Diversity and Dissent: Negotiating Religious Difference in Central Europe, 1500-1800 9780857451095

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Preface
Introduction. Between Conflict and Concord: Th e Challenge of Religious Diversity in Central Europe
1. Constructing and Crossing Confessional Boundaries: The High Nobility and the Reformation of Bohemia
2. Religious Toleration in Sixteenth-Century Poland: Political Realities and Social Constraints
3. Customs of Confession: Managing Religious Diversity in Late Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century Westphalia
4. Cuius regio, eius religio: Th e Ambivalent Meanings of State Building in Protestant Germany, 1555–1655
5. The Entropy of Coercion in the Holy Roman Empire: Jews, Heretics, Witches
6. Conflict and Concord in Early Modern Poland: Catholics and Orthodox at the Union of Brest
7. Confessionalization and the Jews: Impacts and Parallels in the City of Strasbourg
8. Mary “Triumphant over Demons and Also Heretics”: Religious Symbols and Confessional Uniformity in Catholic Germany
9. Heresy and Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Habsburg Monarchy
10. Union, Reunion, or Toleration? Reconciliatory Attempts among Eighteenth-Century Protestants
11. Confessional Uniformity, Toleration, Freedom of Religion: An Issue for Enlightened Absolutism in the Eighteenth Century
Select Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

DIVERSITY AND DISSENT

AUSTRIAN AND HABSBURG STUDIES General Editor: Gary B. Cohen, Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota Volume 1 Austrian Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives Edited by David F. Good, Margarete Grandner, and Mary Jo Maynes Volume 2 From World War to Waldheim: Culture and Politics in Austria and the United States Edited by David F. Good and Ruth Wodak Volume 3 Rethinking Vienna 1900 Edited by Steven Beller Volume 4 The Great Tradition and Its Legacy: The Evolution of Dramatic and Musical Theater in Austria and Central Europe Edited by Michael Cherlin, Halina Filipowicz, and Richard L. Rudolph Volume 5 Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe Edited by Nancy M. Wingfield Volume 6 Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe Edited by Pieter M. Judson and Marsha L. Rozenblit Volume 7 The Environment and Sustainable Development in the New Central Europe Edited by Zbigniew Bochniarz and Gary B. Cohen Volume 8 Crime, Jews and News: Vienna 1890–1914 By Daniel Mark Vyleta Volume 9 The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances, and State Patriotism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy Edited by Laurence Cole and Daniel L. Unowsky Volume 10 Embodiments of Power: Building Baroque Cities in Europe Edited by Gary B. Cohen and Franz A.J. Szabo Volume 11 Diversity and Dissent: Negotiating Religious Difference in Central Europe, 1500–1800 Edited by Howard Louthan, Gary B. Cohen, and Franz A. J. Szabo Volume 12 “Vienna Is Different”: Jewish Writers in Austria from the Fin de Siècle to the Present Hillary Hope Herzog

DIVERSITY AND DISSENT Negotiating Religious Difference in Central Europe, 1500–1800

d Edited by

Howard Louthan, Gary B. Cohen, and

Franz A. J. Szabo

Berghahn Books NEW YORK • OXFORD

First edition published in 2011 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com ©2011 Howard Louthan, Gary B. Cohen, and Franz A. J. Szabo

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Diversity and dissent : negotiating religious differences in Central Europe, 1500–1800 / edited by Howard Louthan, Gary B. Cohen, and Franz A.J. Szabo. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Austrian and Habsburg studies ; v. 11) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-85745-108-8 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Europe, Central—Religion—Congresses. 2. Europe, Central—Church history— Congresses. 3. Religious tolerance—Europe, Central—History—Congresses. I. Louthan, Howard, 1963– II. Cohen, Gary B. III. Szabo, Franz A. J. IV. Title: Negotiating religious differences in Central Europe, 1500–1800. BL980.C39D58 2011 200.943’0903—dc22 2010051902

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Printed in the United States on acid-free paper ISBN: 978-0-85745-108-8, hardback

CONTENTS

d List of Figures

vii

Notes on Contributors

viii

Preface

xi

Introduction. Between Conflict and Concord: The Challenge of Religious Diversity in Central Europe Howard Louthan

1

1. Constructing and Crossing Confessional Boundaries: The High Nobility and the Reformation of Bohemia Petr Maťa

10

2. Religious Toleration in Sixteenth-Century Poland: Political Realities and Social Constraints Paul W. Knoll

30

3. Customs of Confession: Managing Religious Diversity in Late Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century Westphalia David M. Luebke

53

4. Cuius regio, eius religio: The Ambivalent Meanings of State Building in Protestant Germany, 1555–1655 Robert von Friedeburg

73

5. The Entropy of Coercion in the Holy Roman Empire: Jews, Heretics, Witches Thomas A. Brady, Jr.

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6. Conflict and Concord in Early Modern Poland: Catholics and Orthodox at the Union of Brest Mikhail V. Dmitriev

114

7. Confessionalization and the Jews: Impacts and Parallels in the City of Strasbourg Debra Kaplan

137

8. Mary “Triumphant over Demons and Also Heretics”: Religious Symbols and Confessional Uniformity in Catholic Germany Bridget Heal

153

9. Heresy and Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Habsburg Monarchy Regina Pörtner

173

10. Union, Reunion, or Toleration? Reconciliatory Attempts among Eighteenth-Century Protestants Alexander Schunka

193

11. Confessional Uniformity, Toleration, Freedom of Religion: An Issue for Enlightened Absolutism in the Eighteenth Century Ernst Wangermann

209

Select Bibliography

219

Index

228

FIGURES

d Figure 1.1

Last Wills of Lords (páni), 1551–1650 (217 in total)

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Figure 8.1

Master of St. Severin, altarpiece of the Cologne rosary brotherhood, ca.1500–1510

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Anon, print showing the triumph of the most sacred rosary, seventeenth century

162

Figure 8.3

Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder, altarpiece wings, ca.1530

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Figure 8.4

Anon, wings of the Drolshagen altar, after 1581

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Figure 8.5

Anon, print commemorating the arrival of Gustav Adolph in Augsburg, 1632

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Anon, altarpiece from the parish church in Sebeș, Transylvania, ca.1524–1526

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Figure 8.2

Figure 8.6

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

d Howard Louthan is professor of history at the University of Florida. He specializes in the intellectual and cultural history of early modern Central Europe. Among his books are The Quest for Compromise: Peace Maker in Counter-Reformation Vienna (Cambridge, 1997) and Converting Bohemia: Force and Persuasion in the Catholic Reformation (Cambridge, 2009). Gary B. Cohen is professor of history at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and served as director of the Center for Austrian Studies from 2001 through 2009. He teaches modern Central European social and political history and has published numerous articles and essays as well as two books in these areas. Franz A. J. Szabo is director of the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies and professor of Austrian and Habsburg history at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. He has published widely in Europe and North America, including a prizewinning book on Habsburg enlightened absolutism and a recent study of the Seven Years War. Petr Mat’a is a faculty member of the Institute for History at the University of Vienna. He has published a book, Svět české aristokracie (1500–1700) [The World of the Bohemian Aristocracy (1500–1700)] (Prague, 2004) and several articles. He was also co-editor of the “Diary of Adam the Yonger von Waldstien.” He completed his doctoral studies at the University of Prague in 2005. Paul W. Knoll is professor emeritus of history at the University of Southern California. His research primarily focuses on the Medieval and Renaissance periods in European history, and the history and civilization of the western Slavs (particularly the Poles) and the Hungarians in these periods. His publications include The Rise of the Polish Monarchy: Piast Poland in East Central Europe, 1320–1370 (Chicago, 1972).

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David M. Luebke is a historian of early modern Europe whose work focuses on the religions and political cultures of ordinary people in the German-speaking lands. His publications include His Majesty’s Rebels: Communities, Factions and Rural Revolt in the Black Forest, 1725–1745 (Ithaca, 1997) and The CounterReformation: Essential Readings (Oxford, 1999). Robert von Friedeburg holds the chair of Early Modern History at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, and is Director, Erasmus Center for Early Modern Studies. His work focuses on the interface of social history and the history of political thought. His publications include Religious Strife in Early Modern Europe: England and Germany 1530–1680 (2002); Murder and Monarchy. Regicide in European History, 1300–1800 (2004). His newest book is Europe in der frühen Neuzeit (Frankfurt, forthcoming 2012). Thomas A. Brady, Jr., is the Peder Sather Professor emeritus of History at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on Central Europe in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, the political history of the German Reformation, and German and European historiography. His principal publications include Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg, 1520–1555 (Leiden, 1978), Protestant Politics: Jacob Sturm (1489–1553) and the German Reformation (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1995), and German Histories in the Age of Reformations (Cambridge and New York, 2009). Mikhail V. Dmitriev is professor of history, Moscow Lomonossov State University; recurrent visiting professor, Central European University (Budapest), where he teaches courses on historical anthropology and confessions, ethnicity, and protonationalism in Russia and Poland. His publications include Dissidents russes. Vol. 1–2. Feodosij Kosoj. Matvej Baskin. Le starec Artemij. (Baden-Baden, 1998–99); and Between Rome and Constantinople: Genesis of the Church Union of Brest (1595–1596) (Moscow, 2003). Debra Kaplan is the Dr. Pinkhos Churgin Memorial Assistant Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University, where she teaches courses on medieval, early modern, and modern Jewish history. Her research focuses on the early modern period. She has published several articles and her book, Beyond Expulsion: Jews, Christians, and Reformation Strasbourg, will appear in 2011 with Stanford University Press. Bridget Heal is the director of the Institute for Reformation Studies and a lecturer in the School of History at the University of St. Andrews. She specializes in religious and social history and is particularly interested in visual culture. Her recent publications include her book, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany: Protestant and Catholic Piety, 1500–1648 (Cambridge, 2007), and several articles.

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Regina Pörtner is senior lecturer in history at Swansea University. She is a former Rhodes Scholar and a member of Swansea’s Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Her primary research focus is the religious, political, and economic history of the Habsburg Monarchy ca. 1500–1800. Dr. Pörtner is the author of The Counter-Reformation in Central Europe: Styria 1580–1630 (Oxford, 2001), in addition to several articles. Alexander Schunka is junior professor of European Cultures of Knowledge at the Forschungszentrum Gotha of the Universität Erfurt, where he teaches early modern history. His main research interests focus on religious history as well as on cultural transfers and migrations. His publications include Soziales Wissen und dörfliche Welt (Frankfurt, 2000) and Gäste, die bleiben (Hamburg, 2006) as well as a number of articles. Ernst Wangermann is professor emeritus of the history faculty at the University of Salzburg. He is the author of The Austrian Achievement, 1700–1800 (London, 1973) and From Joseph II to the Jacobin Trials: Government Policy and Public Opinion in the Habsburg Dominions in the Period of the French Revolution (Santa Barbara, 1979).

PREFACE

d F

rom the tragic confrontation of Thomas Becket and Henry II to the great ecclesiastical crisis precipitated by Henry VIII’s divorce, the issue of religion and authority, and the rivalry between spiritual and secular power, has been one of the defining themes of the European past and a critical dynamic shaping the continent’s culture and society from the High Middle Ages to the early modern period. This familiar theme, though, has been examined primarily from a Western perspective. It has been chiefly a story of the struggles and conflicts of English kings, French princes, Italian popes, and the occasional German emperor. The present volume is the result of two conferences dedicated to this topic in the Central European context. The first, attended by more than a dozen scholars, was held at the Center for Austrian Studies at the University of Minnesota; and another group gathered some months later for the second at the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies at the University of Alberta. The two teams of historians discussed different aspects of the larger problem. Those who met in Minnesota focused on the political and social challenges that have faced church and state in Central Europe. For generations, scholars have found the complicated nature of governance in both the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth a frequently vexing area of study. In the seventeenth century a frustrated Samuel Pufendorf called the empire a monstrosity, while in Poland an entire series of foreign-born kings never truly understood the administrative structure of the polity they were elected to rule. The discussants in Minnesota readily acknowledged the difficulties of examining a region where authority was diffuse, with competing centers of power and overlapping webs of secular and spiritual jurisdiction. Treading carefully across this complex terrain, they examined the practical workings of religious politics from the lofty altitude of the imperial court down to the micro-level of the village council. In Edmonton, attention shifted to intellectual and theological concerns. The religious world of Central Europe was heterogeneous and multi-polar. In Poland

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a city such as L’viv could boast of four cathedrals (Catholic, Orthodox, Uniate, and Armenian). Scholars at the Edmonton conference investigated this great diversity as they explored a confessional landscape where alongside Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists there existed a variety of Orthodox, Utraquist, and Unitarian communities. One of the great challenges facing those who study premodern Central Europe is the nationally fragmented nature of its scholarship. Historians of this region tend to work in narrow intellectual communities defined by linguistic and geographic boundaries that originated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Both conferences were designed to work across these divisions and examine the broad scope of religious life in Central Europe from a consciously comparative perspective. We assembled specialists on the German, Slavic, and Magyar lands to present their work in a wider Central European context. Coverage ranged from Westphalian villages to Ruthenian cities, from Calvinist strongholds in Royal Hungary and Transylvania to Jewish communities of Prague and Strasbourg. After the two conferences, we were confronted with an embarrassment of riches comprising far more contributions and a wider range of specific topics than could be included in a single volume of essays of reasonable compass. Accordingly, in assembling this volume the editors had to narrow the scope of the discussion to focus on the challenges created by the religious diversity of the early modern era. We are pleased that the Austrian History Yearbook 41 (2010) has published in revised and expanded form two of the original papers that dealt with medieval topics in a forum on religious reform in the Late Middle Ages. These two conferences would not have taken place without the generous financial support of the University of Alberta and its Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies, the University of Minnesota and its Center for Austrian Studies, the University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts Scholarly Events Fund, and the University of Minnesota European Studies Consortium. In preparing the volume for publication, the editors thank the graduate assistants at the Center for Austrian Studies, Joshua Kortbein, Mollie Madden, and Eric Roubinek, along with Allison Giblin at the University of Florida, for their dedicated efforts in helping prepare the manuscript for publication. We are also grateful for the continued commitment of Marion Berghahn and her colleagues at Berghahn Books to scholarship on the former Habsburg lands as reflected in the series in which this volume appears.

Introduction

BETWEEN CONFLICT AND CONCORD The Challenge of Religious Diversity in Central Europe

d Howard Louthan

I

n 1564 Rome’s peripatetic diplomat and soon-to-be cardinal, Giovanni Franceso Commendone, received a lengthy letter from one of Poland’s most prominent clerics. The Venetian Commendone had been serving as a papal envoy for more than a decade. In 1553 he successfully completed a delicate mission to the court of Mary Tudor, helping Rome reestablish its links with the wayward English kingdom. When Pope Pius IV decided in 1560 to reopen the Council of Trent, he sent Commendone across the Alps as his emissary. In a frenetic flurry of activity, the pope’s ambassador met with both Catholic and Protestant princes, inviting them to come south to Trent and participate in the council’s proceedings. In Poland in 1563, he convinced King Sigismund II Augustus to recognize the Tridentine decrees. It was presumably during this trip to Poland that Commendone received the aforementioned letter from the controversial priest Stanisław Orzechowski. Orzechowski had had substantial difficulty with Rome ever since his marriage in 1551. His bishop had initiated proceedings against him, but the fiery Orzechowski struck back, rallying the support of the Polish nobility and compelling the kingdom’s primate to intervene on his behalf. The sparring continued, however, as the papal nuncio denounced what Rome viewed as the overly lenient treatment of the rebellious priest. Orzechowski, never at a loss for words, responded in 1557 with a withering polemic against Paul IV. Attacking the pope’s secular ambitions, Orzechowski denounced him as a bloodthirsty Caligula who

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would not hesitate to sacrifice all of Christendom for his own gain.1 With a new pope in Rome, the 1564 letter to Commendone was a decidedly milder attempt to patch up the longstanding feud. In the letter, Orzechowski defended himself through a fascinating account of his life.2 He was born in 1513 in what is today a town in eastern Poland. His father, a member of the gentry, was Catholic, while his mother was the daughter of an Orthodox priest. The ambitious parents had high hopes for their son and sent him abroad for his education. His first stop was Vienna, but his time in that city was cut short by the arrival of the Turkish army in 1529. He moved on to Wittenberg, where he had an extended stay in “remote Saxony” as a student of Luther and Melanchthon.3 Ever restless, he continued his travels in 1532, heading south and crossing the Alps for study in both Padua and Bologna. These were the most formative years of his life. In Padua he fell in with a group of Erasmian humanists who helped shape his view of the church and its problems.4 The final stop on his grand tour was Rome. His patron there was the influential Cardinal Girolamo Ghinucci, the former secretary of the colorful Julius II. During his stay he met other powerful members of the curia, including Cardinals Contarini and Farnese.5 After multiple pleas from his family, he finally returned to Poland in 1543 and shortly thereafter became a priest. His troubles began in 1551 when he married into one of the most prominent families of Cracow. This union elicited a sharp rebuke from Orzechowski’s bishop and initiated the long quarrel with the church. The Orzechowski letter is not only a window into the life of a sixteenth-century Polish noble but also an important example of late Renaissance rhetoric. The detailed narrative of his time in Rome, the name-dropping, and the account of his earnest conversations with Cardinal Ghinucci were obviously a means by which Orzechowski attempted to burnish his image and establish his Catholic bona fides with Commendone. When he turned to his marriage, however, and prepared his defense, Orzechowski employed a rather curious stratagem. One could imagine that in the vein of an Erasmian reformer, he would have argued that clerical marriage was a necessary remedy to one of the church’s longstanding problems. Alternatively, he could have referred back to his time in Wittenberg and Luther’s well-known position on this matter. Unexpectedly, he did neither. He had only scorn for Luther and heaped abuse on the arch-heretic from Germany. Instead, he reminded Commendone that the Christian world of the sixteenth century was far larger than the one in which the busy diplomat lived. While the Venetian may have been preoccupied with recent disturbances of feuding Catholics and Protestants, Orzechowski noted that he came from a region where confessional pluralism had been a standard feature of society for more than a millennium. His country was home to three ancient Christian faiths: Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Armenian Christianity.6 Indeed, it was the Roman church that had deviated from a model followed by other Christian communi-

Introduction

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ties for centuries; both the Orthodox and the Armenians allowed their clergy to marry. Rome, Orzechowski suggested, might wish to reconsider its position not on the basis of a novel doctrine promoted by a renegade Saxon monk but in light of other ancient Christian traditions. The Orzechowski incident is an appropriate story with which to begin, as it introduces us to the first of three overarching themes in this volume. Orzechowski’s account destabilizes the traditional religious landscape of early modern Europe. Like Commendone, many of us tend to view the Reformation era as a dialogue between the Catholic church and its Protestant rivals. Diversity and Dissent introduces us to a far broader confessional world. Geographically, its focus is the two great supranational states of Central Europe, the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The decentralized structures of governance that evolved here helped produce the most diverse confessional culture in all of Europe, a world where the Catholic Orzechowski rubbed shoulders daily with Orthodox and Armenian Christians, not to mention the newer Protestant arrivals. Religious settlements such as the Edict of Turda (Transylvania, 1568), the Warsaw Confederation (Poland, 1573), and the Letter of Majesty (Bohemia, 1609) created the necessary space for the growth of multiconfessionalism. By the sixteenth century a Catholic statesman such as Johann Eck merely had to mention the word Bohemia to conjure the specter of heresy, and a few decades later neighboring Poland was popularly characterized as a refuge for all sorts of religious radicals. The situation, however, is even more complicated than simply recognizing Central Europe’s remarkable religious diversity. In our initial essay, Petr Maťa highlights another distinctive feature of the region. In this study examining the Bohemian nobility and their shifting confessional allegiances, Maťa illustrates how religious boundaries were often ambiguously constructed, poorly defined, and highly fluid. It is striking that an individual as prominent and seemingly unproblematic as Bohemia’s energetic Archbishop Zbyněk Berka of Dubá (1551– 1606), a figure generally considered to be an important Catholic reformer, was denounced by the papal nuncio as a Hussite heretic.7 The problem of Hussitism or Utraquism, as it was more properly known in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is particularly vexing as its exact parameters are difficult to determine. Apart from a small core set of beliefs and practices, Utraquism was a broad confessional category, so much so that one Catholic critic quipped: “those who were known in the Bohemian kingdom as Utraquists could really have been called by any name you please.”8 It was not only in Bohemia that there was a blurring of lines between confessional groups. Polish Calvinists retained rituals that would have confounded their colleagues in Geneva, while a smaller group such as the Sabbatarians, an Anabaptist offshoot, even incorporated Jewish practices in their worship. Despite the fascinating variety of this religious landscape, scholars have not adequately assessed Central Europe’s confessional diversity. National and linguis-

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tic boundaries continue to divide the region and contribute to the balkanization of its scholarship. As the borders change, so do the histories. The resulting work can often be narrow, with historians debating each other in increasingly smaller and more isolated communities.9 Religion, of course, is a dynamic phenomenon constantly shifting, changing, and evolving. In the complex world of Central Europe, its study demands a methodology that accounts for this dynamism and fluidity. The problem with scholarship today is not insufficient literature on the region’s various confessional communities. There is, for example, a well-developed historiography on the Uniate church in Ukrainian and Russian.10 Too much of this literature, however, has a decidedly static character encased within historiographical traditions defined by seemingly impermeable national, linguistic, and confessional boundaries. What is needed is an approach that rises above these anachronistic divisions and the narrower confessional historiography, an approach that intentionally seeks hybridity, crossover, and interaction. Diversity and Dissent works across these boundaries of nation and language. The volume moves from the villages of Westphalia to the marches of Ruthenia and examines not only the interplay of Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists but also Orthodox, Uniates, and Utraquists. It is our contention that the phenomenon of multiconfessionalism is best understood within a broad cultural and geographic framework. The second theme of the volume and its real conceptual focus highlights the attendant problems of multiconfessionalism. How was religious diversity managed in Central Europe during a tumultuous period of challenge and change? The lack of confessional uniformity, especially in a region of decentralized political structures, could have dire consequences. As Ernst Wangermann notes in the conclusion, “Religious dissent was the high road to social and political rebellion.”11 How was order maintained and authority imposed in such a setting? Diversity and Dissent examines these questions from a variety of perspectives. In doing so, the volume revisits key ceasefires and settlements that were negotiated by competing confessional constituencies. The most famous of these for the sixteenth century was the 1555 Peace of Augsburg and its celebrated formula cuius regio, eius religio. While in retrospect Augsburg may appear as a reasoned, rational, and comprehensive response to the religious crisis facing the empire, at the time it was far from clear what this arrangement actually meant. Thomas Brady notes how easy it is to overestimate the significance of Augsburg, while Robert von Friedeburg demonstrates how lawyers effectively exploited its ambiguities. Moving eastward, Paul Knoll reviews what was in some respects the Polish equivalent of Augsburg, the 1573 Warsaw Confederation. Knoll carefully examines the social background of this settlement, which was actually even more ambitious than Augsburg as it granted full religious freedom to the nobility. With the 1569 Union of Lublin and the official creation of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Polish princes also had to negotiate relations between their Catholic and Orthodox subjects while caught in the crossfire of the Counter-Reformation.

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Mikhail Dmitriev examines the contentious 1596/97 Union of Brest, which was intended to unite both churches together but in actuality generated significant conflict in a deeply divided society. At the end of our period, Ernst Wangermann considers Joseph II’s famous Patent of Toleration. Tracking the shift from confessional uniformity to religious freedom, Wangermann carefully examines the intellectual underpinnings of the edict that transformed the religious culture of the Habsburg lands. Analytically, this volume considers the challenge of managing religious diversity on at least three levels. A number of essays examine this issue at the macro or state level. Thomas Brady looks at religious developments as part of the broader story of state formation. Reacting to a stereotype that has characterized the early modern period as one of great religious violence, Brady focuses on three groups that were not protected by the Peace of Augsburg: Jews, Anabaptists, and witches. He argues that the decline of brute coercion and persecution that occurred in each of his case studies is connected to the consolidation of political power and authority within the empire. Robert von Friedeburg adds a legal dimension to the discussion by examining the response of lawyers to the 1555 settlement. Augsburg, he claims, did not lead inexorably to territorial absolutism but to an ambivalent system of rule where princely power was circumscribed by significant legal constraints. Regina Pörtner, working at the other end of the chronological spectrum, offers a thoughtful consideration of Habsburg religious policy in the eighteenth century. Her specific focus is crypto-Protestantism and how the authorities, both secular and religious, sought to handle this stubborn problem through education and the control of literacy. While Pörtner, Brady, and von Friedeburg investigate issues of multiconfessionalism from a top-down perspective, a number of the articles consider this matter from the bottom up. One can argue that the most effective settlements were not the ones negotiated at the tables of princes but the rough-hewn and often informal agreements cobbled together by city councils and village authorities. David Luebke examines how the men and women in a cluster of Westphalian towns learned to live together in a confessionally pluralistic environment. He highlights the pragmatic creativity of these townspeople as they developed two distinct but equally effective approaches to cope with religious difference. Debra Kaplan explores the treatment of Jews in and around Strasbourg in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Drawing parallels to the treatment of Anabaptists, she considers the relevance of the confessionalization model in this busy trade center by following the efforts of city magistrates to regulate the Jewish presence. Bridget Heal, in contrast, evaluates urban authorities’ intentions to impose confessional uniformity through state-sponsored forms of piety. Her specific focus is the promotion of the Marian cult. Here she draws an intriguing contrast between efforts in the confessionally mixed city of Augsburg and those along the Rhine in the Catholic bastion of Cologne.

