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The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation
Alexandra Bamji, Geert H. Janssen, Mary Laven
Confessionalization
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Ute Lotz-Heumann
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2
Confessionalization
Ute Lotz-Heumann
‘Confession-building’ and ‘confessionalization’ as
alternative concepts to ‘Counter-Reformation’
The concept of ‘Catholic confessionalization’ is seen by its advocates as a replacement
for the term ‘Counter-Reformation’: ‘Counter-Reformation’ (Gegenreformation) and
‘Counter-Reformations’ (in the plural) have been used in German scholarship since
the later eighteenth century. In nineteenth-century Germany, the term became part
of the Kulturkampf: ‘Counter-Reformation’ was used by Protestant historians as
a negative and one-dimensional concept that stressed the aspect of reaction and
resistance to Protestantism and neglected that of reform within Catholicism. The
term was understandably shunned by Catholic historians. Even when the Protestant
historian Wilhelm Maurenbrecher introduced the term ‘Catholic Reformation’ in
1880, German historiography remained confessionally divided on the subject. The
term ‘Catholic Reformation’ appealed to Catholic historians because it offered them
the possibility of avoiding the term ‘Counter-Reformation’, with its problematic
connotation of a mere reaction to Protestantism. But it was rejected by Protestant
historians – largely because they did not want the term ‘Reformation’ to be used
for anything other than the Protestant Reformation. Protestant historians therefore
continued to use the term ‘Counter-Reformation’.1 Responding to this state of
affairs, Hubert Jedin, a Catholic church historian, wrote a short treatise in 1946
in which he described the conceptual and terminological problems of the terms
‘Counter-Reformation’ and ‘Catholic Reformation’ and suggested the compromise
terminology ‘Catholic reform and Counter-Reformation’.2
In 1958 the emphasis of historical research was changed fundamentally by the
Catholic historian Ernst Walter Zeeden, who suggested a completely new concept
For the preceding, see in more detail: H. Outram Evennett, The Spirit of the CounterReformation, ed. John Bossy (Cambridge, 1968); Hubert Jedin, Katholische Reformation oder
Gegenreformation? Ein Versuch zur Klärung der Begriffe nebst einer Jubiläumsbetrachtung über das
Trienter Konzil (Lucerne, 1946); John W. O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in
the Early Modern Period (Cambridge, MA, 2000); and Chapter 1 in this volume.
2
See Hubert Jedin, ‘Catholic Reformation or Counter-Reformation?’, in David M.
Luebke (ed.), The Counter-Reformation: The Essential Readings (Oxford, 1999), pp. 19–45.
1
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and terminology: Zeeden stressed that in the second half of the sixteenth century,
Catholicism, Lutheranism and Calvinism started to build modern, clearly defined
confessional churches, each of which centred on a confession of faith. He called this
process ‘confession-building’ (Konfessionsbildung), a neutral term which could be
applied to all churches.3 Two scholars of the next generation, Wolfgang Reinhard,
a historian of Catholic background, and Heinz Schilling, a historian of Protestant
background, developed Zeeden’s approach further. Reinhard and Schilling
introduced the concept of ‘confessionalization’.4
While Schilling developed the concept of confessionalization from his research on
the interactions of Calvinists and Lutherans in north-western Germany, Reinhard’s
main impetus in introducing the concept was to critique the negative and antimodern implications of the term ‘Counter-Reformation’. With social history being
the dominant influence in German historiography in the 1970s and 1980s, both
Reinhard and Schilling sought to make the early modern period, and early modern
religion in particular, part of a conversation that focused on social developments and
modernization theory. Therefore, both Reinhard and Schilling sought to broaden
Zeeden’s concept of ‘confession-building’, which was concerned with religious and
church history, into a concept of societal history (Gesellschaftsgeschichte). In their view,
the confessional divisions and conflicts in early modern Europe did not affect only
the areas of religion and the church, but the entire social and political system.
The concept of confessionalization: basic observations and
terminology
As Wolfgang Reinhard has put it, the concept of confessionalization proceeds from
four basic observations about sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. First,
‘ecclesiastical and political action still coincided if not entirely, then to a considerable
extent.’ Therefore, ‘“confessionalization” turns out to be an early phase of modern
European state formation, a phase found with remarkable regularity.’5 Second, by
engaging in confessionalizing policies, the state gained control not only over the church,
but was also able to foster a ‘national or territorial identity’ and, above all, to discipline
its subjects, making confessionalization ‘the first phase of what Gerhard Oestreich has
called the absolutist “imposition of social discipline”’.6 Third, as a result – and partly
3
See Ernst Walter Zeeden, ‘Grundlagen und Wege der Konfessionsbildung im Zeitalter
der Glaubenskämpfe’, Historische Zeitschrift, 185 (1958): 249–99.
4
For the most important articles in English by Reinhard and Schilling see the select
bibliography.
5
Wolfgang Reinhard, ‘Pressures towards Confessionalization? Prolegomena to a
Theory of the Confessional Age’, in C. Scott Dixon (ed.), The German Reformation: The Essential
Readings (Oxford, 1999), p. 172.
6
Reinhard, ‘Pressures towards Confessionalization?’, p. 183.
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Confessionalization
as an unintended consequence – of confessionalization, society became modernized,
for example through education and bureaucratic rationalization.7 And finally, because
these were parallel developments in all confessional states and churches, ‘the idea
that the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation were irreconcilable opposites and
consecutive historical phases can no longer be supported’, as Reinhard put it in a
programmatic article first published in 1983.8
In contrast to the older historiography, Reinhard and Schilling were not
primarily interested in the differences of doctrine and ritual between the
confessional churches, but applied a comparative approach which stresses parallel
developments and ‘functional similarities’.9 This has also led them to employ a
new terminology. The terms which were used by German historians to describe
the development of the three confessional churches – Catholic reform/CounterReformation, Second Reformation (for Calvinism) and Lutheran orthodoxy – were
replaced by the parallel terms Catholic, Calvinist (or Reformed) and Lutheran
confessionalization and the term ‘age of confessionalization’ or ‘confessional age’.10
Methods of confessionalization
Proceeding from his interpretation of Catholic confessionalization as a Europewide process, Wolfgang Reinhard has identified seven methods or mechanisms of
confessionalization which were used by church and state to establish confessional
homogeneity.11 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 and secular officials – was to be ensured,
and ‘dissidents’ were to be removed. Third: propaganda and censorship. This
meant making use of the printing press for propaganda purposes on the one
hand, and preventing rival churches from using the printing press on the other
hand. While the propaganda weapon of scholars was controversial theology,
catechisms, sermons and broadsheets were used to influence the masses. Fourth:
7
See Wolfgang Reinhard, ‘Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the Early Modern
State: A Reassessment’, in Luebke, Counter-Reformation, p. 120.
