In 1737 Erik Pontoppidan, a Danish Lutheran bishop of pietist leanings, published a catechism, Sandhed til Gudfrygtighed (Truth unto Godliness). This became the Church of Denmark's official catechism for the next fifty years, with new editions being printed in Norway even into the twentieth century.Footnote ¹ Henrik Horstbøll writes of the catechism's publication that ‘the manual became one of the 18th century's largest book projects’.Footnote ² Thus, for a figure largely unknown to wider modern scholarship, Pontoppidan has enjoyed an extraordinarily enduring influence over Christian formation and the lives of the faithful, not only in Scandinavia but also in Norwegian immigrant communities in the USA. More significantly for the theme of this volume, Pontoppidan left behind not only his ‘official’ programme of Christian education, but also an unofficial blueprint in Menoza (1742–3). This opbyggelse (‘edifying’) novel recounts the conversion to Christianity of an imaginary Indian prince named Menoza and his subsequent travels around Europe. Menoza might be said to offer its readers an alternative or additional Lutheran catechism in literary form, intertwined with the novel's larger project of offering a pietist commentary on the contemporary European religious scene.

This article examines the nature of conversion(s) in Menoza in the light of Pontoppidan's official catechism. Which topics of the Lutheran catechism receive emphasis, are elaborated upon or are downplayed? Does the progression and linking of doctrinal topics match the order of the catechism or does Pontoppidan restructure Christian theology for pedagogical purposes? I shall also explore the non-doctrinal elements of the periods of catechesis undergone by Menoza and other characters, especially in relation to pietist expectations regarding conversion.Footnote ³ What indoctrination, intentional or unintentional, into the vocabulary and experiences of pietist culture did Pontoppidan offer his Scandinavian readers? First, however, I shall briefly outline the historical context of Pontoppidan's two works and their complex publication histories, particularly in Scandinavia and the USA. At the close of the article, I shall return to this bibliographic information, which offers some evidence about contemporary attitudes towards these texts.

Danish pietism, often more narrowly termed state pietism (statspietism),Footnote ⁴ was an early eighteenth-century phase of the history of the Danish church. It was heavily influenced by German pietism, which emerged as a movement in the 1680s and 1690s. As a reform movement, the term ‘pietism’ is generally applied to a variety of interrelated religious movements. Its hallmarks were (and are) a focus on lay readership of the Bible, church reform, the priesthood of all believers and an emphasis on the ‘new birth’ of the believer. In the Danish context, the variety of religious expression within German pietism had to adapt the stricter boundaries of Danish religious life, particularly in relation to the official censorship of books printed in Denmark and in Danish. Nonetheless, the movement engendered a comprehensive education system and improved general literacy levels when confirmation was made mandatory in 1736, since the decree establishing this required primary schooling or regular instruction by a church official.Footnote ⁵

As the official catechism used in Denmark-Norway for confirmation preparation, the number of editions of Sandhed til Gudfrygtighed or of works based on extracts from it is impressive.Footnote ⁶ Horstbøll writes: ‘from the 1700s, over 40 different editions of Pontoppidan's exposition of the Church catechism have been preserved’.Footnote ⁷ During the nineteenth century, in Norway alone over one hundred editions or abridgements of the text were published.Footnote ⁸

Pontoppidan's catechism also had a lasting popularity in the USA. At least six Norwegian editions of his catechism were printed in Iowa from 1873, and a loose English translation was printed in Chicago in 1877, with a second edition in 1895.Footnote ⁹ Another shortened English translation was published in the US in 1900 by the Lutheran Free Church. This went through at least ten editions by 1933.Footnote ¹⁰

Menoza does not have as extensive a publishing history as Sandhed til Gudfrygtighed. The Danish Royal Library holds four editions of the Dutch translation and five of the German, alongside four Danish editions published in Denmark and two Swedish editions. The Norwegian National Library Catalogue reveals that editions were published in Norway in 1847, 1880 and 1931, and the Danish Royal Library supplies a fourth, published in Norway in 1881. The publishing dates for the Danish editions (1742–3, 1745–51, 1763–4 and 1860) are earlier than those of the editions published in Norway, another indication that Pontoppidan had a longer literary life in Norway.