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Along with the macro and the micro levels, this volume explores a third level of confessional negotiation, one that was a distinctive feature of Central European society. While early modern elites obviously exercised a disproportionate effect on social, political, and economic life elsewhere on the continent, their influence was even greater in this region. Numerically, the nobility constituted approximately 1 to 2 percent of the European populace. In Poland that share may have been as high as 8 percent.12 Whatever the exact figures, the significance of the power the nobility wielded in this society is perhaps best expressed by the early-sixteenth century Polish slogan “Nothing about us, without us.” To the west in Bohemia, the nobility were an effective counterweight to the new Habsburg kings. Even when the Habsburgs suppressed a revolt spearheaded by some of the most prominent nobles of the kingdom in 1620, the aristocracy staged a remarkable comeback and returned to dominate the political and social life of the region for the next two centuries.13 In this volume we devote special attention to the ways in which the elites managed the challenges of religious pluralism. Petr Maťa explores the confessional attitudes of the Bohemian nobility in the sixteenth century. He illustrates the shifting nature of religious allegiances in this period and the resourcefulness of the nobility as they constructed and deconstructed confessional boundaries. Working in the Polish context, Paul Knoll examines the elites in conjunction with religious toleration, arguing that the connection between noble and religious freedom was very close indeed. Mikhail Dmitriev, considering the converse of this phenomenon, contends that the rise of intolerance was also dependent on the nobility. The failure of Brest could be attributed to individuals such as Prince Konstantyn Ostrogski, palatine of Kiev. Stubbornly independent, Ostrogski was the patron of an important Orthodox theological academy and one of the most prominent and effective opponents of church union. The third major theme of this volume is the long-debated issue of religious toleration. Ernst Wangermann offers a concise but thoughtful reflection on developments leading to Joseph II’s momentous decision to issue the Patent of Toleration. He helps us understand how the Habsburgs, somewhat reluctantly, realized the need to shift away from policies supporting confessional uniformity to those allowing religious freedom. Though Wangermann’s essay is an appropriate one with which to close a volume examining the problem of religious diversity in Central Europe, it reflects a well-established approach to the study of toleration in which scholars examine the ideas and ideals behind the phenomenon. In recent years, historians have engaged in a lively debate concerning the nature of toleration in the early modern world, and Diversity and Dissent evaluates this matter from a revisionist perspective as well. Many now argue that toleration should not be considered a special product of Enlightenment Europe, a result of a specific strain of thinking that culminates with Locke and the policies of progressive princes in the eighteenth century. They contend that the influence of Enlightenment ideals has been overestimated and that the eighteenth century

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actually witnessed a surprising upswing in confessional tension and violence.14 In Central Europe it is important to remember that this era was marred by incidents of gross intolerance ranging from the decision of Salzburg’s Archbishop Firmian to send 20,000 Lutherans into exile to the 1724 Toruń (Thorn) incident when Polish royal officials executed more than a dozen Lutheran leaders of the city. This volume captures this curious chronology. Paul Knoll examines the development and apogee of religious toleration in sixteenth-century Poland while Mikhail Dmitriev reflects on its demise in the subsequent generations. The second significant critique that revisionists have posed concerns the actual nature of toleration. They argue that toleration is best understood not as an abstract ideal but as lived experience, a subject most suitable for social and cultural historians. In a recent study on Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age, Charles H. Parker maintains that scholars have artificially magnified the impact and pervasiveness of toleration in the seventeenth-century Low Countries. Parker has ably demonstrated that Catholics faced enduring prejudice and persistent persecution in this Calvinist society. He avers, then, that toleration in the early modern period should be seen as a dialectic that “emphasizes the reciprocity between tolerance and violence and thus grounds religious identity in the management of confessional conflicts.”15 A spectrum of options were available to the men and women who sought to manage the complicated problems of religious pluralism in Central Europe. In his chapter, Thomas Brady, borrowing a term from medieval Iberia, speaks of convivencias to describe the often remarkably stable settlements that developed between local communities of different faiths.16 David Luebke gives us a close-up view of how these arrangements were negotiated. He contrasts his western Westphalian towns, where councilors and officials tended fences and minimized religious conflict by working within the parameters of the 1555 settlement, with the eastern towns where civic authorities blurred divisions, allowing townspeople “to pick and choose among observances to attend.”17 Mikhail Dmitriev, in contrast, investigates the other extreme. What happens to a multiconfessional society when an outside authority attempts to impose its own settlement on the region? Taking us to the eastern end of Central Europe, Dmitriev uses the Ruthenian lands as his case study. Here, he shows how a relatively stable and peaceful relationship that had developed over decades between Ruthenia’s Catholic and Orthodox populace was quickly destroyed by the hamfisted attempt of primarily Roman officials to dictate a forced union between the two churches without knowledge of local cultures and traditions. Dmitriev aptly describes Brest as a “cultural misunderstanding” and its violent fallout a result of two clashing religious cultures where both sides had “an amazing incapacity to understand each other.”18 Whatever one makes of the work of the revisionists, it is safe to say that the study of toleration is a complex matter. Not unexpectedly, in response to the critics a more traditional approach has reemerged where the emphasis is laid on

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intellectual and theological concerns.19 This volume acknowledges the validity of both approaches. Indeed, we would argue that to understand a multifarious phenomenon such as toleration it is necessary to study it from a variety of perspectives. Alexander Schunka’s investigation of eighteenth-century Protestant leaders who pursued confessional reconciliation speaks directly to the matter. Schunka begins his essay by evaluating the theological impulse that drove interconfessional dialogue forward. Schunka, however, shrewdly realizes that such discussions were not the product of ideas alone and concludes his essay by considering the social and political circumstances that favored these negotiations in the first place. The most thorough examination of toleration in the volume, Paul Knoll’s consideration of sixteenth-century Poland, is a clear reflection of the theme’s complexity. While nationalist historians have patriotically saluted their Polish homeland as a “state without stakes” or, as a French scholar argued, “an example for Europe,” Knoll gives a more sober evaluation.20 While not denying the importance of religious ideals, he recognizes that toleration was socially bound and dependent on the peculiar composition of Poland’s social and political life. As we reflect now more generally on the goals of this volume as a whole, it seems clear that the lessons Stanisław Orzechowski sought to impress upon Cardinal Commendone still demand attention today. Though the polemical Polish priest clearly had his own agenda when he wrote to the Italian churchman, his reminder that Central Europe was home not only to Catholics and Lutherans but also to Orthodox and Armenian Christians is a healthy admonition for contemporary scholars who may be inclined to limit their confessional vision and rely on old stereotypes and oversimplifications when studying the region. Diversity and Dissent is an attempt to recover the vibrancy of Central Europe’s multiconfessional culture and an opportunity to consider the unique challenges that it posed for society.

Notes 1. The most recent work on Orzechowski is Krzysztof Koehler, Stanisław Orzechowski i dylematy humanizmu (Cracow, 2004); for a brief biographical sketch in English see Harold Segel, Political thought in Renaissance Poland (New York, 2003), 36–47. For the feud with Paul IV see Hanna Świderska, “Stanisław Orzechowski: The Uneasy Years, 1550–1559,” Polish Review 8 (1963): 36–38, 44–45. 2. The autobiographical letter was printed as Vita Stanislai Orichovii Gente Rutheni, Natione Poloni (Cracow, 1891). 3. Ibid., 8. 4. Ibid., 9–11. 5. Ibid., 11–14. 6. Ibid., 5–6. 7. Petr Maťa, “Constructing and Crossing Confessional Boundaries: The High Nobility and the Reformation of Bohemia,” in this volume, 21.

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8. Cited in R. J. W. Evans, Rudolf II and his World (Oxford, 1973), 33. 9. Consider the examples of studies of Slovenia and Slovakia: Marjan Dolgan, ed., Družbena in kulturna podoba slovenske reformacije (Ljubljana, 1986); Karl Schwarz and Peter Švorc, eds., Die Reformation und ihre Wirkungsgeschichte in der Slowakei: Kirchen- und konfessionsgeschichtliche Beiträge (Vienna, 1996). 10. For an introduction to this literature see Borys Gudziak, Crisis and Reform: The Kyivan Metropolitanate, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the Genesis of the Union of Brest (Cambridge, MA, 2001). 11. Ernst Wangermann, “Confessional Uniformity, Toleration, Freedom of Religion: An Issue for Enlightened Absolutism in the Eighteenth Century,” in this volume, 210. 12. Jonathan Dewald, The European Nobility, 1400–1800 (Cambridge, 1996), 1–2. For a brief overview of the Polish nobility see Norman Davies’s summary, “Szlachta: The Nobleman’s Paradise,” in his God’s Playground: A History of Poland, vol. 1 (New York, 1982), 201–255. 13. R. J. W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550–1700 (Oxford, 1979), 200– 216; Howard Louthan, Converting Bohemia: Force and Persuasion in the Catholic Reformation (Cambridge, 2009), 47–82. 14. Most representative here is Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA, 2007), esp. 333–358. 15. Charles H. Parker, Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge, MA, 2008), 20. 16. Thomas A. Brady, Jr., “The Entropy of Coercion in the Holy Roman Empire: Jews, Heretics, Witches,” in this volume, 93. Also note Brady’s use of this term in his recent German Histories in the Age of Reformations, 1400–1650 (Cambridge, 2009), 233–234. 17. David M. Luebke, “Customs of Confession: Managing Religious Diversity in Late Sixteenth-Century and Early Seventeenth-Century Westphalia,” in this volume, 59. 18. Mikhail Dmitriev, “Conflict and Concord in Early Modern Poland: Catholics and Orthodox at the Union of Brest,” in this volume, 115, 129. 19. See in particular Perez Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (Princeton, 2003). 20. Janusz Tazbir, A State without Stakes: Polish Religious Toleration in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. Alexander T. Jordan (New York, 1972); Ambroise Jobert, De Luther à Mohila: La Pologne dans la crise de la chrétienté (Paris, 1974).

Chapter 1

CONSTRUCTING AND CROSSING CONFESSIONAL BOUNDARIES The High Nobility and the Reformation of Bohemia

d Petr Maťa

F

or any historian who has ever dealt with the history of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the Kingdom of Bohemia has been a familiar place. Given the broadly recognized particularity and importance of the historical processes taking place in this territory, significant research has been invested here. Besides the local historiography, the contribution of international scholarship has been remarkable. With respect to all this research, however, a marked deficit in our knowledge—and thus an interesting challenge—remains. We have rather fragmentary knowledge of the confessional composition of the nobility in Reformation Bohemia, despite the fact that research on early modern elites in this region has been booming for two decades. This is because the issues of the Reformation have generally been viewed through the prism of either denominational or political history, mapping the emergence, doctrinal consolidation, and organizational development of the churches on the one hand, and the estates’ struggle for religious tolerance, confessional liberty, and political rights on the other. Thus the denominational preferences of several prominent nobles, normally political leaders or significant patrons of confessional churches, have been highlighted, but we know little about the management of confessional diversity in the day-today affairs of the noble elite. Considering the unique history of the Reformation

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in Bohemia, this is a startling lacuna. In this essay I would like to provide a basic framework for a deeper examination of these issues and then make a few preliminary observations. But to begin, a brief review of basic facts about the peculiar case of Bohemia may be in order.

The Rise and Fall of the Reformation in Bohemia In the Kingdom of Bohemia (and in the adjacent and incorporated but largely autonomous Margravate of Moravia), the breakdown of religious uniformity dates to the fifteenth century.1 Here, the Reformation started a century before the outbreak of the Lutheran movement. The Hussite revolution of 1419–1434 not only destroyed the institutional structures of the Roman church in wide areas of Bohemia (and to some extent Moravia) and facilitated the secularization of its properties but also gave rise to a body of reformed teaching and to a largely autonomous Calixtine or Utraquist church. The reception of communion in both kinds—sub utraque—was its essential characteristic and its constitutive symbol. Utraquist belief was sanctioned by the so-called Compactata, a compromise settlement that was negotiated with the Hussites at the Council of Basel in 1433 and proclaimed as law in 1436. The dependence of the Utraquist church on Rome was reduced to the principle of apostolic succession (Utraquist priests were ordained by bishops of the Roman church), and its organizational structure was based on a wholly independent administration and jurisdiction under its own administrator and consistory. Thus, Bohemia and Moravia were in fact divided by faith long before the German Protestant Reformation began. For several decades after the Compactata, the balance between the Calixtine and Catholic camps was particularly unstable, as the papal curia endeavored to put an end to the schism by provoking Catholic magnates to rebel and foreign rulers to intervene. But the peace of 1485 between the major religious factions definitively secured the coexistence of two creeds in Bohemia. Although the doctrinal divergences between the Roman church and the Utraquists do not seem unbridgeable when viewed in light of the Reformations of the sixteenth century, and although the Utraquist church never disavowed apostolic succession, the jurisdictional and administrative split turned out to be durable in practice. The otherness of Utraquist belief and the autonomy of the Utraquist church, guarded by the Utraquist estates of Bohemia, outlasted all attempts at ecclesiastical union. The church maintained its independence until its destruction in the seventeenth century.2 Secondly, in eastern Bohemia after 1450, a religious sect emerged that traced its origins to the theologically radical but pacifist strands of the Hussite movement. With a pronounced separatist character, they emphasized the practical aspects of Christian life as opposed to the close study of doctrinal thought. After decades

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of seclusion and occasional persecution by both Catholics and Utraquists, these “Brethren” gradually reformulated their theological position concerning political authority and social hierarchy and slowly engaged broader Bohemian society. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Brethren had established their congregations in many urban communities. They found protection from the nobility and even had sympathizers among some high-ranking families. In the 1530s, the Unity of Brethren finally opened itself to the higher estates as a group of nobles was solemnly admitted in 1530. The Brethren remained a notable presence on the confessional map of Bohemia until the triumph of the Counter-Reformation after 1620. Numerically small but influential, this religious society was organized in distinct local congregations around their houses of worship. These were independent of the existing parish structures dividing Catholic and Utraquist. Though occasionally exposed to sanctions (namely after 1547, when a large-scale persecution forced the leadership to relocate their organizational center to Moravia), the Brethren were effectively sheltered and supported by their noble patrons.3 Thirdly, given this “reformation before the Reformation,” the impact of the Lutheran movement in Bohemia was more complicated than in other countries. While the regions and towns that had repulsed the Hussites and remained loyal to the Roman church during the fifteenth century (namely, though not only, the German-speaking regions of western and northern Bohemia bordering Saxony) proved to be markedly receptive to Lutheran Protestantism from its very beginnings,4 neither the Utraquist church nor the Brethren were ready to give up their confessional identities and merge fully with the new Reformation movement. However, the long-term relationship to the Lutheran Reformation was different in the case of the Brethren and the Utraquists. The Brethren, after a period of collaboration and exchange with Wittenberg, drifted apart from the Lutherans. In the early seventeenth century, the mutual relations between them and orthodox Lutherans were strained if not hostile. The Utraquists were more sympathetic to the German Reformation in the long run, and in fact, their theological positions were influenced by Lutheranism in the course of the sixteenth century. Consequently, as the Utraquists adopted elements of Lutheran belief and practice, they began to lose their distinctive confessional contours. In Moravia, where the organizational structure of the Utraquist church was underdeveloped, Utraquists gradually adopted Lutheran doctrine.5 In Bohemia, on the other hand, where the Utraquist church was organized around its autonomous consistory and the University of Prague, there were always influential voices that opposed this growing affinity. While it may be possible to distinguish between Utraquist and Lutheran within the clergy, it is much less apparent at the level of the laity. As a result, some historians have thought it necessary to make a distinction between orthodox “Old Utraquists,” who inclined toward Rome rather than Wittenberg, and the Lutheran-inspired “Neo-Utraquists.” Other historians, however, have insisted on the principal homogeneity and orthodoxy of Utraquism.6

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Finally, the Swiss Reformation had an impact on the confessional situation of Bohemia as the Unity of Brethren underwent a type of “Calvinization” beginning in the last decades of the sixteenth century. The influence of Calvinism on the Brethren included the nobility as well. Many young noble members of the Brethren were sent to study at Calvinist universities in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century.7 With the coexistence of two beliefs and two churches since the Hussite movement, Bohemia in the sixteenth century turned out to be a truly multiconfessional territory. One of this society’s distinctive features resulting from the early Reformation was the growth of toleration during the last decades of the fifteenth century. Such a phenomenon was an outcome of both the gradual acceptance of the biconfessional reality of Bohemia and the erosion of royal authority in favor of the estates—the group that profited most directly from the Hussite Ständerevolution.8 The fact that religious liberty was closely linked to the estates’ privileges appears to be very important. Though new religious groups may have been exposed to persecution on a local level in certain circumstances (as with the Brethren in the early sixteenth century), and though Ferdinand I (1526–1564) attempted several times to suppress both the Brethren and the Lutherans, there was a general distaste among the Bohemian estates for the use of force in matters of conscience—an attitude that emerged as a consequence of the religious peace of 1485 that settled relations between Catholics and Utraquists. Thus, there was neither a struggle for religious uniformity nor an authority that wished to enforce such policies in Bohemia.9 In Moravia, the degree of religious tolerance was even higher. Even Anabaptists were integrated into rural society, becoming a part of the feudal web of relations.10 It was only in the second half of the sixteenth century that plans for religious unification on a broad scale emerged, instigated by external agents of the Counter-Reformation, and it was only in the late part of the century that attempts at radical change sporadically reached the local level. Legal arrangements helped sustain confessional coexistence in Bohemia. As of 1436 Utraquists and Catholics possessed equal rights, and even when the pivotal Compactata was later rejected by Rome, it did not lose its legal force in Bohemia until the second half of the sixteenth century. In fact, the biconfessional legal arrangement protected other groups as well. Utraquism served as a type of “legal umbrella,” a catch-all category for many who did not necessarily share the views and values of traditional Utraquism of the fifteenth century. In contrast, Ferdinand I insisted on a narrow definition of Utraquism and hoped to enforce the Compactata strictly in order to halt the spread of Lutheranism and other “heretical” sects while preserving the Catholic-Utraquist nature of Bohemia. In the second half of the sixteenth century, the non-Catholic estates attempted to secure a more general legalization of their status. At the Diet of 1575 they negotiated the so-called Confessio Bohemica, a common doctrinal statement for Utraquists, Lutherans, and Brethren. Though they received only a verbal com-

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mitment to honor the statement from Maximilian II, in 1609 they finally forced Rudolf II, in the course of a dynastic crisis and under extreme pressure, to sanction the Confessio Bohemica. Rudolf ’s approval by means of the so-called Letter of Majesty not only meant legal security for those of the estates espousing the Confessio Bohemica but also granted freedom of faith and worship to commoners. The Confessio Bohemica borrowed heavily from the Augsburg Confession and did not refer directly to the Compactata. However, the long tradition of Utraquism as a common platform for religious-political resistance continued to create solidarity among Bohemian non-Catholics and provided a common front to oppose the Habsburg kings. The self-portrayal of all non-Catholic estates as “the estates of both kinds” (stavové pod obojí ) helped overcome doctrinal division. In the eyes of Lutheran and Calvinist theologians, however, the Confessio Bohemica was nothing more than a pragmatic and patchwork statement quickly compiled to achieve legal protection for their co-religionists.11 The legal safeguard of 1609 did not stop the struggle between the Protestant estates and the Catholic dynasty. Rather, it helped polarize both camps. After the suppression of the Estates’ Uprising of 1618–1620, the dynasty initiated an unforgiving campaign against Protestantism in the Bohemian and Austrian lands. In Bohemia, Protestant nobles were given a dire choice in 1627/28: convert or emigrate. Large-scale property confiscations that impoverished many ancient noble families and the introduction of a new and loyal foreign nobility to Bohemia in the 1620s made the process easier for the Habsburgs. Thus Catholic uniformity was quickly enforced among the kingdom’s nobility in the years after 1620 and the Catholic victory at White Mountain. Several non-Catholic wives of Catholic nobles remained the only, and temporary, exception.12

High Nobility and the Denominations: Numbers and Contours This is only a brief outline of the complex history of the rise and fall of the Bohemian Reformation as it is usually told. I do not intend to challenge this picture; rather, I suggest that it is worth trying to tell the story from another viewpoint, examining the confessional attitudes of noble society. Little attention has been paid to this matter. Instead, historians have traditionally written church history from an institutional and doctrinal perspective. In doing so, they have occasionally shed some light on those individual nobles who were important members or supporters of a specific religious group. Similarly, historians who examined the struggle between royal religious policy and the political maneuvering of the estates have cursorily explored the religious allegiances of the key protagonists in this contest between king and estates without placing the question of confessional affiliation in a broader diachronic framework. Naturally, biographies of individual nobles, genealogical literature, and other genres of historical writing

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provide some useful, though mostly perfunctory and often repetitive, data. To this point there has been no systematic examination of the religious allegiances of the high nobility as a social class. There is not even a general survey that attempts to elucidate how nobles managed the interplay and gradual overlap of the various Reformations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.13 The scanty literature that does exist on nobles in the Bohemian Reformation is based on a series of debatable presuppositions. First, scholars have assumed that there was a more or less linear development from Utraquism to a decidedly Protestant orientation. Second, there has been a presumption that the religious composition of the nobility mirrored the broader religious makeup of society. Though historians have noticed a somewhat greater proportion of Catholics among the lords (páni), identifiable at the beginning of the seventeenth century, they have generally explained this fact as a result of the wave of conversions to Catholicism that began in this time. During the sixteenth century, on the other hand, Utraquist nobles seem to have turned seamlessly into Neo-Utraquists or redefined themselves as Lutherans or Brethren. According to the rough estimations we have for the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, major segments of noble society in Bohemia were predominantly Protestant; this state of affairs has then been projected back to an earlier period.14 This assumption, however, may be misleading, and the evidence indicates that reality was much more complex. In his challenging, posthumously published study of faith and piety in Bohemia under the Jagiellonian kings (1471–1526), Josef Macek argues that all the families of the high nobility (páni) in Bohemia had returned to Rome before the Habsburgs ascended the throne in 1526.15 Though this claim may be exaggerated, Macek’s assertion that Utraquism gradually lost the high nobles’ support in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century is corroborated by other evidence. There was a revival of Catholic forms of piety among the high nobility around 1500. Certain Catholic aristocrats, unlike their predecessors who alienated church property during the Hussite wars, even founded new monasteries for mendicant friars in this time. If Macek’s claim does have some merit, there are a number of important consequences. First, Macek reminds us of the social distribution of confessions within the nobility. It seems that the religious profile of the lords was significantly different from that of the knights (rytíři) in the early sixteenth century. Knights were predominantly Utraquist while lords were predominantly Catholic. The situation may have been different in Moravia, where, according to another prominent historian, both lords and knights chiefly adopted Utraquism after the Hussite wars.16 There were substantially more knights than lords in Bohemia. But even if not all lords could be labeled as magnates (in the sense of rich, powerful, influential nobles), and even if there were several magnates who were knights, the ruling elite of the kingdom were members primarily of the high nobility. The following discussion will concentrate on the lords exclusively. Second, Macek’s claim implies that the

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Lutheran Reformation and the new noble participation in the Unity of Brethren may have had a greater impact on the Bohemian aristocracy than is usually supposed. If the páni were predominantly Catholic in the 1520s, how could it happen that only a quarter of this estate espoused the Roman faith in 1609? In fact the wave of noble conversions to Roman Catholicism had already begun in the 1590s, so it is likely that the figure estimated for 1609 may be even higher than that of two decades earlier. For Macek to be correct, dozens of nobles must have apostatized during the sixteenth century, yet no historian has examined this subject in significant detail. Clearly, we need to examine the religious practice and conduct of the nobles more closely to be able to verify and interpret these figures. Given our present state of knowledge, this is not an easy job. The so-called tituláře (registers enumerating names and titles of all adult noblemen in the kingdom and published several times throughout the sixteenth century) list approximately 200–300 male members of the lords’ estate in Bohemia.17 These several hundred noblemen and probably as many noblewomen belonged to several dozen families, some of them with multiple branches, others with only a few members. The available literature, however, allows us to reconstruct the long-term confessional profiles of only a few of these houses. I offer four examples here. The story is quite simple in the case of the lords of Jindřichův Hradec (Neuhaus). Although a branch of the family joined the Utraquist party during the Hussite wars, the house seems to have been faithfully obedient to the Roman church afterward, from the middle of the fifteenth century until 1604 when it died out in the male line. The male descendants preferred to marry Catholics, although several interconfessional marriages took place as well. Jindřich/Henry (d. 1507), one of the leaders of the Catholic party and a devout promoter of the Marian cult, married the daughter of a prominent Utraquist nobleman from Moravia. Another example is provided by Zacharias (1527–1589), whose second wife Anna Hedvika funded a Czech edition of a book by Lucas Osiander in 1589—an apparent sign of her sympathy for the Reformation. From the 1540s on, Jáchym (1526–1565) even had a brother-in-law who supported the outlawed Unity of Brethren (and was punished by royal sanctions in 1547), though he supposedly joined the Brethren only after he married Jáchym’s sister in 1543. During its last generation the family became more militantly Catholic. In 1594 they helped the Jesuits establish a college in the family’s residential town of Jindřichův Hradec. In order to safeguard the family’s patrimony in Catholic hands, the family also contributed to the conversion of a relative who became Catholic before he married the sister and heiress of the last lord of Jindřichův Hradec. This relative was the famous Vilém/William Slavata (1572–1652), the highest-ranking of those three Catholic radicals defenestrated by the Protestant estates in 1618.18 The lords of Rožmberk (Rosenberg), one of the wealthiest Bohemian families, made up the kingdom’s most prominent house. They follow a similar pattern, but

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the end of their story is different. After some hesitation at the beginning of the Hussite revolution, the Rožmberks became fierce opponents of radical Hussitism. They were involved in all the major military confrontations between Catholics and Calixtines up to the peace settlement of 1485. The family maintained their Catholic affiliation into the sixteenth century, even when Petr of Rožmberk (1462–1523) married an Utraquist noblewoman in 1483 after promising to respect her faith. In the late 1550s, however, Petr Vok/Peter Wok (1539–1611), the younger of two brothers in the last generation, wavered as his Lutheran sympathies slowly grew. After a long period of internal reflection, and after a critical marriage to a young noblewoman who was heiress to a domain in Moravia belonging to a house that supported the Brethren, he joined his wife’s church in 1582. Later, he became a devoted benefactor of the Brethren and one of their most influential patrons. He even left a sizable bequest in his will to establish a school for adherents of the Confessio Bohemica. His brother Vilém/William of Rožmberk (1535–1592) stood in decided contrast. Though he did not hesitate to marry two German Lutherans for reasons of prestige and politics (1557, 1561), he became a more ardent Catholic supporter in the 1580s, and with encouragement from the papal nuncio, he launched the Counter-Reformation in his own domain.19 In contrast, the religious profile of the lords of Kunštát and Poděbrady changed markedly and repeatedly. Viktorín (d. 1427), the founder of this family branch, was a zealous supporter of the Utraquists. His only son Jiří/George (1420–1471), due to his social connections, economic resources, and diplomatic gifts, eventually became the leader of the Utraquist party among the Bohemian estates. As such, he played a central role in the regency before young King Ladislav entered his majority. After Ladislav’s death, Jiří was even elected king of Bohemia by the estates in 1458, which resulted in new tensions between Utraquists and the Roman curia and led to a new series of wars as malcontent Catholic magnates allied with Mathias Corvinus, the interventionist king of Hungary. Realizing the impossibility of ensuring the succession of his descendants, Jiří worked to ensure that his sons would at least have a privileged social position among the nobility of Bohemia and in the incorporated territories. Besides being heirs to their father’s domain in eastern Bohemia, the sons became lords of several duchies in adjacent and purely Catholic Silesia, there establishing a new social identity as “dukes of Münsterberg.” In order to preserve this uneasy legacy in a delicate religious environment, all four sons renounced Utraquism soon after the “Hussite king” had died. Within one generation, the Poděbrads/Münsterbergs lost most of their landed property in Bohemia, and by the beginning of the sixteenth century their fortunes lay in Silesia, although they repeatedly sought marriage alliance with Bohemian nobles. For several decades, they fully observed their new role as Catholic princes, placing daughters in cloisters, burying family members in Catholic churches (preferably monasteries), and preferring Catholic marriage partners. But

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the return to Catholicism did not last more than two generations. The growth and spread of Lutheranism changed the family strategy once again. After several female members of the family had left nunneries in the 1520s, and after Karel/ Charles of Münsterberg (1476–1536), who had earlier flirted with Protestantism, had died, his sons joined the German Reformation. By 1540, the descendants of the Hussite king in the paternal line were Lutherans, and they remained so until the dynasty died out in 1647.20 Finally, there is the similar but even more colorful story of the lords of Pernštejn. They were a high noble family from Moravia who expanded their domain to Bohemia around 1500, quickly becoming one of the wealthiest houses of the region. After the Hussite wars, the scions of the family held with the Utraquist estates. Even during the reign of Mathias Corvinus—who, after his election as a rival king in 1471, usurped Moravia and other territories from the Kingdom of Bohemia—Vilém/William of Pernštejn (1438–1521) remained Utraquist. Only after the death of Corvinus in 1490 did Vilém convert in order to win the favor of the Jagiellonian king who had succeeded the Hungarian as ruler of Moravia. Both of his sons, however, returned to Utraquism again, and Jan/John of Pernštejn (1487–1548) even supported the Utraquist church’s doctrinal shift toward the German Reformation. The generation of his sons eventually split. The youngest son Vojtěch/Albert (1532–1561) kept his father’s faith while opposing the Brethren, to whose teaching his wife inclined. In contrast, his brothers Jaroslav (1528– 1560) and Vratislav (1530–1582) joined the Roman church. In 1555, Vratislav married a Spaniard, an attendant of the future Empress Mary. She helped create a purely Catholic network of relatives and succeeded in transforming the Pernštejns into religious militants and sympathizers of the Counter-Reformation.21 Thus we have four stories displaying different ways of managing religious diversity within a noble house over five or six generations: lords of Jindřichův Hradec, keeping the Catholic faith; lords of Rožmberk, holding with Rome in the era of confessional dualism though splitting afterward; lords of Kunštát and Poděbrady (later dukes of Münsterberg) becoming Utraquists, then converting to the Roman church before joining the Lutheran Reformation; and the lords of Pernštejn, abandoning Utraquism, then adopting it again in a more radical form, and then reverting to Rome. If we move from secondary literature to source material, we could easily multiply these stories many times over, finding confessional divisions within houses, branches, and families, between generations, and between brothers and sisters, but such an examination still waits to be undertaken.