8
Reinhard, ‘Pressures towards Confessionalization?’, p. 173.
9
Heinz Schilling, ‘Confessionalization in the Empire: Religious and Societal Change
in Germany between 1555 and 1620’, in Heinz Schilling, Religion, Political Culture and the
Emergence of Early Modern Society: Essays in German and Dutch History (Leiden, 1992), p. 210.
10
See Wolfgang Reinhard, ‘Gegenreformation als Modernisierung? Prolegomena zu
einer Theorie des konfessionellen Zeitalters’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 68 (1977):
251–2; Schilling, ‘Confessionalization in the Empire’, pp. 209–10.
11
For the following, see Reinhard, ‘Pressures towards Confessionalization?’, pp. 177–82.
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internalization of the new confessional norms through education. By founding new
educational institutions, especially universities, all confessional churches hoped
to keep their flock from attending their rivals’ institutions and to ‘indoctrinate’
future generations. Fifth: disciplining the population. Visitations and church
discipline were used to create a confessionally homogeneous population. The
expulsion of confessional minorities also served as a means to this end. Sixth:
rites and the 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 monitored through the keeping of registers.12 In particular, rites
which served as markers of confessional difference were cultivated. Seventh and
lastly, Reinhard refers to the confessional regulation even of language, a field
in which little research has been done. As an example he mentions the fact that
Calvinists preferred names from the Old Testament while saints’ names were
particularly appealing to Catholics, these in turn being forbidden in Geneva.
Historiographical debates about the limits of the concept of
confessionalization
The debate about the concept of confessionalization began soon after Reinhard
and Schilling had published their programmatic books and articles in the late
1970s and early 1980s. The debate resulted in three conferences on Reformed,
Lutheran and Catholic confessionalization (which resulted in the publication of
three volumes of essays between 1986 and 1995) and a focal point in the Archiv für
Reformationsgeschichte in 2003, as well as a number of other collections of essays and
articles.13 The critiques of the concept of confessionalization fall roughly into four
categories: first, confessionalization as modernization; second, periodization of the
confessionalization process, especially Catholic confessionalization; third, a debate
about the blind spots of the concept in terms of the propria – the theologies and
religious rituals, the religious cultures and identities – of the confessional churches
and their flocks; and fourth, confessionalization as a fundamental process in society,
12
For an interpretation of these rites in light of recent scholarship, see Chapter 10.
See Heinz Schilling (ed.), Die reformierte Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland – Das Problem
der ‘Zweiten Reformation’ (Gütersloh, 1986); Hans-Christoph Rublack (ed.), Die lutherische
Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland (Gütersloh, 1992); Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling
(eds), Die katholische Konfessionalisierung (Gütersloh, 1995); James R. Farr, ‘Confessionalization
and Social Discipline in France, 1530–1685’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 94 (2003): 276–93;
Allyson M. Poska, ‘Confessionalization and Social Discipline in the Iberian World’, Archiv für
Reformationsgeschichte, 94 (2003): 308–19; John M. Headley, Hans J. Hillerbrand and Anthony
J. Papalas (eds), Confessionalization in Europe, 1555–1700. Essays in Memory of Bodo Nischan
(Aldershot, 2004), especially the chapters by Thomas A. Brady Jr. and Heinz Schilling. See also
the select bibliography.
13
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Confessionalization
in particular the question of the relationship between confessionalization and state
formation and the question of whether confessionalization can be characterized as
a top-to-bottom process.
First, Reinhard’s and Schilling’s view of confessionalization as a modernization
process has been criticized as an expression of the historiographical background
of Gesellschaftsgeschichte of the 1970s.14 More recent social and cultural history
has rejected the implications of modernization theory following Max Weber. As
a result, these teleological aspects of the concept of confessionalization can no
longer be maintained. Interestingly enough, however, the usage in historiography
of the term ‘Counter-Reformation’ as a neutral shorthand to refer to Catholicism
in the early modern period seems to indicate that the debate on the modernizing
effects of Catholic confessionalization – and Reinhard’s insistence on the equality
of the three processes of confessionalization – have had some effect; it seems that
the term ‘Counter-Reformation’ has been stripped of its negative connotations.
Historians who study early modern Catholicism seem to have banished from
their minds the implicit value judgements associated with the term which led
earlier generations of historians to shun its usage.15
Second, with regard to periodization, Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling
never did, in fact, agree on a time frame for the ‘age of confessionalization’ in
which, as they both stipulated, the confessional churches experienced similar
developments. Schilling has proposed a periodization of confessionalization in
Germany which spans the period between the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 and the
Thirty Years War.16 In contrast, Reinhard has extended the process of Catholic
confessionalization 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 he argues that the
Thirty Years War was not the end point of confessionalization. Rather, according
to Reinhard, Catholic confessionalization ended only with the expulsion of the
Salzburg Protestants in 1731–32.17 Regional studies, such as those by Werner Freitag
and Andreas Holzem on Westphalia, and by Mark Forster on the bishopric of
Speyer, have shown that Catholic confessionalization ‘really developed strongly
after 1650, after the so-called Age of Confessionalism was over. It appears that
14
See Luise Schorn-Schütte, ‘Konfessionalisierung als wissenschaftliches Paradigma?’,
in Joachim Bahlcke and Arno Strohmeyer (eds), Konfessionalisierung in Ostmitteleuropa.
Wirkungen des religiösen Wandels im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert in Staat, Gesellschaft und Kultur
(Stuttgart, 1999), pp. 63–77.
