6

Confessionalization

Ute Lotz-Heumann

In the 1982 Reformation Europe: Guide to Research, James M. Kittelson wrote a chapter entitled “The Confessional Age: The Late Reformation in Germany,” in which he called the research situation with regard to the second half of the sixteenth century “a virtual wasteland.”¹ That situation has since changed dramatically, not least as a result of the influence of the concept of confessionalization introduced by Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling in books and articles published in the early and mid-1980s. This concept has shifted historiographical interest from its emphasis on the early Reformation toward the second half of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Between 1986 and 1995, three volumes on Reformed (Calvinist), Lutheran, and Catholic confessionalization appeared that set the scene for a lively historiographical debate.² From the beginning, the concept of confessionalization had been met with positive reception as well as strong criticism, which has grown over time. The critique of the concept is closely connected with the move away from societal history (Gesellschaftsgeschichte) and structural history toward microhistory and cultural history. This essay will first give an overview of the genesis and contents of the concept of confessionalization. The second part will explain the historiographical critique that has resulted from an intensive discussion of the concept as well as its application to different case studies. The third and final part will explore the question of future directions for the field and argue that a more flexible concept of confessionalization can still serve as a useful research tool.

Development of the Concept of Confessionalization

In nineteenth-century German historiography, not least through the influence of Leopold von Ranke, the terms Reformation and Gegenreformation were established and came to be understood as two distinct historical periods in the sixteenth century. Gegenreformation was translated into other languages (as, for example, “Counter-Reformation,” “contre-réforme,” “Controriforma,” “Contrareforma”) and spread in European historiography. However, as Counter-Reformation implies a mere reaction to Protestantism and neglects the aspect of reform within Catholicism, the term was repeatedly criticized.³ Responding to this state of affairs, the Catholic theologian Hubert Jedin in 1946 suggested the compromise terminology “Catholic reform and Counter-Reformation,” which has remained influential in historical research ever since.⁴

In 1958, the Catholic historian Ernst Walter Zeeden suggested a new approach. He stressed that in the second half of the sixteenth century, the major creeds developing out of medieval Christianity—Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism—started to build modern, clearly defined confessional churches, which centered on written confessions of faith. Zeeden called this process “confession-building” or “confessional formation” (Konfessionsbildung), a neutral term that could be applied to all churches.⁵

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, two historians of the next generation, Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling, from Catholic and Protestant backgrounds respectively, widened the concept of confession-building into “confessionalization.” While Reinhard developed the concept of confessionalization from his criticism of the negative and antimodern implications of the term Counter-Reformation, Schilling developed the paradigm out of his research on the interactions of Calvinism and Lutheranism in northwestern Germany.⁶

The Concept of Confessionalization

How do Schilling and Reinhard conceptionalize confessionalization? They see it as a paradigm of societal history (Gesellschaftsgeschichte). In their view, the religious and ecclesiastical developments of the early modern period, in particular the confessional divisions, deeply affected society and politics as well. The concept of confessionalization thus proceeds from the general observation that during the Middle Ages and the early modern period, the religious and the secular, church and state, were closely linked. As a consequence, Reinhard and Schilling stress the connections between confession-building and state formation, processes that could interact in different ways. According to Reinhard and Schilling, confessionalization in most cases “enabled states and societies to integrate more tightly.”⁷ When medieval Christianity was broken up by the Reformation, the principle cuius regio, eius religio (whose territory, his religion), which had been established in the Holy Roman Empire by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, was enforced by the German princes in their territories, resulting in the creation of unified confessional states. Reinhard and Schilling see confessionalization as the first phase of early modern state formation and social disciplining (Sozialdisziplinierung).⁸ As a result, one aspect of the original formulation of the concept, that of opposition and conflict, has taken a backseat: “confessionalization could also provoke confrontation with religious and political groups fundamentally opposed to this…integration of state and society.”⁹