Crossing and Constructing Confessional Differences Admittedly, the stories retold above are simplifications. They are based on the assumption that the high noble society of Bohemia was marked by clearly dis-

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tinguishable confessional affiliations that we, many centuries after the fact, are able to chart. Both of these assumptions are questionable. In most cases, it is impossible to identify the faith of a high noble with certainty, and in many cases the conclusions we can draw come only from indirect testimony, small clues in confessional behavior based on rituals (marriages, deaths, last wills, burial places, etc.). An important question still remains. How were these differences in creed among the high nobility perceived and respected by their contemporaries? Josef Válka, in a discussion primarily based on Moravia at the beginning of the sixteenth century, has argued that “a large number of noblemen acknowledged no confession whatsoever”—rather, their stance toward religion was characterized by a “non-confessional” or “supra-confessional Christianity.” According to Válka, this attitude grew out of decades of futile controversy in the fifteenth century when Catholics sparred with Utraquists and was strengthened by the early confessional character of the Hussite Reformation.22 Such a claim is in line with recent findings that have highlighted the growth of confessional indifference across early modern Europe. Scholars have brought to our attention many examples of irenic-minded personalities and syncretic attitudes in confessionally mixed societies.23 Josef Válka is certainly right in disputing the strength of confessional boundaries within elite society of that time. There is no doubt there was much less attention to matters of confession among the nobility around 1500 than there was one hundred years later. Válka’s remarks suggest that confessional awareness may have grown and declined, which opens up a series of interesting questions: how were confessional affiliations expressed, how were confessional divisions perceived, and how can historians approach this issue if the determination of religious allegiance remains obscure and unsure? On the other hand, the very fact that the confessional affiliations of nobles were so rarely and casually articulated in written documents does not necessarily imply full ignorance on matters of religious diversity. We should be aware that “absence” may sometimes signify “presence,” and as Keith P. Luria has recently pointed out, peaceful coexistence did not override confessional divides and at times could even heighten awareness of confessional difference.24 Noble conversions to Rome under the Jagiellonian kings suggest that confessional preference certainly played a role even in Válka’s heyday of “non-confessional Christianity.” In any case, important changes began to occur in the 1520s as noble society in Bohemia felt the effects of the Reformation. Obviously, certain circles of the high nobility remained indifferent or hostile to the new creeds. Others, however, quickly displayed a noticeable enthusiasm—for instance, several Germanspeaking families in the border region of northwest Bohemia, such as the Šliks/ Schlicks, quickly adopted Lutheran teachings. Kunrát/Conrad Krajíř of Krajek (d. 1542) stands out as another example of the fascination the new creeds exerted on the nobility in this time. In 1501 he founded a cloister for mendicant Minim

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friars in a remote part of his manor at Nová Bystřice in southern Bohemia. The Minims were a new religious order founded in the 1470s by St. Francis of Paola. The order moved across the Alps in 1491 and established several cloisters in Upper Austria and southern Bohemia with the support of high noble families of that region (Polheim and Harrach in Austria, Rožmberk and Krajíř in Bohemia). In 1507 Krajíř emended his will to include a mass for the souls of his ancestors, relatives, and himself once a year. In 1513 the superior of the order, who was visiting Bohemia, apparently admitted him as a tertiary. All this evidence seems to indicate that his sympathies lay with Rome and not with Utraquism. Krajíř’s sympathy for the Minims, however, shifted to another, very different religious community soon after. In 1512/13 his sister Johanna, an aging widow who for decades had sheltered the Brethren on her vast manor, Mladá Boleslav, northwest of Prague, left her possessions to Kunrát and joined the Unity of Brethren as a common sister. Moving to Mladá Boleslav himself, Kunrát contacted the Brethren and adopted their teachings. In 1530 he and his noble friends, neighbors, and clients solemnly received a second baptism in accordance with the Brethren’s practice at that time (only in 1534 did the Brethren cease to practice adult baptism). Thus he joined the outlawed group despite the threat of severe punishment. Though before 1530 a few nobles (especially women) had secretly joined the Brethren, this is the first recorded instance of a public conversion, and such a development had significant ramifications for this group’s social standing. In the following years, Kunrát became a devoted supporter and defender of the Brethren. He fought for toleration and transformed Mladá Boleslav into the group’s main center. In 1535 he defended their teaching during an audience with Ferdinand I. On his deathbed, he thanked the Brethren for having delivered him from darkness and error. This break with his Catholic past had serious consequences for Kunrát and his family. The next two generations struggled on without royal favor and would be punished after the suppression of the estates’ revolt of 1546/47.25 Krajíř’s avowal of the Brethren’s teachings in 1530 recalls the case of his contemporary Leonhard of Liechtenstein (1482–1534), who not only harbored Anabaptist refugees on his estate at Mikulov/Nikolsburg in southern Moravia but submitted to rebaptism himself by Balthasar Hubmaier in 1526. Other lords in the area opened their estates to the Anabaptists as well. Leonhard’s support for this group did not waver, even when they encountered fierce persecution under Ferdinand I and then began to quarrel among themselves. His successor, however, did not share the same sympathies toward the illegal (though widely tolerated in Moravia) Anabaptists.26 As suggested above, a remarkable decrease in the number of Catholic aristocrats must have occurred sometime between the 1520s and the end of the sixteenth century. This transformation within the high nobility was not only a process of confessional restructuring and differentiation, for at the same time it resulted in

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more transparent confessional divides. The emergence of confessional difference was a slow process. Church leaders’ efforts to determine and assert clear distinctions between emergent groups, to enforce policies of confessional discipline, and to stir up religious fervor may well have produced a gradual awareness of religious borders. A recent study on the strategies adopted by the bishop of Olomouc, Stanislav Pavlovský (d. 1599), with the Moravian nobility is a good example of this phenomenon. At the same time, Pavlovský’s case illustrates to what extent the elites themselves were increasingly disposed to participate in the construction of religious divides on their own.27 For the greater part of the sixteenth century this ideal of clear divides, so much wished for by the church leaders, was more notional than real. People in the everyday world vacillated or at times consciously dissimulated. Thus, David von Tannenberg, to quote an Austrian example, was in 1580 recognized “as Catholic for he stands during the mass on feasts, but ex conversatione he does not seem to be so.” According to a letter of the militant Catholic Georg Eder, who commented on this case, Tannenberg had in fact “some doubts as de communione sub utraque, de invocatione sanctorum, de purgatorio, maybe de sacrificio missae as well and more like this.”28 For Eder, Tannenberg’s allegiance to Catholicism was very much in doubt. This example illustrates that though certain forms of ritual behavior were confessionally distinguishable, religious allegiance was a more complicated matter and often difficult to determine. Another example that illustrates the nebulous nature of confessional affiliation is the fascinating case of Zbyněk Berka of Dubá (1551–1606). Berka, who is often described as the scion of a faithful Catholic family, was an important CounterReformation archbishop of Prague (1593–1606).29 Many members of this multibranched house, however, adopted Lutheranism after 1550. Some seemed to have joined the Brethren as well, and even Zbyněk´s confessional pedigree was obviously not pure. After Rudolf II nominated him as archbishop, the papal nuncio Cesare Speciano denounced the candidate in the course of the canonical process, claiming that Berka had been “a Hussite heretic” as a child since he had received the Eucharist in two kinds without giving auricular confession. Furthermore, Speciano claimed, both of his parents were members of that “sect” and had died as “Hussites.”30 Consequently, the Roman Curia required that Berka forswear these Utraquist errors before his ordination. Berka, however, protested. As a canon of Salzburg and administrator of the Regensburg bishopric, he regarded his treatment as humiliating. He claimed that he had never been a heretic, and that his father, though he received the sacrament in both kinds, was a faithful Catholic.31 Moreover, even though Berka acknowledged that his mother was a “Hussite” (as the nuncio put it), he refused to condemn her, since he did not share the view that the Utraquists, once legalized by the Compactata, were heretics.32 At the beginning of the controversy the nuncio, whose acquaintance with Berka’s family background was based only on the information of a witness, resolutely

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argued that both parents were “Hussites.” But in the course of the quarrel he seems to have realized the weak point of his claim: it was apparently impossible to find any direct evidence determining whether Berka’s father had confessed as a Catholic or as an Utraquist. Berka’s father Zdeněk had died in 1572, two decades earlier, and his confessional allegiance is unknown to historians. All we know is that his father Jindřich/Henry (d. 1541), the archbishop’s grandfather, died a Catholic (we can assume so from the fact that he was buried in the St. Vitus Cathedral at Prague Castle). Zbyněk (d. 1578), one of Zdeněk´s brothers and the archbishop’s uncle, was a Catholic as well. In his last will, composed in 1574, he named Catholic guardians for his children and complained about his relatives who had apostatized. He was anxious that they could possibly make “some nuisance concerning my children and churches.”33 His brother Václav (d. 1575), on the other hand, was obviously a Protestant. His last will, also drawn up in 1574, expressed similar concern for the religious future of his subjects (he was childless), but this time it was the “Papists” (papeženci) who were to be excluded from positions of church leadership.34 The archbishop’s father was buried in a church building on his manor, and it is not clear who administered it at the time. No wonder that the nuncio was puzzled and later in the dispute focused instead on the mother’s confessional allegiance, since in his mind there was unambiguous evidence: she was buried in the Týn church in the Old Town of Prague, the symbolic center of Utraquism.35 This misunderstanding between the nuncio and the nominated archbishop illustrates on the one hand competing categorizations of Utraquism, heresy, or orthodoxy, thus inviting us to analyze religious allegiance as a process in which self-identification and external categorization interacted, rather than relying on the problematic concept of confessional identity.36 On the other hand, it reveals how difficult it was, even for contemporaries, to be sure about the confessional affiliation of others. Theoretically, we could determine an individual’s confessional commitment by identifying the worship in which he or she participated, but documentation here is thin. We are also unsure to what extent differences between Catholic and Utraquist laity could be blurred in practice through the celebration of the Eucharist. Could communion be administered sub una or sub utraque to Catholics and Utraquists by the same priest during the same service? Such arrangements may not be improbable, for there were many religiously mixed households. In the case of the Brethren, differentiating is less problematic as their worship was distinct, and their priests and congregations had no link to an Episcopalian church. On the other hand, many nobles did not make their attachment to the Unity public during periods of persecution. How, then, can denominational allegiances be approached and interpreted by historians if they were often expressed so opaquely? Starting with the assumption that confessional affiliation for elite society can neither be taken for granted nor even viewed as stable in the sense that there

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were distinct borders between religious groups, we should not simply ask which confession specific nobles professed. Instead, we should identify situations and practices in which confessional divisions were recognizable and identifiable for contemporaries, or those that by contrast were viewed as confessionally neutral. Insufficient documentation does not allow us to track the confessional composition of high noble society decade by decade, but we may learn much more about conduct in the matter of confession if we examine situations in which confessional borders were constructed. A sample of 217 wills of Bohemia’s high nobility (Figure 1.1) reveals how confessional sentiments were gradually affecting the consciousness of the ruling elite.37 Prior to 1550 these last testaments contained dispositions of property but usually held no direct references to the confession of testators. Starting in the middle of the 1560s, however, some testators included confessionally specific language, and the percentage slowly grew over the decades. Normally, such clauses concerned admonitions to the testator’s children, particularly sons, to remain faithful to the paternal creed; the education of children in the testator’s faith; legacies for religious purposes; the sepulcher of the testator; or religious rules for the testator’s domain. After the defeat of the Protestant estates in 1620, the number of last wills that identified the testator as Catholic not surprisingly surged, while clauses mentioning non-Catholic confessions disappeared. By the end of the Thirty Years’ War, the writing of a last will in Bohemian noble society was in most cases an act of Catholic self-identification. Initially, it was only men who included confessional language in their wills, but from the 1590s onward noble women started to do the same and were soon represented proportionally. Initially, it was highranking officers who followed this practice. Catholics adopted it before non-

Figure 1.1. Last Wills of Lords (páni), 1551–1650 (217 in total)

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Catholics, although the latter followed suit after one or two decades. Brethren nobles, however, rarely mentioned confession in their wills—apparently it was too risky as the Unity was outlawed. In general, non-Catholic nobles simply identified themselves as sub utraque (“pod obojí”), thus blurring other possible affiliations. The giving of Christian names to children in high noble society reveals a similar trend. Until the very end of the sixteenth century, first names were used irregardless of confessional orientation. Matters changed in the first decades of the seventeenth century, as the name František (Francis) and the female variant Františka, both extremely rare in elite circles until this time, began to spread among Catholics. Between 1605 and 1625, at least thirteen children, all from Catholic couples, were given these names. There may have been more such cases as our evidence is incomplete due to high infant mortality. The Jesuit name Ignác (Ignatius) had a similar career. It first appeared in 1586 and then was chosen at least five times between 1611 and 1625. Catholics also began to use the names of several female saints in similar fashion. As with the case of wills, Catholics were in the forefront of this trend. Protestants do not seem to have adopted a similar strategy with names.38 In contrast, confessional boundaries were probably perceived much earlier in burial practices. Unlike the writing of wills or the choice of names, this was an act that by definition addressed confessional matters directly. Nobles were most regularly buried in churches, and the confessional affiliation of a church was admittedly clearer than that of the nobles themselves. Indeed, burial was one cultural practice where a family was compelled to make their confessional affiliation visible. When a noble or even an entire family converted, burial places were often relocated, or at times the church itself changed its confessional affiliation. Some burial spaces were kept strictly mono-confessional. This was supposedly the case with St. Vitus Cathedral, although this question has not been fully examined. As far as I have been able to determine, only one non-Catholic was buried in the cathedral. Despite the fact that he was under the papal ban, the Utraquist “Hussite king” George was entombed here in 1471. Symbolically, though, his bowels were deposited in the Týn church.39 On the other hand, the remains of non-Catholics—particularly women, as cross-confessional marriages were widespread—were sometimes deposited in family crypts of Catholic monasteries. The lords of Rožmberk serve as one example. They owned a vault in the Cistercian abbey at Vyšší Brod/Hohenfurt, their medieval foundation. No less than ten generations of family members were buried here, including both Protestant wives of Vilém (d. 1592) and—even more significantly—the last lord of Rožmberk (d. 1612) and his wife (d. 1601), who had both joined the Unity of Brethren. Petr Vok had intended to break with family tradition and build another burial place for his wife and himself in his residential town, Český Krumlov. He failed to realize his plan only because he was forced to sell the town in order to redeem his debts.40

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As can be seen from these examples, confessional sentiments slowly but surely affected a broad array of social and cultural activity. Their impact, though, is not always easy to gauge as they intersected with other factors, be it social and gender identification or family traditions, that often proved stronger than the new religious currents. The approaches outlined above account for this complexity and may substantially deepen our knowledge of these confessional attitudes and the role they played in the lives of early modern nobles.

Conclusion The story of how the Reformation influenced the behavior of the Bohemian nobility, especially its higher echelons, is not only the narrative of a political process (the Protestant estates’ struggle for religious toleration and legalization) but also the story of the construction and deconstruction of confessional boundaries. Closer exploration of this sociocultural process is needed, and the present essay suggests only some directions for further research. In the meantime, we might consider two further issues. The first is the shift in the confessional composition of the lords’ estate. In the first stage, a split between Catholic and Calixtine nobles came about as a consequence of the Hussite wars. It was followed by the Catholicization of the high nobility, which occurred, surprisingly, under the weak rule of the Jagiellonian dynasty (1471–1526). Under the Habsburgs, both the authoritative Ferdinand I and the moderate Maximilian II (1526–1564; 1564–1576), the tide shifted once more and the lords adopted Protestantism in ever increasing numbers, though the rate of this change was initially slow. Given the data we have, it seems likely that many of these conversions did not occur until after 1550. This dynamic changed once more in the 1590s as many of the high nobles returned to the Catholic camp, preparing the ground for the forced re-Catholicization after 1620. Many questions remain unanswered concerning these broader patterns. How did these changes arise in the first place? What prompted these social shifts, and how were these changes in confessional allegiance managed in practice? The other concerns the change in the depth of confessional awareness: the ways confessional divides were identified and expressed and the ways individuals were sensitized to them. Crossing confessional divides was common within the confessionally mixed nobility of Bohemia in the sixteenth century. But the divides we are thinking of were still rather fluid and actually only then crystallizing. The emergence of confessional borders within this noble society was a long-term process that did not follow a straightforward pattern until at least the middle of the sixteenth century. In all likelihood, many nobles had little interest in doctrinal matters, and as Josef Válka has suggested, a significant number of them were ready to accept a broad understanding of Christian community that resisted con-

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fessional distinctiveness. Even then, it is not clear whether this resulted in confessional indeterminacy, as the fragmentary evidence may suggest (as well as the lack of a systematic examination). Despite a type of trans-confessional accommodation, certain confessional markers (communion, for instance) may have always existed, at least in a latent form. Whatever the case may be, vast areas of noble life remained untouched by these religious divisions for a long time. Only in the late sixteenth century did this process of religious polarization really began to accelerate, whereupon catalysts of confessionalization such as papal nuncios helped generate a confessional and political conflict with far-reaching consequences.

Notes 1. The complicated and dissimilar religious developments in the other dependencies of the composite monarchy of Bohemia (Silesia and Upper and Lower Lusatia) cannot be addressed here. 2. František Kavka and Anna Skýbová, Husitský epilog na koncilu tridentském a původní koncepce habsburské rekatolizace Čech (Prague, 1968), 175–180; Winfried Eberhard, Konfessionsbildung und Stände in Böhmen 1478–1530 (Munich, 1981); František Šmahel, Die Hussitische Revolution, vols. 1–3 (Hanover, 2002); Zdeněk V. David, Finding the Middle Way: The Utraquists’ Liberal Challenge to Rome and Luther (Washington, D.C., 2003). 3. Anton Gindely, Geschichte der Böhmischen Brüder, vols. 1–2 (Prague, 1857–1858); Joseph Theodor Müller, Geschichte der Böhmischen Brüder, vols. 1–3 (Herrnhut, 1922–1931); Rudolf Říčan, Die Böhmischen Brüder (Berlin, 1961). 4. Frederick G. Heymann, “The Impact of Martin Luther upon Bohemia,” Central European History 1 (1968): 107–130; Winfried Eberhard, “Die deutsche Reformation in Böhmen 1520–1620,” in Deutsche in den böhmischen Ländern, ed. Hans Rothe (Cologne, 1992), 103–123. 5. František Hrubý, “Luterství a kalvinismus na Moravě před Bílou horou,” Český časopis historický 40 (1934): 265–309 and 41 (1935): 1–40, 237–268; Hrubý, “Luterství a novoutrakvismus v českých zemích v 16.–17. stol.,” Český časopis historický 45 (1939): 31–44. 6. The forenamed perspective, developed by Ferdinand Hrejsa, Česká konfesse, její vznik, podstata a dějiny (Prague, 1912), and adopted by Winfried Eberhard, Monarchie und Widerstand: Zur ständischen Oppositionsbildung im Herrschaftssystem Ferdinands I. in Böhmen (Munich, 1985), was recently challenged by David, Finding the Middle Way. 7. Otakar Odložilík, Jednota bratrská a reformovaní francouzského jazyka (Philadelphia, 1964); František Hrubý, Étudiants tchéques aux écoles protestantes de l’Europe occidentale à la fin du XVIe et au début du XVIIe siècle (Brno, 1970). 8. The interpretation coined by Ferdinand Seibt, Hussitica: Zur Struktur einer Revolution (Cologne, 1965). 9. Winfried Eberhard, “Zu den politischen und ideologischen Bedingungen öffentlicher Toleranz: Der Kuttenberger Religionsfrieden (1485),” Zeszyty naukowe Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Prace historyczne 100 (1992): 101–118; Jaroslav Pánek, “The Question of Tolerance in Bohemia and Moravia in the Age of the Reformation,” in Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation, ed. Ole Peter Grell and Robert W. Scribner (Cambridge and New York, 1996), 231–248; František Šmahel, “Pax externa et interna: Vom heiligen Krieg zur erzwungenen Toleranz im hussitischen Böhmen (1419–1485),” in Toleranz im

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10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

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Mittelalter, ed. Alexander Patschovsky and Harald Zimmermann (Sigmaringen, 1998), 221–273. Thomas Winkelbauer, “Die rechtliche Stellung der Täufer im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert am Beispiel der habsburgischen Länder,” in Ein Thema – zwei Perspektiven: Juden und Christen in Mittelalter und Frühneuzeit, ed. Eveline Brugger and Birgit Wiedl (Innsbruck, 2007), 34–66. Hrejsa, Česká konfesse; Jaroslav Pánek, “The Religious Question and the Political System of Bohemia before and after the Battle of the White Mountain,” in Crown, Church and Estates: Central European Politics in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. R. J. W. Evans and T. V. Thomas (New York, 1991), 129–148; Joachim Bahlcke, Regionalismus und Staatsintegration im Widerstreit: Die Länder der Böhmischen Krone im ersten Jahrhundert der Habsburgerherrschaft (1526–1619) (Munich, 1994). Jiří Mikulec, Rekatolizace šlechty v Čechách: Čí je země, toho je náboženství (Prague, 2005); Alessandro Catalano, La Boemia e la riconquista delle coscienze: Ernst Adalbert von Harrach e la Controriforma in Europa centrale (1620–1667) (Rome, 2005); Tomáš Knoz, Pobělohorské konfiskace: Moravský průběh, středoevropské souvislosti, obecné aspekty (Brno, 2006). An exception here is Josef Válka’s stimulating contributions on “non-confessional Christianity”; see note 22 below. There has been some research on noble strategies during the Counter-Reformation. See Jiří Mikulec, “Mezi konverzi a emigrací: Vídeňský dvůr a náboženská loajalita šlechty v Čechách v prvních pobělohorských desetiletích,” in Šlechta v habsburské monarchii a císařský dvůr (1526–1740), Opera historica 10, ed. Václav Bůžek and Pavel Král (České Budějovice, 2003), 397–414. For an important recent study on noble converts to Catholicism see Thomas Winkelbauer, Fürst und Fürstendiener: Gundaker von Liechtenstein, ein österreichischer Aristokrat des konfessionellen Zeitalters (Vienna, 1999), 85–158. František Dvorský, “Jaký byl číselný poměr katolíků vůči straně pod obojí l. 1609,” Sborník historický 2 (1884): 280–288; František Hrubý, “Moravská šlechta r. 1619, její jmění a náboženské vyznání,” Časopis Matice moravské 46 (1922): 107–169. Both studies are exceptions because they examine the confessional composition of the nobility, not of the population, as most other studies do. Jaroslav Macek, Víra a zbožnost jagellonského věku (Prague, 2001), 161. Jaroslav Mezník, “Česká a moravská šlechta ve 14. a 15. století,” Sborník historický 37 (1990): 7–35, here 24–25. Petr Maťa, Svět české aristokracie (1500–1700) (Prague, 2004), 575. The number seems to have been declining slightly. It increased only in the seventeenth century in connection with a general transformation of the lords’ estate and the imposition of new titles and hierarchies: ibid., 67–76, 157–165. Václav Bůžek, ed., Poslední páni z Hradce, Opera historica 4 (České Budějovice, 1998). Here and in the following I refer only to summarizing publications containing further references. Jaroslav Pánek, Poslední Rožmberkové: Velmoži české renesance (Prague, 1989). Otakar Odložilík, The Hussite King: Bohemia in European Affairs 1440–1471 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1965); Stefan Głogowski, Genealogia Podiebradów (Gliwice, 1997); Ondřej Felcman, Radek Fukala, et al., Poděbradové: Rod českomoravských pánů, kladských hrabat a slezských knížat (Prague, 2008). Petr Vorel, Páni z Pernštejna: Vzestup a pád rodu zubří hlavy v dějinách Čech a Moravy (Prague, 1999); Jaroslav Pánek, “Politika, náboženství a každodennost nejvyššího kancléře Vratislava z Pernštejna,” in Pernštejnové v českých dějinách, ed. Petr Vorel (Pardubice, 1995), 185–198; Josef Válka, “Politika a nadkonfesijní křesťanství Viléma a Jana z Pernštejna,” in Pernštejnové v českých dějinách, 173–182. Josef Válka, “Moravia and the Crisis of the Estates’ System in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown,” in Evans and Thomas, Crown, Church and Estates, 149–157, here 153; Válka, “Die

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24. 25.

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27. 28.

29. 30.

31.

32.

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‘Politiques’: Konfessionelle Orientierung und politische Landesinteressen in Böhmen und Mähren (bis 1630),” in Ständefreiheit und Staatsgestaltung in Ostmitteleuropa: Übernationale Gemeinsamkeiten in der politischen Kultur vom 16.-18. Jahrhundert, ed. Joachim Bahlcke, Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg, and Norbert Kersken (Leipzig, 1996), 229–241. The argument is further developed by Thomas Winkelbauer, “Überkonfessionelles Christentum in der 2. Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts in Mähren und seinen Nachbarländern,” in Dějiny Moravy a Matice moravská. Problémy a perspektivy, ed. Libor Jan et al. (Brno, 2000), 131–146. Kasper von Greyerz et al., eds., Interkonfessionalität – Transkonfessionalität – binnenkonfessionelle Pluralität: Neue Forschungen zur Konfessionalisierungsthese (Gütersloh, 2003); Howard Louthan, The Quest for Compromise: Peacemakers in Counter-Reformation Vienna (Cambridge, 1997). Keith P. Luria, Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early Modern France (Washington, D.C., 2005). Jos(ef ) Mrštík, Bývalý Paulánský klášter nejsvětější Trojice u Nové Bystřice (Tábor, 1883), 11–17; Jaroslav Kadlec, “Pavláni v jižních Čechách,” Časopis společnosti přátel starožitností českých 58 (1950): 40–52, here 43–44; Jiří Mihola, “K počátkům paulánského řádu a jeho rozšíření v českých zemích,” Sborník prací Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity v Brně 153, Řada společenských věd 18 (2001): 25–36; Amedeo Molnár, Boleslavští Bratří (Prague, 1952). Konrád Krajíř has received little scholarly attention so far. Quite symptomatically, the fact that the founder of the cloister and the famous follower of the Brethren were one and the same person has been overlooked so far. Not even the attentive Macek, Víra, seems to be fully aware of it. Jarold Knox Zeman, The Anabaptists and the Czech Brethren in Moravia 1526–1628: A Study of Origins and Contacts (The Hague, 1968), 166, 185, 221ff.; Christoph Möhl, “Die Herren von Liechtenstein und die Wiedertäufer in Mähren,” Jahrbuch des Historischen Vereins für das Fürstentum Liechtenstein 77 (1977): 119–171; Martin Rothkegel, “Anabaptism in Moravia and Silesia,” in A Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521–1700, ed. John Roth and James Stayer (Leiden, 2007), 163–215. Ondřej Jakubec, Kulturní prostředí a mecenát olomouckých biskupů potridentské doby (Olomouc, 2003), 65–96. “…für catholisch, das er bey der mess am feyrtag sten [= stehen] bleibt, aber ex conversatione befindt sichs wol anders… ”; “…etliche dubia alls de communione sub utraque, de invocatione S. S., de purgatorio, villeicht auch de sacrificio missae und dergl. mer. ” Viktor Bibl, “Die Berichte des Reichshofrates Dr. Georg Eder an die Herzoge Albrecht und Wilhelm von Bayern über die Religionskrise in Niederösterreich (1579–1587),” Jahrbuch für Landeskunde von Niederösterreich 8 (1909): 67–154, here 100, 102. Winfried Eberhard, “Berka von Duba und Leipa, Zbynko,” in Die Bischöfe des Heiligen Römischen Reiches: 1448 bis 1648, ed. Erwin Gatz (Berlin, 1996), 44–46. “…il quale senza dubio è Catholico, ma è però stato da figliuolino heretico Hussita, et si communicava sub utraque specie senza confessarsi sacramentalmente, della medesima setta furono suo Padre et Madre, et sono morti Hussiti,” Natale Mosconi, ed., La nunziatura di Praga di Cesare Speciano (1592–1598), vols. 1–5 (Brescia, 1966), vol. 3, 20. “…egli mi dice che solo la Madre era hussita, et ch’egli non si ricorda d’esser mai stato tale, et che suo Padre ancora che fosse delli communicanti sub utraque, ma [ … ] fosse catholico, perché si confessava sacramentalmente…”, ibid., 86. Alena Pazderová, who is preparing a critical edition of Speciano’s correspondence, provided me with more a reliable transcription of this sentence, though a part of it remains illegible. “…non essendo mai stato heretico, né volendo confessare che alcuno de suoi Padre, o madre sia stato tale…”, ibid., 185.

