Catalogues of Friends: The Meaning of Friendship for Early Modern Religious Seekers

Saturday, January 7, 2012: 9:00 AM
Los Angeles Room (Chicago Marriott Downtown)
Rosalind J. Beiler, University of Central Florida

                Shortly after 1700, Heinrich Wilhelm Ludolf a German Lutheran, sent a list of his friends to August Hermann Francke in Halle.  He proposed to recommend “one or another of my acquaintances, especially from foreign nations, should they present themselves to you in Halle.”  Intent on uniting the Protestant church, he reminded Francke that one should “think of every possible way and means” to develop correspondence “with other people and churches.” Ludolf then enumerated his contacts in locations throughout England, Europe, Russia and the Middle East.  Among them were Anglicans, Presbyterians, Eastern Orthodox priests, Jews, Philadelphians, a Walloon minister, a Greek Monk, and a French Carmelite preacher.  Ludolf was not alone in cataloguing his “friends.”  In 1703, a young German who had joined Jane Lead’s Philadelphia Society in London traveled to Germany as a missionary.  To demonstrate his early success, he sent back a “Catalogue of friends in Germany” – a list just as varied as Ludolf’s.

                The catalogues of friends Dittmar and Ludolf created reveal the extensive and diverse correspondence circles present at the turn of the century as religious thinkers sought to reform and unite the Christian church.  Their correspondents came from various religious backgrounds.  Nevertheless, their missionary impulse motivated them to seek individuals they perceived as sharing a common goal.  This paper examines the kinds of people who participated in these fluid, outward-looking correspondence networks.  It asks who they were, from what kinds of social and religious backgrounds they came, and why they sought out others who shared their views.  By answering these questions, it seeks to understand the multiple meanings of “friend” and how they shaped religious correspondence networks in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

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