THE PIA DESIDERIA

As was the case with the first two decades of the seventeenth century, a growing crisis in international relations and ensuing outbreak of general war contributed heavily to making the period from the late 1660s through the 1680s a time of crisis and change of direction within the Lutheran church. After only about twenty years of comparative peace, the Holy Roman Empire was once again beset by aggressive external enemies and subject to the surge in social misery that accompanied the return of war. Unlike the similarly stressful period at the beginning of the century, however, the general mood among Lutheran clergy and laity in the 1670s and 1680s was not one of apocalyptic expectancy but rather one of seeking to strengthen the church in whatever ways were required to meet the challenges posed by Catholic France and the Muslim Turks.

Indicative of this new willingness to change – and the widespread, popular character of this sentiment – was the veritable explosion of interest in the translated writings of English Puritan authors. Well into the 1660s, the works of only a small number of Puritan writers, no more than a dozen, had been translated. The appearance of many of these editions came about, moreover, as a result of initiatives by church leaders, such as Johann Schmidt of Strasbourg, who made sure in some cases that prior to publication the texts had been “purified” of theological “errors” stemming from the Reformed origin of these works.