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33. Národní archiv (Prague), Desky zemské větší 20, C13–C16 (“…aby mi při dětech a kostelích nějakého neřádu neučinili…”). 34. Miloslav Rohlík, ed., Moravské zemské desky, vol. 3: 1567–1641: Kraj brněnský (Prague, 1957), 122. 35. “… che non poteva egli [i.e., the nominated archbishop Berka] negare quello che era noto a tutti che sua Madre era morta heretica Hussita et sepolta in questa Chiesa principale delli Hussiti …” Mosconi, La nunziatura di Praga, vol. 3, 187. The fact that Zdeněk’s wife was buried separately from him and their children might imply that the archbishop’s parents actually did disagree on the issue of confession. Her brother-in-law Václav was buried in the Týn church as well. 36. Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, “Beyond ‘Identity,’” Theory and Society 29 (2000): 1–47; Frauke Volkland, Konfession und Selbstversändnis: Reformierte Rituale in der gemischtkonfessionellen Kleinstadt Bischofszell im 17. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2005), 9–47; Ronald G. Asch, “Religiöse Selbstinszenierung im Zeitalter der Glaubenskriege: Adel und Konfession in Westeuropa,” Historisches Jahrbuch 125 (2005): 67–100. 37. This inquiry aims at giving a sense of the development and is by no means intended to be exhaustive. Admittedly, a more thorough examination of last wills would require a much more elaborated and systematic approach. Excluded were women descended from lords’ families that married knights, and included were women from knights’ families that married lords. Source: Národní archiv (Prague), Desky zemské větší 10–12, 14–25, 27, 128–129, 131–132, 134, 136–138, 141–142, 146, 150–151, 256; Úřad desk zemských—listiny, box 50, 54. Some of these testaments have been carefully edited by Pavel Král, Mezi životem a smrtí: Testamenty české šlechty v letech 1550–1650 (České Budějovice, 2002). 38. Petr Maťa, “Vorkonfessionelles, überkonfessionelles, transkonfessionelles Christentum: Prolegomena zu einer Untersuchung der Konfessionalität des böhmischen und mährischen Hochadels zwischen Hussitismus und Zwangskatholisierung,” in Konfessionelle Pluralität als Herausforderung: Koexistenz und Konflikt in Spätmittelalter und Frühen Neuzeit. Winfried Eberhard zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Joachim Bahlcke, Karen Lambrecht, and Hans-Christian Maner (Leipzig, 2006), 307–331. 39. On the funeral of the Hussite king with the assistance of priests from both Catholic and Utraquist sides see Odložilík, Hussite King, 262, 267. On noble sepulchers in general see Pavel Král, “Tod, Begräbnisse und Gräber: Funeralrituale des böhmischen Adels als Mittel der Repräsentation und des Andenkens,” in Macht und Memoria: Begräbniskultur europäischer Oberschichten in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Mark Hengerer (Cologne, 2005), 421–448. On the cathedral see Anežka Merhautová, ed., Katedrála sv. Víta v Praze. (K 650. výročí založení) (Prague, 1994) (with more literature). 40. For other examples see Maťa, Vorkonfessionelles, 320–325.

Chapter 2

RELIGIOUS TOLERATION IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY POLAND Political Realities and Social Constraints

d Paul W. Knoll

Introduction By the end of the European Middle Ages, the Polish state had succeeded in establishing a significant regional identity and had incorporated the heritage of the European tradition as it had emerged in Latin Europe. Although it was part of what Jerzy Kłoczowski has revealingly depicted as “the younger Europe,” the polity, society, and culture of Poland were fully part of the larger picture of medieval Christianitas.1 The civilization that had evolved under the Piast dynasty (until 1370) was in many respects derivative, and the brief period of Angevin rule from Hungary (1370–1382) represented a period of flux. But under the rule of the Jagiellonian family of Lithuania, from the end of the fourteenth century until the death without an heir of King Sigismund II Augustus in 1572, Poland entered a new era, during which it constituted, in Norman Davies’s words, “one of the most original civilizations of early modern Europe.”2 Poland was converted to Catholic Christianity in the tenth century during the rule of Duke Mieszko I (d. 992) and throughout the succeeding generations became an integral part of Latin Christendom.3 Even though the countryside may not have been as profoundly and effectively Christianized as parts of “older Europe,” as Stanisław Bylina has recently shown, the dominant religious outlook

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of the intellectual and cultural elite of the country was solidly Catholic.4 In the late Middle Ages, however, political and social developments in Poland created conditions that changed this characterization. In the course of his long reign (1333–1370), King Casimir the Great incorporated territories into Poland from Ruthenia, where the population was a mix from the world of Orthodox Christianity.5 Subsequently, the dynastic union created by the 1386 marriage of Jadwiga of Anjou, whose rule in Poland can be dated from 1384, to the pagan Grand Prince of Lithuania, Jogaila, brought into being a Polish-Lithuanian state with a population that was by no means uniformly Catholic.6 Jogaila had converted to Catholic Christianity as a condition of the marriage, taking the baptismal name Władysław (he is most commonly known in Polish historiography as Jagiełło) and promised to convert the remaining pagan population of his state to Catholicism. But many of the subjects of the Lithuanian state were already Christian, though Orthodox (some of them Monophysite Armenians). In addition there were members of other religious faiths within the new state, including Muslims and, in growing numbers, Jews.7 By necessity, the rulers of the early Jagiellonian state were forced to accept a kind of religious coexistence in order to insure that the diverse parts of this polity—geopolitically the largest in Europe—could be integrated into a political whole. Moreover, this de facto toleration of religious diversity was reinforced by the dynamic process of colonial settlement and urbanization in the region of Ruthenia. There, Orthodox native populations, both elites and commoners, mixed with new Catholic arrivals, and the whole region became a Latin frontier in which issues of political, economic, and social integration were inseparably intermixed with religious issues.8 Thus, on the eve of the Reformations of the sixteenth century, Poland-Lithuania reflected a degree of religious pluralism that Michael G. Müller has characterized as non-theological and non-constitutional.9 With some important exceptions to be noted below, a number of different religious communities lived side by side in circumstances that did not disrupt the social fabric or political order. It is this sixteenth-century tradition that has come to be regarded as underlying Poland’s widespread reputation as a state characterized by religious toleration. Thus, for example, Jerzy Kłoczowski has noted that medieval religious pluralism in Poland-Lithuania and elsewhere in the region was the foundation for the development of religious freedom, which allowed diverse religious groups to live peacefully together.10

The Image of the “State Without Stakes” The Reformation period greatly complicated the religious picture in Poland. The rupture within the Catholic church that followed the break between Martin Luther and Rome and the subsequent emergence of a broad spectrum of movements

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that are loosely known as “Protestant” all found echoes within the Jagiellonian world. Lutheran adherents were most common in Prussia, Silesia, and Great Poland among the German townspeople there. Calvinist, or Reformed, traditions found a receptive audience among the nobility. Even elements of the Radical Reformation—Bohemian Brethren, German Anabaptists, Dutch Mennonites, and various versions of anti-Trinitarian belief and practice—were represented within the Kingdom of Poland (and also, increasingly, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania).11 For the most part, the arrival of the Reformation in Poland created far less disruption than had occurred in countries to the west. Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Protestants, and even non-Christian groups lived in an environment that seemed relatively stable. No event in Poland even approached the violence and horror of the slaughter of French Huguenots on St. Bartholomew’s Night in 1572, and as we shall see below, the Warsaw Confederation of 1573 guaranteed full religious freedom to the nobility. As a result, the idea that Poland was characterized by religious toleration took deep root, and the notion of Poland as a “state without stakes” at which heretics were burned eventually became a particularly powerful element in Polish historiography.12 Earlier versions of this tradition were, in a sense, codified at the beginning of the last century in Aleksander Brückner’s study of Polish dissidents, in which he argued that their presence and survival in Poland was due, in part, to something specific about the character of Polish civilization. It was this, he suggested, that brought fame and honor to Poland beyond even that achieved by the Battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg, Żalgris) in 1410 or the Union of Lublin in 1569.13 Others soon followed in teasing out details of the religious scene in the sixteenth century. In the interwar period Władysław Konopczyński emphasized Polish religious tolerance in a number of publications.14 A half century after Brückner, the great historian Roman Dyboski, writing in exile during the Second World War, devoted special attention to the tradition of Polish toleration in his study of Poland’s place in European and world civilization.15 By the mid 1960s a fuller picture of this tradition had been put together, not first but most powerfully by Janusz Tazbir. His presentation at the 12th International Congress of Historical Sciences in Vienna in 196516 was complemented soon after by a historiographical masterpiece whose eventual translation into English proved an influential force in shaping the understanding of developments in Poland for a wider audience.17 Subsequently this theme was further developed by scholars writing either in Poland or in emigration.18 Indeed, almost all modern Polish scholarship regarding the Reformation in Poland remarks upon the phenomenon of religious toleration, often in terms that suggest it to be a national characteristic. But Polish historians have not been alone in this. Foreign scholars, too, have developed this theme. In his classic work on toleration during the Reformation, Joseph Lecler devoted a whole “book” (or chapter in three subsections) to Poland’s place in the history of the rise of tolerance.19 His contemporary Ambroise

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Jobert, in his own treatment of the Reformation in Poland, took seriously the image of Poland as the land of religious toleration.20 And, as Howard P. Louthan has noted in a slightly different context, North American scholars such as Earl Morse Wilbur and George Huntston Williams have also contributed to burnishing the image of Poland as a religiously tolerant state by their focus upon such groups as the Socinians or Polish Brethren, who were themselves, indeed, ardent supporters of religious toleration.21 Lest it appear from the foregoing that I am suggesting these Polish and foreign scholars have manufactured an image out of whole cloth, it is important to note that even in the sixteenth century Poland was thought by many to be characterized by what some might call religious toleration. The great Catholic cardinal Stanisław Hosius (in Polish, Hozjusz), bishop of Warmia (Ermland) after 1551 and a leading force for Catholic reform in Poland, reported that in the view of the papacy Poland had become a haven for heretics (asylum hereticorum).22 A second expression of the spirit of toleration is also attributed to Poland in this period. It is one many scholars have traditionally identified with a model that sees toleration growing, almost organically, out of Renaissance humanism, especially in its northern variant as personified in such figures as Erasmus and Thomas More.23 Erasmus, the “Prince of Humanists,” had close connections with Poland, and he and his rational, tolerant views were widely appreciated there. The eventual Archbishop of Gniezno and Primate of Poland, Jan Łaski, corresponded frequently with Erasmus; his nephew and namesake Jan Łaski, who became an important Protestant reformer in Poland, the Netherlands, and England, was a personal friend of Erasmus and eventually bought his library; Stanisław Hosius was a member of an Erasmian Circle in Poland, and—most famously—Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski (Modrevius), royal secretary, political and perhaps religious reformer, and author of the De republica emendanda libri quinque, was a great admirer of Erasmus and drew heavily upon his works in his own writings.24 It is, therefore, not without significance for the question of Poland-Lithuania’s image as a religiously tolerant state that Erasmus should have once commented in a letter to Archbishop William Warham of Canterbury that “Poland is devoted to me.”25 Surely this statement implies that, if Poland were so deeply imbued with the spirit of Erasmus, it must have shared his irenic and tolerant outlook. The influx into Poland as early as the 1530s of dissident religious groups fleeing religious persecution elsewhere in Europe is regarded as evidence that the papacy’s judgment about religious conditions there was sound.26 Finally, there is the revealing observation of the early seventeenth-century British traveler Edwin Sandys, who commented in his diary on the peaceful coexistence of various religious traditions in Poland. He noted that “if somebody had lost his confession in his homeland, he should come to Poland and find it there; if not, however, it would mean that the confession of his choice exists nowhere in the world.”27

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Statements attributed to the last two rulers of the Jagiellonian dynasty enhanced the image of Poland-Lithuania as a “state without stakes.” For example, when King Sigismund I the Old was urged by a papal envoy to arrest and execute heretics, he responded, “Permit me to rule over the goats as well as the sheep.”28 Some years later, when his son and successor Sigismund II Augustus reportedly was asked by some of his subjects which side they should take on religious issues, his answer was “I am not the king of your consciences.”29 Closer examination of the policies of these two monarchs, however, reveals a more ambiguous attitude toward religious matters than these anecdotal comments suggest. While Sigismund the Old supported the general idea of church reform, including serious consideration of convening the national council of the Polish church, his personal piety was profoundly Catholic,30 and to the end of his life he remained hostile to the Protestant Reformation (see below).31 Understanding Sigismund Augustus’s attitude is more complex. He may have been sympathetic to the Erasmian tradition and may have harbored thoughts about the establishment of a national church, but he was not a supporter of Protestant doctrines. Though the papal nuncio at the time, Berardo Bongiovanni, believed that many Catholics in Poland feared the king would convert to Protestantism,32 his policy of allowing full freedom of religion to Lutherans in Danzig (Gdańsk), Thorn (Toruń), and Elbing (Elbląg) in 1557/58 was predicated neither upon altruism nor religious relativism, but rather upon the king’s financial need.33 When all is said and done, it is clear that, although he was open to new political and intellectual, even religious, currents, his traditionalism and conservatism ensured that he would remain firmly faithful to the Catholic church.34 The question of religious toleration in history has often been treated in the abstract, especially by historians of ideas who have divorced the phenomenon from its political and social context; their “whiggish” approach has been effectively analyzed by Ole Peter Grell.35 The Polish historiographical equivalent has often been to single out toleration in a rather uncritical way, holding it up as an idealized example of an important contribution, before the success of other European nations, to European civilization. As is clear from other contributions to this volume, however, the trajectory of toleration in Poland-Lithuania both mirrored and deviated from other European developments: in some places policies of religious toleration were put in place even though intolerance remained. The treatment of the complexity of this process is one of the stronger elements of Benjamin Kaplan’s recent synthesis Divided By Faith. In it he shows the pragmatism of social interaction between people of different faiths in which, not from mutual acceptance or commitment to diversity, groups worked out a kind of “peaceful coexistence with others who adhered to a different religion.”36 Some aspects of this process were, as we shall see, evident in sixteenth-century Poland-Lithuania. At the same time, in ways that did not happen elsewhere, in Poland-Lithuania (along with Bohemia and parts of the southern Low Countries) intolerance re-

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turned.37 That there was a kind of toleration in Poland-Lithuania in the sixteenth century is clear. The question is what its character was and from what was it derived. I want to suggest here that a fundamental factor in why, in the sixteenth century, there was no religious uniformity, thus presenting the impression of toleration, is the reality that it was impossible to enforce such uniformity throughout the Polish-Lithuanian state. This situation was in large measure the result of a set of developments that had gradually created conditions within the state in which no single authority—whether monarch or church—could marshal sufficient coercive resources to ensure such uniformity. Beneath the picture of religious diversity lay political and constitutional limitations that had evolved in previous generations and that enabled individual noble members of society to decide these issues on their own. They were able to create, as it were, a Polish version of the Diet of Augsburg’s cuius regio, eius religio in which, on an individual basis—rather than a ruling prince’s basis—a noble might pursue his own interests rather than those of the king or the kingdom. I do not wish to minimize the sincerity of individual belief or the importance of crucial theological and ecclesiological issues in the sixteenth century. Neither do I wish to reduce all the elements of a “state without stakes” to the development to be treated below. Nor do I deny that, in historical context, the nature of the Polish-Lithuanian state was, in important ways, responsible for shaping a reality in which all inhabitants and subjects had to accommodate cultural and religious diversity. But it is clear that, had the power of the church within the polity or the authority of royal rule within the kingdom been sufficient and greater, dissent, heterodoxy, heresy, and Christian diversity would not have been tolerated to the degree they were. Indeed, in the late Middle Ages there had been aggressive attempts at religious suppression, and in the sixteenth century there were instances where repressive and violent measures were taken to sustain Catholic uniformity. Let me cite just a few examples to illustrate this. Paweł Kras has shown the effectiveness of the papal Inquisition against heresy in the western borderlands of the Polish kingdom in the medieval period.38 While there was little evidence of real or suspected heresy, inquisitors were zealous against every instance that was found. Polish support for the heresy of the Englishman John Wyclyf—by Professor Andrzej Gałka of the University of Cracow—was met with an aggressive response by the Polish church, and Gałka was forced into exile.39 Of greater significance was the potential of religious heresy spreading to Poland during the Hussite period. While scholars in the communist era sought to show the widespread penetration into Poland of a movement they deemed to be derived from social and economic factors,40 more recent scholarship has shown that Hussite ideals found few supporters there.41 The Polish church, led by Bishop Zbigniew Oleśnicki of Cracow, aggressively suppressed Hussite activity in Poland, and followers were pressured to return to the unity of the faith. Ironically,

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in a state said later to have no such stakes, at least seven who resisted this pressure were burned at the stake.42 With respect to the Orthodox community within the state and beyond the borders, the evidence we have from the fourteenth century suggests that Polish clerical and intellectual elites had very negative views of them. The Orthodox were regarded as schismatici and were often equated with and lumped in with heretici.43 Later attitudes, from the sixteenth century, saw a great many Catholic clerics advocating rebaptism of the Orthodox who had accepted the Union of Brest in 1596, which allowed for “uniates” to maintain their Greek rite after they had accepted the Roman primacy.44 In a more violent context, it is worth noting that when the first instances of Protestant activity were found in Poland, King Sigismund the Old moved vigorously against it. A revolt in Danzig (Gdańsk) in 1526 that was inspired in significant measure by Lutheran teachings was viciously suppressed: more than a dozen leaders of the rebellion were executed, and secularized monasteries and churches were returned to the monks and Catholic clergy.45 In addition, numerous very strict anti-Protestant laws were passed during his reign, though very few were enforceable.46 Despite repeated urging by Catholic authorities in Rome and in Poland for stronger action against Protestants, little was done. By default, Protestant elements endured, and some prospered. The weakness of royal authority and the political realism of Sigismund the Old—and eventually of Sigismund Augustus (though, as we have seen above, his own religious views may have been more ambiguous)—led Polish rulers to conclude that social order was of higher value than religious unity. How had it come to be that the king’s power was so compromised?

The Road to Noble Freedom The Kingdom of Poland in the late middle ages was, in many ways, similar to western monarchies such as those in England and France. The king sought to exercise and extend royal power; other groups in society—especially the nobility (in Polish szlachta)—strove to define and enhance their rights. Specific developments in the fourteenth century in Poland initiated a process that, for the nobility, brought them power and parity within the polity of the realm. The origins of the nobility in Poland are not well understood.47 The early knighthood (rycerstwo) of the Piast period constituted a social elite, but we know few details of its development in the period before the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. By then, however, those who would eventually become part of the noble estate had begun to identify themselves as an exclusive group. Based on their possession of important government offices and on efforts to convert their dependence upon such offices into an independent position based upon land

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tenure, their identity increasingly was expressed in a complex series of heraldic devices and in their understanding that high birth and their warrior status gave them special status and privilege in society.48 A crucial stage in this process came during the reign of King Casimir the Great (1333–1370).49 Without a direct male heir, and seeking to regularize the succession within the kingdom, at some point in the 1350s he recognized the rights of the nobility to be consulted as a corporate group with regard to a choice of his successor. During the reign of that successor, King Louis of Anjou from Hungary, a further definition of noble rights took place.50 Louis himself had no male heir, so in 1374 he met with representatives of the Polish nobility at Košice (Kassa) in Upper Hungary (present-day Slovakia) to propose a succession plan for them. In return for their agreement that his daughter should succeed in Poland (he intended his elder daughter, Mary), Louis confirmed the corporate status of the nobility, promised that the lands of the Polish crown would not be diminished by Hungarian territorial interests,51 stipulated that royal officials should be natives of their provinces, and extended the rights of the nobility by exempting them from certain taxes. Upon Louis’s death, the Polish nobility (especially those from the region of Little Poland) insisted they would accept only his younger daughter, Jadwiga, as their ruler, and in 1384 she was crowned Rex Poloniae, the nobility thus ensuring that her eventual spouse would not easily be able to claim the royal title merely by marriage. In addition, they refused to accept the arrangement her father had made for her to marry William of Habsburg, preferring instead to identify a candidate of their choice. That same year, they accepted the proposal of the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Jogaila, to marry her and bind Lithuania to the Polish crown “in perpetuity.”52 Eventually, following Jadwiga’s death in 1399, Jagiełło was recognized as king of Poland. During his lifetime, with the decree of Horodło in 1413,53 the rights, privileges, and prerogatives of the Polish nobility were extended to the Lithuanian boyars (or nobles). Ultimately the personal dynastic union established by Jagiełło was transformed into an organic, constitutional bond by the Union of Lublin in 1569.54 Before that, however, the rights of the szlachta in Poland—and by extension in Lithuania too—had been transformed. In 1422 at a meeting of Jagiełło with the nobility at Czerwińsk, the king sought support for his policies against the Knights of the Teutonic Order, a traditional enemy of both Poland and Lithuania. To obtain it, in the decree Nec bona recipiantur, he extended noble rights by promising: Likewise … we promise that … we will neither possess nor confiscate, nor cause to be possessed or confiscated, the hereditary property of any royal subject, of whatever rank, position, or prominence he may be … nor, through us, our officials, or any oth-

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ers, will we visit the penalty of this confiscation for any illegal or blameworthy act, unless, first our judges … together with our bishops and barons, have conducted a full legal inquiry, and second, a sentence has been handed down.55

By this act he affirmed the right of due process for the nobility. Still without a male heir despite three marriages, Jagiełło contracted a fourth marriage to a Lithuanian princess, from which union there was male issue, though with no “Polish” blood. In 1430 at Jedlno and in 1433 at Cracow, in order to obtain noble permission for the succession of sons from this marriage, Jagiełło again made concessions to them. In the decree Neminem captivabimus, he swore Moreover, we promise and pledge that … we will neither seize at once, nor order the seizure of, any propertied native individual, nor shall the same be punished, unless justly convicted through a criminal proceeding. As for jurisdiction and judges, an accused will be tried in the locale of his home, by judges of that same place.56

By protecting land and person from confiscation and arrest unless sentence had been passed in a court where one had been present, Jagiełło thus granted the right of habeas corpus. By these two acts, the potentially abusive powers of a monarch who might seek absolute authority were effectively constrained. During the reign of Casimir the Jagiellonian, Jagiełło’s second son, noble rights were further extended. In 1454, Casimir convened a diet at Nieszawa. This unicameral diet, which was composed of the higher clergy, state and territorial officers, and representatives from the nobility sent from local assemblies, was the Polish Sejm, the equivalent of Parliament, the Cortes, or the Reichstag. To obtain support for his proposed war against the Teutonic Knights, which was the chief feature of his foreign policy, Casimir promised that he would levy no new tax nor raise an army without consulting the nobility and obtaining their consent, and further that such proposals would be presented to the local assemblies prior to convening the national diet so that deputies sent to the Sejm could be instructed on policy. By granting the nobility the right to be consulted in these “little Diets” (dietines or Sejmiki) the king effectively allowed deputies at the national diet to be informed and guided by the interests and policies of a broad base of political participation.57 In 1493 a bicameral Sejm met for the first time in an “upper” house, eventually known as the Senate, composed of the king, the high clergy, and the state officers, all appointed by the king, and in a “lower house,” the Chamber of Deputies, composed of nobles sent as envoys from the Sejmiki. This division was to remain until the end of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth three hundred years later. The rise of the lower house was confirmed early in the sixteenth century, when in 1505 King Alexander, the third son of Casimir the Jagiellonian, was forced at the Sejm at Radom to grant the decree Nihil novi. It ruled that

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Because common laws and public ordinances affect not one, but all people in common, therefore … we have reasonably moved and, further, adopted, the following: … henceforth, and in future times in perpetuity, no new laws shall be made by us or our successors, without the consent of the councillors [sic.] and territorial deputies.58

Thus no new laws could be enacted without the consent of both chambers. In other words, the noble deputies now controlled legislation firmly, and—as their proverbial statement put it—there was to be “nothing about us without us” (nic o nas bez nas). This legislative supremacy was eventually used, in subsequent generations, to wrest further advantages for the nobility over the rest of society: immunities, monopolies in landed property, and government administrations.59 To a degree the rights of the clergy were constrained; to an even greater degree the rights of burghers and peasants were restricted. Poland-Lithuania was fast becoming what one editor of a justly famous and influential collection of articles in English called “A Republic of Nobles.”60 In this noble democracy—as others have termed it—the privileges discussed above established a principle of consensual lawmaking, rather than a dependence upon the whim of the ruler. At their best, these developments, predicated upon the idea that unity and consent among all concerned were in the best interests of society, ensured that arbitrary royal absolutism would not limit the republican freedoms of those in society who possessed political rights, namely the szlachta. Who was a noble in Poland in the early modern period—or indeed in other countries in the same period—is one of the more problematic Polish historiographical questions, and it has recently been complicated further as scholars have taken a new look at the exercise of a variety of rights.61 That problem aside, the nobility was an estate, a status (or, in Polish, a stan), an undifferentiated political stratum within society. Whether rich or poor, landed or landless, rural or urban, all nobles were legally the same. In practice, it was somewhat different. At the top of a socio-economic hierarchy were a few score families whose wealth was enormous—estates with hundreds of villages, dozens of towns, and thousands of subjects. At the bottom of this same hierarchy were, as Jerzy Lukowski has put it recently, “hordes of landless beggars.”62 And in between there was every possible variety of propertied and non-propertied individual. What all of those who claimed nobility, or were recognized as being noble, had in common was the legal status that gave each the aforementioned basic political rights, with related social and economic privileges. Indeed, the nobility, the szlachta, was literally the only political class within the state. Far from being a small political elite, however, the nobility constituted a significant percentage of society. Some earlier estimates have suggested that perhaps as much as 10 percent of the population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was of noble status.63 More recent analyses have reduced this to 6–7 percent, perhaps about 850,000 individuals or about

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150,000 adult males.64 In no other place in Europe was there as substantial a political class as in the commonwealth. Indeed in England, as late as the Great Reform Bill of 1832, political rights were exercised by a far smaller number than in early modern Poland. For a monarch in this period to try to abridge the rights, privileges, and prerogatives of such a significant segment of society could have spelled political ruin. In the realm of religion, for example, neither king nor cleric could insist on only one form. Too much was at stake for noble members of society to allow themselves to be religiously defined by others. This was the result, in part, of two specific developments in the sixteenth century, both of which were closely bound up with religion and—by extension—religious toleration as it came to be understood. First there was the movement for the execution—or enforcement—of the laws, or in Polish simply egzekucja.65 Concerned with the growing influence and position of the richer and more powerful nobles—the magnates (in Polish magnateria)—other, lesser, members of the noble estate sought to curb the power of both crown and magnates. At issue, at one level, was the call for the restoration to the crown of lands that the crown had bestowed upon some powerful noble families in the fifteenth century. At a deeper level, however, the egzekucja movement sought the reform of Polish political life, the institutions of the treasury and of the army, and—in particular—of the Catholic church. By the early decades of the sixteenth century, in the Kingdom of Poland proper, the church owned (according to some calculations) just over 10 percent of all arable land in Great Poland, more than 15 percent in the region of Little Poland, and about one-quarter of the land in Mazovia.66 (Proportionally the crown owned about 9 percent, 7 percent, and 5 percent in these territories respectively.) More galling to the lesser nobility than that, however, was the issue of pluralities in both ecclesiastical and secular appointments. Members of the high clergy and of the magnateria were often in a position to contravene or avoid the formal regulations that constituted the letter of the law. Hoping to arrive at an adherence to the spirit as well as the letter of the laws, the egzekucja movement fought against royal and magnate privilege.67 In the teachings of a reformed Catholicism that would create a national church, independent of Rome, or in the doctrines of various aspects of Protestantism, especially Calvinism in its vesting of power and authority in the lay elder as an equal of the clergy,68 the lesser nobility found religion a powerful weapon in its pursuit against the privilege and position of the king, the magnates, and the higher clergy. Thus, again, not only purely religious but also more mundane, practical considerations drove some members of the nobility in Poland toward Protestant commitments. From 1530 onward, the role of politics and social standing powerfully conditioned the issue of how certain parts of the nobility would respond to efforts of the monarchy and church to sustain traditional religion. In his study of religious coexistence and competition in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,

