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Although Moravians have traditionally been considered good record-keepers, substantial amounts of documents were destroyed during the decades between 1760 and 1810. When the Unity Archives was founded as the central archives for the worldwide Moravian Church in 1764, a group of specially appointed “revisers” sifted through the material and destroyed documents that did not fit the reinvented image of the Moravian Church of the post-Zinzendorf era. By controlling the content of their archives, Moravians tried to manipulate the historiography of their church. As this article will argue, the work of the Moravian archivist was not invisible; on the contrary, the archivist edited the surviving record.

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Moravian ideas on sexuality have been studied in depth in recent years. Most of these studies, however, are written from a theological perspective and do not necessarily deal with questions as to how these ideas were implemented in Moravian communities, or how ordinary Moravians experienced the sexual practice propagated by their leaders. A careful reading of Moravian texts as well as of the writings of non-Moravians, combined with letters written by Moravians about their first sexual experiences, will help answer these questions. This article will give insight into what ordinary Moravians thought of the marital theology into which they were instructed and how they perceived the church's control over their sexual activities.