Hidden Lives: Asceticism and Interiority in the Late Reformation, 1650-1745

Hidden Lives: Asceticism and Interiority in the Late Reformation, 1650-1745 By Timothy Cotton Wright A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Jonathan Sheehan, chair Professor Ethan Shagan Professor Niklaus Largier Summer 2018 Abstract Hidden Lives: Asceticism and Interiority in the Late Reformation, 1650-1745 By Timothy Cotton Wright Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Jonathan Sheehan, Chair This dissertation explores a unique religious awakening among early modern Protestants whose primary feature was a revival of ascetic, monastic practices a century after the early Reformers condemned such practices. By the early seventeenth-century, a widespread dissatisfaction can be discerned among many awakened Protestants at the suppression of the monastic life and a new interest in reintroducing ascetic practices like celibacy, poverty, and solitary withdrawal to Protestant devotion. The introduction and chapter one explain how the absence of monasticism as an institutionally sanctioned means to express intensified holiness posed a problem to many Protestants. Large numbers of dissenters fled the mainstream Protestant religions—along with what they viewed as an increasingly materialistic, urbanized world—to seek new ways to experience God through lives of seclusion and ascetic self-deprival. In the following chapters, I show how this ascetic impulse drove the formation of new religious communities, transatlantic migration, and gave birth to new attitudes and practices toward sexuality and gender among Protestants. The study consists of four case studies, each examining a different non-conformist community that experimented with ascetic ritual and monasticism. Chapters two and three examine the prayer practices of two semi- monastic Protestant communities—the ‘Angelic Brethren’ led by the mystic Johann Gichtel and a circle of Quietists led by Charles Héctor Marquis de Marsay. These communities fused the ascetic, mystical teachings on self-renunciation and union with modern mystical traditions in creating their own withdrawn, mystical devotions in an attempt to separate themselves from the world and their own carnal wills. In chapter four, the familiar story of a Protestant cloister in North America, the Ephrata Cloister, is recast as a part of the broader ascetic revival in this dissertation. Particularly attention is given in this chapter to the prevalence of celibacy in Protestantism. The final chapter and conclusion examines the afterlife of ascetic theology and mysticism in the late enlightenment and romantic period which saw a fierce divide over the value and meaning of solitude. From northern Germany, Amsterdam, and across the Atlantic in colonial North America, these dissenters formed utopian communities that strove to keep their distance from civilization even as they engaged in the project of global European expansion, empire, and settlement. 1 To Mirjam and Elias i TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………....1 DEDICATION PAGE……………………………………………………………….........i TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………………………………………...ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………………………………………….iii INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………..1 CHAPTER ONE: ‘Dying to the World’: Rethinking Ascetic Worship in Seventeenth- Century Protestantism……………………………………………………………………13 CHAPTER TWO: ‘To Burn in the Love of Jesus’: Asceticism, Spiritual Martyrdom and Vicarious Suffering in Radical Protestantism c. 1700…………………………………...50 CHAPTER THREE: “Cette passiveté agissante”: French Quietism and the Practice of Passivity in the Schloss Hayn Society, 1733-1745………………………………………88 CHAPTER FOUR: The Ephrata Cloister, Celibacy, and the Communal Hidden Life...................................................................................................................................124 CONCLUSION: Romantic Solitude and Contemplation: Echoes of a Reformation Debate…………………………………………………………………………………..157 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………....169 ii Acknowledgments I would like to thank some of the many people who made this dissertation possible. First, my family and especially my parents Tom and Molly, who nurtured me and my twin brother in our fascination with history, even taking us all the way to Europe to visit historical sites (after we had earned our own fare of course by means of a paper route). A special thanks is owed to my twin brother Peter who read a lot of drafts and grant applications. My undergraduate advisors and teachers, Dr. Craig Harline and Paul Kerry who taught me how to do history professionaly and offered encouragement and advice on a constant basis. At Berkeley, Tom Brady, Ethan