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Daniel Tollet has briefly analyzed several meetings of the Sejm in this period, noting the interplay of religious motivation, social status, and political ambition.69 Among the magnateria, their powerful political, social, and economic status ensured that they would go their own way on religious matters. A second development was connected with the growth of Protestant adherence in the second half of the sixteenth century and the aftermath of the end of Jagiellonian rule in Poland in 1572. By the late 1550s, several important strands of Protestantism had emerged in dominant positions in Polish religious and political life, by which time Protestants were nearly in the majority in the Sejm.70 At the local level, about one-sixth of the ecclesiastical parishes in the country were held by Protestants. These included Calvinists, Lutherans, and the Bohemian Brethren. Following the Diet of Piotrków in 1562/63, when splits over doctrine threatened to divide them in the face of the growing Anti-Trinitarian movement (the so-called Socinian camp)71 and of Catholic reform (some of it executionist, some of it traditionally Catholic, but none of it sympathetic to Protestant reform), these groups began to consider some kind of union. Their solution came in the Consensus of Sandomir (Consensus Sendomieriensis) in 1570, which Protestants designed to protect themselves against Catholic repression, to distance themselves from the growing influence of the Anti-Trinitarians, and to promote understanding among the groups.72 In it, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Bohemian Brethren mutually acknowledged one another as orthodox, and each agreed to defend the religious liberty of the others. This unity and the strength of Protestantism was to be an important factor in the crisis that followed the death, without male heir, of the last Jagiellonian ruler, Sigismund Augustus in 1572.73 The need to elect a new king, in the absence of any established procedure to do so, resulted in an interregnum and the appointment of Archbishop Jakub Uchański of Gniezno as Interrex. It was eventually determined that the election would be held viritim—that is, with all members of the body politic (in other words, the szlachta of whatever rank) eligible to participate in person at the site of the election. At the same time, a compact was reached by which absolute religious toleration without exception was granted to all dissidentes de religione and was regarded by all as a guarantee against religious fanaticism. By extension, it also constrained royal efforts to force religious conformity upon nobles intent upon preserving every shred of their hard-won prerogatives.74 This principle was eventually included in the contract offered to Henry of Valois in 1573 upon his election and became known as the pacta conventa or “things agreed upon.”75 He was required to accept it in order to rule, and subsequently all elected kings had to agree to this contract. Should it be broken, the electorate (i.e., the nobility) was absolved from obedience to him and might legally act against him in the name of the common good, without fear of punishment if unsuccessful. This principle, which came to be known as the Right of Confederation (in Polish konfederacja) and was first established in the Warsaw Confederation of

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1573 in the context of offering the crown to Henry Valois, was intended, again, to ensure against the encroachment of an abusive and authoritarian king who did not respect civil rights, political freedoms, and—by inclusion—religious toleration.76

Conclusion By the last quarter of the sixteenth century toleration in Poland had been firmly established, but it rested upon more than mere idealism and the belief that there was more than one correct view of the religious truth. There were, it is clear, some who genuinely believed that others’ views should be respected. The Polish intellectual tradition, after all, had included a tradition of natural law—best represented by some members of the law faculty at the University of Cracow in the fifteenth century—that argued that the rights of pagans should be accorded the same status as those of Christians.77 And there were some—perhaps, as we have seen, the last Jagiellonian king himself—who, like the politique faction in contemporary France, saw political considerations as more important than the question of religious uniformity. And there were certainly those who saw the dangers of religious war and the extremes of religious intolerance, as manifested in the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in France on the eve of the election of a French prince as king of Poland. But when all is said and done, political realities, grounded in the strength and independence of the nobility as the dominant political stratum in the kingdom (and after 1572 the commonwealth), were crucial. Thus the Warsaw Confederation of 1573, read literally, as Benjamin Kaplan has observed, “was merely a pact between the nobles not to molest or hinder one another in the practice of their religion, or to allow others (namely, the crown) to do the same,” and a number of scholars have noted that this kind of religious tolerance was closely bound up with larger movements that replaced the struggle for religious conciliation and unity in this period.78 For example, Janusz Małłek has commented that religious toleration was a pragmatic recognition of the process of confessionalization, utilized as a kind of “defensive shield” for Protestants.79 Michael Müller has analyzed even more fully the process of what has come to be known as “the Second Reformation” in the lands of Prussian Poland, showing how religious toleration was ultimately part of a political weapon used by and against Prussian towns.80 Each, along with other scholars, effectively concludes that there was little theological altruism involved in religious toleration. Quite the reverse—had there been sufficient authority remaining for ecclesiastical and royal power, there would have been less willingness to tolerate deviant religious views. Thus, while Poland was indeed a “state without stakes,” and while it may have been, as Ambroise Jobert put it, “an example for Europe” with respect to religious toleration, it was also a “republic of nobles,” whose limitations upon authority—enacted to prevent ar-

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bitrary and abusive authoritarianism as well as to enhance their own increasingly selfish position in society—indeed insured that without coercive power, de facto toleration would obtain in religious matters.81

Notes 1. Jerzy Kłoczowski, Młodsza Europa: Europa Środkowo-Wschodnia w kręgu cywilizacji chrześcijańskiej średniowiecza (Warsaw, 1998). 2. Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland, 2 vols. (New York, 1982), vol. 1, 105. 3. On the development of the church and the Christian religion in Poland, the older standard work, Bolesław Kumor and Zdzisław Obertyński, eds., Historia Kościoła w Polsce, vol. 1: do roku 1764, part 1: do roku 1506 (Poznań and Warsaw, 1974), is still useful, in particular for its full bibliography of early scholarship. Some insights into the process of Poland’s integration into Christendom with respect to a specific place, the city of Cracow, arguably the most important medieval center in Poland, are now provided in Jerzy Wyrozumski, “Krakow in the 10th–13th Century Christian Europe / Kraków w chrześcijańskiej Europie X–XIII wiek,” and Krzysztof Ożóg, “The Intellectual Culture of the 10th–13th Century: Krakow in the European Context / Kultura intelektualna Krakowa w X–XIII wieku w kontekśie europejskim,” both in Kraków w chrześcijańskiej Europie X–XIII w. / Krakow in Christian Europe, 10th–13th c. (Cracow, 2006), 36–77 and 78–119 respectively. Now available in English is the magisterial survey by Kłoczowski, The History of Polish Christianity (Cambridge, 2000), a revised and extended translation of his Dzieje Chrześcijaństwa Polskiego, 2 vols. (Paris, 1987 and 1991); for the medieval period, see especially 1–83. 4. Stanisław Bylina, Chrystianizacja wsi polskiej u schyłku średniowiecza (Warsaw, 2002). 5. The classic work by Henryk Paszkiewicz, Polityka Ruska Kazimierza Wielkiego (Warsaw, 1925), has now been reissued (Cracow, 2002) with additions. More recent literature is treated in Janusz Kurtyka, Odrodzone królestwo: Monarchia Władysława Łokietka i Kazimierza Wielkiego w świetle nowszych badań (Cracow, 2001), 28–32 especially. The specific colonial impact of Polish conquests in Ruthenia is analyzed effectively by Andrzej Janeczek in “New Authority, New Property, New Nobility: The Foundation of Noble Estates in Red Ruthenia in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” Quaestiones medii aevi novae 7 (2002): 77–125, where he draws upon and synthesizes some of his earlier scholarship; see 82, n. 9 in particular. In English, see my The Rise of the Polish Monarchy: Piast Poland in East Central Europe (Chicago, 1972), 121–178 for details. 6. The last published work by the great Polish medievalist Oscar Halecki, Jadwiga of Anjou and the Rise of East Central Europe, edited and with a foreword by Thaddeus V. Gromada (Highland Lakes, NJ, 1991), deals in detail with these developments, but his work was essentially finished in the early 1970s (and much of it rests upon his earlier classic work, Dzieje Unii Jagiellońskiej, 2 vols. [Cracow, 1919–1920]). More recent scholarship is incorporated by Jadwiga Krzyżaniakowa and Jerzy Ochmański in Władysław II Jagiełło (Wrocław, 1990); see especially 89–94. All the documents relating to the history of the union have been collected and edited by Stanisław Kutrzeba and Władysław Semkowicz, Akta Unii Polski z Litwą, 3 vols. (Cracow, 1932). 7. See Jerzy Wyrozumski, “Jews in Medieval Poland,” in The Jews in Old Poland, 1000–1795, ed. Antony Polonsky, Jakub Basista, and Andrzej Link-Lenczowski (London and New York, 1993), 13–22.

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8. On these developments, see the stimulating and suggestive contributions of, among others, Andrzej Janeczek, “Ethnicity, Religious Disparity and the Formation of the Multicultural Society of Red Ruthenia in the Late Middle Ages”; Thomas Wünsch, “Die religiöse Dimension sozialer Integration: Glaubensverhältnisse in den galizisch-wolhynischen Bistümern des 15.–17. Jahrhunderts”; and Janusz Kurtyka, “Podolia: The ‘Rotating Borderland’ at the Crossroads of Civilizations in the Middle Ages and in the Modern Period,” all in On the Frontier of Latin Europe Integration and Segregation in Red Ruthenia, 1350–1600 / An der Grenze des lateinischen Europa Integration und Segregation in Rotreußen, 1350–1600, ed. Thomas Wünsch and Andrzej Janeczek (Warsaw, 2004), 15–45, 61–80, and 119–187 respectively. This volume is the fruitful result of cooperation between younger scholars from Ukraine, Switzerland, Poland, and Germany focused upon acculturation and integration in a region that has long been contested between rival states. Some historians suggest that economic considerations ultimately led to increased tolerance; this is the general argument of Henry Kamen, The Rise of Toleration (London, 1967). To the extent that this element was a factor in the stability of religious pluralism in Ruthenia, many of the authors in the Wünsch and Janeczek volume show the importance of economic developments there. 9. Michael G. Müller, “Protestant Confessionalisation in the Towns of Royal Prussia and the Practice of Religious Toleration in Poland-Lithuania,” in Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation, ed. Ole Peter Grell and Robert W. Scribner (New York, 1996), 264. 10. Kłoczowski, Młodsza Europa, 311ff. (the beginning of a chapter entitled “Religious Pluralism”). 11. The best overview of Reformation developments in Poland remains Janusz Tazbir, Reformacja w Polsce: Szkice z dziejów tolerancji w Polsce w XVI i XVII wieku (Warsaw, 1993) and, more recently, his Reformacja, kontrreformacja, tolerancja (Wrocław, 1997). His Historia Kościoła katolickiego w Polsce (1460–1795) (Warsaw, 1966) is more general, despite its specific focus on the Catholic church, and somewhat out of date. Ambroise Jobert, De Luther à Mohila: La Pologne dans la crise de la chrétienté 1517–1648 (Paris, 1974) is a classic work that is still very useful; it is now available in Polish translation as Od Lutra do Mohyły: Polska wobec kryzysu chrześcijaństwa 1517–1648 (Warsaw, 1994). There is no good modern treatment in English on the Reformation in Poland, apart from short chapters in works on the Reformation in general and discrete articles devoted to specific issues. The best overview is Daniel Stone, The Polish-Lithuanian State, 1386–1795 (Seattle, 2001), 36–66 passim. Kloczowski’s The History of Polish Christianity, 90–108, is useful, as is the comparative study by James Palmitessa, “The Reformation in Bohemia and Poland,” in A Companion to the Reformation World, ed. Ronnie Po-Cha Hsia (Oxford, 2004), 185–204. The important book by Janusz Tazbir (see n. 17 below) in its English translation is a partial exception to the foregoing observation about the limitations of literature available in English. 12. Regarding the phrase “state without stakes,” see n. 17. 13. Aleksander Brückner, Różnowiercy polscy (Warsaw, 1905). 14. Władysław Konopczyński, “O dawnej i nowej nietolerancji polskiej,” in his collection of studies Od Sobieskiego do Kościuszki (Warsaw, 1921), and “Quelques remarques sur l’histoire de la liberté de conscience en Pologne,” in La Pologne au VIe Congrès International des Sciences Historiques (Oslo, 1928). 15. Roman Dyboski, Poland in World Civilization (New York, 1950); chapter 4 was entitled “Religious Toleration.” 16. Janusz Tazbir, “La tolerance religieuse en Pologne au XVIe et XVIIe siècles,” in La Pologne au XIIe Congrès International des Sciences Historiques, ed. Juliusz Bardach (Warsaw 1965), 31–48. 17. Tazbir, Państwo bez stosów: Szkice z dziejów tolerancji w Polsce w XVI i XVII wieku (New York, 1967); English translation by Alexander T. Jordan, whose title, many believe, “works”

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18.

19.

20. 21.

22.

23.

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eloquently and even better than the Polish—A State Without Stakes: Polish Religious Tolerance in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York, 1972). For example, Tazbir, Dzieje polskiej tolerancji (Warsaw, 1973); Wiktor Weintraub, “Tolerance and Intolerance in Old Poland,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 13 (1971): 21–43; Stanisław Świdziński, “Religionstoleranz—Phänomene in Polen 1517–1663,” Kirche im Osten 13 (1970): 67–73; Mieczysław Korolko, Klejnot swobodnego sumienia: Polemika wokół konfederacji warszawskiej w latach 1573–1658 (Warsaw, 1974); Marceli Kosman, Protestanci i kontrreformacja: Z dziejów tolerancji w Wielkim Księstwie Litewskim XVI–XVII wieku (Wrocław, 1978); and Wacław Urban, Epizod reformacyjny (Cracow, 1988). For an overview of histographical developments between 1945 and the end of the 1960s, see Tazbir, “Powojenne badania nad tolerancją religijną w Polsce,” Przegląd historyczny 60 (1969): 554– 561. Joseph Lecler, Histoire de la tolerance du siècle de la Réforme, 2 vols. (Paris, 1955); English translation by T. L. Westow, Toleration and the Reformation, 2 vols. (New York and London, 1960). In the English version, the chapter on Poland is in vol. 1, 383–423; his conclusion is that “the fact remains that this Catholic kingdom was the first European State where the experiment of freedom of worship was seriously attempted. … This freedom was the result of a completely deliberate policy on the part of the Catholic sovereigns” (vol. 1, 422). Jobert, De Luther à Mohila. I have used the Polish translation of this work Od Lutra do Mohyły (Warsaw, 1994); see especially 133–135 (Polish edition). Howard P. Louthan, “From Rudolfine Prague to Vasa Poland: Valerian Magni and the Twilight of Irenicism in Central Europe,” in Conciliation and Confession: The Struggle for Unity in the Age of Reform, 1415–1648, ed. Howard P. Louthan and Randall C. Zachman (Notre Dame, IN, 2004), 199–227, here 207f. He is referring to Wilbur’s work on the history of Unitarianism and Williams’s study of what he termed “the Radical Reformation,” and his two-volume collection of primary sources on the Polish Brethren. See also Williams’s translation, with interpretation, of Stanislas Lubieniecki’s History of the Polish Reformation and Nine Related Documents (Minneapolis, 1995), and my (see above) review of this volume in The Sixteenth Century Journal 28, no. 2 (1997): 567–570. Cited by Lecler in Toleration and the Reformation, vol. 1, 383 from Hosius, Opera omnia, 2 vols. (Cologne, 1584), vol. 2, 225. This oft-cited judgment is usually taken as evidence that “heretics” were tolerated in Poland-Lithuania, but the context of Hosius’s comment suggests equally a judgment on the weakness of the church and the monarchy in Poland with regard to restoring religious unity. The older study on Hosius by Joseph Lortz, Kardinal Stanislaus Hosius: Beiträge zur Erkenntnis der Persönlichkeit und des Werkes (Münster, 1931), though not a full-fledged biography, is still useful; however, it needs to be supplemented by much more recent work, especially Polish contributions summarized by Halina Kowalska, “Stanislaus Hosius,” in Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Peter G. Bietenholz, 3 vols. (Toronto, 1986), vol. 2, 206–207. More recently, the contributions in two conference volumes have greatly advanced our understanding of Hosius’s place in the context of religious developments in sixteenth-century Poland: Stanisław Achremczyk, Jan Guzowski, and Jacek Jezierski, eds., Kardynał Stanisław Hozjusz (1504–1579): osoba, myśl, dzieło, czasy, znaczenie: praca zbiorowa (Olsztyn, 2005); and Bernhard Jähnig, ed., Stanislaus Hosius: sein Wirken als Humanist, Theologe und Mann der Kirche in Europa (Münster, 2007). See the historiographical comments and critique by Ole Peter Grell in his introduction to Grell and Scribner, Tolerance and Intolerance, 1–12, especially 1–4. Very recently Benjamin J. Kaplan, in Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA, 2007), has subjected this model to a critique from a different standpoint; see particularly 7–12.

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24. The general picture of Erasmus’s relations with Poland can be seen in the following: Maria Cytowska, “Erasme de Rotterdam et sa correspondance polonaise,” in Miscellanea JeanPierre Vanden Branden, ed. Jean-Pierre Vanden Branden (Brussels, 1995), 381–396, which treats Archbishop Łaski particularly thoroughly; Peter Bietenholz, “‘Concordia Christiana’: Myśl Erazma a rzeczywistość polska: Spotkania i korespondencja Erazma z Polakami,” in Jan Łaski 1499–1560: W pięćsetlecie urodzin, ed. Wojciech Kriegseisen and Piotr Salwa (Warsaw, 2001), 71–94; Konrad Ludwicki, “Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski jako kontynuator myśli Erazma z Rotterdamu,” in Dziedzictwo Andrzeja Frycza Modrzewskiego w myśli humanistycznej i politycznej, ed. Jerzy Kukulski, Wojciech Piotrowski, and Tadeusz Szerna, 2 vols. (Toruń, 2004), vol. 2, 610–621. As a whole, these two volumes represent a significant contribution to Modrevian studies and to the importance of Modrzewski. For material on Jan Łaski (the nephew), see my “A European and Polish Reformer,” The Polish Review 47, no. 1 (2003): 109–114. Most recently, Jacqueline Glomski has developed other aspects of the Erasmian influences in and connections to Poland in Patronage and Humanist Literature in the Age of the Jagiellons: Court and Career in the Writings of Rudolf Agricola Junior, Valentine Eck, and Leonard Cox (Toronto, 2007), 17–45 passim. 25. “Polonia mea est.” This statement, from Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen et al., 12 vols. (Oxford, 1906–1958), vol. 5, 1488, oft cited, is most effectively used by Jobert, Od Lutra do Mohyły, p. 15 and again p. 20 in his opening chapter entitled “The Kingdom of Erasmus.” In another letter of 8 February 1524 cited by Jobert, Erasmus commented that he had many supporters ready for battle, “princes, bishops, educated and honorable persons, not only in England, France, and Germany, but also in Hungary and in Poland” (20, n. 12, emphasis mine). One of the widely used histories of Poland in the Anglophone world, Adam Zamoyski’s The Polish Way: A Thousand-Year History of the Poles and Their Culture (London and New York, 1987) draws upon Jobert to entitle one of its chapters “The Kingdom of Erasmus” (105–125). 26. Peter J. Klassen, A Homeland for Strangers: An Introduction to Mennonites in Poland and Prussia (Fresno, 1989); Jolanta Dworzaczkowa, Bracia czescy w Wielkopolsce w XVI–XVII wieku (Warsaw, 1997); see also her articles “Bracia czescy przejawem odrębności Wielkopolski,” “Zbór i szkoła braciu czeskich w Koźminku (około 1554–1614),” and “Zbór braci czeskich w Karminie,” in her collected studies Reformacja i kontrareformacja w Wielkopolsce (Poznań, 1995), 138–144, 145–156, and 157–174 respectively. Tazbir, in A State Without Stakes, discusses the way Calvinists in Geneva condemned Polish tolerance, the position of French Huguenots who conversely saw Poland as a model for their ruler, and the attitude of religious dissidents elsewhere who regarded Poland as a place of religious freedom, hospitality, and shelter (132–134). 27. Edwin Sandys, A Relation of the State of Religion … in the Several States of these Western Parts of the World (London, 1605). I am indebted to Professor Paweł Kras of the Catholic University in Lublin for pointing out this reference, which he quoted in his original paper for the colloquium upon which this present volume is based and, in a slightly different way, in his “Religious Tolerance in the Jagiellonian Policy during the Age of the Reformation (The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth),” in Die Jagiellonen: Kunst und Kultur einer europäischen Dynastie an der Wende zur Neuzeit, ed. Dietmar Popp and Robert Suckale (Nuremberg, 2002), 131–138, here 131, n. 2. 28. Quoted in Tazbir, A State Without Stakes, 41f. This was in response to counsel provided by Professor John Eck of Leipzig in 1526 urging the king to take stronger measures against the Lutherans. 29. This statement, attributed to the king and oft-quoted in the secondary literature (see, for example, Zamoyski, The Polish Way, 86), is a bit of a mystery. Tazbir does not mention it in A State Without Stakes or Reformacja w Polsce; neither does Lecler in Toleration and the

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30.

31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36.

37.

38.

39.

40. 41. 42.

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Reformation nor Jobert in Od Lutra do Mohyły. It may have been attributed to the king in the funeral oration delivered by Jan Dymitr Solikowski and printed in Cracow in 1574; a more explicit attribution came over a century later when the Calvinist Andrej [Andrzej] Wegierski claimed that Sigismund Augustus had declared “I am king of men but not of their consciences”; see the comment of Daniel Tollet, “Religious Coexistence and Competition in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth c. 1600,” in Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe, vol. 1: Religion and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400–1700, ed. Heinz Schilling and István György Tóth (Cambridge, 2006), 64–87, here 79, n. 19. On this point, see Urszula Borkowska, “Życie religijne polskich Jagiellonów: Zarys problematyki,” in Chrzest Litwy: Geneza, przebieg, konsekwencje, ed. M. T. Zahajkiewicz (Lublin, 1990), 149–180. Andrzej Wyczański, Zygmunt Stary (Warsaw, 1985), 26ff. See Jobert, Od Lutra do Mohyły, 110f. See Tazbir, A State Without Stakes, 80ff. For the character of Sigismund II Augustus, his religious policies, and his own religious practice, see the important study by Anna Sucheni-Grabowska, Zygmunt August: Król polski i wielki książę litewski 1520–1562 (Warsaw, 1996). See his introduction to Grell and Scribner, Tolerance and Intolerance, 1–12. See also the comments of the editors in Louthan and Zachman, Conciliation and Confession, 2. Kaplan, Divided by Faith, 8; see particularly his section on “Arrangements,” 137–234. Kaplan’s work effectively challenges the traditional narrative of the triumph of reason over faith. In addition to the contribution in this volume by Mikhail Dmitriev and the literature he cites, see also Magda Teter, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era (New York, 2006). For Bohemia in the seventeenth century, see Louthan, Converting Bohemia: Force and Persuasion in the Catholic Reformation (Cambridge, 2009), which, while emphasizing the instruments of persuasion, discusses also the elements of intolerance that lay behind the application of forcible Catholicization. Kras, “Dominican Inquisitors in Mediaeval Poland,” in Praedicatores, Inquisitores I: The Dominicans and the Mediaeval Inquisition, ed. W. Hoyer (Rome, 2004), 249–310, especially 251ff. Kras has now published a valuable study of the Inquisition in medieval Europe, Ad abolendam diversarum haeresium pravitatem: System inkwizycyjny w średniowiecznym Europie (Lublin, 2006), which incorporates much Polish material into a broad European picture. For the story of Gałka, see first Józef Garbacik, “Andrzej Gałka z Dobczyna,” in Polski Słownik biograficzny (Cracow [later also Warsaw and Wrocław], 1935–), 7 (1948–1957), 255–258; and, more recently Teresa Michalowska, Średniowiecze (Warsaw, 1995), 534–545 and Jerzy Strzelczyk, “Andrzej (Jędrzej, Andreas) Gałka von Dobczyn: ein polnischer WyclifAnhänger um die Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts,” in Konfessionelle Pluralität als Herausforderung: Koexistenz und Konflikt in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Joachim Bahlcke, Karen Lambrecht, and Hans-Christian Maner (Leipzig, 2006), 71–58. An equally useful treatment is Paweł Kras, Husyci w piętnastowiecznej Polsce (Lublin, 1998), 193–202. See also my “‘The Worst Heretic:’ Andrzej Gałka of Dobczyn in the Academic and Ecclesiastical Context of Mid-15th Century Kraków and Poland,” The Polish Review 54 (2009): 3–29. Especially, though not exclusively, Ewa Maleczyńska, Ruch husycki w Czechach i w Polsce (Warsaw, 1959). Kras, Husyci w piętnastowiecznej Polsce, especially his conclusion, 311–317. See the treatments by Kras, Husyci w piętnastowiecznej Polsce, 243–310, and, in the larger context of the Inquisition and Hussites in Poland, “Inkwizycja papieska w walce z husytyzmem na ziemiach polskich,” in Polskie echa Husytyzmu, ed. Stanisław Bylina and Ryszard Gładkiewicz (Warsaw, 1999), 88–115, and virtually the same text in Zeszyty Naukowe

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44.

45. 46.

47.

