Nikolaus von Zinzendorf

Zinzendorf heads the Moravian community at Herrnhut, a movement Weber cites when tracking Pietism's ethical offshoots and their uneven relationship to capitalist conduct. His religion runs warm where Puritanism runs cold, and that very warmth raises the question Weber pursues: whether a faith organized around feeling can still produce the methodical, this-worldly asceticism that feeds economic rationalism. In the middle chapters he functions as a counterweight, showing that ascetic Protestantism had more than one temperament and that not every branch pointed toward the same worldly result.