"In frölichkeit Sein lob außbreitt." Women and the Formation of Protestant Piety during the Reformation and the Confessional Age

The project asked how women from different denominations and social positions between 1520 and 1650 contributed to the formation of Protestant piety in the various Protestant denominations and thus to the perpetuation of Reformation ideas in society through the publication of prayer and devotional books and the writing of spiritual songs. It was precisely through “small literature”, which to this day has only been indexed in isolated cases, that the everyday and pious life of people, and thus also Protestant theology, was decisively shaped in the early modern period. By indexing and systematically analyzing the sources, the research project inscribed these writings and their authors as important actors of the Reformation and the confessional age in the history of Christianity in the early modern period.