In contrast to the older historiography, Reinhard and Schilling stress parallel developments and “functional similarities”¹⁰ between the confessional churches. Instead of the differences in doctrine and ritual, the concept of confessionalization focuses on the comparative aspects between the confessional churches: the aim of confessional homogenization, or maybe even the Christianization of popular religion; the connection between confession-building and state formation; the confessional churches’ contribution to the process of social disciplining; the development of cultural and political—often national—identities in which the confessional factor played a key role. Reinhard and Schilling have also introduced a new terminology. The terms traditionally used by German historians to describe the developments of the three confessional churches in the second half of the sixteenth and at the beginning of the seventeenth centuries—Catholic reform/Counter-Reformation, Lutheran orthodoxy, and Second Reformation (for the introduction of Calvinism in Lutheran territories)—have been replaced by the parallel terms Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist (or Reformed) confessionalization.

All in all, Reinhard and Schilling see confessionalization as “a fundamental process of society, which had far-reaching effects upon the public and private life of individual European societies.”¹¹ They assume that the process of confessionalization affected all areas of life, from the state and its institutions to gender relations and personal lives. In addition, Reinhard and Schilling emphasize the modernizing impetus of the process of confessionalization. In order to contradict the antimodern implications of the term Counter-Reformation, Reinhard stresses the intentional and unintentional modernizing effects of Tridentine reform, for instance the rationality of the Jesuits. Schilling rejects the established notion that the Reformation was the decisive turning point toward the modern age, holding rather that the age of confessionalization brought about deep-rooted changes on the way to modernity. For example, in his view, the social control exercised by church and state led to a modern, disciplined society. Moreover, because the process of confessionalization resulted in war and destruction, reducing confessional formation to absurdity, confessionalization eventually resulted in secularization.

Reinhard and Schilling have put different emphases in their definitions of confessionalization. Schilling has developed a periodization for the process of confessionalization in the Holy Roman Empire between the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 and the Thirty Years’ War.¹² He defines four phases. The first is the “preparatory phase,” from the late 1540s until the early 1570s. Although confessions of faith had already been formulated in the Reformation period, during this time, the Augsburg peace system was still functioning; however, Tridentine reform and Calvinism entered the empire and made the confessional situation more precarious. The second phase, the 1570s, brought the “transition to confessional confrontation.” After the conflicts within Lutheranism following Martin Luther’s death in 1546, the Lutheran concord movement once again defined Lutheranism unambiguously through the Formula of Concord of 1577 and the Book of Concord of 1580–81. As a result, Lutheran orthodoxy was defined in clear contrast to Calvinism, and Protestant princes were increasingly forced to choose between Lutheranism and Calvinism. In this phase, Catholicism also became more dynamic as princes and prince bishops embraced the Tridentine decrees and introduced the Jesuit order to their lands. This period marked the onset of a “pressure for confessionalization” (Zwang zur Konfessionalisierung), a phrase coined by Reinhard.¹³ The third phase, the “apogee of confessionalization,” occurred between the 1580s and the 1620s. Several German princes became Calvinist during this period, the concord movement was vibrant in Lutheran Germany, and Tridentine Catholicism had become a major force in Catholic territories. These developments took place against a political background increasingly characterized by confrontation and conflict on all levels of imperial politics. The new generation of politicians was clearly lacking a will for compromise. Pope Gregory XIII introduced his calendar reform in 1582, but Protestants in the empire did not accept the new calendar until 1699/1700. Even time had become confessionalized. Schilling describes the fourth phase as “the end of confessionalization under the conditions of war and in the basis of the Peace of Westphalia.” This last period began in the 1620s when people realized that confessional conflict led to destruction and devastation. As a result, irenicism and new religious movements such as Pietism were on the rise.