15
See, for example, Regina Pörtner, The Counter-Reformation in Central Europe: Styria
1580–1630 (Oxford, 2001); Ulrike Strasser, State of Virginity: Gender, Religion, and Politics in an
Early Modern Catholic State (Ann Arbor, MI, 2007).
16
See Schilling, ‘Confessionalization in the Empire’, pp. 210–32.
17
See Wolfgang Reinhard, ‘Was ist katholische Konfessionalisierung?’, in Wolfgang
Reinhard and Heinz Schilling (eds), Die katholische Konfessionalisierung (Gütersloh, 1995), p. 435.
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Catholics experienced confessionalization, but perhaps later than Protestants’.18
While Wolfgang Reinhard continues to insist on Catholic, Lutheran, and
Reformed confessionalization as chronologically parallel developments, Mark
Forster has pointed out the danger of such a strict periodization in the face of
strong empirical evidence to the contrary: ‘For historians of Catholic Germany
the chronological issue even threatened to bring back the notion of Catholic
backwardness’.19
Third, both Protestant and Catholic scholars, for example Thomas Kaufmann,
Walter Ziegler and John O’Malley, have criticized the concept of confessionalization
for ignoring the specific characteristics – the propria – of the confessional churches
in theology, piety and spirituality as well as lived religion in its many shapes and
forms. As John O’Malley writes: ‘But what about religion in and of itself – religion
not as political or social force but as a yearning for the transcendent or an experience
of it?’20 The treatment of religion in the concept of confessionalization has been
described a ‘functional-reductionist’; ‘functional’ because the concept looks only
at the function of religion within state and society and ‘reductionist’ because
the characteristics of the confessional churches are thus levelled.21 Initially, such
criticism was mostly voiced by church historians. However, in terms of research
output, this aspect of the critique of the concept of confessionalization has been
most effective in the current historiographical ‘growth areas’ of cultural history.
The term ‘confessional cultures’, first suggested by Thomas Kaufmann, has gained
wide traction among cultural historians, and we are seeing an increasing number
of studies on, for example, the visual and ritual aspects of confessional cultures as
well as space as a new category to explore confessional differences.22
18
Marc R. Forster, ‘Review of Ehrenpreis, Stefan; Lotz-Heumann, Ute, Reformation
und konfessionelles Zeitalter’, H-German, H-Net Reviews, April, 2005, http://www.h-net.
org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10402, accessed 31 January 2012. See also Werner Freitag,
Pfarrer, Kirche und ländliche Gesellschaft. Das Dekanat Vechta 1400–1803 (Bielefeld, 1998);
Andreas Holzem, Religion und Lebensformen. Katholische Konfessionalisierung im Sendgericht
des Fürstbistums Münster 1570–1800 (Paderborn, 2000).
19
Forster, ‘Review of Ehrenpreis/Lotz-Heumann’.
20
O’Malley, Trent and All That, p. 139. See also Thomas Kaufmann, ‘Die
Konfessionalisierung von Kirche und Gesellschaft. Sammelbericht über eine
Forschungsdebatte’, Theologische Literaturzeitung, 121 (1996): 1008–25, 1112–21; Walter
Ziegler, ‘Kritisches zur Konfessionalisierungsthese’, in Peer Frieß and Rolf Kießling (eds),
Konfessionalisierung und Region (Constance, 1999), pp. 41–53.
21
Kaufmann, ‘Die Konfessionalisierung von Kirche und Gesellschaft’, p. 1121.
22
See Thomas Kaufmann, ‘Einleitung: Transkonfessionalität, Interkonfessionalität,
binnenkonfessionelle Pluralität – Neue Forschungen zur Konfessionalisierungsthese’,
in Kaspar von Greyerz, Manfred Jakubowski-Tiessen, Thomas Kaufmann and Hartmut
Lehmann (eds), Interkonfessionalität – Transkonfessionalität – binnenkonfessionelle Pluralität.
Neue Forschungen zur Konfessionalisierungsthese (Gütersloh, 2003), p. 10; Thomas Kaufmann,
Anselm Schubert and Kaspar von Greyerz (eds), Frühneuzeitliche Konfessionskulturen
(Gütersloh, 2008); Volker Leppin and Ulrich A. Wien (eds), Konfessionsbildung und
Konfessionskultur in Siebenbürgen in der Frühen Neuzeit (Stuttgart, 2005); Susanne Wegmann
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Fourth, from the very beginning, historians have doubted Schilling’s and
Reinhard’s thesis that confessionalization was a fundamental social process
and have described phenomena and processes in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries which existed independent of or were largely or partially uninfluenced
by the process of confessionalization. Although acknowledging that religion was an
important factor, historians have identified elements and developments in the age
of confessionalization which were unconfessional or could not be confessionalized:
Roman law and many aspects of matrimonial law, the mystic-spiritual tradition,
alchemy, astrology and, at least in part, the humanist republic of letters.23
The question of a ‘fundamental process’ is closely related to another
controversial aspect of the concept of confessionalization: the relationship between
confessionalization and state formation. In recent historiography, a consensus
has emerged that Reinhard and Schilling have overemphasized the role of the
state in the process of confessionalization, thus interpreting it as a top-to-bottom
process in which the common people appear as subjects who were controlled
and disciplined by church and state. Although most scholars would not deny
that there were pressures toward confessionalization ‘from above’, they argue
that the process of confessionalization could only be successful if it found fertile
ground in society. Next to the authorities in the state and church, communities
and groups in society were agents in the process of confessionalization.
For example, in his study on the prince-bishopric of Münster, the Catholic
church historian Andreas Holzem has drawn attention to the interaction between
confessionalization ‘from above’ and the reactions and processes of appropriation
and rejection in the local communities. He concludes that by the eighteenth
century confessionalization measures eventually had a disciplining effect on the
population, if only partially.24 In this context, territories of mixed confessional
make-up and/or with a weak state have proven to be suitable ‘test cases’ for the
critique of the concept of confessionalization. Marc Forster has drawn attention
to the bishopric of Speyer and other smaller Catholic territories in south-western
Germany, where the communities developed a Catholic identity ‘from below’
without much influence either by Tridentine reform or by confessionalization
measures of the state. Confessional cultures and identities could, therefore,
and Gabriele Wimböck (eds), Konfessionen im Kirchenraum. Dimensionen des Sakralraums in
der Frühen Neuzeit (Korb, 2007); Will Coster and Andrew Spicer (eds), Sacred Space in Early
Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2005).