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Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego 42, no. 1–2 (1999): 27–49, and “‘Pro fidei defensione contra modernos haereticos.’ Hérétiques et inquisiteurs dans la Pologne medieval (XIVe– XVe siècles),” Heresis 40 (2004): 69–94. This issue is treated, with respect to the first Jagiellonian ruler, by Jan Drabina, “Die Religionspolitik von König Władysław Jagiełło im polnisch-litauischen Reich in den Jahren 1385–1434,” Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 43 (1994): 161–173. The study by Juliusz Bardach, “Les relations entre les catholiques et les orthodoxes dans le Grand Duché de Lituanie (XIVe—XVIIe s.),” Nuovi Studi Storici 17 (1992): 377–392, summarizes a great deal of his Polish-language scholarship. I have briefly discussed this general problem, with reference to the sources, in “Poland as Antemurale Christianitatis in the Late Middle Ages,” The Catholic Historical Review 60, no. 3 (October 1974): 392. Jakub Sawicki, “‘Rebaptisatio Ruthenorum’ in the Light of 15th and 16th Century Polish Synodal Legislation,” in The Christian Community of Medieval Poland, Anthologies, ed. Jerzy Kłoczowski (Wrocław, 1981), 57–72, which is essentially a translation of his “Die ‘Rebaptizatio Ruthenorum’ im Lichte der polnischen Synodalgesetzgebung im XV. und XVI. Jh.,” in Geschichte der Ost- und Westkirche in ihren wechselseitigen Beziehungen, ed. F. Zagiba (Wiesbaden, 1967); see especially 142–146. See also Edmund Przekop, “Die ‘Rebaptizatio Ruthenorum’ auf dem Gebiet Polens vor der Union von Brest (1596),” Ostkirchliche Studien 29 (1980): 272–282; Ihor Mončak, Florentine Ecumenism in the Kyivan Church (Rome, 1987), 233ff.; and the comments of Yurij Zazuliak, “Rebaptism, Name-Giving and Identity among Nobles of Ruthenian Origin in Late Medieval Galicia,” in Wünsch and Janeczek, On the Frontier of Latin Europe, 47–60, esp. 52–55. Older works, such as Kazimierz Chodynicki’s Kościół prawoslawny a Rzeczpospolita Polska. Zarys historyczny: 1370–1632 (Warsaw, 1934) and Aleksander Łapiński’s Zygmunt Stary a Kościół prawoslawny (Warsaw, 1937), tended to see Polish state policy toward the Orthodox in the first three-quarters of the sixteenth century as generally tolerant, as does a more recent study by Leszek Ćwikła, Polityka władz państwowych wobec Kościoła prawosławnego i ludności prawosławnej w Królestwie Polskim, Wielkim Księstwie Litewskim oraz Rzeczpospolitej Obojga Narodów w latach 1344–1795 (Lublin, 2006). This episode is well treated in Zygmunt Wojciechowski, Zygmunt Stary (1506–1548) (Warsaw, 1946), 179–183. More briefly, in English, see Tazbir, A State Without Stakes, 37–39. These measures are discussed by Tazbir, A State Without Stakes, 41–43, who concludes by quoting the nineteenth-century historian Władysław Zakrzewski, Powstanie i wzrost reformacja w Polsce (Leipzig, 1870), 47: “Having found that private worship cannot be controlled, they [Kings Sigismund the Old and Sigismund Augustus] confined themselves to restrictions and impediments. But even these did not work.” See also the treatment of Janusz Małłek, “The Reformation in Poland and Prussia in the Sixteenth Century: Similarities and Differences,” in The Reformation in Eastern and Central Europe, ed. Karin Maag (Aldershot, 1997), 186f., discussing the inefficacy of royal edicts prohibiting people from going abroad to Lutheran universities. Antoni Gąsiorowski, “Research into Medieval Polish Nobility: Introduction,” in The Polish Nobility in the Middle Ages, ed. Antoni Gąsiorowski (Wrocław, 1984), 7–20. See also Karol Buczek, “Prawo rycerskie i powstanie stanu szlacheckiego w Polsce,” Przegląd historyczny 69 (1978): 23–46, which appears essentially unchanged in an English version in Gąsiorowski, The Polish Nobility in the Middle Ages, 87–122; and Janusz Bieniak, “Jeszcze w sprawie genezy rodów rycerskich w Polsce,” in Społeczeństwo Polski średniowieczej, ed. Stefan K. Kuczyński (Warsaw, 1992), vol. 5, 45–55. On the heraldic devices, their origins and significance, see Janusz Bieniak, “Heraldyka polska przed Długoszem,” in Sztuka i ideologia XV wieku, ed. Piotr Skubiszewski (Warsaw, 1978), 165–210; and Józef Szymański, Herbarz średniowiecznego rycerstwa polskiego

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(Warsaw, 1993). On closely related matters, see Stefan Krzysztof Kuczyński, Polskie herby ziemskie: Geneza, treści, funkcje (Warsaw, 1993); and Zenon Piech, “Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik in der Monarchie der letzten Piasten (1320–1370),” Quaestiones medii aevi novae 1 (1996): 43–76, especially 60f. The developments of his reign in this context are treated by Jerzy Wyrozumski, “Geneza sukcesji andegaweńska,” Studia Historyczne 25 (1982): 185–197; and Sławomir Gawłas, “Monarchia Kazimierza Wielkiego a społeczeństwo,” in Genealogia: Władza i społeczeństwo w Polsce średniowiecznej, ed. Andrzej Radzimiński and Jan Wroniszewski (Toruń, 1999), 197–236, especially 228–232. More generally on this development, see Kurtyka, Odrodzone królestwo, 171–188. For issues related to Louis’s successor, see Józef Matuszewski, Przywileje i polityka podatkowa Ludwika Węgierskiego w Polsce w latach 1370–1382 (Toruń, 1994), and Knoll, “Louis the Great and Casimir of Poland,” in Louis the Great King of Hungary and Poland, ed. S. B. Vardy, G. Grosschmid, and L. S. Domonkos (Boulder, 1986), 105–127; on the privilege issued at Košice, see the details spelled out by the editors of Joannis Dlugossii Annales seu Cronicae incliti Regni Poloniae, liber decimus, ed. Danuta Turkowska, et al. (Warsaw, 1985), sub anno 1374, 285f., n. 10, and discussed by Stanisław Szczur, Historia Polski średniowiecze (Cracow, 2002), 404f. This was a crucial matter, since Hungary and Poland had been rivals in Ruthenia. The Hungarian palatine Duke Władysław of Opole in Silesia had been appointed as an administrator in Ruthenia in 1372 and clearly pursued Angevin interests there to the disadvantage of Polish territorial claims. For his controversial career, see Stanisław Sroka, Książę Władysław Opolczyk na Węgrzech (Cracow, 1996). Although the older work by Paszkiewicz, O genezie i wartości Krewa (Warsaw, 1938) still remains useful, it should be complemented by such recent studies as Jan Tęgowski, “Bezkrólewie po śmierci Ludwika Węgierskiego a geneza unii Polski z Litwą,” in Studia historyczne z XIII–XV wieku, ed. Józef Śliwiński (Olsztyn, 1995). See also the treatment by Szczur, Historia Polski, 472–476. Juliusz Bardach, Historia państwa i prawa Polski, 2 vols. (Warsaw, 1964), vol. 1, 569. More recent scholarship is analyzed by Zofia Kowalska-Urbankowa, “Unia Polski i Litwy w latach 1385–1413 w najnowszej historiografii polskiej,” Analecta Cracoviensia 19 (1987): 207– 221. Most recently, see Rafał Gozdalik, “Polityka dynastyczna Władysław Jagiełły a unia horodelska 1413 r.,” in Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów i jej tradycje, ed. Marek Wagner and Janusz Wojtasik (Siedlce, 2004), 43–48; and the brief comments of Krzysztof Ożóg, “Unia w Horodle,” in Monarchia Jagiellonów 1399–1586, ed. Marek Derwich (Warsaw, 2003), 24–25. The 400th anniversary of the Union of Lublin in 1969 was the occasion for a general assessment of its origins and significance, and a very substantial literature was devoted to these questions. These are best approached in two articles by Bardach, “Krewo i Lublin: Z problemów unii polsko-litewskiej,” Kwartalnik Historyczny 76 (1969): 583–616, and, in slightly different form addressing some different problems, “L’union de Lublin: ses origins et son rôle historique,” Acta Poloniae Historica 21 (1970): 69–92. More recent attention to the history and significance of the union is reflected in the several contributions in Adam André Witusika, ed., Unia Lubelska 1569 roku w dziejach Polski i Europy (Lublin, 2004). Two different approaches to the union are reflected in recent works: Jerzy Kłoczowski looks at moral issues and at implications for European integration in the present in “Kilka refleksji historyka wokół moralno-politycznego przesłania Unii Lubelskiej dla naszych czasów,” Ethos 15 (2002): 113–120; and Kiaupiene Jurate examines the union from the Lithuanian side, a perspective that has been neglected in both western and Polish historiography, in “The Grand Duchy and the Grand Duke of Lithuania in the Sixteenth Century: Reflections on

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58 59.

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the Lithuanian Political Nation and the Union of Lublin,” in The Polish-Lithuanian Monarchy in European Context, c. 1500–1795, ed. Richard J. Butterwick (Basingstoke, 2001), 82–92. I quote here from the translation by Jacek Jedruch, Constitutions, Elections and Legislatures of Poland, 1493–1977 (Washington, D.C., 1982), Appendix A, 510; see also his discussion of this decree, 19f. The discussion by Szczur, Historia Polski, 555 incorporates recent Polish scholarship. Jedruch, Constitutions, 511; the older work by Stanisław Kutrzeba, “Przywilej jedlneński z r. 1430 i nadanie prawa polskiego Rusi,” in Księga pamiątkowa ku czci Bolesława Ulanowskiego (Cracow, 1911), 271–301, still remains standard. Stanisław Roman, Przywileje nieszawskie (Wrocław, 1957). See also Bardach, “Początki sejmu,” in Historia sejmu polskiego, general editor Juliusz Bardach, 3 vols. (Warsaw, 19841989), vol. 1: Do schyłku szlacheckiej Rzeczypospolitej, ed. Jerzy Michalski (Warsaw, 1984), 35–36; and Sucheni-Grabowska, “The Origin and Development of the Polish Parliamentary System through the End of the Seventeenth Century,” in Constitution and Reform in Eighteenth Century Poland: The Constitution of 3 May 1791, ed. Samuel Fiszman (Bloomington, IN, 1997), 13–25. . Quoted from Jedruch, Constitutions, Elections and Legislatures, 512; see his discussion of Nihil novi, 21f. In addition to the contribution by Sucheni-Grabowska cited above, see also her analysis of the role of Polish primates in the parliamentary system of sixteenth-century Poland, “Prymasi XVI stulecia w polskim systemie parlamentarnym,” in Prymasi i prymasostwo w dziejach państwa i narodu polskiego, ed. Jan Wysocki (Warsaw, 2002), 16–38. A good overview of Polish parliamentary development, including a discussion of its prerogatives vis-à-vis other parts of society, is provided in The Polish Parliament at the Summit of Its Development (16th—17th Centuries), ed. Władysław Czapliński (Wrocław, 1985). See especially the article therein by Władysław Konopczyński, “The Principle of Unanimity during the Renaissance,” 35–51. J. K. Federowicz, ed., A Republic of Nobles: Studies in Polish History to 1864 (Cambridge, 1982). The classic Polish study on this theme is by Andrzej Wyczański, Polska Rzeczą Pospolitą szlachecką (Warsaw, 1965; 2nd ed. Warsaw, 1991), now available in German translation as Polen als Adelsrepublik, Klio in Polen 5 (Osnabrück, 2001). In his own contribution to Federowicz’s Republic of Nobles, “The Problem of Authority in Sixteenth-Century Poland: An Essay in Reinterpretation,” 96–108, Wyczański has shown the ways that the monarch still held impressive powers vis-à-vis the nobility in the Chamber of Deputies, giving him considerable political advantages. The same argument was developed earlier in a different way by Konstanty Grzybowski, Teoria reprezentacji w Polsce w epoce Odrodzenia (Warsaw, 1959). See, for example, the various contributions in H. M. Scott, ed., The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 2 vols. (London, 1995) and in R. J. W. Evans and T. V. Thomas, eds., Crown, Church and Estates: Central European Politics in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York, 1991). For Poland specifically, see Emanuel Rostworowski, “Ilu było w Rzeczypospolitej szlachty,” Kwartalnik Historyczny 94, no. 3 (1988): 3–40. Jerzy Lukowski, The Partitions of Poland 1772, 1793, 1795 (London and New York, 1999), 2. See the comments of Wyczański, “La structure de la noblesse polonaise aux XVIe–XVIIIe siècles (Remarques méthodiques),” Acta Poloniae Historica 36 (1977): 109–117. The point is made more explicitly by Tazbir, A State Without Stakes, 11, and by Andrzej Walicki, The

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66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

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Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Nationhood: Polish Political Thought from Noble Republicanism to Tadeusz Kościuszko (Notre Dame, IN, 1989), 12. Rostworowski, “Ilu było w Rzeczypospolitej szlachty,” 38–40. This complicated phenomenon has been thoroughly treated by Sucheni-Grabowska, Monarchia dwu ostatnich Jagiellonów a ruch egzekucyjny (Wrocław, 1974), which complements the somewhat older work of Andrzej Tomczak, Walenty Dembiński, kanclerz egzekucyjny, ok. 1504–1584 (Toruń, 1963). The subject is also well discussed in English by Harry E. Dembkowski, The Union of Lublin: Polish Federalism in the Golden Age (Boulder, 1982). A brief but equally lucid treatment is provided by Harold B. Segel, Political Thought in Renaissance Poland: An Anthology in English (New York, 2003), 11–15. Kumor and Obertyński, Historia kościoła w Polsce, vol. 1, part 2, 22–27. These issues are analyzed by Gottfried Schramm in Der polnische Adel und die Reformation, 1548–1607 (Wiesbaden, 1965). This point is particularly well developed in Janusz Tazbir’s entry “Poland” in The Reformation in National Context, ed. Robert Scribner and Roy Porter (Cambridge, 1994), 168–180. Tollett, “Religious Coexistence and Competition,” 68. For the region of Little Poland (i.e., the lands of Cracow and Sandomierz), the Protestant dominance was even more pronounced. As Irena Kaniewska has shown in Małopolska reprezentacja stanowa za czasów Zygmunta Augusta 1548–1572 (Warsaw, 1974), the percentage of Protestant deputies was nearly two-thirds. In the Senate, about 50 percent of the members were Protestant in 1569 (see Małłek, “The Reformation in Poland and Prussia,” 189). For the Anti-Trinitarians or Socinians in Poland, the collection of articles in Socinianism and Its Role in the Culture of XVIth to XVIIth Centuries, ed. Lech Szczucki with the cooperation of Zbigniew Ognonwski and Janusz Tazbir (Warsaw and Łódź, 1983) is particularly valuable. Other studies by Polish scholars on the Socinians include Stanislas Kot’s Socinianism in Poland (Boston, 1957), now badly outdated, and the more current entry by Lech Szczucki, “Socinianism,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand, 4 vols. (Oxford and New York, 1996), vol. 4, 83–87. See also the works by Wilbur and Williams (above, n. 21). The study by Halecki, Zgoda sandomierska 1570 r. (Warsaw, 1915) is still useful, but should be complemented by the studies of Jerzy Lehmann, Konfesja sandomierska (Warsaw, 1937) and Michael G. Müller, “Der Consensus Sendomierensis – Geschichte eines Scheiterns? Zur Diskussion über Protestantismus und protestantische Konfessionalisierung in Polen-Litauen im 16. Jahrhundert,” in Bahlcke, Lambrecht, and Maner, Konfessionelle Pluralität als Herausforderung, 397–408, with reference to current literature. In English, see the entry by one of the senior scholars of Reformation developments in Poland, Wacław Urban, “Consensus Sendomieriensis,” in Hillerbrand, Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, vol. 1, 413f. The details of these developments are best followed in Stanisław Salmonowicz, Konfederacja warszawska 1573 r. (Warsaw, 1985). In this context it is important to note that Polish scholarship, following Tazbir, generally agrees that religious toleration was something enjoyed largely by the various groups within the nobility, from the magnates on down, including particularly the stratum known somewhat awkwardly in English as “the gentry,”—i.e., the lesser nobles. This point has been reemphasized by Edward Opaliński in “The Local Diets and Religious Tolerance in the Polish Commonwealth (1587–1648),” Acta Poloniae Historica 68 (1993): 43–57, particularly 45; as he notes, “the number of statements made in defence of the religious freedom of other estates is not large.” When such statements were made they related exclusively to royal towns.

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75. The full text is found in Mirosław Korolko and Janusz Tazbir, eds., Konfederacja warszawska 1573 roku, wielka karta polskiej tolerancji (Warsaw, 1980). See also Gottfried Schramm, “Ein Meilenstein der Glaubensfreiheit: Der Stand der Forschung, über Ursprung und Schicksal der Warschauer Konföderation von 1573,” Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 24 (1975): 711–736. 76. Like much else in Polish constitutional practice, it was rooted in medieval developments; see Roman Grodecki, “Konfederacje w Polsce XV w.,” Sprawozdanie Polskiej Akademii Umiejętności 52 (1951): 880–885. There is a convenient English-language treatment of this institution in Davies, God’s Playground, vol. 1, 399–400. 77. These issues, particularly associated with Stanisław of Skarbimierz and Paulus Vladimiri (Polish: Paweł Włodkowic) are discussed by Stanisław Wielgus in Polska średniowieczna doktryna Ius gentium (Lublin, 1996). The English translation is entitled The Medieval Polish Doctrine of the Law of Nations: Ius Gentium (Lublin, 1998). 78. Kaplan, Divided By Faith, 154. The latter part of the observation in the text and the comments that follow in the next sentences are intended to be references to confessionalization. The contributions to Louthan and Zachman’s Conciliation and Confession are particularly good at revealing this process; see especially, with reference to East Central Europe, the articles by Graeme Murdock, Zdeněk V. David, and Howard P. Louthan. 79. Małłek, “The Reformation in Poland and Prussia,” 190. 80. Michael Müller, Zweite Reformation und städtische Autonomie im Königlichen Preußen: Danzig, Elbing und Thorn in der Epoche der Konfessionalisierung (1557–1660) (Berlin, 1997). 81. Jobert, Od Lutra do Mohyły, 133.

Chapter 3

CUSTOMS OF CONFESSION Managing Religious Diversity in Late Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century Westphalia

d David M. Luebke

In their neighborly comportment and likewise in their conduct of life, the Protestants compare rather well. … No aggravation (ärgernuß) is experienced in daily interaction, except before and after the processions of foreign and native Protestants, when now and again they gather together here. … The Protestants base [their continued presence in town] on the twelfth and subsequent articles of the peace, wherefore one cannot discern a convenient and moderate method (manierliche weise) by which to achieve their restriction or elimination, especially given the fact that they are admitted to citizenship and membership in the craft guilds on the strength of that treaty.

These few cryptic lines, composed sometime after 1632, describe religious behaviors and perceptions of legal authority that were profoundly at odds with the norms and expectations of the emerging confessional state.1 The prince to whom they were addressed, Bishop Ferdinand I of Münster (r. 1612–1650), an ardent exponent of Catholic reform, was determined to eliminate “heresy” from the lands he ruled. The report, however, revealed Ferdinand’s failure to impose unity of belief and practice on a town—Vreden—that almost ten years earlier, in 1623, had submitted formally to the Catholic faith. The author also ventured an explanation for these deficits: the town’s inhabitants, he seemed to suggest, valued good neighborliness as highly as uniformity in religious belief and practice. Finally, he exposed a legal defense of pluriform religious observance. Its founda-

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tion was corporate privilege and its architecture a customary reading of the 1555 Peace of Augsburg. In a nutshell, the Protestants of Vreden were claiming that as members of a privileged corporation within an ecclesiastical principality, the protections of the religious peace extended to them, their town, and its longstanding accommodation of religious plurality. These reports stand out for two reasons. One is that such homespun appropriations of the religious peace contradict its signal status in historical macronarratives of state building, confessionalization, and social disciplining. Did not the Peace of Augsburg codify the sovereign right of territorial overlords to determine which religion their subjects were required to observe? The authorities in Münster certainly thought so and rejected all arguments to the contrary. But as Bernd Christian Schneider has shown, the formula cuius regio, eius religio only gradually acquired the kind of retrospective clarity attributed to it in Reformation history textbooks.2 The Vredeners were using the Peace to advance a different relationship between religion and authority, one consistent with late sixteenth-century polemicists who argued that the agreement guaranteed freedom of conscience for the Protestant subjects of Catholic princes.3 It is also possible that the Vredeners knew about the Declaratio Ferdinandea—the vague royal patent appended to the Peace of Augsburg that extended toleration to privileged “nobles, cities, and communes” within ecclesiastical territories that “for a long time” (lange Zeit und Jahr) had adhered to the Augsburg Confession.4 So it was in Vreden, where Protestants claimed they had practiced their religion “from time immemorial” (von undencklichen Jahren hero).5 A second point concerns the relationship between religious plurality and the corpus christianum. How are we to account for the town’s apparent acceptance of pluriform religious observance? Since the publication in 1962 of Bernd Moeller’s seminal Imperial Cities and the Reformation, historians have been accustomed to arguing that the legitimacy of sixteenth-century city governments derived in large measure from a tendency among urban people to imagine their polity as an allembracing “sacred society” that bore responsibility for the material welfare and eternal salvation of its members—a tendency that the Reformation powerfully reinforced.6 By their very nature, confessional subcultures undermined the unity of observance upon which the “sacred society” depended and that magistrates were everywhere sworn to safeguard. But as C. Scott Dixon recently observed, this model cannot easily account for the adaptations that civic regimes made after they had become habituated to the complex pluri-confessional realities of the mid and late sixteenth century. These realities often shifted the focus of urban politics toward problems of concord, civic autonomy, and the ordering of sacred spaces. For the governments of pluri-confessional cities and towns, open confessional conflict raised the hazard of external intervention and the possibility that self-government might suffer as a result.7 To recognize these dangers, Westphalian townsfolk had only to recall the aftermath of Münster’s Anabaptist

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revolution in 1534–1535, when the territory’s two largest municipalities were punished with the loss of civic liberties and the incomes they generated.8 Unless they were prepared to impose orthodoxy by force, the governments of pluri-confessional towns had few options other than to reorder the relationship between religion and authority in ways that preserved communal unity at the expense of uniformity in religious observance.9 This essay is about a cluster of small Westphalian towns and how they learned to cope with religious plurality in an era of ever-escalating pressure to conform. These were the so-called “secondary” towns of the prince-bishopric of Münster— Ahlen, Beckum, Bocholt, Borken, Coesfeld, Dülmen, Haltern, Rheine, Telgte, Vreden, Warendorf, and Werne—a group of privileged boroughs that were included with the city of Münster in the Third Chamber of the territorial diet. In size and sheer might, the diocesan capital dwarfed these municipalities. But they resembled Münster in the complexity of their religious composition: though the proportions varied from town to town, all harbored Lutherans, Catholics, and growing numbers of Calvinists, while several contained small populations of Mennonites and Jews.10 On the strength of several late medieval territorial settlements, moreover, the secondary towns possessed such a measure of legislative and jurisdictional autonomy that the territorial government could proceed legally against non-Catholics only with great difficulty.11 Finally, the secondary towns recognized strength in numbers and periodically formed defensive “unions” that pledged them all to mutual aid against any attempt to diminish these privileges.12 They shared, in other words, a common interest in preserving the status quo. Though united in the defense of civic liberties, not all of the secondary towns dealt with religious plurality in the same manner. Some sought to preserve unity by differentiating sacred spaces according to confession; others organized spaces and liturgies in a more instrumental fashion, sacrificing purity for the sake of civic unity. Broadly speaking, the emergence of separatist approaches was a “west side story” reflecting the more militant confessional politics that prevailed near the Dutch frontier. The “east side story” tells of subtler, more nuanced solutions that had the effect of blurring distinctions between the two confessions. But these solutions, too, were the product of their immediate environment, a region characterized by ambiguous confessional politics and strong local traditions of liturgical accommodation. Both strategies were reflected in distinct modes of legal self-defense: the western towns typically mustered the Peace of Augsburg in support of their solutions, as Vreden did, while the eastern towns tried to ensnare the question of religion in a web spun from territorial law and an essentially feudal conception of lord-subject reciprocities. This essay recounts each of these stories in turn. The accommodations they describe did not emerge from ignorance of confessional differences, nor can they be dismissed as nothing more than the expression of a confessionally indeterminate folk Catholicism.13 The inhabitants of these towns knew well enough, or thought

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they did, what distinguished Luther from Calvin and both from Catholicism and Anabaptism. For some—Mennonites, committed Calvinists—the requirements of doctrinal purity often trumped the demands of good neighborliness or communal unity. But for the less committed majority, confessionally specific inclinations did not always preclude religious observance in common, in part because not all the rites of Christian life demanded common worship, in part because the requirements of doctrinal purity did not impinge equally on all rituals and the spaces in which they were performed. All this indicates how misleading it is to measure religious experiences and behaviors against the yardstick of the confessionally committed few, let alone the stipulations of ecclesiastical ordinances.14 The strategies that the secondary towns developed also argue against a traditional view of confessional relations as a contest between “movements for the destruction and preservation of sacred space.”15 Rather, the commonalities underlying their methods for dealing with religious plurality point to the emergence of new and subtly complementary constructions of sacred space that enabled municipal governments to address the liturgical needs of a religiously diverse population while also respecting the prince-bishop’s right to determine the religion in his territory. These constructions, in turn, sought to reconcile the privileges guaranteed in the Declaratio Ferdinandea with the ius reformandi granted to prince-bishops by the treaty’s main provisions. None of this should be taken to suggest that Westphalian townspeople or their magistrates elevated religious toleration to the status of an inherent moral good. But their strategies do mean that in everyday life, townspeople weighed confessional identities against the demands of kin, neighborhood, and civic belonging. They were, in short, capable of crafting politique solutions to the problem of confessional plurality.

West Side Story: Tending Fences The older historical literature on sixteenth-century confessions tended to treat all evidence of conflict as emblematic of religious affairs in general. Confessional subcultures were presented as politically unified, theologically aware, socially coherent blocs in a state of permanent confrontation with one another. Relations between them were described almost invariably as battles (Kämpfe), altercations (Wirren), wrestling matches (Ringen), or unrest (Unruhen).16 No doubt, Westphalian sources yield many instances of religiously charged conflict, some of it violent. But the confrontation model is misleading prima facie. It is a fact that Catholics and Protestants lived cheek by jowl in the Westphalian towns for generations, and their relations simply cannot have been conflictual at all times. A very different picture of confessional relations emerges if one analyzes religious conflicts as the products of rupture in otherwise peaceable modes of coexistence in everyday life.17 This approach involves treating the evidence of local conditions

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as artifacts of a complex and asymmetrical process of communication between the mighty and the weak, in which each document is significant not only for its assertions but also for its silences, gaps, and hidden assumptions.18 Read in this way, the evidence on confessional relations reveals the emergence of regionally distinctive methods for dealing with religious plurality. Consider the town of Bocholt, a “well populated” town situated in the bishopric’s westernmost administrative district, bounded by the duchies of Geldern and Cleves and only four hours’ travel from Wesel, a major center of Reformed Protestantism on the lower Rhine.19 Beginning in 1582, the town council came under heavy pressure from its ecclesiastical overseer, Archdeacon and Cathedral Dean Gottfried von Raesfeld, to purge non-Catholic religious practices from the parish church. In its negotiations with Raesfeld, the Bocholt town council—a confessionally mixed body—had proposed to leave each citizen “to his own conscience” which of the two “confessions permitted under imperial law” he or she preferred to observe.20 This position echoed the terms of the Declaratio Ferdinandea and was also consistent with an agreement, reached in 1565 between the Catholic parish priest in Bocholt and a Lutheran chaplain, that had divided the liturgical day into confessional halves. Under this arrangement, the Catholic priest would officiate the Mass at matins and vespers, but at other times the chaplain could “preach the Word of God, [and] administer the sacraments of baptism and the altar.”21 But Archdeacon Raesfeld rejected this arrangement categorically. After several years of negotiations, the Bocholt town council finally consented in 1587 to a thorough Catholicization of the parish church interior. Henceforth, only the exercise of Catholic religion would be permitted “according to the example of the cathedral church in Münster”; the town council also promised never to “secede (absöndern) from the Catholic religion” and pledged never “to excuse itself with [reference to] the Imperial Recess or Religious Peace of 1555.”22 All this comports well enough with the confrontation model of confessional relations and looks at first glance like an unconditional surrender on Bocholt’s part. But a closer look at how the 1587 deal was implemented suggests that in return for preserving the church as an exclusively Catholic sacred space, Bocholt’s Protestants got de facto toleration as a confession “permitted under imperial law.” This emerges from no stated policy but from the behavior of Raesfeld’s protégé, Arnold von Büren, who succeeded him as archdeacon in 1587.23 For the next quarter century, Büren pressed the council to assist him in evicting “heretics” from Bocholt—and by that he meant Mennonites, the members of a confession not “permitted under religious peace” of Augsburg.24 The council obliged, albeit half-heartedly.25 But as long as the town council maintained Catholicism as the official religion in town, Büren did not compel Bocholt’s Protestants to communicate in the Catholic rite. This tacit agreement began to unravel toward the end of Büren’s tenure, in 1611–1613, when the council’s foot-dragging in the expulsion of Anabaptists

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prompted him to menace “Calvinists” with eviction, too.26 Yet even this threat exposed the contours of earlier accommodations. The presence of Calvinists in the western towns had been common knowledge since the time of Archdeacon Raesfeld, but Büren had done nothing to thwart their increase. In response to his threats, the guilds and council of Bocholt presented arguments not heard since the treaty of 1587: “excepting only a few [Anabaptists],” they protested, the citizens of Bocholt adhered to no religion forbidden in the Holy Empire but only to “permitted and confirmed” confessions.27 Did they resume this argumentation because they perceived a breach of the 1587 deal? Had the archdeacon been complicit all along in lumping Calvinists together with Lutherans as adherents of the “Augsburg Confession,” as the Reformed so often did? There is no way to say for sure, but the alternative—that he was simply unaware of the Calvinists’ presence or their selfproclaimed adherence to the “Augsburg Confession”—is highly unlikely. The cumulative effect of these behaviors was to keep the choice of confession a matter of conscience, as it had been prior to 1587. For their part, the Protestants accepted a kind of corporate Nicodemism as the price of their continued residence in a town subject to a Catholic prince-bishop. In keeping with its obligations under the 1587 agreement, the council prosecuted those who disrupted the Catholic Mass.28 If they wished to worship in public, the Reformed inhabitants of Bocholt were obliged to travel some seven kilometers to a filial chapel in the village of Werth, where they could receive the Word and sacraments from a Reformed preacher who lived under the protection of a Reformed noble family there.29 For committed Calvinists, it was a grim bargain. And yet despite the tumult of 1611–1613, the town council continued to uphold a Catholic monopoly over the public exercise of religion right down to 1623, when forces of the Catholic League under the command of Count Johann Jakob of Anholt, acting at the behest of Bishop Ferdinand I, occupied the secondary towns and threw “heretics” out of civic office. The council had adhered to the 1587 agreement even though by 1607 the number of communicating Catholic households had already dwindled to “scarcely ten.”30 Whether they involved the division of space or time, however, these strategies involved strict demarcations along confessional lines. But as Keith Luria argues, clear boundaries did not always mean confrontation; well-tended fences between confessional subcultures could also limit and contain conflict and thereby preserve the conditions of peaceful coexistence.31 Open confrontation typically occurred in reaction to perceived violations of negotiated demarcations or in response to the extracommunal pressure that these ruptures provoked. The turmoil of 1611, for example, resulted in part from fighting that broke out inside the Bocholt parish church when town council elections reduced the Catholics’ share of seats to two, apparently in violation of an earlier quota.32 In the western towns, the Peace of Augsburg worked like a floating signifier, offering convenient legal fictions to all the parties in these negotiations. Against

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charges that he tolerated sects within his archdeaconate, Archdeacon von Büren could claim that the town had never strayed from the faith and the bishop’s right to determine the character of religious observance, in accordance with a Catholic conceptualization of the Peace of Augsburg and its unqualified extension of ius reformandi to ecclesiastical princes. Thanks to the Bocholt council’s collusion, moreover, he could also claim to have intervened energetically against the spread of (Anabaptist) heresy.33 For their part, the Protestant inhabitants of the western towns believed that the Peace conferred a beneficium libertatis conscientiae. But they also insisted that their accommodations of religious plurality satisfied the legal requirement that only the Catholic religion could be observed within the diocese.34 Common to both positions was a spatialized definition of the princebishop’s ius reformandi that bounded its sway at the limit between public and private.35 Thus the religious peace provided a framework within which the western towns could remain in a state of formal obedience to diocesan authorities, preserve civic unity and the continuity of local self-government, and minimize conflict within a pluri-confessional population. For all but the hapless Mennonites, it was a workable and lasting solution.