Wolfgang Reinhard has identified seven methods or mechanisms of confessionalization used by church and state to establish confessional homogeneity and to implement the cuius regio, eius religio principle.¹⁴ First, the establishment of pure doctrine and its formulation in a confession of faith: this meant distinguishing one confessional church from other churches and eliminating possible sources of confusion. Second, the distribution and enforcement of these new norms, for example through confessional oaths and subscription. In this way, the religious orthodoxy of personnel in key positions—for instance theologians, clergy, teachers, midwives, and secular officials—was to be ensured and “dissidents” were to be removed. Third, propaganda and censorship, meaning, on the one hand, using the printing press for propaganda purposes and preventing rival churches and religious movements from making use of the printing press on the other hand. Although scholars used controversial theology as a propaganda weapon, catechesis, preaching, and processions (in the Catholic Church) were used to influence the people. All confessional churches practiced censorship, the most famous being the Roman index, the index librorum prohibitorum. Fourth, internalization of the new norms through education: by founding new educational institutions, especially universities, the confessional churches wanted to keep their flock from attending rivaling institutions and to indoctrinate future generations. Fifth, disciplining the people: visitations and church discipline were used in order to create a confessionally homogenous population. The expulsion of confessional minorities also served as a means to this end. Sixth, rites and control of participation in rites: in view of the importance of rites for the coherence of the confessional group, participation in rites like baptism and marriage was ensured through the keeping of registers. Rites that served as markers of confessional differences were cultivated in particular. Seventh, the confessional regulation of even language: this is a field in which little research has been done so far. As an example, Reinhard mentions Christian names: while saints’ names were particularly appealing to Catholics, they were forbidden in Geneva, with Calvinists preferring names from the Old Testament.

Historiography of the Concept of Confessionalization

The discussions about and critique of the concept of confessionalization fall broadly within six categories:¹⁵ (1) the discussion about the periodization of the confessionalization process; (2) macrohistorical criticism of confessionalization as a fundamental process of society; (3) the critique of confessionalization as a modernization process; (4) the controversy about the neglect of the characteristics of the confessional churches; (5) the microhistorical critique of the “top-to-bottom approach” or “etatistic narrowing” of the concept of confessionalization; and (6) criticism or suggestions for modifications of the concept resulting from research on early modern countries and regions outside of Germany.

Periodization of the Confessionalization Process

With regard to periodization, even Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling are not in agreement. As seen above, Schilling has proposed a periodization of confessionalization in Germany that spans the period between the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 and the Thirty Years’ War. In contrast, Reinhard has extended the confessionalization process much further, although he has not suggested a detailed periodization. He sees the beginning of the age of confessionalization in the 1520s with the development of written confessions of faith and the Confessio Augustana of 1530 as a first climax of this process. And he argues that the Thirty Years’ War was not the end point of confessionalization, but that this came only with the expulsion of the Salzburg Protestants in 1731–32, which was, according to Reinhard, the last confessionally motivated act of expulsion in the Holy Roman Empire.¹⁶ In Reinhard’s view, therefore, the age of confessionalization is understood as a longue durée process; however, he also defines Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed confessionalization as developments that were largely chronologically parallel.¹⁷

With Reinhard and Schilling not agreeing on periodization, it is not surprising that later historians have presented very different opinions. Harm Klueting, for instance, argues in favor of 1525 as the end of the Reformation as a popular movement and thus the beginning of confessionalization as a state-sponsored process.¹⁸ Similarly, Erika Rummel has argued that the confessionalization of humanism had already begun in the 1520s.¹⁹ Other historians have rejected the idea of a parallel development of the confessional churches. The Catholic historian Walter Ziegler, for instance, argues that the Catholic Church was in a special position because of its unbroken continuity with the medieval period.²⁰ The Protestant church historian Thomas Kaufmann stresses the importance of the Protestant Reformation as an upheaval and turning point in early modern society that will be underestimated if the development of the three confessional churches is regarded as parallel.²¹ Studies on early modern Catholicism, in particular, have shown that the process of confessionalization did not end with the Thirty Years’ War. In their works on Catholic areas in Germany, Marc Forster, Werner Freitag, and Andreas Holzem have made very clear that Catholic confessionalization was a vibrant process after 1650 and far into the eighteenth century.²² As a result, collections of essays have now also begun to extend the framework of confessionalization at least until the beginning of the eighteenth century.²³

