Herrnhut: The Formation of a Moravian Community, 1722–1732: Pietist, Moravian, and Anabaptist Studies, Herrnhut 1722–1732. Entstehung und Entwicklung einer philadelphischen Gemeinschaft: Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Pietismus, 67

It has been widely accepted that the Moravian Church of the eighteenth century (in German: Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine or Brüder-Unität) was part of the larger movement of German Pietism, founded upon renewed traditions of the older, Hussite-based Czech Unity of Brethren (Unitas Fratrum) and with certain links to Lutheranism. However, some recent researchers have become skeptical about both the alleged Czech origins and the Lutheran connection of the Moravian Church, just as the assumed coherence of one singular Pietist movement is currently under debate. What has increasingly been investigated is how contemporaries and historians of later decades dealt with the particular Moravian distinctiveness and even how some Moravian traditions (or perhaps myths) might have been invented to serve particular needs. The present book builds on these recent historiographical trends and presents a radical reevaluation of the Herrnhuters’ foundational decade between 1722 and 1732. The book appeared almost simultaneously in an...