LITERARY CRITICS HAVE SHOWN that German Pietism's emphasis on the display of a wide range of emotions provided an important background to the sentimental and psychological literature of the eighteenth century. This form of emotional religiosity also had the potential to contribute to an exaggerated sense of sadness in its followers.

Pietism placed a strong emphasis on the active participation of the laity, and many Protestant believers became more interested in a form of Christianity that touched the heart than the scholarly approach of the orthodoxy. Pietism promoted the idea that true faith could be perceived and experienced through spiritual exercises such as introspection and repentance, and believers were encouraged to express a range of emotions in their religious practices. These emotions had to be deeply felt in order to be considered genuine and of divine origin.

This article will provide a general overview of the experience of sadness in Pietism by exploring the views of religious leaders such as Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705) and August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), and will consider some of the most popular devotional works of the time, such as Christian Scriver's Seelen-Schatz (1675–92) and Johann Heinrich Reitz's Historie der Wiedergebohrnen (1698–1745). Special attention will be given to the reception of English Puritan literature, which many Pietists considered exemplary and which had the potential to evoke strong feelings of sadness in the reader.

On the one hand, Pietists rejected sadness that was based on the believer's concern with worldly things, like sadness over the loss of goods or material possessions. This form of sadness was seen as spiritually unproductive.