Criticism of Confessionalization

as a Fundamental Process of Society

From the very beginning, historians have doubted Schilling’s and Reinhard’s thesis that the role of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was so important that confessionalization was a fundamental process of society. Scholars have identified numerous elements and developments in the age of confessionalization that were unconfessional or could not be confessionalized, such as Roman law and many aspects of matrimonial law, the mystic-spiritual tradition, alchemy, and astrology. As Anton Schindling has pointed out, the boundaries of the concept of confessionalization in today’s research are thus defined by those areas of early modern life that were not affected by confessionalization.²⁴ In addition, as Hartmut Lehmann and others have stressed, popular religion and the influence of other processes like the “little ice age” on popular religion have not yet been sufficiently analyzed to gauge the relationship between confessionalization and other processes in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century society.²⁵

Winfried Schulze, one of the earliest critics of the concept of confessionalization, has also argued that many historical subjects and processes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries existed independent of, and can therefore be described without reference to, confessionalization. He holds that Reinhard and Schilling have overestimated the “pressure for confessionalization.” Schulze stresses ideas and phenomena of tolerance and religious freedom, but also those of skepticism and unbelief as well as secularized ideas of peace in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In his opinion, this period was marked by pluralization and paved the way for secularization, rather than being characterized by confessionalization.²⁶ This critique has been reinforced from the point of view of the history of law. Martin Heckel and Michael Stolleis have stressed aspects like the secularization of imperial law and the “detheologizing of politics” by political theorists and lawyers.²⁷ Rudolf Schlögl has argued that confessionalization as such was not a fundamental process. Rather, proceeding from system theory, he sees confessionalization only as a symptom of a more far-reaching fundamental process in society, in which the form of differentiation of society gradually changed from the preeminence of social hierarchy with the nobility at the top into independent spheres of social action such as the state and the church.²⁸

Confessionalization as a Modernization Process

Reinhard’s and Schilling’s view of confessionalization as a modernization process has also come under criticism. While authors like Schulze and Schlögl do not doubt that a modernization process took place in the early modern period, even if they do not see confessionalization as being at the forefront of modernization, other historians doubt the concept of modernization altogether. They regard this thesis as an expression of the historiography of the 1970s, when German historians proceeded on the assumption that there was a teleological process of social change, moving toward improved social and political structures. Luise Schorn-Schütte has stressed that, because the notion of Western modernity has now been replaced by the idea of multiple modernities in which western civilization no longer plays a leading role, the modernization aspect of the concept of confessionalization can no longer be maintained.²⁹ A younger generation of scholars, therefore, is more skeptical about the long-term implications of processes in early modern church, state, and society and is more inclined to concentrate on the period and its characteristics as such.

Characteristics of Confessional Churches

Both Protestant and Catholic scholars (for example, Thomas Kaufmann and Walter Ziegler) have criticized the concept of confessionalization for ignoring the specific characteristics—the so-called propria—of the confessional churches in theology, piety, and spirituality.³⁰ Kaufmann regards the treatment of religion in the context of the paradigm of confessionalization as “functional-reductionist”:³¹ functional because the concept looks only at the function of religion within state and society and reductionist because the propria of the confessional churches are thus leveled. Already during the first symposium on Calvinist confessionalization in the Holy Roman Empire (held in 1985), participants argued that the concept of confessionalization did not sufficiently consider the characteristics of the Calvinist (Reformed) Church in Germany.³² Kaufmann, whose research focuses on the development of Lutheranism in the seventeenth century, has proposed the concept of Konfessionskulturen (confessional cultures) as an alternative to confessionalization. He concentrates on the “internal perspective” of the confessions and looks at how a confessional church variously shaped social and cultural life. His emphasis on diversity in Lutheran confessional culture, rather than uniformity, has led him to introduce a new term, binnenkonfessionelle Pluralität (inner-confessional plurality).³³

