In December, Anne Por and Herman Paul published a chapter titled ‘Humility and Modesty in the Early Modern German University: Student Instruction at Halle around 1700’ in the volume Representations of Humility and the Humble (edited by Silvia Negri).
The abstract of their chapter reads as follows: “Humility and modesty meant different things to hodegetics teachers like August Hermann Francke and Christian Thomasius. Their different conceptions of humility and modesty corresponded to different views on how the religious duty of honoring God related to duties of honor in the social realm. However, this lack of agreement did not imply that Francke, Thomasius, and later hodegetics teachers such as Martin Schmeitzel actually socialized their students into different kinds of social norms. Although they drew on different theological and philosophical idioms, they all agreed that their students should become devout Christians as well as prudent civil servants. The hodegetics teachers differed primarily, not in what they taught, but in how they articulated and justified their moral advice.”