East Side Story: Blurring Divisions A subtly different, though no less durable set of arrangements governed confessional relations inside towns located in the eastern sectors of the diocese. Like the western towns, their solutions reflected a keen awareness of the hazards that religious strife posed to civic concord and autonomy. But they were not constrained by treaties such as the agreement under which Bocholt labored. Left to their own devices, the eastern towns tended to define sacred spaces in ways that fostered an instrumental approach to the institutions of common religious life, leaving townspeople to pick and choose among observances to attend. For town councils, this typically meant adopting a neutral stance in matters of religion; it also meant inhibiting the attempts of external authorities to interfere in religious affairs. To that end, the eastern towns defended their accommodations with appeals not to the Peace of Augsburg, but to custom, civic privilege, and the late medieval territorial settlements upon which they were founded. The “east side story,” in other words, was about blurring confessional divisions internally while maintaining high walls against the outside world; it was about building boundaries, not between confessional subcultures, but around them. Episcopal authorities first learned about some of these arrangements in 1623, when forces of the Catholic League conquered and occupied the secondary towns. Soon after the secondary towns’ defeat, an ad hoc commission was given the task of identifying and expelling Protestants from civic office and appointing Catholics in their place. Therefore the commissioners wanted to find out about the

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conduct of religious life before the occupation; specifically, they wanted to know whether Protestants had performed secret baptisms and marriages or had heard sermons from heretical preachers at “secret conventicles” outside the city walls. What the commissioners learned may well have surprised them. Members of the town council all insisted that there had been no “private exercise” of religion in Warendorf; none could recall any “secret conventicles” outside the town.36 The treasurer, Johann Sterneberg, stipulated that while several parish priests had become Lutheran while in office, “no non-Catholic rites were performed in the [private] houses” and that all “baptisms and marriages occurred in church in the Catholic manner.”37 Only “heretics,” they claimed, abstained from these functions—and here as in Bocholt, that label applied only to Anabaptists, whom the Warendorfers often slandered as Tibben (“she-dogs” or “bitches”).38 There is good reason to take much of this testimony at face value. Ten years earlier, the Catholic priest of St. Marien parish in Warendorf, Wilbrand Mertens, had confirmed to diocesan visitors that all baptisms and marriages were performed in the church. While many heard his sermons, moreover, few took part in the Catholic sacrum—implying that parishioners were permitted to abstain from portions of the Mass that they found objectionable.39 Such accommodations were in fact of long standing. Back in 1571, an earlier visitation had revealed that Warendorf ’s priests administered the Eucharist in one or both kinds, as their parishioners wished, in a service that was deemed to be otherwise liturgically correct.40 In 1572, they discovered that in Telgte, too, “not a few” parishioners took the lay chalice—implying that others preferred to communicate in the Catholic rite.41 All in all, the visitation of 1571/72 found that thirty-one parish priests, representing almost a quarter of the total number of parishes in the diocese, offered laypeople the chalice. But of these only nineteen refrained from administering the sacrament sub una specie.42 By 1600, this habit of accommodating parishioners’ ritual preferences also obtained in the secondary towns of Haltern, Rheine, and Werne.43 Did parishioners form separate lines to receive the Host? Or did the utraquists celebrate separately from the others? The sources yield few concrete answers. But we know plenty about the assignment of Eucharistic tasks. The simplest mode of accommodation was that of Erle, a village located near the bishopric’s southwestern periphery, whose priest distributed the Eucharist however his parishioners wanted it done.44 The more scrupulous curates accommodated demands for the lay chalice by assigning the task of distributing the sacraments sub utraque to a vicar or a chaplain, as the priest in Werne did.45 It is tempting to characterize these practices as the latter-day expressions of a latitudinarian tendency in the liturgical practice of late medieval Catholicism.46 As Bishop Bernhard von Raesfeld had admitted in 1561, popular demand for the lay chalice was widespread in mid sixteenth-century Westphalia.47 But this did not necessarily indicate the infiltration of Protestant liturgical norms, nor did the efforts of priests to meet it. A Catholic priest could, for example, satisfy it

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by distributing unconsecrated wine with the consecrated host. But the converse proposition—that such practices were crafted to accommodate the liturgical needs of parishioners whose beliefs had begun to diverge along confessional lines, but who were prepared to forego the pleasures of doctrinal consistency for the sake of good neighborliness—is no less plausible. Approaching the evidence with this possibility in mind enables us to weigh more precisely the emotional balance between confessional identities and other forms of belonging, as it pertained to the organization of specific rituals and particular sacred spaces. This approach also permits us to show how townspeople built and rebuilt confessional boundaries within and around their communities in response to new circumstances, as political forces shifted and as new beliefs arrived on the scene. How these more fluid accommodations came into being emerges from a series of conflicts during the 1590s over the burial of Protestants in the churchyard at St. Laurentius, the older of Warendorf ’s two parishes. In February 1597, the Catholic priest, Johann Hoyer, refused to permit the burial of Johann Middendorf or to allow the church bells to toll in his honor, “because he had refused to take communion in the manner of the church.”48 A Calvinist schoolteacher, Goswin Betuleius, had emboldened the dying man in his final hours to remain constant in his beliefs. On his deathbed Middendorf had slandered the Catholic host as “a bread god” and asserted that “he had no need of popish rites.”49 This, as far as we know, was the first time that a priest had attempted to deny anyone burial on sacramental grounds.50 It was also the first instance in which a citizen’s beliefs had interfered with the usual performance of a sepulchral ritual, even though the citizenry had contained self-described Calvinists since the mid 1580s, perhaps earlier. Even so, Middendorf ’s fellow Bürger would have none of Hoyer’s prohibition. Under pressure from his relatives and with the council’s collusion, the municipal gravedigger defied the priest’s ban and made room in the churchyard, where the corpse was buried “with great pomp” in the company of over 200 citizens and their dependents.51 In its communications with outside authorities, the council reacted to the fracas with an ostentatious display of confessional indifference, claiming that the nature of Middendorf ’s beliefs was none of its business and, in effect, that his status as a prominent and honorable citizen should determine the site of his interment.52 The violent humors that this incident stirred should not distract us from the sepultural accommodations they set in motion. Confronted with overwhelming opposition, Johann Hoyer accepted a compromise that would restore concord without violating his integrity as a priest or the status of St. Laurentius as a house of exclusively Catholic worship. Henceforth, the priest would officiate only at the burial of confessed Catholic parishioners. But Protestants would continue to be buried in the Catholic churchyard of St. Laurentius, and the church bells would toll in their honor. A suitable chaplain or sacristan could lead the burial procession and deliver an oration over the body of the deceased Protestants.53 This

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compromise seems to have continued under Hoyer’s decidedly more Tridentine successor at St. Laurentius, Johann Asmann.54 A similar arrangement obtained at Warendorf ’s second parish, St. Marien, where the priest buried the dead promiscue, without regard to confession.55 On one issue, however, there would be no compromising: the council would not permit confessional tests to displace citizenship and social rank as criteria for an honorable churchyard burial. It resisted, in other words, the differentiation of the churchyard along confessional lines. Small wonder then, that Protestant as well as Catholic citizens remained eager to bury their dead inside the parish church. In 1605, for example, the survivors of Hermann Ebbeling asked that his remains be laid to rest “inside the church because there was no room in the churchyard.”56 There is little doubt that Ebbeling’s beliefs were Calvinist: according to the town council minutes, he had been raised “in the religion of Bremen,” and the request to bury him inside the church was submitted on behalf of his survivors by Andreas Holstein, a merchant known to the town’s Catholic priests as a contumax Calvinist.57 If the behavior of Ebbeling’s survivors is any indication, Protestant parishioners sought to reproduce a citizen’s prestige in the proximity of his burial plot to the sacred interior of the Catholic parish church. Everyone in town, it appears, joined the council in ordering the churchyard primarily in relation to the distribution of civic honors, not the requirements of confession.58 The fact that no further complaints over these sepultural accommodations reached the ears of authorities in Münster indicates that this local deal remained intact right down to the occupation of Warendorf in 1623.59 The archives bear mute testimony to the strength of those outer walls. Like Bocholt’s recourse to the Peace of Augsburg, Warendorf ’s manner of dealing with religious plurality was reflected in the legal methods it chose to defend its accommodations. Rather than make its case dependent on the Declaratio Ferdinandea or on a controversial reading of the religious peace, however, Warendorf opted to defend itself at the bastion, so to speak, with a barrage of lawsuits aimed at the town’s archdeacon, Georg Nagel, and at the prince-bishop, all lodged at the Imperial Chamber Court. In these suits, the council defended its jurisdiction over the two parish churches on the basis of “ancient rights and privileges” that, it argued, were guaranteed by a long series of territorial settlements going back to the early fourteenth century.60 This was a deliberate choice: in the course of its litigations, the council had consulted several experts in imperial law on religion, one of whom advised that because of the praesumptio pro principe it would be “sheer insanity”—bloßer whann—for the town to invoke the Peace of Augsburg in its defense.61 The goal of this strategem was to transform disputes over religious orthopraxy into questions of princely authority and, in so doing, to turn tables on the accusation that Warendorf had allowed impermissible “innovations” in the conduct of religion. Specifically, the council claimed that it had never interfered with the archdeacon’s right to appoint parish priests and chaplains in the town; nor had

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it reneged on its obligations as corporate provisor of Warendorf ’s two parish churches; nor, finally, had it disputed their status as sites of exclusively Catholic worship. “As far as religion is concerned,” the council claimed, “we have never intended, still less have we attempted, to change anything.” In their interpretation, the true “innovator” in religion was Archdeacon Nagel, who had interfered with Warendorf ’s ancient exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the town walls.62 Central to this argumentation was a contractual conception of princely authority as a reciprocal bond between a lord and his corporate subjects, a pact founded on territorial contracts, inscribed in custom, and reanimated through the exchange of oaths at the accession of every new prince-bishop.63 Because Warendorf had upheld its end of the bargain, the council claimed, and because the prince-bishop had sworn to preserve the town’s privileges, the latter had no legal alternative but to respect the town’s full range of jurisdictions.64 The unspoken corollary of these positions was, of course, that the prince-bishop was also obligated to respect the ritual emanations of civic privilege, including the town’s accommodations of religious plurality. Though its strategies diverged from the approach taken in the eastern towns, Warendorf ’s solution shared with it a spatialized definition of the prince-bishop’s ius reformandi. Its tactics were designed to prevent Archdeacon Nagel from interfering, as Archdeacon Raesfeld had done in Bocholt, with the town’s autonomy in the regulation of religious life. But the town’s recognition of the prince-bishop’s right to determine the formal status of public religious observance in the town’s two parish churches was, after all, the legally indispensable concomitant of their insistence that in return, the prince-bishop must respect and defend the town’s corporate privileges and jurisdictions. By framing the bishop’s religious authority in relation to the reciprocal bonds of obligation between lord and subject, the Warendorf town council participated in the same spatialized construction of the bishop’s ius reformandi that had characterized Bocholt’s arrangements with Archdeacons Raesfeld and Büren. Common to both was an understanding of ius reformandi as the right to determine the confessional status of sacred spaces, and only that status.

Common Places To one degree or another, all the conflicts and negotiations described so far reflected the growing influence of Reformed Protestantism within small and individually weak towns that were both subject to the unquestioned authority of a Catholic prince-bishop and accustomed to meeting the diverse liturgical needs of religiously heterogeneous populations. Though they traveled different paths, the western and eastern towns arrived at accommodations of religious plurality that at once upheld and restrained episcopal authority over parish churches and

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the Catholic status of their sacred interiors. At first blush, these effects seem paradoxical. How could the growth of Calvinism have been anything but disruptive to relations between the confessions? Reformed constructions of ritual and sacred space, after all, could not have diverged more radically from that of both Catholics and Lutherans; any right-thinking believer who took part in the “unclean customs and idolatrous ceremonies” of “papist” or Lutheran churches ran the risk of excommunication by the synodal arbiters of Reformed orthopraxy.65 Their strident liturgical purism made for famously raucous confessional politics—one thinks of the street brawls it ignited in Brandenburg over the custom, considered by Lutherans to be theologically indifferent, of exorcizing baptismal water.66 Part of the answer is that the secondary towns of Westphalia were woven only loosely into the institutional fabric of Reformed synods and classes. Although Reformed communities in all the secondary towns maintained frequent contact with nearby centers of Calvinist preaching and education, such as Wesel, Dortmund, Bentheim, and Rheda, only Bocholt’s Calvinists attempted to establish formal affiliation with an external congregation, the classis of Wesel.67 Rigorous doctrinal oversight was simply lacking; no synod was in a position to discipline such abominations as the Catholic baptism of Protestant infants or the burial of Calvinists in Catholic churchyards.68 Another, richer explanation lies in the negative complementarity of Reformed and Catholic constructions of sacred space. Calvin rejected categorically the notion, so fundamental to Catholic sacrality, that holiness could adhere to objects or spaces. Houses of worship did not “by any secret sanctity of their own make prayers more holy”; prayer and services sanctified the spaces within which they were performed, not the reverse, and for this reason Heinrich Bullinger denounced the Catholic practice of consecrating buildings and hallowing grounds.69 To be sure, as Andrew Spicer reminds us, Calvin’s repudiation of intrinsic holiness proved difficult to sustain wherever the Reformed faith became the established religion. Reformed parishioners continued to ascribe innate sanctity to churches, especially if they had been the sites of pilgrimage, and efforts to combat such perceptions risked undermining religious authority in its new, Reformed guise. In time, the popular pressure drove some communities to begin consecrating churches in spite of Calvin’s repudiation.70 But no such qualms troubled Calvinist communities in towns subject to the rule of a “papist” prince. The souls of the Reformed would suffer no harm, of course, by their absence from the Catholic Eucharist. Assuming Calvinists were prepared to accept the inevitability of religious plurality and subjection to a Catholic prince—as they clearly were in the Westphalian towns—the presence of consecrated Catholic spaces in their midst need not trouble them, either. Given the secondary towns’ neutral stance in religious matters, Calvin’s repudiation of innate sacrality was consistent with their preserving the Catholic status of parish church interiors.

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To derive the meaning of these behaviors solely from theological precepts, however, would be to miss important strands of continuity that delineate a distinctly civic construction of the corpus christianum.71 Spicer’s caution alerts us to the persistence of pre-Reformation practices, even in towns that had driven out Catholicism. Just as they attributed sacrality to church buildings, many Reformed communities also persisted in the belief that “the sanctity of a church” lent “weight to … secular activities carried out under its roof.”72 So it was in Bocholt, where elections to the town council continued to be held inside the parish church long after the agreement of 1587.73 In all the towns, secular officials routinely read out council rulings and episcopal decrees or made other public announcements from the pulpit.74 The implication is that Protestant inhabitants of the secondary towns continued to ascribe vital civic importance to parish churches, notwithstanding the specifically Catholic nature of their sacrality. The Warendorf treasurer’s insistence that all “baptisms and marriages” were conducted “in church in the Catholic manner” suggests that this attitude extended to any ritual of Christian life that described an individual’s relationship to the civic community as a whole. How else are we to explain the desire of Johann Middendorf ’s kin to inter his Calvinist bones in a Catholic churchyard, or Hermann Ebbeling’s longing for a burial inside the church of St. Laurentius? These attitudes suggest that townspeople were able to approach institutions of Christian life instrumentally, distinguishing between the civic and sacramental functions of ritual, embracing the former and eschewing, if need be, the latter.75 None of these accommodations would have worked—indeed, none of them would have been necessary—if citizens of the secondary towns had made uniformity of religious belief and practice the prerequisite of peaceful coexistence. The greater weight of evidence suggests that they did not. In the course of expelling Protestants from the diocese, authorities discovered that intermarriage was quite common, even among the most prominent citizens of the secondary towns.76 In Warendorf there were no fewer than thirty-two marriages between Catholic women and men who were “infected with Calviniana.”77 Nor was confession an insuperable impediment to office holding. True, a majority of council members in Bocholt and Warendorf were Lutheran or Calvinist by inclination, which reflected the Catholics’ minority status in both towns. But this did not prevent the election of Catholics such as Clemens Hamacher, who sat on the Warendorf town council from 1611 to 1614 and again from 1617 to 1620. Others are harder to pin down. One of the most slippery was Werner Pagenstecher, who served continuously as mayor of Warendorf from 1606 to 1623, when he was expelled from office as a Protestant and a rebel. But according to the very Catholic priest, Johann Asmann, Pagenstecher “attends church regularly and participates in the rite from start to finish.”78 Does this mean that Pagenstecher took communion more catholico despite his theological leanings? Or was he merely a last-minute convert? We cannot say for sure. Either way, the point remains that confessional

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labels, though very much in use at the time, do not begin to capture the variety of attitudes and behaviors, even among the powerful. These attitudes and behaviors attest to the creative potential of what Robert W. Scribner called “practical rationality,” a resigned acceptance of religious plurality, rooted in material interdependence and informed by hard-won experience with the disruptive effects of discord between the confessions.79 To be sure, none of these accommodations, or the legal strategies they engendered, betokened the advent of some popular movement for religious tolerance; to claim as much would be to indulge a sentimentalizing anachronism. Even in the famously latitudinarian Dutch Republic, as Andrew Pettegree has observed, toleration was at best a “loser’s creed,” advocated from the margins.80 And yet for the town councils of Westphalia, “practical rationality” had concrete political form in an explicitly neutral stance in matters of religion. Thus Warendorf ’s council not only rejected religious tests for office holding; its lawyers also insisted that no personal qualities should apply other than “civic honor and probity” (politische erbar- und redlichkeit).81 “Practical rationality” was also mirrored in the willingness of (Protestant) town magistrates to enforce public deference toward (Catholic) religious observance by banning the sale or consumption of beer and brandy during the Mass, for example, or by punishing noisy youths for disrupting the sermon. As the Mennonites’ fate shows, this neutrality applied only to the “permitted and confirmed” religions and therefore did not equate to toleration as such. But it was certainly politique. These experiments in the accommodation of religious plurality ended abruptly in 1623, when the Catholic League occupied the secondary towns. It was a decisive moment in the evolving relationship between state power, confession, and local autonomy in Westphalia: from 1623 on, no person could legally be admitted to citizenship or to membership in a craft guild unless he or she had been certified as well and truly Catholic. Although the secondary towns’ corporate privileges were eventually restored, communion in the Catholic rite also remained in place as the necessary precondition for election to civic office. The secondary towns were subjected to frequent diocesan and archidiaconal visitation and to the regular oversight of synodal courts (Sendgerichte). From 1623 on, in other words, networks of civic and ritual communication were absorbed into a system of confessional controls that over the long term proved effective at Catholicizing all but a handful of Calvinist holdouts, among them the Protestants of Vreden.82 The eventual success of Catholicization in the prince-bishopric of Münster must not, however, divert us from the fact that local solutions to the problem of pluriform religious observance could be sustained over long periods of time. By 1623, the secondary towns had amassed over eighty years’ experience in the ways and means of preserving civic unity and communal concord without uniformity of religious belief and practice. Nor should the secondary towns’ capitulation detract from the efficacy of homespun interpretations of the Peace of Augsburg

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in postponing the day of reckoning with the confessional state. These arguments may not have been especially persuasive on legal grounds. But the secondary towns’ lawsuits entangled the agents of Catholic confessionalization in a Gordian knot of litigation so tight that only military force, in the end, could sever it. In the interim, they were able to encapsulate the prince-bishop’s spiritual authority within the sacred precincts of parish church interiors. The secondary towns thus ordered sacred space in a manner that addressed a diversity of religious needs while acknowledging the prince-bishop’s right to determine the exercise of religion.83 In so doing, they sacrificed religious uniformity in the interest of preserving communal unity. The rupture of 1623 is therefore significant not only because it removed obstacles to the progress of confessionalization: its violence also attests to the durability of local, civic solutions to the problem of religious plurality.

Abbreviations BAM FM GV KAW LANRW-W MHR

Bischöfliches Archiv Münster Fürstbistum Münster Generalvikariat Kreisarchiv Warendorf Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Abteilung Westfalen Münsterische Heimgelasse Räte

Notes 1. BAM GV Vreden St Georg A 3, Underthänigster Bericht wegen der Reformirten zu Vreden, 12 August [1632]. 2. Bernd Christian Schneider, Ius reformandi: Die Entwicklung eines Staatskirchenrechts von seinen Anfängen bis zum Ende des Alten Reiches (Tübingen, 2001), especially 218–228, 256– 268, 316–320. 3. See Bernhard Ruthmann, Die Religionsprozesse am Reichskammergericht: Eine Analyse anhand ausgewählter Prozesse (Cologne, 1996), 296–311; Axel Gotthard, Der Augsburger Religionsfrieden (Münster, 2005), 535–560; and Schneider, Ius reformandi, 177–182. 4. Karl Brandi, Der Augsburger Religionsfriede vom 25. September 1555: Kritische Ausgabe des Textes mit den Entwürfen und der königlichen Deklaration (Göttingen, 1927), 52–54. 5. BAM GV Vreden St Georg A 3, Underthänigster Bericht, 12 August [1632]. 6. Bernd Moeller, Imperial Cities and the Reformation: Three Essays (Durham, 1982), 44, 48. For a more socially nuanced interpretation than Moeller’s, see Thomas A. Brady, Jr., “In Search of the Godly City: The Domestication of Religion in the German Urban Reformation,” in The German People and the Reformation, ed. R. Po-Chia Hsia (Ithaca, 1988), 14–31. 7. C. Scott Dixon, “Urban Order and Religious Coexistence in the German Imperial City: Augsburg and Donauwörth, 1548–1608,” Central European History 40 (2007): 1–33. 8. On Münster’s loss of civic liberties and the 60 percent drop in incomes it caused, see R. PoChia Hsia, Society and Religion in Münster, 1535–1618 (New Haven, 1984), 7–11, 23–30.

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10.

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12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

17. 18.

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On Warendorf ’s punishment see Siegfried Schmieder, Stadt- und Gilderechte der Stadt Warendorf (Warendorf, 1993), 64–66. See Will Coster and Andrew Spicer, “The Dimensions of Sacred Space in Reformation Europe,” in Will Coster and Andrew Spicer, eds., Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2005), 1–16; and Willem Frijhoff, “The Threshold of Toleration: Interconfessional Conviviality in Holland during the Early Modern Period,” in Embodied Belief: Ten Essays on Religious Culture in Dutch History, ed. Willem Frijhoff (Hilversum, 2002), 39–66, esp. 41–42. In 1620 Mennonite communities still existed in Bocholt, Borken, and Vreden; BAM GV II 1 37, [Johannes Hartman], Status spiritualis et religionis ciuitatum diocaesis Monasterien [ca. 1620]. After an expulsion decree issued by Bishop Bernhard von Raesfeld in 1560, Jewish communities existed only in Münster, Bocholt, and Warendorf; see Diethelm Aschoff, “Die Juden in der ständischen Gesellschaft,” in Geschichte der Stadt Münster, 3 vols., ed. FranzJosef Jakobi (Münster, 1993), vol. 1, 83–113. These included many prerogatives typically reserved for territorial overlords, such as the right to try and execute criminal cases carrying the penalty of death. Ludwig Keller, Die Gegenreformation in Westfalen und am Niederrhein, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1881–1895), vol. 2, 286. The fifteenth-century city leagues were revived in 1588, in 1600, and again in 1622; see LANRW-W FM Stadt Coesfeld A 1, 56r, “Vorzutragende gravamina der Stadt Bocholt auf dem Landtagsausschus 1588”; Keller, Gegenreformation, vol. 2, 356–358, nr. 320; and Heinz Duchhardt, “Protestanten und ‘Sektierer’,” in Jakobi, Geschichte der Stadt Münster, vol. 1, 217–247. Cf. Andreas Holzem, “Katholische Konfessionskultur im Westfalen der Frühen Neuzeit: Glaubenswissen und Glaubenspraxis in agrarischen Lebens- und Erfahrungsräumen,” Westfälische Forschungen 56 (2006): 65–87, here 70–72. This is the nub of Heinrich R. Schmidt’s critique of confessionalization theory; see his “Sozialdisziplinierung? Ein Plädoyer für das Ende des Etatismus in der Konfessionalisierungsforschung,” Historische Zeitschrift 265 (1997): 639–682; also Dorf und Religion: Reformierte Sittenzucht in Berner Landgemeinden der Frühen Neuzeit (Stuttgart, 1995); and his Konfessionalisierung im 16. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1992). See also Marc R. Forster, “With and Without Confessionalization: Varieties of Early Modern Catholicism,” Journal of Early Modern History 4 (1997): 315–343. Coster and Spicer, “Dimensions of Sacred Space,” 7. See for example Augustin Hüsing, Der Kampf um die katholische Religion im Bisthum Münster nach Vertreibung der Wiedertäufer 1535–1585: Actenstücke und Erläuterungen (Münster, 1883); Keller, Gegenreformation, vol. 1, 267–342, vol. 2, 261–300, and vol. 3, 261–364; Wilhelm Zuhorn, Kirchengeschichte der Stadt Warendorf, 2 vols. (Warendorf, 1918–1920); Friedrich Brune, Der Kampf um eine evangelische Kirche im Münsterland, 1520–1802 (Witten, 1953); Friedrich Reigers, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Stadt Bocholt und ihrer Nachbarschaft (Bocholt, 1963); and most recently Alois Schröer, Die Kirche in Westfalen im Zeichen der Erneuerung (1555–1648), 2 vols. (Münster, 1987). Here I take my cues from Willem Frijhoff’s critique of confessionalization theory in “Threshold of Toleration,” 45–47. Alf Lüdtke, “Herrschaft als soziale Praxis,” in Herrschaft als soziale Praxis: Historische und sozial-anthropologische Studien, ed. Alf Lüdtke (Göttingen, 1991), 9–63; and Helga Schnabel-Schüle, “Kirchenvisitationen und Landesvisitationen als Mittel der Kommunikation zwischen Herrscher und Untertanen,” in Im Spannungsfeld von Recht und Ritual: Soziale Kommunikation in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Heinz Duchhardt and Gerd Melville (Cologne, 1997), 173–186.