Confessionalization and State Formation

Younger historians have also expressed doubts about the close connection between confessionalization and state formation postulated by Reinhard and Schilling. This point of criticism impinges on the general debate about the relationship between macro- and microhistory, between societal history and cultural history in Germany. As noted above, Reinhard and Schilling proceed from the assumption that confessionalization was decisively influenced by the early modern state and was therefore a top-to-bottom process; state and church worked together to confessionalize and discipline the people. However, historians have increasingly drawn attention to conflict and resistance to confessionalization by the estates, the nobility, local officials, clergymen, burghers, and the populace. For example, Werner Freitag has drawn attention to the Anhalt principalities, and Bodo Nischan has shown how conflict-ridden confessionalization really was in seventeenth-century Brandenburg.³⁴

Luise Schorn-Schütte has stressed that confessionalization from above did not automatically take effect below; confessional disciplining measures by state and church failed more often than not. Thus, according to Schorn-Schütte, the concept of confessionalization has been shown to be a self-fulfilling prophecy: it interprets intentions of disciplining and confessionalizing the population in early modern society as having been successful and as actually having influenced behavior, while in reality this did not happen.³⁵ Andreas Holzem, a Catholic church historian who has published a major study on the prince-bishopric of Münster, has also drawn attention to the interaction between confessionalization from above and the reactions and the processes of appropriation and rejection in the local communities. However, in contrast to Schorn-Schütte, he concludes that by the eighteenth century confessionalization measures eventually had a disciplining effect on the population, if only partially.³⁶

Territories of mixed confessional makeup or with a weak state have proven to be suitable test cases for critiquing the concept of confessionalization. For example, Marc Forster has drawn attention to the bishopric of Speyer and other smaller Catholic territories in southwestern Germany, where the communities developed a Catholic identity from below without much influence either by Tridentine reform or by confessionalization measures instituted by the state.³⁷ Confessional cultures and identities could, therefore, develop without confessionalization from above. In a collection of essays on the duchy of Berg, a multiconfessional region in northwestern Germany, the concept of confessionalization as a successful top-to-bottom process is also called into question. Because Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists coexisted in the region, the etatistic version of confessionalization can clearly not be applied to this case. However, the editors of the volume, Stefan Ehrenpreis and Burkhard Dietz, have interpreted confessional formation on the local level, which resulted in many conflicts among communities, as competing processes of confessionalization from below.³⁸

The European Perspective: Modifications

of the Concept of Confessionalization

Suggestions to modify the concept of confessionalization have also been put forward by historians working on European countries other than Germany. From a microhistorical viewpoint as well as from the perspective of research into the workings of church discipline in the early modern period, Heinrich Richard Schmidt has criticized the etatistic focus and overestimation of the role of the state in the concept of confessionalization. Drawing on his research on church courts (Chorgerichte) in the rural communities of the Reformed territory of Berne, Schmidt concluded that successful social disciplining—if it existed at all—was not due to pressure from state and church, but rather was based on mechanisms of self-regulation and self-disciplining in the village communities. Although Schmidt does not deny that there were pressures toward confessionalization from above, he argues that the process of confessionalization could be successful only if it fit in with the need for regulation within society.³⁹ Randolph Head has also used a Swiss territory, Graubünden, as a case study to test the concept of confessionalization. He comes to the conclusion that, although the state “was absent,” confessional identities emerged in Graubünden which were strong enough to disrupt the “power communal solidarity created by the Bündner political system.” Head formulates three conclusions: first, “agents besides institutional states or churches could have instigated the confessionalization process”; second, “confessional conflict became an arena for carrying out underlying struggles that derived from both internal and exogenous forces”; and third, “confessionalization…may have been only one version of a broader process of social and ideological transformation.”⁴⁰