23
See Anton Schindling, ‘Konfessionalisierung und Grenzen von Konfessionalisierbarkeit’,
in Anton Schindling and Walter Ziegler (eds), Die Territorien des Reichs im Zeitalter der Reformation
und Konfessionalisierung. Land und Konfession 1500–1650 (Münster, 1997), vol. 7, pp. 9–44;
Winfried Schulze, ‘Konfessionalisierung als Paradigma zur Erforschung des konfessionellen
Zeitalters’, in Burkhard Dietz and Stefan Ehrenpreis (eds), Drei Konfessionen in einer Region.
Beiträge zur Geschichte der Konfessionalisierung im Herzogtum Berg vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert
(Cologne, 1999), pp. 15–30; Erika Rummel, The Confessionalization of Humanism in Reformation
Germany (Oxford, 2000); Arnoud S.Q. Visser, Reading Augustine in the Reformation: The Flexibility
of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500–1620 (Oxford, 2011).
24
See Holzem, Religion und Lebensformen.
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develop without confessionalization ‘from above’.25 In addition, Trevor Johnson
in his study of the Counter-Reformation in the Upper Palatinate has pointed
toward ‘the importance of cultural intermediaries, of parochial clergy, low-grade
officials … indicating the possibilities of recatholicization not just from above or
below but also “from the middle”’.26
The applicability of the concept of confessionalization to
other regions of Europe
The aspect of agency beyond state and church and of ‘confessionalization from
the middle and/or below’ has proven to be an important modification when the
concept of confessionalization is applied to European case studies. For example,
Randolph Head has 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 of communal solidarity created
by the Bündner political system’. As a consequence, Head formulates three
conclusions: ‘that agents besides institutional states or churches could have
instigated the confessionalization process’, that ‘confessional conflict became
an arena for carrying out underlying struggles that derived from both internal
and exogenous forces’ and ‘that confessionalization … may have been only one
version of a broader process of social and ideological transformation’.27
Similar results have been presented by historians of east central Europe.
Confessionalization processes in east central Europe, especially in Poland and
Bohemia, took place in a multiconfessional framework and were thus regionalized
and localized. In addition, they were not initiated centrally by the state, but by other
agents, for example the estates or urban elites.28 Scholars working on the Dutch
25
See Marc R. Forster, The Counter-Reformation in the Villages: Religion and Reform in
the Bishopric of Speyer, 1560–1720 (Ithaca, NY, 1992); see also Alexander Jendorff, Reformatio
Catholica. Gesellschaftliche Handlungsspielräume kirchlichen Wandels im Erzstift Mainz, 1514–
1630 (Münster, 2000).
26
Trevor Johnson, Magistrates, Madonnas and Miracles: The Counter Reformation in the
Upper Palatinate (Farnham, 2009), p. 9.
27
Randolph C. Head, ‘Catholics and Protestants in Graubünden: Confessional
Discipline and Confessional Identities without an Early Modern State?’, German History, 17
(1999): 341–2.
28
See Jörg Deventer, ‘“Confessionalisation” – a Useful Theoretical Concept for the
Study of Religion, Politics, and Society in Early Modern East-Central Europe?’, European
Review of History, 11 (2004): 403–25; Winfried Eberhard, ‘Voraussetzungen und strukturelle
Grundlagen der Konfessionalisierung in Ostmitteleuropa’, in Bahlcke and Strohmeyer (eds),
Konfessionalisierung in Ostmitteleuropa (Stuttgart, 1999), pp. 89–103; Howard Louthan, Converting
Bohemia: Force and Persuasion in the Catholic Reformation (Cambridge, 2009); Michael G. Müller,
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Republic have also argued that confessionalization processes were started and
shaped in local communities and that agents in the middle of society, like parish
priests and the urban middling sort, played an important role in these processes.29
In recent years, historians have also increasingly discussed the application of
the concept of confessionalization to France. Philip Benedict, James Farr, Gregory
Hanlon and Mack Holt have concluded that the ‘strong theory of confessionalization’,
which postulates that state-building and confessionalization were mutually
reinforcing processes, cannot be applied to France.30 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’.31 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’.32 On the other hand, Farr has observed that, if the
time frame is broadened to 1530–1685 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’ in France.33
‘Unionsstaat und Region in der Konfessionalisierung. Polen-Litauen und die großen Städte des
Königlichen Preußen’, in Bahlcke and Strohmeyer (eds), Konfessionalisierung in Ostmitteleuropa
(Stuttgart, 1999), pp. 123–37; Stefan Plaggenborg, ‘Konfessionalisierung in Osteuropa im 17.
Jahrhundert. Zur Reichweite eines Forschungskonzeptes’, Bohemia, 44 (2003): 3–28.
29
See Benjamin J. Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines: Confession and Community in Utrecht,
1578–1620 (Oxford, 1995); Olaf Mörke, ‘Die politische Bedeutung des Konfessionellen
im Deutschen Reich und in der Republik der Vereinigten Niederlande. Oder: War die
Konfessionalisierung ein “Fundamentalvorgang”?’, in Ronald G. Asch and Heinz Duchhardt
(eds), Der Absolutismus – ein Mythos? Strukturwandel monarchischer Herrschaft in West- und
Mitteleuropa (ca. 1550–1700) (Cologne, 1996), pp. 125–64; Judith Pollmann, Catholic Identity
and the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1520–1635 (Oxford, 2011).
30
See Philip Benedict, ‘Confessionalization in France? Critical Reflections and New
Evidence’, in Raymond A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer (eds), Society and Culture in the
Huguenot World 1559–1685 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 44–61; Farr, ‘Confessionalization and
Social Discipline in France’; Gregory Hanlon, Confession and Community in SeventeenthCentury France: Catholic and Protestant Coexistence in Aquitaine (Philadelphia, PA, 1993);
Mack P. Holt, ‘Confessionalization beyond the Germanies: The Case of France’, in Headley,
Hillerbrand and Papalas (eds), Confessionalization in Europe, 1555–1700 (Aldershot, 2004),
pp. 57–73.