Shagan, Carla Hesse, and Niklaus Largier led excellent seminars and advised on papers and my dissertation, providing me with insights into the Early Modern world I would not find elsewhere. Most of all, Jonathan Sheehan, my advisor, guided my project and my graduate career with a steady hand, pushing me to do my best and helping me see the implications of the archival material I found. My deepest gratitude to him and all the Berkeley faculty. Beyond Berkeley, Professor Martin Mulsow at Erfurt, Jonathan Strom at Emory, and Kevin Hilliard at St. Peter’s College Oxford provided help at key junctures. The warmth and expertise of the staff and archivists at numerous archives likewise made this project possible. The archivists at the Gotha Research Center, the Franckesche Stiftung in Halle, The Library Company, Horner Library, and Pennsylvania State Archives in Philadelphia, as well as the Oberlausitzische Bibliothek der Wissenschaften in Görlitz, and the Archiv der Evangelischen Kirche im Rheinland in Cologne all opened their doors to me. The Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire BCU Lausanne nearly saved this dissertation through their digitization project which included the crucial sources for chapter three. I want to thank in particular Hélène Denebourg for facilitating that digitization. The German Historical Institute, the German Academic Exchange Service, The Mabelle McLeod Fund, the Max Kade, and Thyssen foundations all provided generous funding for my research. Throughout most of this research and much of the writing, my primary travel companions consisted of a tight-nit group of fellow PhD students I fell into upon coming to Berkeley. Although we were already adults (mostly), it still feels as if I grew up with them. We studied, discussed, traveled, and spent most of our free time together. Beyond all of the feedback and workshops on each other’s work, we made graduate school bearable by exploring California and each other’s hobbies and commiserating with each other at every step. To Brendan, Joey, Sam, Danny, Ivana, Brandon, Ari, Chris, Erica, Jason, Katie, Sam, Trevor, Gillian, Sophie, Liz, JT, and many others: I couldn’t have done this without a little help from my friends. Almost at the end of my time at Berkeley, the most important person came into my life, whom I want to thank for her loving, kind, and intelligent presence. I could not be happier leaving Berkeley with Mirjam and with our son, Elias to find out what adventures await us elsewhere. iii Hidden Lives: Asceticism and Interiority in the Late Reformation, 1650- 1745 INTRODUCTION In Hans Grimmelshausen’s (1621-1676) famed seventeenth-century picaresque novel, Der Abenteuerliche Simplicissimus, the figure of the solitary, world-fleeing hermit features prominently. The novel’s hero, young Simplicius, first stumbles onto a forest hermit in the opening chapters as he flees Swedish soldiers pillaging and burning his village. The hermit’s long, tangled hair and “wild beard” makes him look fierce and nearly indistinguishable from the beasts of the forest, marking his separation from society. Adopting the orphaned Simplicius, the hermit teaches him that a Christian’s whole duty consists in “diligent prayer”, introspection, simple work to sustain oneself, and avoiding the evil around him, a formula elsewhere reduced to three principles: “These three things: know thyself, avoid evil company, and remain constant” (beständig verbleiben).1 At the end of the novel, Simplicius remembers his hermit father’s teachings and lives out his days alone, on an island, declaring that “here is a quiet solitude without wrath, disputes, or quarrels…a peaceful calm wherein one can worship the almighty alone, ponder his works, and sing and praise him.”2 The novel presents a meandering meditation on the evils of the world, with the conclusion that the Christian’s safest course is withdrawal and serving God in simplicity and solitude. It evokes parallels to Voltaire’s Candide a century later where the exhausted Candide resolves to “cultivate [his] garden.” As one scholar has summarized the moral lesson stemming from Grimmelshausen’s use of the hermit, “The hermit ideal is for him [Grimmelshausen] the result of his ethics aimed at transcending the world”.3 Published in 1669, Grimmelshausen’s account of this hermit’s simple, ascetic faith is significant for yet another reason. Initially, the text offers surprisingly little evidence indicating the hermit’s confessional identity, be it Catholic or Protestant, despite such an ascetic lifestyle being long associated with Catholic devotion. Even amidst the polarizing Thirty Years War, his prayers and teachings conspicuously contain no confessionally-specific dogmas. The cross he wears,

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