Since there is not space for an exhaustive study of Pontoppidan's catechism and novel, this article will focus on the theme of conversionFootnote ¹¹ as presented in the novel. Besides the conversion to Christianity of Menoza himself, I will draw on several other accounts of conversion, including those of a young woman in Montpellier, a young German count and an older Viennese woman. In the novel, these and similar episodes are referred to using terms such as ‘conversion’ (omvendelse) or ‘awakening’ (opvækkelse), and Pontoppidan's catechism reveals how closely these terms are linked in his thought to the larger idea of new birth.Footnote ¹²

Menoza's actual conversion occurs long after he has come to hold many of the classical theistic beliefs to be true, but also after he has developed an aversion to religion's ‘dry external existence’Footnote ¹³ and to the hypocritical behaviour of believers, and has come to trust implicitly in his conscience or inward guide (rettesnor). He initially hears the gospel from several Catholic missionaries, but it is from Danish Lutheran missionaries that he receives his final catechesis before being baptized. The actual conversation begins with a discussion of reason and revelation, where revelation is never to be set against reason but rather deals with that which is beyond reason. The bulk of the dialogue between Menoza and the Danes revolves around questions about Christ and his identity, especially his fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies and his role as Saviour, atoning for sin. The middle section of the conversation deals with justification, the need for sanctification and finally the reasonableness of the resurrection.Footnote ¹⁴ Finally the outward elements of the Christian faith, the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist, are explained. These final elements of Christianity trouble Menoza the most because of their external nature, which in his eyes veers close to superstition. The variation in baptismal rites also suggests to Menoza that baptism is not an eternal and unchanging truth.Footnote ¹⁵ He is reassured by historical reasoning concerning the origin of the sacraments and the practical grounds for variations in the baptismal rites. Shortly afterwards, during a severe illness, he prays for and receives the ‘sweet taste of [the Lord's] grace, which I [Menoza] rightly considered the pouring out of [Christ's] love in my heart’.Footnote ¹⁶ This spiritual reassurance acts also as a physical cure and he is subsequently baptized.

Let us now examine this story in the light of the typical Lutheran catechism layout present in Sandhed til Gudfrygtighed (Truth unto Godliness), which is intended as an explanation of the Lutheran Small Catechism: introduction, the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist. Menoza's informal catechesis begins apart from the church and the Scriptures, but he describes himself as ‘awakened by God's prevenient grace to seek further light’.Footnote ¹⁷ His search begins along theistic lines, related to those covered briefly in the catechism's section on the first article of the Creed, initially skipping the explication of the Ten Commandments. Menoza's introduction to Christ gives more space to the exegesis of Old Testament prophecies than does Sandhed til Gudfrygtighed, something that might speak to the passion for biblical scholarship often displayed by pietists. The catechism defines justification in the section on the Creed (question 503 under the third article).Footnote ¹⁸ Sanctification is also dealt in this section, although it is renamed, or at least merged with, renewal (fornyelse), a term which itself connects with the pietist emphasis on the new man and allows for sanctification to be sought continually in this life but never fully achieved.Footnote ¹⁹ Baptism and the sacrament of the Lord's table are the final themes in both Menoza's education and Pontoppidan's catechism, although they are treated quite differently. In Menoza, Pontoppidan seems to be on the defensive when dealing with the external elements of the Christian religion.Footnote ²⁰ Similarly, the section of his catechism on baptism, after discussing the sacrament, turns to the nature of conversion or repentance and the new man (questions 673–99).Footnote ²¹ Likewise, the section on the eucharist deals with the themes of sorrow for sin and self-examination (questions 744–52).Footnote ²² However, although these themes of sorrow and repentance are not as strong in Pontoppidan's depiction of Menoza's catechesis, they find their place in the novel's other tales of conversion.