31
Benedict, ‘Confessionalization in France?’, p. 48.
32
Benedict, ‘Confessionalization in France?’, p. 50.
33
Farr, ‘Confessionalization and Social Discipline in France’, p. 291. For discussions
of Italy and Spain see Kathleen M. Comerford, ‘Did Tuscan Dioceses Confessionalize in
the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries?’, Journal of Early Modern History, 7 (2003): 312–31;
Volker Reinhardt, ‘Rom im Zeitalter der Konfessionalisierung. Kritische Überlegungen zu
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Introducing fluidity into the concept of confessionalization
In my view, we need to introduce more methodological ‘fluidity’ into our analysis
of confessionalization in early modern Europe. By overstating their case and
generalizing the allegedly successful alliance of state and church in the early
modern period, Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling have often disregarded
the strength of resistance to state-sponsored confessionalization from all levels of
society. They have also largely eliminated the meandering of history, the importance
of analysing development and timing, from their narrative of confessionalization.
In hindsight, we as historians can describe how certain developments either gained
momentum or did not come to fruition. However, history, when it happens, is a
slow, meandering and, for contemporaries, open-ended development. Research
into confessionalization as a process has to take this seriously. Furthermore,
confessionalization should be understood as a process which was driven by
negotiations between different agents. These agents were individuals or social
groups, unified by similar aims and objectives. These agents included people who
drove the action or those who stood back and reacted to actions by others. And
finally, these agents included people who cooperated with or resisted a specific
agenda of confessionalization proposed or driven by other agents.
Confessionalization in Ireland: an overview
In my own work on Ireland, I have come to the conclusion that the development
in Ireland is best described as a process of ‘dual’ confessionalization.34 Although
Ireland did not experience a popular first Reformation in the early sixteenth century,
it entered a process of dual confessionalization from about 1580. Ireland became
biconfessional because the majority of the population rejected the haphazard
attempts by the English state to introduce the Protestant Reformation and remained
Catholic. This led to two competing processes of confessionalization in the late
einem Epochendeutungskonzept’, Zeitsprünge. Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit, 7 (2003):
1–18; Poska, ‘Confessionalization and Social Discipline’, pp. 308–19.
34
For the following, see Ute Lotz-Heumann, Die doppelte Konfessionalisierung in Irland.
Konflikt und Koexistenz im 16. und in der ersten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, 2000); Ute
Lotz-Heumann, ‘Confessionalization in Ireland: Periodization and Character, 1534–1649’,
in Alan Ford and John McCafferty (eds), The Origins of Sectarianism in Early Modern Ireland
(Cambridge, 2005), pp. 24–53; Ute Lotz-Heumann, ‘Between Conflict and Coexistence: The
Catholic Community in Ireland as a “Visible Underground Church” in the Late Sixteenth
and Early Seventeenth Centuries’, in Benjamin J. Kaplan et al. (eds), Catholic Communities in
Protestant States: Britain and the Netherlands, 1580–1720 (Manchester, 2009), pp. 168–82; Ute
Lotz-Heumann, ‘Konfession als Instrument von Staatsbildung? Erfolg und Misserfolg als
Fragestellung? Irland im europäischen Vergleich’, in Peter Eich, Sebastian Schmidt-Hofner
and Christian Wieland (eds), Der wiederkehrende Leviathan: Staatlichkeit und Staatswerdung in
Spätantike und Früher Neuzeit (Heidelberg, 2011), pp. 229–47.
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sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries – one Catholic, one Protestant. While the
Protestant process of confessionalization was state-sponsored, the Catholic process
of confessionalization was initiated by the traditional elites who used Parliament
or rebellion to voice their religious and political demands.
As a result of its failure to convert the majority of the Irish population to
Protestantism, the Church of Ireland developed into a minority, but legal,
confessional church while maintaining its claim to be an all-embracing state
church. Catholicism, on the other hand, filled the vacuum left by the state church
and developed from an exploratory mission into a full-fledged, if illegal and
underground, Tridentine church. Thus, Catholic and Protestant confession-building
were parallel processes in Ireland as they were perhaps nowhere else in Europe,
which created a situation of intense confessional rivalry. While Protestantism came
to be associated with colonial state-building, Catholicism came to be associated
with resistance to that state – be it parliamentary or military. Obviously, neither
process of confessionalization succeeded; the state-sponsored Protestant one failed
because it could not achieve an integration of politics and religion in Ireland; the
oppositional Catholic one failed because it could not break the legal status of the
Church of Ireland and establish an official Catholic state and church.
While I suggest the following periodization for the process of dual
confessionalization in Ireland, it is important to note that this process unfolded
gradually and that its outcome was by no means inevitable. The first phase, from
1534 to 1558/60, was one of political and legal Reformation on the one hand and
religious uncertainty on the other hand. The second phase, from 1558/60 to c. 1580,
can be called the preparatory phase of confessionalization. The third phase, from
c. 1580 to 1603, saw the gradual formation of confessional churches in Ireland as
well as the gradual confessionalization of Irish society. During the fourth phase,
starting in 1603, dual confessionalization and its resulting confessional rivalry
became ingrained in Irish society, politics and culture.
General observations for the study of confessionalization in
Ireland
The general observations on which my methodological approach is based are
the following. First, Ireland as a dependent territory of England was not at all
unique in early modern Europe. Rather, Ireland – even if it undoubtedly became
an extreme case in the long run – started out as a ‘normal’ periphery, joined
with England, Wales and eventually also Scotland in a ‘composite monarchy’.35
Second, early modern state formation, especially in ‘composite monarchies’, relied
heavily on the collaboration of local elites, for example noblemen and urban elites,
See J.H. Elliott, ‘A Europe of Composite Monarchies’, Past and Present, 137 (1992):
48–71.
