SPENER, PHILIPP JAKOB (1635–1705), is the most widely recognized representative of early Pietism. Spener was born in Rappoltsweiler, Alsace, on January 13, 1635. He grew up in a Lutheran home in which the prevailing religious atmosphere was heavily influenced by Johann Arndt's True Christianity, the widely beloved devotional guide of seventeenth-century Lutheranism. Thus Spener was naturally predisposed toward Arndtian piety. Being an omnivorous reader, even at a tender age, he acquainted himself early with Puritan works that had been translated into German, as well as with those coming out of the reform party within Lutheranism, the avowed aim of which was the furtherance of religious devotion and ethical sensitivity within the Lutheran churches.

After he had completed the necessary preliminary studies, Spener matriculated at the University of Strasbourg in 1651. His student life manifested what was considered, by the prevailing standards of the day, an unusually ascetic tendency...