The aspects of agency beyond state and church and of confessionalization from below have proven to be an important modification or supplement when the concept of confessionalization is applied to other European case studies. For example, Olaf Mörke has made clear that the concept cannot be applied to the Dutch Republic as a whole because it was a multiconfessional state and because—by early modern European standards—it was very tolerant. However, Mörke drew attention to the fact that in the Netherlands, it was the individual religious communities that experienced processes of confessionalization. Although the Netherlands do not fit the etatistic model, this does not mean that processes of confessionalization did not take place there.⁴¹ Similar results have been presented by historians working on east central Europe, notably Winfried Eberhard, who has shown that the German model of confessionalization from above cannot beapplied to these territories. Rather, confessionalization processes in east central Europe took place in a multiconfessional framework and were thus regionalized and localized. In addition, they were not initiated centrally by the state, but by the estates or, as Michael G. Müller has shown regarding Gdask, Elblag, and Toru, by urban elites.⁴²

Historians have also increasingly discussed the application of the concept of confessionalization to France. Philip Benedict, James Farr, Gregory Hanlon, and Mack Holt⁴³ have concluded that the “strong theory of confessionalization”, which postulates that state-building and confessionalization were mutually reinforcing processes, cannot be applied to France. However, a “weak theory of confessionalization” is regarded as a useful research tool for the French case: in Benedict’s words, the weak theory “defines confessionalization as a process of rivalry and emulation by which the religions that emerged from the upheavals of the Reformation defined and enforced their particular versions of orthodoxy and orthopraxy, demonized their rivals, and built group cohesion and identity.” In terms of the role of the state, different views have been put forward. On the one hand, Benedict argues that “France’s wars of religion…illustrate how the division of Christendom into rival confessions could bring even the era’s strongest states to the very brink of dissolution.”⁴⁴ On the other hand, Farr has observed that, if the time frame is broadened to 1530 through 1685 and if confessionalization is understood as an intention of state policy and not necessarily as a success, “then we can see that there was a relatively consistent state policy of catholicization”⁴⁵ in France.⁴⁶

For the cases of England and Scotland, Andrew Pettegree has also rejected the strong theory of confessionalization, arguing that “the process of confessionalism (Konfessionsbildung), the internal consolidation of the different confessions in parallel, competing churches, went forward strongly.”⁴⁷ My own research on Ireland has led to the conclusion that the development in Ireland is best described as a process of double or dual confessionalization. Ireland became biconfessional after the introduction of the Protestant Reformation because the majority of the population remained Catholic, which led to two competing confessionalization processes in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. While the Protestant process of confessionalization was state-sponsored, the Catholic process of confessionalization came from below, initiated by the traditional elites who used Parliament or rebellion to voice their demands.⁴⁸

All in all, it becomes clear that applying the concept of confessionalization to case studies of German territories and other European areas has resulted in some refinement—or redefinition—of the concept. Above all, it is striking that historians with very different specialties agree that there was hardly ever a successful connection between confession-building and state formation. Rather, different constellations have to be taken into account: confessionalizing intentions by the state with no or little success; different forms of resistance and opposition to state-sponsored processes of confessionalization; different agents such as estates, urban elites, and the populace; and above all, various forms of confession-building; and the formation of confessional identities independent of state influence. These last two points have inspired recent research,⁴⁹ so that on the one hand, religious communities like the Mennonites or the Jews, which (according to the original definition of the concept) were not considered to have gone through a process of confessionalization, have been described as confessionalized communities.⁵⁰ On the other hand, some authors have rejected the concept of confessional identity altogether.⁵¹

The question is: where do we go from here?