Menoza's first opportunity to act as a spiritual counsellor occurs in Montpellier, after his rousing defence of the priesthood of all believers causes uproar in the town.Footnote ²³ Several young ladies are stricken with melancholy, and eventually he is called to one who has been confined to bed by sorrow and sickness. She declares that Menoza's words have moved and troubled her and she implores him: ‘if [you] can lead me to land again, then shall my duty to you be greater than to any person on earth’.Footnote ²⁴ This depth of feeling is repeated as she describes how earlier she had tried to force herself to feel sorrow and repentance for her sins, but now ‘the sorrow in my heart is an entirely different quality … . Now I see and feel what I have to grieve for, and even in my most bitter sorrow I find a wonderfully sweet taste’.Footnote ²⁵ In the face of the protestations of the young woman's mother, Menoza supports the young woman. When her mother insists that her daughter is already very pious, avoiding lavish dress and only reluctantly attending dances, the daughter declares that until now, her very nature has been hypocritical: she had avoided some evils but desire for God was not her only motivation.Footnote ²⁶ Menoza's words, she says, have awakened her to the truth which is now ‘so living and powerful in my heart’.Footnote ²⁷ Menoza ends the encounter with a short evangelizing speech in which he explains that the work of justifying faith only begins when the truth triumphs over the world and he emphasizes the necessity of drawing closer to Christ, who is the true giver of the grace and power that leads to sanctification. In reply the young woman declares vehemently: ‘O yes, my Jesus! Draw me after you’.Footnote ²⁸ Examining this short episode, several themes stand out. There is sorrow, an unbidden sense that one's previous identity had been fundamentally hypocritical, and a strong emotional desire and longing for Christ. These recur in the following instances.

The second convert is a young German count whom Menoza meets in Venice during carnival in 1718.Footnote ²⁹ This festive backdrop gives Menoza much to grieve over, as it confirms to him that ‘Christ is driven out from among the Christians and that to a great degree they have forgotten the mind of Christ’.Footnote ³⁰ The count is described as a Lutheran who has received a good Christian upbringing and education but is beset by temptations brought about by his European journey. The count and his stories can be read as a foil to Menoza, who is also a man of noble birth on a world tour. The count seeks out Menoza's support and expresses his desire to follow Christ while lamenting society's expectation that the nobility should attend balls and dances.Footnote ³¹

For the count, knowledge of the particularities of Christian doctrine is not the issue, for he is well educated; rather the process of formation is the focus. His conscience or nagging heart plague him when attending various ‘frivolities’ (as Menoza regards them), even though he declares he has no desire to dance or gamble. The conversation between the count and Menoza that follows reveals the complexity of moral dilemmas and purposes inherent in situations that ‘in their nature seem innocent, yet through misuse become sinful’.Footnote ³² Danish pietists, like English puritans earlier, were instrumental in closing Danish theatres for a time, and here Pontoppidan associates dances, comedies and operas with the sin of luxuriousness, ‘which meek and vigilant Christians should never consider themselves safe from’.Footnote ³³ After this argument, and an exhortation to sobriety and against the frivolous mood displayed in dancing as unworthy for a serious Christian, the count returns several days later and attests to Menoza's wisdom.Footnote ³⁴ Their second conversation dwells on the subject of play, broadly considered. Here Menoza gives a more nuanced understanding of human entertainments and joys, arguing that in God's wisdom it was not only the necessities that were created for humans, but also much that ‘delights and amuses the taste, the mind or the other senses’.Footnote ³⁵ The danger comes when these amusements become the primary focus, or a type of addiction which leads to what Menoza terms a half-life, or more correctly a half-death.Footnote ³⁶ The count acknowledges that his gambling is itself a type of theft, from his own tenants or farmers.Footnote ³⁷ In the end, the count, in distress over his misdeeds, seeks God's help and vows he will never gamble again.Footnote ³⁸ The episode ends with Menoza secretly paying off the count's gambling debt and gaining him as a travelling companion for a time.

The final convert is also a card player, this time a woman in Vienna. Pontoppidan describes her as a well-known card player with a heavily made-up face, but also as a zealously devout Catholic anxious for Menoza's soul. The conversation between them is presented as a theological examination of Menoza set up by the woman together with the Jesuits, whom she ensures are present. Menoza thus begins by portraying himself as a person who seeks only Christ and the truth, rather than thinking according to sectarian positions.Footnote ³⁹ The second section of the conversation is a debate over the eucharist, with Menoza seeming to catch out a Jesuit over the possibility that Christ was bodily present in a dual manner during the Last Supper. What is at stake here is the question of who has the right to read and interpret the Bible, and the role of reason in such interpretation. A second meeting a few days later between Menoza and the lady leads to a more personal conversation. He suggests that her blind trust in religious authorities is a type of superstition. A condensed catechesis follows about the narrow path of following Christ, and the lady is brought to tears. She confesses how earlier her confessor suppressed her doubts and she sobs that ‘all her existence has hitherto been of the world and not of the Father, who by his word of truth gives us birth as new creatures’.Footnote ⁴⁰ Menoza leaves Vienna not long afterwards, but expresses the hope that the lady has been led towards conversion to the truth.