35
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particularly in outlying territories. This observation leads me to my third point:
notwithstanding the critique of modernization theories, we should not ignore
that there was inequality regarding state formation between different territories
in early modern Europe; all were not equal, especially with regard to their degree
of institutionalization which was largely dependent on one factor – the backing by
loyal elites and thus the availability of a sufficient number of loyal officials.
Fourth, I regard it as essential to any discussion of confessionalization to
distinguish between ‘conformity’ – defined as visible compliance – and ‘conversion’
– understood as self-conscious adoption of a set of religious beliefs and practices.
When early modern reformers, both Catholic and Protestant, complained that
popular religious practices persisted, they created the impression that true
conversion had yet to be achieved. But contemporaries still regarded those areas
as firmly in the ‘Protestant’ (Lutheran or Calvinist) or ‘Catholic’ camp, even if
the personnel of the state church was disillusioned with, and sceptical about, the
impact it had made on the population. In contrast, in Ireland, by the seventeenth
century, contemporary observers agreed that the Protestant Reformation had
fared poorly and that Roman Catholicism had succeeded against the will of the
English crown. Conversely, in those European states where a confessional church
backed by the state became firmly institutionalized and subsequently established a
confessional monopoly, conformity of the majority of the population was the norm.
I therefore define ‘success and failure’ as success or failure in the enforcement of
conformity and will focus on this aspect rather than the persistence of popular
religious practices.
And finally, we should not forget that there was, in the early modern period,
a strong ideal of the unity of state and church; in the eyes of contemporaries, one
state should ideally have only one religion. In their view, state and society could
not function without at least an official religion. Therefore, rulers in early modern
Europe showed a strong will to unify religion and politics and to use religion as an
instrument of state formation – even if they often did not have the power to impose
their will on their territories.
This strong ideal of the integration of religion and state can be described as a
‘representation’, a perception that societies or social groups have of themselves
and/or the world around them.36 As Stuart Hall has written, ‘cultural meanings are
not only “in our head”. They organize and regulate social practices, influence our
conduct and consequently have real, practical effects’.37 Therefore, ‘representations’
also play an important part in power struggles among social groups. However,
representations are, of course, never translated directly into action. Rather, there
is a complex and tension-filled relationship between representations and actions.
36
See Roger Chartier, ‘Die Welt als Repräsentation’, in Matthias Middell and Steffen
Sammler (eds), Alles Gewordene hat Geschichte. Die Schule der Annales in ihren Texten 1929–1992
(Leipzig, 1994), pp. 320–47.
37
Stuart Hall, ‘Introduction’, in Stuart Hall (ed.), Representation: Cultural Representations
and Signifying Practices (London, 1997), p. 3.
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Moreover, the possibility of ‘self-fulfilling prophecies’ has to be taken into account.38
This means that representations – the formulation of ideals, threats, measures that
are announced but not or only haphazardly put into action, and so forth – provoke
action from the persons and social groups to whom they were addressed. People
do not act on the basis of an ‘objective’ evaluation of a situation; rather, they act
on their interpretation of a situation. Therefore, it is important to observe the
interaction between representations and practices when analysing the process of
confessionalization.
Dual confessionalization in Ireland: a case study of gradual
alienation, self-fulfilling prophesies and unintended
consequences
In my study of Ireland, I investigate the interaction between confession-building,
state formation and the development of confessional identities and cultures by
looking at the interaction between representations and actions in everyday life. In
the course of the dual process of confessionalization, competing social groups (and
sometimes individuals) and political and religious institutions aimed for control
of state and church. But instead of succeeding, they were locked in an unintended
process of mutual misunderstandings, gradual alienation and, eventually, selffulfilling prophecies which led to a hardening of confessional lines and the
development of distinct confessional cultures and identities.
In order to provide readers with a glimpse of the complexities of the process
of dual confessionalization in Ireland, I will focus on the relationship between
the Old English inhabitants of Ireland and the English administration in Dublin.
The Old English were the medieval colonizers of Ireland who had always
been considered – and who had also regarded themselves – as the mainstay of
‘English civilization’ in Ireland. The religious estrangement of the Old English
from the Dublin administration unfolded as a slowly escalating process.
Misunderstandings, the gradual breakdown of communication and the creation
of self-fulfilling prophecies eventually led to the collapse of social relations.
Increasingly – and often reluctantly – people were forced to take confessional
sides. Finally, the history of the Old English in the process of confessionalization
in Ireland highlights the difficulties of stepping outside a process that began
slowly, but then gained momentum, produced unintended consequences, and
eventually seemed inevitable to contemporaries.
In the following, I will concentrate on the reign of Elizabeth I of England
between 1558 and 1603 – that is, on the preparatory phase between 1560 and
c. 1580, and the gradual confessionalization of Irish society from c. 1580 to 1603.
See Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, revised edn (Glencoe, IL,
1957).
38
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Within roughly two generations, the English government lost the religious
allegiance of the Old English, which resulted in the above-mentioned process of
dual confessionalization. But in the 1560s, relations were still harmonious. Even
though the Old English were religiously conservative and it was clear that they
would not take the lead in introducing the Protestant Reformation to Ireland,
they cooperated with the English government and the new Church of Ireland in
many ways.
The starting point: a loyal elite conforms
The Irish Parliament of 1560, staffed mostly by the Old English, approved without
signs of resistance the establishment of the Protestant state church through the
Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity. In the early years of Elizabeth’s reign, the Old
English were receptive to all kinds of government initiatives. For example, they
consistently and enthusiastically backed initiatives to establish grammar schools
and a university in Ireland. These institutions, had they been founded in a timely
fashion (which they were not), would have played a major role in disseminating
Protestantism in Ireland. The younger generation would have grown up in the
new religion.
In addition, the Old English conformed to the Protestant state church in the
first decades of Elizabeth’s reign. While Protestant reformers regarded them as
‘ignorant’ and ‘superstitious’, they also noted that the Old English observed
the law and attended the services of the Church of Ireland. Similarly, Catholic
clergymen reported that the burghers of the Old English towns went to the
Protestant services of the state church, while also going to hear mass celebrated
half-clandestinely by older priests. These ‘massing priests’, as they were called
by the Protestant reformers, would eventually have died out and been replaced
by Protestant-educated clergymen. As a result, Protestant services would have
been the only services available and the population of Ireland would have been
slowly educated to the Protestant faith. As mentioned above, this would not have
been a process of conversion, but the inculcation of conformity leading to an
acceptance of the religion by law established as part of people’s everyday life. In
European comparative terms, this would not have been an unusual development.
