinguishing features of German Pietism were the collegia pietatis.Although central to the history of the movement, the nature of these meetings remainsfairly imprecise.They could take on a variety of forms, from informal prayer meetingsand Bible-study groups to extended sessions in exegesis and interpretation.In an effortto point up the potential dangers of these private assemblies, orthodox critics tended toassociate the collegia with the separatist tradition.But the use of conventicles had beena fairly common phenomenon in the Reformed tradition, and there was a long historyto draw on.Lutheran Pietists generally preferred to cite the apostolic precedent 194 Revivals(1 Corinthinans 14) rather than justify their actions with Reformed arguments, andthey did so in the conviction that it was fully in keeping with the teachings ofmainstream Lutheran thought.Years before Spener had gathered his group in Frank-¬furt, the clergy in Butzbach, Strasbourg, Hamburg, and Gorlitz had thought in theseterms while founding conventicles of their own.62In setting up the collegia, early Pietists did not presume to challenge the authority ofthe church or the special functions of the clergy.On the contrary, men like Spener firstthought of the meetings as a supplement to the sermons, services, and sacraments oforthodox worship.They were not conceived as para-ecclesiastical institutions, but ashelpmeets to the clergy in their efforts to remedy the perceived decline in piety that hadset in since the Reformation.In some ways they were analogous to the secular societiesof the day, for here too it was a question of finding a place for interests and motives thatno longer fit within traditional forms.But there were tensions and contradictions builtin.In Frankfurt, for instance, although they began under the auspices of Spener himself,¬once Johann Jakob Schutz (1640 90), Spener s co-founder, moved closer to theradical tradition, the meetings became more openly critical of the church.The formerdistinctions between the clergy (or the theologically aware) and the laity fell away, witheach man and woman granted an equal voice in interpretation.At the same time themeetings became more frequent and less accountable.One week they might meet at¬the Saalhof, the next at the house of Schutz or a Dr Kißner, another at the residence of¬a tailor on the Fahrgasse.63 Similarly, in Lubeck there was a conventicle movement asearly as the 1660s.Led by two pious laymen, one of whom was a trained theologian, themeetings were a way for select parishioners to meet in small groups and cultivate a morepersonal faith.And although, as in Frankfurt, the meetings were not originally intendedto replace or supplant the service, in time leaders began to impinge on the rights of thechurch, going so far as to offer the Lord s Supper in private sessions.On receiving word¬of this, the ministers and magistrates of Lubeck condemned it as Quakerism and theconventicles were suppressed, the ringleaders either imprisoned or expelled.64 A finalexample is provided by the history of events in Halberstadt.Founded in 1690 byAndreas Achilles, one of the Leipzig exiles, the Halberstadt conventicle soon turnedinto a forum for the reading and interpretation of radical ideas.Notions of rapture andprophecy replaced prayer and exegesis, and within a few years the conventicle becameinfamous for the ecstatic visions of Anna Margaretha Jahn, whom Achilles considered¬a prophetess.As in Lubeck, the authorities intervened, and in this instance with the fullbacking of the Halberstadt parishioners, who feared that their town was on its way to¬becoming the new Munster.65Regardless of the type of community taking shape, whether the fellowship of radicalsin Halberstadt or the early exegetical workshop in Leipzig, Pietistism invested the laitywith a greater role in religious affairs.The Reformation had promised the same thing inthe early years, Luther himself projecting a return to the apostolic notion of the royalpriesthood what he termed the priesthood of all believers and an elimination of thestrict separation between the clergy and the laity.And in so far as Protestant theologytaught that all men and women were spiritually equal in the eyes of God and that allshared in the ministry of the gospel, this goal had been realized.In practical terms,however, after the disaster of the Peasants War and the rise of the radicals, the Revivals 195Protestant churches returned to a powerful culture of clericalism.Presbyteries, asMilton famously put it, became old priests writ large.Spener wanted to reverse thisbalance, to restore some remnant of the apostolic vision in the form of a spiritualpriesthood (his version of the paradigm).While still maintaining that the clergy alonehad the authority to initiate and oversee reform, Spener granted the laity a heightenedspiritual role, not just expecting them to foster an inner piety and a living faith, but toadmonish others and help to spread the Word.66 In effect, they became pastors on a verysmall scale, if not prophets then pundits of the Word.This principle, in combinationwith the Pietist tendency to turn away from corporate religion and privilege privateor group worship, was a threat to the magisterial order for it fostered a new idea ofpriesthood that was based on an inner calling rather than an external confirmation.The best proof of the Pietist empowering of the laity was the role assumed by women.In the early phase, female members of the collegia were restricted in what they might do.In Frankfurt, for instance, they sat behind a dividing wall without the right to speak.Buttheir impact was substantial beyond the conventicles, when pious women became activeas writers, teachers, promoters, and patrons of the movement.Within the radicaltradition, women were not only active participants in the group meetings, they emergedas leaders, prophets, and theologians with large regional and interregional followings.Indeed, according to Johann Heinrich Feustking, author of the Gynaeceum HaereticoFanaticum (1704), Pietism itself was the creation of women, enthusiasts and visionariessuch as Rosamunde Juliane von der Asseburg and Johanna Eleonora von Merlau(Petersen), who had encouraged the local prophetesses of Erfurt, Quedlinburg, andHalberstadt, who had then preached their visions and written their books and led theparishioners away from the church.67What made the Pietist invocation of the priesthood of all believers so revolutionarywas its teaching on the rebirth (Wiedergeburt)
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