Future Directions

In the light of recent research, it is no longer possible to see confessionalization as a fundamental process of society, as a modernizing force, or as a process successfully integrating state-building and confessional formation. The result is a concept more limited in scope. And there is, of course, always the question whether and how far a theoretical concept can be redefined, supplemented, or handled more flexibly before there is nothing left of the original concept. However, the concept of confessionalization can still serve as a useful heuristic research tool.

It is of course true that questions about popular religiosity, about early modern religion as a phenomenon between individual experience and social communication, about religion as everyday practice, and so forth, can best be answered by employing methods of microhistory. These include thick description and the close analysis of ego-documents and sources that provide glimpses of the everyday life of early modern common people. However, in this way, history and history-writing run the danger of becoming fragmented. Therefore, if we still wish to attempt comparative approaches beyond individual case studies, look at structures, ask macrohistorical questions, and examine long-term developments, the concept of confessionalization can help us do so. By integrating the discussion of political, social, and cultural developments in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this concept enables us to see, for example, possible connections among these different spheres.

Confessionalization also has the advantage of being defined as a process. Thus, “confessionalization” is not the same as “confessionalism” (as it is sometimes translated into English). The term “confessionalization” draws attention to the developments that led to confession-building and the construction of confessional cultures and identities by different agents. Moreover, the development of confessional propria, of different confessional cultures, was an essential ingredient of confessionalization as a process of confessional differentiation. Applying the concept of confessionalization should therefore entail analyzing parallels between, as well as specifics of, the early modern confessional churches and cultures; for example, parallel strategies could be effected by different means. In this context, the methods of confessionalization identified by Wolfgang Reinhard remain useful as a guideline. At the same time, new research—and in particular new case studies—can identify other methods of confessionalization and gauge their effectiveness, as well as discuss and categorize the reactions and possible strategies of avoidance they provoked.

Scholars now know that opposition to centralized state-building and confessionalization from above was widespread, possibly even universal, in early modern Europe. We have also come to realize that confessional conflicts and confessional cultures could be the result of local and regional developments, rather than of state influence from above. As a consequence, the relationship between state formation and confession-building as part of the concept of confessionalization must be construed much more flexibly. First, opposition and resistance to measures by state and church must move to the forefront of research. Second, we must ask whether even measures from above that were not effective did in fact have unintended effects: even if such measures remained only declarations of intent, they were perceived as potentials or threats to which people may have reacted in some way. Third, we will have to look away from the question of “success and failure” of confessionalization altogether and look instead at different agents and their interests in the process of confessionalization. Social formations like confessional churches, cultures, or identities could, after all, only come into being and continue to exist if they were reinforced again and again through interaction and communication. As research into the state is also changing, so that the early modern state is seen not as an entity but as fragmented into different agents, it becomes possible to look at various agents and their interests in state and society and thus at the role of individuals and different social groups. Consequently, a microhistory of the state can be combined with a microhistory of social and cultural phenomena to describe the process of confessionalization as one of conflict, negotiation, and accommodation. Fourth, such a modified approach raises, among others, the question of horizontal confessionalization within social groups⁵² and of self-confessionalization, about which little is known so far. It is clear that elites on all levels of society played an important role in the process, but it is so far largely unknown how confessional identities and confessional cultures—on the eventual existence of which current research largely agrees—came into being.

Finally, research into the creation of confessional cultures and identities can profit from using confessionalization as a framework and research tool because the concept offers a wide approach. It integrates political, social, and cultural developments, analyzing their interaction, and as a developmental concept, it focuses on processes of cultural construction and (attempted) diffusion in society. Recent research has shown that the process of confessionalization extended far into the eighteenth century. Scholars can therefore ask questions like “What is the relationship between confessionalization and secularization?” again, but from a different angle—not as a macrohistorical thesis, but as a research problem that looks in detail at the processes and agents that constructed religious and secular meanings in the early modern period.

Bibliography

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