There are marks of sorrow and distress present in all four of these episodes. Menoza and the young lady are both afflicted in a physical fashion, she being confined to bed and he with an illness. Each conversion involves an element of education: Menoza's is understandably the most extensive, but the conversation with the count, who is explicitly described as having received a thoroughly Christian upbringing, also contains a didactic section detailing the pleasures permitted to Christians, such as the enjoyment of natural beauty, and explaining the reasons why certain types of ‘play’ are forbidden: they generally lead to some form of addiction, accompanied by anger or jealousy.Footnote ⁴¹ The three European episodes each serve as a condemnation of Christian hypocrisy. The young lady's conversion is the most explicit, for she calls her previous existence hypocritical, even though her mother declares she has been a model of piety. The Viennese lady's vanity and gambling are tacitly shown to be at odds with her apparent outward piety, but Menoza goes even further, declaring that she is not yet a true Christian.Footnote ⁴² Similarly, the count's ostensibly pious intentions stand in conflict with his actions.Footnote ⁴³

All these conversions resonate most clearly with the teachings included under the topic of baptism in Pontoppidan's catechism. This defines conversion or repentance: ‘to convert is to know deeply, feel, repent and hate the sins one has committed, yes, all the perversity of one's sinful nature, and inwardly to long for God's grace in Christ, and soberly to intend to improve one's life’.Footnote ⁴⁴ Later in the same section, Pontoppidan explicitly denies the possibility of conversion without regret or shame. True regret for sins is, he says, ‘a spiritual pain and sadness that crushes the heart, which will probably sting and even bring tears to the sinner's eyes now and then’.Footnote ⁴⁵ In Menoza, these teachings take shape through the characters.

Despite Menoza's sickness, which precedes that ‘sweet taste of grace’ and his baptism, his story is not primarily one of repentance. Trygve Skarsten has described Menoza as the perfect pietist post-conversion,Footnote ⁴⁶ but from the beginning his journey is characterized differently from that of the other converts. Menoza longs for GodFootnote ⁴⁷ and is described as ‘asking the way to heaven’.Footnote ⁴⁸ In his story, his imperfect or incomplete knowledge acts as his sin, and thus as a source of sorrow.Footnote ⁴⁹ However, the themes of repentance and sorrow are rather more clearly found in the stories of the Christian conversions, or reconversions.

Pontoppidan's novel thus allows him to explore a type of noble savage drawn by, and longing for, God.Footnote ⁵⁰ There is an element of idealization in Menoza's catechesis which makes it possible for Pontoppidan to present large sections of his catechism in the opening chapters. However, this approach, set up in the novel as a search for truth, sets aside some of the moral instruction found in the catechism, although the theme of disdaining hypocritical behaviour is found in both works. In the novel, such behaviour is generally that of others and not Menoza's. The other converts offer something different to their readers, rectifying this omission in Menoza's story. They warn his audience that to be a true Christian, it is not enough to be baptized and confirmed. In a variety of ways, these figures reveal how Christendom has betrayed the true understanding of what it is to be a Christian. They offer a framework for conversion, a type of pietist cultural education.

Of course, this reading of Menoza is dependent on the assumption that readers have turned to the novel as a source of moral instruction and devotional engagement.Footnote ⁵¹ One must ask whether Pontoppidan's work had an audience who viewed the text in this fashion. Several editions include forewords which, if not revealing readers’ attitudes and reading patterns, suggest that editors often saw Menoza as a devotional or edifying text. Pontoppidan's own address to the reader of Menoza is entitled ‘a few words for useful consideration by the sensible reader’.Footnote ⁵² It explores the theme of truth as single (that is, there is only one truth) and thus strong and enduring, compared to the multiplicity intrinsic to lies. This is an interesting beginning to a fictional narrative, which contains a variety of conversion stories, suggesting that for Pontoppidan fiction is not inimical to the truth. Pontoppidan also decries the many contemporary Danish writings that he feels promote the ‘false words of Satan’ which deceive and confuse the simple, observing that ‘one of the most ancient ways to teach is to portray truth, not only in clear, dry and bare rules, but also, for the sake of our make-up as human beings, through examples, stories, parables and fables, which catch the eye quickly and yet remain longest in the memory’.Footnote ⁵³ For the author, then, these ideas represent the novel's ‘foundation, method and context’.Footnote ⁵⁴