In fact, this is exactly what happened in Norway which, as a peripheral area of
Scandinavian Europe and a political dependency of the Danish monarchy, had
much in common with Ireland. In 1536, the Danish king imposed Lutheranism
on his Norwegian subjects. The new faith was not greeted enthusiastically and
there was resistance. Yet, despite the fact that Lutheranism was identified with an
alien monarchy and was propagated in the foreign language of that power, the
majority of the population eventually conformed to the Lutheran state church.
Why did this not happen in Ireland and why was it instead replaced with a
process of dual confessionalization?
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Gradual escalation: from political grievance to
confessionalization
The key to this development is politics, or to be more specific, the particular
political situation in Ireland in the sixteenth century. As a loyal elite and as English
office-holders in Ireland, the Old English were keen supporters of a more vigorous
political engagement of the English crown in Ireland and more military activity
against independent noblemen. Throughout the sixteenth century, successive lord
deputies employed military force to control the warring lords and to establish
English rule over Ireland once and for all. In fact, if not in name, a standing army
was deployed. However, the implementation of such a policy in a dependent
territory was very expensive, and the resources of the English crown were limited.
As a result, both the London and the Dublin governments looked to the Old English
to find funding for this military enterprise.
As a loyal population that was comparatively prosperous, the Old English
already contributed to their own defence by a levy called ‘the cess’ which had been
a very useful instrument in the late Middle Ages. The cess could be levied on an
ad hoc basis and without having to call Parliament. By the middle of the sixteenth
century, however, the cess had become a much greater financial burden on the
Old English because of the increased size of the army in Ireland. While the lord
deputies could simply not do without the cess in order to keep up the army, the
Old English increasingly resented it. This had the paradoxical consequence that
the resurgence of the English crown’s power in Ireland gradually alienated the Old
English who had originally been strongly in favour of such an enterprise.
The Old English, feeling betrayed by the various lord deputies who exerted ever
higher amounts of the cess from them, saw a threat to their political liberties and
privileges in general – a threat to the right of Parliament to consent to taxes, a threat
to the material well-being and the traditional independence of the towns and, due
to the increasing influx of New English, a threat to their status as a privileged
elite in Ireland. The earlier positive interaction between the Old English and the
Dublin government gradually turned into negative social interaction, marred by
misunderstandings and negative representations of the ‘other’.
Successive lord deputies continued to use the cess as their main source of
revenue to finance the army in Ireland. When Old English resistance to the cess
registered with them, it no longer registered as a problem to be addressed and
resolved. Rather, the Dublin administration increasingly saw the Old English
as ‘troublemakers’, as a population group that simply did not cooperate with
government initiatives. The more the Old English felt threatened and resisted, the
more the Dublin government saw them as unreliable.
Gradually, as the Old English perceived themselves under attack from the
Dublin government, their perception of what was going on changed fundamentally.
They saw not only a threat to their political privileges, but perceived a general
threat to their traditions and way of life. In their eyes, not only was Parliament and
its right to consent to taxation under threat; the establishment of the Protestant
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Church of Ireland and the requirement to conform to it were increasingly seen as
part of a universal attack by the government on time-honoured traditions – and
these traditions included the Catholic religion. The Catholic faith, defined as their
old, traditional religion, was appropriated as part of Old English identity vis-à-vis
the Dublin government.
While outright rebellion was far from the thoughts of most of the Old English,
they resorted to subtle and not-so-subtle acts of resistance against various aspects
of government policy; for example, passive resistance to the cess by delaying their
payments, parliamentary opposition, and, from the late 1580s onwards, nonattendance at the services of the Church of Ireland, the so-called ‘recusancy’.
I am well aware that this interpretation of events in Ireland invites accusations
of a ‘functional-reductionist’ view of religion. Let me emphasize, therefore, that
I am not arguing that religion was some kind of political pawn in early modern
Ireland. There is no doubt in my mind that, by the end of the sixteenth century, the
Old English were convinced Catholics, with many of them taking incredible risks
for their faith. However, I am arguing that convictions and identities do not grow
in people’s minds independently of their political, social and cultural situation.
That is to say, the Old English might have become Protestants, but they reacted
to specific political and social circumstances in Ireland and became conscious
Catholics instead.
The process of dual confessionalization in Ireland after 1580
The Old English, facing increasing powerlessness and pressure from the Dublin
government, formed a separate identity and took measures which bound them
tighter together as a social group. They began to send their sons to Catholic
universities on the continent rather than to England, in the full knowledge that
their children would be educated in the spirit of Tridentine Catholicism. At the
same time, they stopped forming marriage alliances with the Protestant New
English. As a result, some Old English families split along confessional lines.
In the late 1580s and early 1590s, the Old English, finding a unified identity,
increasingly stayed away from the services of the state church. Recusancy became
widespread and Protestantism was openly rejected in favour of Catholicism. In
the decades before, older priests, celebrating mass clandestinely, had kept up the
old religion among the Old English. Now, however, a younger group of convinced
Catholics sprang from the continental seminaries; the sons of the Old English
returned to Ireland as priests and Jesuits and they strove to establish a substantial
underground church in Ireland – a church with a hierarchy in place, with clandestine
Catholic schools, and with a laity firmly asserting their Catholicism through
recusancy. By initiating a process of Catholic confession-building and reinforcing
the newfound religious and political identity of the Old English community as
Catholics defending their ancient rights against an encroaching government, these
clergy played a decisive role in the process of dual confessionalization in Ireland.
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When the Old English embraced Catholicism, and recusancy became a
widespread phenomenon, the perception of the Dublin government changed also.
In the eyes of the New English officials, the Old English moved from being just
‘troublemakers’ to being at least potential rebels and traitors. In early modern
Europe, there was a general expectation that difference in religion would result
in political disloyalty and treason. Therefore, when the Old English advertised
their Catholic faith by refusing to come to the services of the state church, this was
automatically interpreted as an act of political disobedience.
Several factors accelerated this process of alienation and the resulting breakdown
of social relations. First, the perceived resistance and troublemaking of the Old
English led the English government in Ireland to curtail Old English influence as
much as possible. The Dublin administration and the law courts were no longer
staffed with Old English, but with New English office-holders and judges. Second,
after there had been Old English resistance in Parliament, Parliament was not called
for almost thirty years. And finally, the Dublin government attempted to enforce
the so-called recusancy laws, laws that imposed fines on people who did not attend
the services of the Church of Ireland. It is no surprise that such measures furthered
mutual distrust, accelerated the breakdown of social relations and eventually led
both sides to believe in their negative view of the other side as a ‘self-fulfilling
prophecy’. By the early seventeenth century, the relationship between the Dublin
government and the Old English had come to a point where trust was eroded, and
assumptions about the malignant intentions of the other side abounded.
What is most striking about this gradual process of alienation is that none of
the parties involved wanted it to happen. The Old English wanted to be loyal to
the crown, but felt increasingly threatened by the Dublin administration. The
government wanted good relations with the Old English, indeed it desperately
needed a broad loyal elite conforming to the state religion to implement both its
political and religious reform programmes. But it increasingly regarded the Old
English as troublemakers and potential traitors who had to be curtailed and repressed.
This led to a vicious circle of increasing mutual distrust. As social communication
deteriorated, reconciliation became impossible and the process of alienation between
these two groups took its course. However, it has to be emphasized that there was
nothing inevitable about this process which unfolded in small steps, and the point
of no return was only reached in the early seventeenth century. In the end, what
was meant to be a ‘success story’, with the Old English as the spearhead of state
formation and Protestant confessionalization in Ireland, came to be a ‘failure’ for all
concerned, resulting in a process of dual confessionalization in Ireland.
The future of the concept of confessionalization
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. Not only do we
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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 state
and church measures must move to the forefront of research. Second, we must
ask whether even those measures ‘from above’ that did not achieve their goals
did in fact have unintended effects; even if they remained declarations of intent,
such measures were perceived as potentials and/or threats to which people
may have reacted in some way. Third, we will have to look at different agents
and their interests in the process of confessionalization. Social formations like
confessional churches, confessional cultures or confessional 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 and the early modern state is no longer seen as an entity, but
as fragmented into different agents, it becomes possible to look at agents and
their interests in state and society and thus the role of individuals and different
social groups. Consequently, a microhistory of the state can be combined with
a microhistory of social and cultural developments to describe the process of
confessionalization as one of conflict, negotiation and accommodation.
This raises, among others, the question of ‘horizontal confessionalization’
within social groups, and self-confessionalization, about which we know little
so far.39 It is clear that elites and also the middling sort played an important role
in the process, but we need more research into how confessional identities and
confessional cultures – on the eventual existence of which early modern historians
largely agree – came into being.
One could perhaps say that in the manner of Thomas Kuhn’s scientific
revolutions, the concept of confessionalization became a paradigm which was then
criticized and modified by a mostly younger generation of scholars. According
to Kuhn, this will eventually result in the replacement of such a paradigm.
But are we at that point yet? While the result of the criticism of the concept of
confessionalization has undoubtedly resulted in a concept of more limited scope,
the question is whether this is a good or a bad thing. On the one hand, one could
argue that there are limits to how much a theoretical concept can be redefined,
supplemented or handled more flexibly before there is nothing left of the original
concept. However, I would argue that, stripped of its macrohistorical claims and
implications, the concept of confessionalization still serves as a fruitful research
tool. One of the most striking phenomena in recent research is that works on various
aspects of the Counter-Reformation, such as Regina Pörtner’s book on Styria and
39
Helga Schnabel-Schüle, ‘Vierzig Jahre Konfessionalisierungsforschung – eine
Standortbestimmung’, in Peer Frieß and Rolf Kießling (eds), Konfessionalisierung und Region
(Constance, 1999), p. 37.
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Ulrike Strasser’s State of Virginity, approach their topics in the broader spirit of
the concept of confessionalization by closely observing the interactions between
different agents of state formation and agents of religion while at the same time
being critical of the original, strict formulations of the concept.
While it is true that questions about early modern popular religion can best be
answered by using methods of microhistory, employing this approach alone runs
the danger of fragmenting history-writing. If we still wish to attempt comparative
approaches beyond individual case studies, look at structures, ask larger historical
questions and examine long-term developments, the concept of confessionalization
can help us do so. 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. ‘Confessionalization’ draws our attention to the
developments which led to confession-building and the construction of confessional
cultures and identities by different agents in different social and political contexts.
Applying the concept of confessionalization should therefore mean analysing
parallels between, as well as specifics of, the early modern confessional churches
and cultures. In this context, the ‘methods of (Catholic) 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 that they provoked. 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 broad approach: it integrates political, social and cultural developments
and analyses their interactions, and, as a developmental concept, it focuses on
processes of cultural construction and (attempted) diffusion in society. As we have
seen, recent research has shown that this process extended far into the eighteenth
century, especially in Catholic regions. Therefore, the eighteenth century, with its
possible overlap of processes of confessionalization and enlightenment, is a field
which promises fruitful research and further debates.
Select bibliography
Bahlcke, Joachim and Arno Strohmeyer (eds), Konfessionalisierung in Ostmitteleuropa.
Wirkungen des religiösen Wandels im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert in Staat, Gesellschaft
und Kultur (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1999).
Bottigheimer, Karl S. and Ute Lotz-Heumann, ‘The Irish Reformation in European
Perspective’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 87 (1998): 268–309.
Chaix, Gérald, ‘La confessionnalisation. Note critique’, Bulletin de la Société de
l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, 148 (2002): 851–65.
Dietz, Burkhard and Stefan Ehrenpreis (eds), Drei Konfessionen in einer Region.
Beiträge zur Geschichte der Konfessionalisierung im Herzogtum Berg vom 16. bis zum
18. Jahrhundert (Cologne: Rheinland-Verlag, 1999).
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Ehrenpreis, Stefan and Ute Lotz-Heumann, Reformation und konfessionelles Zeitalter
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