The 1931 Norwegian translation of Menoza gives some indication of the reputation of the novel nearly two centuries later. The publisher helpfully informs readers that the novel ‘is especially lively and interesting and has therefore been widely read up to the present … . It contains Christian wisdom of enduring worth and is a lovely memorial of the rich spiritual life of pietism at its best.’Footnote ⁵⁵ A similar vein of thought is also expressed in the Danish edition of 1860, albeit with a slightly more critical edge:

The publisher, Vilhelm Birkedal, also recognizes that the novel has been well loved.Footnote ⁵⁷ If the novel had ceased to be read for its devotional value in Denmark, in Norway it seems to have retained some of its reputation for Christian insight. Pontoppidan himself certainly viewed his work as Christian pedagogy and his own foreword was included alongside that of later publishers. Moreover, both later forewords suggest that the novel remained well regarded and widely read.

Menoza, however, receives little attention in Danish literary or theological studies. This is unfortunate since the novel contains fascinating insights into how pietists spoke about and imagined conversion, besides its pages upon pages of contemporary cultural commentary. Discussing another edifying Scandinavian Christian novel, Squire Adamson, Mark Safstrom writes:

The later Menoza forewords hint at a similar reception and reading audience.Footnote ⁵⁹

Moreover, Menoza is significant because an understanding of the culture and roots of pietism has import beyond Scandinavian church and cultural history. Historians of anglophone evangelicalism, Mark Noll and Bruce Hindmarsh, have praised the work of the British historian W. R. Ward for rewriting the history of evangelicalism by attending to German history and historical scholarship, especially regarding pietism.Footnote ⁶⁰ If Scandinavian pietism was not as influential on the British evangelical movement, the links between American evangelicalism and Scandinavian pietism via the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish immigrant communities nonetheless deserve to be explored more thoroughly.

This article has touched only briefly on the way in which the fictional narrative offers a variety of lenses through which Pontoppidan's teaching on conversion can be viewed. A more in-depth study of Menoza might demonstrate more fully how Pontoppidan uses the novel to surpass the pedagogical limitations of his catechism, particularly regarding pietistic concerns about conversion or new birth. Might the narrative form be more fitting than a catechism to accomplish a pedagogical or edifying purpose?Footnote ⁶¹ In addition, although Pontoppidan's work is fictional, it might benefit from consideration in the light of recent scholarship on conversion narratives and autobiographies from the early modern era, particularly among English evangelicals, Moravians, and Dutch and German pietists.Footnote ⁶² Understanding how readers might have been expected to engage and learn from such narratives may offer insights into how Menoza as a narrative might have been received by its audience. On the fictional side, rather than comparing Menoza to Christian allegorical works such as Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress or P. P. Waldenström's Squire Adamson, its educational methods might be understood better when it is placed alongside other didactic novels. Pontoppidan owned a copy of the early modern French didactic novel Les Aventures de Télémaque (The Adventures of Telemachus), and a publication list from the 1880 Horsens edition of Menoza reveals numerous Norwegian translations of nineteenth-century Christian historical novels for children, for which there was clearly a demand.Footnote ⁶³ Perhaps the publisher recognized that Menoza fitted within this category.

Edifying or devotional literature and reading ought not to be a pejorative label describing a genre which is often viewed as not deserving scholarly attention.Footnote ⁶⁴ If Menoza has often been considered in this way, this article represents an attempt to rectify this by using the novel to open a window into the educational aspirations of pietism as a distinct cultural and religious movement. The novel has been seen to be, not merely an edifying work – as if edification was only a vapid sort of encouragement – but a work of education and formation. By reading Menoza as a catechetical work, the story operates on a meta-level: Menoza the character, on his quest for true Christians within the narrative, facilitates the building up of those who read the narrative as true Christians. Pontoppidan demonstrates for his readers an ideal process of catechesis for Menoza that mirrors his own catechism, but also introduces or reinforces the religious culture and emotionality of Danish pietism within a theological framework. The didactic sections of the novel are never devoid of certain fitting emotional responses, which are not themselves the purpose of the work, but rather witnesses to a changed life.Footnote ⁶⁵ Read as a source of religious authority, the novel supplies both a ‘how to’ manual on becoming a true converted Christian for those not yet ‘reborn’ and encouragement for those who might see their own experiences mirrored in the characters. Given Pontoppidan's emphasis on daily renewal, it should not be surprising that Menoza can be positioned as a second catechism, a fictional account of a continuing process of education or re-education. Pontoppidan's audience (the children of God) always stand in need of such aids in this present life.