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19. BAM GV II 1 37, Status spiritualis et religionis ciuitatum diocaesis Monasterien [ca. 1620]; Reigers, Beiträge, 774. On confessional relations in Wesel see most recently Jesse A. Spohnholz, “Strangers and Neighbors: The Tactics of Toleration in the Dutch Exile Community of Wesel, 1550–1590” (PhD Dissertation, University of Iowa, 2004). 20. Reigers, Beiträge, 807–808. 21. Ibid., 783–784. 22. BAM GV Bocholt A 5, “Pro[toco]l auszug” [1587]. The treaty was concluded on 29 September 1597. 23. On Arnold von Büren’s tenure as dean of the cathedral chapter (1587–1613), see Wilhelm Kohl, Das Domstift St. Paulus zu Münster (Berlin, 1987), 160–161. 24. BAM GV Bocholt A 5, “Bericht unnd Erclerüng mein Arndten von Büren Dhomdechandts uber zugestellte Articulum” [1597]. 25. The fact that Mennonites were expelled from Bocholt in 1598 and again in 1608 strongly indicates the council’s complicity in Büren’s campaign against them; LANRW-W FM Landesarchiv 518/519, XIa, 62r, “Nhamen der auß Bocholt verwichenen Wiedertäuffern,” 25 March 1608; and LANRW-W FM Landesarchiv 2a/16, vol. 5, 22r–v, Archdeacon Arnold von Büren to MHR, 18 October 1611. 26. BAM GV Bocholt A 5, “Project vertrags” [1612?]. 27. LANRW-W FM Landesarchiv 2a/16, vol. 5, 38r–40v, Guilds of Bocholt to MHR, 5 December 1611; and LANRW-W FM Landesarchiv 2a/16, vol. 7, 33r–34v, Petition of “Untertanen und Religionsverwandten” in Bocholt to Ferdinand I, 13 June 1613. 28. LANRW-W FM Landesarchiv 2a / 16, vol. 5, 68r–69v, “Specification und Verzaichnuß der Excessen” [1611]. 29. On the “caluinische predicanten” maintained by the Culenborg family in Werth, see LANRW-W FM Landesarchiv 2a/16, Bd. 1, 1696–v, MHR to Rentmeister in Bocholt, 1 June 1598, 70r–v. 30. “vix decem”; see the testimony of the priest Caspar Droste before the Ecclesiastical Council on 9 May 1607, to the effect that nunquam sub utraque specie communicarit; Herbert Immenkötter, ed., Die Protokolle des Geistlichen Rates in Münster (1601–1612) (Münster, 1972), 247. 31. Keith P. Luria, “Separated by Death? Burials, Cemeteries, and Confessional Boundaries in Seventeenth-Century France,” French Historical Studies 24 (2001): 185–222; and Luria, Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early-Modern France (Washington D.C., 2005), xxviii–xxix. 32. LANRW-W FM Landesarchiv 2a/16, vol. 5, 68r–69r, “Specification und Verzeichnuß der Excessen” [1611]; BAM GV Bocholt A 11, Drost Wilhelm von Welfeld to Bernhard Steck, Rentmeister, 11 April 1611. 33. See for instance von Büren’s assertions before the cathedral chapter on 7 March 1607; LANRW-W FM Domkapitel A 4844, 10r–v. 34. The phrase comes from LANRW-W FM Landesarchiv 2a/16, vol. 7, 33r–34v, Petition of “Untertanen und Religionsverwandten” in Bocholt to Ferdinand I, 13 June 1613. For the council’s insistence that it allowed “the exercise of no other religion … than that observed within the diocese of Münster,” see LANRW-W FM Landesarchiv 2a/16, vol. 5, 12r–v, Mayors and Council of Bocholt to MHR, 18 September 1611. 35. This, too, echoed Protestant interpretations of the Peace of Augsburg; see Ronald G. Asch, “Religious Toleration, the Peace of Westphalia and the German Territorial Estates,” Parliaments, Estates & Representation 20 (2000): 75–89. 36. LANRW-W FM Landesarchiv 432, 20/2, 99r, 101r, 102v, 104r–v, 109r, 111v, 113v–114r, and 116r. 37. LANRW-W FM Landesarchiv 432, 20/2, 102v.

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38. See, for example, KAW Stadt Warendorf A 100, 8r–11v, Council minutes for 18 March 1605. 39. BAM GV Handschriften 23, pp. 70–73, 181–186, Visitation of Warendorf, 28 August and 9 September 1613: baptizet et copulet in templo … ad concionem magno numero, ad sacrum pauci vel nulli veniunt. 40. See Wilhelm Eberhard Schwarz, ed., Akten der Visitation des Bistums Münster aus der Zeit Johanns von Hoya (1571–1574) (Münster, 1913), 151. 41. Ibid., 147. 42. “Extract aus den Visitationsprotocollen des Bischofs Johann von Hoya, 1571–2,” in Hüsing, Kampf, 234–236, nr. 165; and Schwarz, Akten der Visitation, cxiv–cxviii. 43. In Immenkötter, Protokolle des Geistlichen Rates, see the testimonies of Heinrich Sebbel, Pastor in Haltern, 165–166 (29 May 1604); of Hermann Dreck, Pastor in Rheine, 64–65 (17 May 1601); and of Rupert Berentz, Chaplain in Rheine, 162–163 (23 March 1604). On Werne see Schwarz, Akten der Visitation, 179, 182; and BAM GV Werne St Christopherus A 25, 2r–3v, Ecclesiastical Council to Probst zu Cappenberg, 1 October 1609. 44. Testimony of Pastor Conrad Storck in Immenkötter, Protokolle des Geistlichen Rates, 217 (13 September 1606). 45. In Immenkötter, Protokolle des Geistlichen Rates, see, for example, the testimonies of Heinrich Winkelmann, priest in Lüdinghausen, 74 (26 September 1601); and Vicar Johannes Hulsshorst, 86–87 (29 November 1601). Similarly Georg Walraf, the priest in the village of Beelen, distributed the Eucharist in the Catholic manner but left a chaplain named Johannes Backhuss to administer sub utraque to anyone who wanted; 320 (20 February 1609). 46. Schwarz, Akten der Visitation, cxiv–cxvii; Andreas Holzem, Der Konfessionsstaat (1555– 1802) (Münster, 1998), 290; Holzem, “Katholische Konfessionskultur;” and Werner Freitag, Pfarrer, Kirche und ländliche Gemeinschaft: Das Dekanat Vechta 1400–1803 (Bielefeld, 1998). 47. Instruction of Bishop Bernhard von Raesfeld to his brother, Cathedral Scholaster Goddart von Raesfeld, 26 March 1561, in Hüsing, Kampf, 158–160, nr. 18. 48. BAM GV Warendorf St. Laurentius A 9, Testimony of Johann Dorssel, 30 June 1597. See also LANRW-W FM Domkapitel A 4840, Protocollum de anno 1597, 106r, 26 February 1597; and KAW Stadt Warendorf A 94, 9r–12r, Council minutes for 30 June 1597. 49. BAM GV Warendorf St. Laurentius A 9, 7r–11v, Interrogatoria [May 1597]. 50. In fact, Hoyer’s ban exceeded the requirements of diocesan law: not until 1604 did Bishop Ernst I forbid the burial of Protestants in parish churchyards; BAM Domarchiv VI 4, Edict on Religion, received 21 November 1606. This edict reiterated in greater detail the terms of an earlier prohibition issued on 22 August 1604; see Keller, Gegenreformation, vol. 2, 376, nr. 348. 51. BAM GV Warendorf St. Laurentius A 9, 7r–11v, Interrogatoria [May 1597]. 52. KAW Stadt Warendorf A 94, .9r–12r, Council minutes for 30 June 1597. 53. KAW Stadt Warendorf A 100, 35v–36r, Council minutes for 14 November 1605. 54. See Immenkötter, Protokolle des Geistlichen Rates, 368 (20 October 1610). The continuation of this compromise emerges from the fact that the council regulated the fees that sacristans could charge for performing burials and marriages; KAW Stadt Warendorf A 107, 34r–35r, Council minutes for 27 June 1614. 55. BAM GV Handschriften 23, 181–186, Visitation of Warendorf, 9 September 1613. 56. See the burial requests on behalf of Hermann Ebbeling in KAW Stadt Warendorf A 100, 28v, Council minutes for 30 October 1605. 57. KAW Stadt Warendorf A 100, 31r–35r, Council minutes for 14 November 1605. On Andreas Holstein’s religious proclivities, see LANRW-W FM Landesarchiv 2a/19, vol. 16, 78r–79v, Nomina hereticorum Warendorpensium [1623–1624].

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58. For contemporaneous parallels see Will Coster, “A Microcosm of Community: Burial, Space and Society in Chester, 1598 to 1633,” in Coster and Spicer, Sacred Space, 124–143; Luria, “Separated by Death?” and Penny Roberts, “Contesting Sacred Space: Burial Disputes in Sixteenth-Century France,” in Bruce Gordon and Penny Marshall, eds., The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2000), 131–148. 59. The town council minutes indicate that a Calvinist was buried in the St. Laurentius churchyard in 1621; see KAW Stadt Warendorf A 109, 77v–78r, Council minutes for 1–3 October 1621. 60. See LANRW-W Reichskammergericht W 281/940, vol. 3, which contains supporting documentation for Warendorf ’s suit against Archdeacon Georg Nagel over the city’s right to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the town walls. 61. KAW Stadt Warendorf A 219, “[Johann] Byfangs bedencken.” 62. LANRW-W Reichskammergericht W 276/936, Libellus articulatus in Sachen Warendorff contra Münster, 6 July 1608, §§ 31, 36. 63. André Holenstein, Die Huldigung der Untertanen: Rechtskultur und Herrschaftsordnung (800–1800) (Stuttgart, 1991); Elizabeth Anne Harding, “Das Zeremoniell der fürstbischöflichen Inthronisation in Münster vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert,” MA thesis, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, 2003. 64. LANRW-W Reichskammergericht W 281, vol. 1, 19r–39v, Libellus nullitatis et iniquitatis articulatus, 17 June 1591, §§ 2–3. 65. Thus the verdict of the 10th Synod of Berg, 2 September 1591, concerning those who communicated in the Reformed rite but allowed their children to be baptized in “papist churches”; D. Eduard Simons, Synodalbuch: Die Akten der Synoden und Quartierkonsistorien in Jülich, Cleve und Berg, 1570–1610 (Neuwied, 1909), 690. 66. Bodo Nischan, “The Exorcism Controversy and Baptism in the Late Reformation,” Sixteenth Century Journal 18 (1987): 31–51. 67. On Bocholt’s relations with the Reformed classis in Wesel, see Simons, Synodalbuch, 497– 498, 506, 513, 520, 524. 68. On Calvinist condemnations of burials in church interiors, see Andrew Spicer, “‘Defyle not Christ’s Kirk with your Carrion’: Burial and the Development of Burial Aisles in PostReformation Scotland,” in Gordon and Marshall, The Place of the Dead, 149–169. 69. Jean Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion: 1536 Edition (Grand Rapids, 1986), 73, and Heinrich Bullinger, The Decades of Heinrich Bullinger (Cambridge, 1849–1852), vol. 4, 499, cited by Andrew Spicer, “‘What Kinde of House a Kirk Is’: Conventicles, Consecrations and Sacred Space in Post-Reformation Scotland,” in Coster and Spicer, Sacred Space, 81–103, here 86–87. See also Christian Grosse, “Places of Sanctification: The Liturgical Sanctity of Genevan Reformed Churches, 1535–1566,” in Coster and Spicer, Sacred Space, 60–80. 70. Spicer, “What Kinde of House a Kirk Is,” 87, 93–103; Spicer, “‘God Will Have a House’: Defining Sacred Space and Rites of Consecration in Early Seventeenth-Century England,” in Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Andrew Spicer and Sarah Hamilton (Aldershot, 2005), 207–230. 71. Cf. Lee Palmer Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy (Cambridge, 2006). 72. Spicer, “What Kinde of House a Kirk Is,” 88–89. 73. LANRW-W FM Landesarchiv 2a / 16, vol. 5, 68r–69v, “Specification und Verzaichnuß der Excessen” [1611]. 74. Thus in February 1601, Warendorf ’s secular overseer, or Drost, read from the pulpit a ruling on the sale of cotton yarn; KAW Stadt Warendorf A 98, 12r–14v, Council minutes for 5 February 1601.

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75. LANRW-W FM Landesarchiv 431 20/2, 102v. 76. An investigation conducted in 1627 revealed that forty-three mixed couples remained in Bocholt; in thirteen of these pairs, the husband was the “heretic,” among them Severin de Wilde, a former mayor; BAM Domarchiv II A 7, 37r–38v, “Designation der Uncatholischen im Ambt Bocholt” [1627]; and ibid., 46r–47v, “Designatio der Religionsverwanten zue Bucholtz” [1627]. 77. Based on a comparison between BAM GV Verstreutes A 10, 4v–54r [September?] 1626; BAM GV II A 18, “Nomina pertinacium haereticorum Warendorpensium” [1627] and BAM Domarchiv II A 7, 15r, “Haeretici Wahrendorpenses” [1627]. 78. LANRW-W FM Landesarchiv 432, 20/2, 123r, 20 July 1623. 79. Scribner, “Preconditions of Tolerance and Intolerance,” in Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation, ed. Ole Peter Grell and Robert W. Scribner (Cambridge, 1996), 34–39. 80. Andrew Pettegree, “The Politics of Toleration in the Free Netherlands, 1572–1620,” in Grell and Scribner, Tolerance and Intolerance, 182–198. 81. KAW Stadt Warendorf A 219, “[Johann] Byfangs bedencken.” 82. See Werner Freitag, Volks- und Elitenfrömmigkeit in der frühen Neuzeit: Marienwallfahrten im Fürstbistum Münster (Paderborn, 1991); Andreas Holzem, Religion und Lebensformen: Katholische Konfessionalisierung im Sendgericht des Fürstbistums Münster, 1570–1800 (Paderborn, 2000); and Holzem, Konfessionsstaat, 327–335. As late as 1672, some forty Calvinist and Lutheran families remained in Bocholt; see BAM GV Vreden St. Georg A 6, “Responsis ad interrogatoria Sssimi Domini Archidiaconi de parochiali ecclesia Vredensi” [1672]. 83. For a similar interpretation of the Peace of Augsburg and its effect on confessional cultures in a rural setting, see David Mayes, Communal Christianity: The Life and Loss of a Peasant Vision in Early Modern Germany (Leiden, 2004), 60–63.

Chapter 4

CUIUS REGIO, EIUS RELIGIO The Ambivalent Meanings of State Building in Protestant Germany, 1555–1655

d Robert von Friedeburg

C

entral Europe at the turn of the sixteenth century may best be understood as a collection of three supranational polities: the Hungarian Kingdom, the Polish-Lithuanian Confederation and the empire of the German Nation.1 None of these empires survived the early modern period. The kingdom of Hungary was shattered by the Turkish victory at Mohács in 1526. Poland saw troops from Sweden and Brandenburg in Warsaw as early as 1656. Though Poland recovered afterwards, the Polish Sejm came under the influence of noble factions funded by Moscow, Vienna, and Berlin in the 1730s if not earlier. Movements to restore independence led to the first (1772) and second (1793) partitions of Poland and ultimately to the complete dissolution of a sovereign Polish state. The invasion and conquest of areas of the empire of the German Nation by armies of the French Republic after 1793 led to the redistribution of the lands of the imperial Catholic church among more powerful dynasties, primarily in Prussia, Austria, Württemberg, Bavaria, and Baden (in the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803), to alliances of most of them with Napoleon, and to the dissolution of the empire in 1804–1806. These facts have led many historians to conclude that the nation inevitably needed a strong centralized monarchy in order for it to survive in the highly predatory and competitive environment of early modern Europe. Reflections on

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the alleged corruption of the Swedish and Polish Diet supported this conclusion. Such ideas, however, have a longer pedigree, for European reflections on the nature of politics and government in the turmoil of war and crisis go back to Machiavelli and the breakdown of the Italian city-state system following the French invasion of the 1490s. Arguably, bloodshed in the sixteenth and seventeenth century encouraged further reflection on the “reason of state” by European princes, who attempted to patch together lands to assemble “dynastic agglomerations.”2 Since the nineteenth century, these agglomerations were (mis-) understood as the kernel of the nation-state. During the nineteenth century, even important “Whig” historians like Thomas Babington Macauley addressed the “Prussian Monarchy” as “the youngest of the European states.”3 Along this line, the territorial state within the empire provided Protestant historians with the functional equivalent of the centralized national governments of France, England, Sweden, or Portugal, while Catholic historians tended to emphasize the dissolution of the empire.4 To both, however, cuius regio, eius religio was the factual and legal watershed between a disintegrated and chaotic late medieval empire and the “wellordered police state,” as Marc Raeff described it, of the later sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. The 1555 Peace of Augsburg allegedly gave princes the right to determine confessional allegiance. They gained power over the church in their lands, which bolstered their rights and their authority and helped them consolidate their power in a system of territorial absolutism. According to this argument, this critical transfer had occurred by 1555.5 Leonard Krieger’s famous “German Idea of Freedom,” outlining a German Sonderweg of passive and inner freedom of conscience as opposed to active participatory liberty, is rooted in this notion.6 In his widely praised study on Luther, Roland Bainton reminds the reader that Luther, in his 1523 On Secular Authority, states that belief is a “free work” (freies Werk um den Glauben) that should not be enforced and that secular authority should leave subjects to believe as they “can and will” (so oder so glauben lassen, wie man kann und will ). Indeed, the limits of what secular authority should enforce is the focus of this treatise.7 During the eighteenth century, enlightened Lutherans attempted to project their notion of tolerance back in time onto Luther, claiming the great man for their own cause and taking him away from their orthodox foes.8 In 1625 Christoph Besold, the towering legal authority of Lutheran Germany, referred in his De iure maiestate to Luther and to Johann Gerhard, the “father” of Lutheran orthodoxy, to assert the following point: it displeases God when we desire to make others pious (Es gefälle Gott nicht, wenn wir ander Leut begehren fromm zu machen). Besold additionally asserted that the law of nature gives every subject the right to a free conscience and to believe whatever he wants ( Juris naturalis est, conscientiam liberam habere, & credere quicquid velis).9 By the same token, Besold reminded his readers of Luther’s earlier writings on the Jews, where he advised against violence. Besold quoted Luther with his reminder that

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Christ was a Jew, and that if the Apostles, who also had been Jews, had treated us, the pagans, as we treat the Jews today, no pagan would ever have become Christian.10 Besold was not an outsider but a seven-time rector of the University of Tübingen and one of the most frequently cited authorities on law and politics from the 1620s to the 1650s.11 Indeed, during the later 1640s and early 1650s, Hessian noblemen suing their prince at the Imperial Chamber Court frequently referred to Besold in their depositions. As should be obvious from these citations, how individuals perceived the territorial state was not uniform in this period. To start, its formation was in no way complete by 1555. Rather, from the middle of the sixteenth century juridical conflicts and academic treatises about what had actually been achieved with the Peace of Augsburg began to shape the meaning of what was to become the territorial state, a process brought to a closure in 1648 in only some respects. The struggles between princes and estates in places such as Hesse, Mecklenburg, Württemberg, or Calenberg over the precise extent of the rights and privileges of princes, estates, and subjects carried on well beyond Westphalia.12 In particular the last twenty years have considerably changed our views on the timing and meaning of the formula cuius regio, eius religio. Scholars still debate the meaning of the terms regio and religio and the relationships between faith, confession, and secular power groups. After reviewing some results of recent historiography on the timing and nature of territorial state building, I will then present new insights into the variety of contemporary legal and political expertise on the issue, focusing on the meaning of terms like regio or patria in the course of the sixteenth century and on the treatment of princely rule in political thought during the first third of the seventeenth century. In conclusion I argue that the emerging concept of the res publica as legal person of public order within the empire did by no means enshrine territorial absolutism but rather a highly ambivalent system of rule in which princes and their exercise of power were meant to remain constrained by legal boundaries enforceable at courts of law.

Territorial State Building: Recent Historiography Neither the reformation of the princes13 nor the Peace of Westphalia is understood today as a watershed of territorial absolutism. A revision of the older narrative concerning the empire and territorial states depends upon four points. Support for three of them has been provided by the explosion of detailed monographic research during the last thirty years, led primarily by Karl Otmar von Aretin, Thomas Brady, Heinz Duchhardt, Peter Moraw, Volker Press, Heinz Schilling, Georg Schmidt, and Eike Wolgast.14 The fourth point is the subject of research at the interface of the history of political thought and social history, conducted,

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among others, by myself in cooperation with legal historians.15 Regarding the first three points, the empire was not disintegrating—neither around 1500, nor in 1555 nor even in 1648; territories were built, but in conjunction with the empire and in subjection to it; and the building of territories was only completed during the period between the eventual dissolution of the empire in 1804–1806 and the reordering of Central Europe’s borders in 1814–1815. The restructuring of legal relations between the emperor, princes, and vassals was pursued during the later sixteenth and seventeenth century within the legal framework of the empire, not independent of it. Thus, the consolidation of princely territories remained stretched across the whole early modern period and was accompanied by initiatives from subjects and vassals to secure their own privileges by seeking support from imperial courts or neighboring princes. As for the fourth point, this dynamic was also influenced by changes in political thought that then informed the way the law was interpreted and applied. Let us consider these issues in turn. Recent accounts underline the independence of late medieval Central European dynasties and corporations.16 At the beginning of our period, the empire was not primarily a constitutional unity but a mixed political system comprising princely dynasties, regional associations of cities and nobilities, and the Imperial Church. It could be variously conceived in three overlapping yet different senses. It still claimed the transferral of the plenitudo potestatis from the late Roman Empire (translatio imperii). Second, the empire laid claim to fiefs not only in the regnum teutonicum, but also in upper Italy, Burgundy, Savoy, and Lotharingia (Reichslehensverband ). The elected king and emperor remained the feudal lord (Reichslehensherr). Third, beginning in the fifteenth century there was a growing sense, mainly in the regnum teutonicum, the eventual center of imperial reforms, of being the patria communis of the German nation, governed by common institutions, laws, and procedures rather than by a single dynasty or an aristocracy of princes. Right into the fifteenth century, the empire in this latter sense was well understood to be composed of divergent areas, though these were not meant to be principalities but historic regions. A document of 1422 enumerates German lands (deutsche lande) as lying in “Swabia, Bavaria, at the Rhine, in Alsatia, in the Wetterau, in Hesse, Thuringia, Saxonia, Maissen, Brabant, Holland, Zealand, Gelderen,” and so forth.17 Neither these older lands nor the jurisdictional districts (Reichskreise) of imperial reform from 1495 were the terrae of the princes. But the terrae that princes did possess as fiefs were not understood as spatially defined areas, either. The varieties of dynastic demography and high medieval developments had provided for huge differences in the extension of princely fiefs.18 The Roman king (dominus) and the prince (vasallus) established a mutual bond of responsibilities and duties through princely fiefs that could be subinfeudated, creating an even more complex web of lord and vassal relationships.19 Enfeoffment, although it did concern a principality, did not define a precise geographical

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area or legal district; rather, it granted certain general rights that the respective prince had to shape into practical politics in manifold ways. The increasing institutionalization of late medieval princely government, of councils and offices for finance, of the administration of the demesne, of taxing peasant and urban subject populations, of the negotiations with vassals consolidating themselves into a recognizable group as estates during the fifteenth century—all of that gave sharper contours to princely rule. It did not consolidate princely fiefs into spatially defined legal districts. Recent research confirms that by 1500, the small administrative and legal districts of Ämter, often consisting of a small town and several villages, had achieved a relatively continuous and clear-cut spatial shape. But the princely fiefs themselves were by no means organized into such Ämter; rather they consisted of them—and of the towns and noble families beginning to form the territorial estates.20 Consequently, the period from the late fifteenth to the mid seventeenth century has been reconceptualized as the making of the German Empire—in particular in terms of the implementation of the reforms of 1495 involving the Diet, an Imperial Chamber court, and administrative districts—in conjunction with the consolidation of dynastic territorial possessions from a diverse number of corporations, families, and allegiances, rather than the emergence of the territorial state from imperial ruins.21 In this manner, early modern German historiography is now being rewritten in terms of evolving political, social, and cultural relations in the German-speaking parts of Central Europe that increasingly began to reorganize themselves as part of a meaningful political unity and a jurisdictional legal entity. Owing to the fragile relations of power and rights in the empire, neither the emperor nor the princes could dictate the shape of the evolving political entity of the empire and the territories within them or their relations to each other. Because the consolidation of public power within the empire remained in such flux during the early modern period, both within the empire as a whole and the evolving territories of princes, individuals and groups continuously had to adjust their own claims for status—and thus public power—according to changing events and changing notions of legitimacy. Even by the later seventeenth century, families like the von Alvensleben, though legally vassals to the electors of Brandenburg, decided independently to appoint Reformed or Lutheran ministers to their parishes and had their own network of sub-vassals.22 As late as 1729, the nobility of the ecclesiastical electorate of Trier could still declare its independence of the prince and become imperial knights. The Catholic emperor could still, with the help of allied Lutheran princes, restore the rights of nobility and estates in Mecklenburg against the absolutist policies of its territorial duke between 1719 and the 1755. The dukes of Württemberg could not enforce absolutism against their estates. If the empire dissolved into a confederation of princely dynasties and their possessions—not territorial states—that happened after 1740, not before.23

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The enforcement of rule over peasant and urban subjects living within the Ämter was by no means at the core of what state building meant for princes during the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Indeed, focusing on the relations between princes and peasant-subjects within these Ämter would miss the development and strategic advantage of superioritas territorialis, a term signifying a new approach to the relations of princes and their vassals. Those affected by this development were primarily the noble vassals of princes and towns that had claimed some kind of right to self-administration, in particular with regard to the administration of the church. Territorialization was meant to subject these semi-independent groups in particular by transforming the myriad constellations of relationships between lord and vassals, dependent on specific verifiable rights, into a single all-encompassing subordination. With this aim in mind, around the turn of the seventeenth century several German jurists and authors of politicas embraced Jean Bodin’s thesis that any political unit needed a single supreme authority. Andreas Knichen’s treatise on territorial rule stands out among these works attempting to bring about this interpretative shift.24 One major incentive behind this change was a desire to shift the balance in legal disputes about material burdens among lords, vassals, and subjects. Rather than the lord having to prove every single right against vassals and subjects, now subjects and vassals were meant to prove exemption from full subjection to subject-status and its burdens, including taxes and services, by specific pieces of evidence. Shifting this burden appears to be the major strategic advantage that princes’ lawyers could exploit, provided their client possessed this superiority. In some cases, the issue of motivation is clear-cut. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Landgrave Maurice of Hesse-Cassel (1608–1624) claimed the existence of such a spatial district, the principality of Hesse, well beyond the range of his rural and urban subjects living in the Ämter of his demesne, mainly as tenants of his land, or the vassals holding fiefs including subjection in jurisdictional issues from him. He now claimed that the neighboring counties of Waldeck and those in the Wetterau were in fact geographically part of a single Hessian territory. Thus, their inhabitants were necessarily his subjects and the counts of Waldeck and of the Wetterau were his, and not imperial, vassals; occasional fifteenth-century enfeoffments were submitted as proof of subject status. He also attempted to capture one of the counties by force, but given his own limited resources he, like other princes, relied in general not on force alone but on argument before the courts as well.25 Knichen, however, had not described an accepted legal procedure or a political reality ex post facto, but a new legal concept. The new terms—Landesobrigkeit, jus territorii, superioritas—and the claims associated with them by princes thus became subject to legal and political contests with diverse outcomes. Indeed, these terms were themselves products of such strife. Neither cuius regio, eius religio nor ius reformandi were formulas to be found in the actual regulations of the

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1552 Treaty of Passau or the later 1555 Peace of Augsburg. Passau established peace among emperor, king, electoral princes, princes, and estates of the empire until a solution to the religious question was found. Similarly, the treaty of Augsburg only mentioned king and estates in paragraph four: Churfürsten, Fürsten und Gemeinen Ständen. Adherents to the Augsburg Confession were to be protected under the peace of the land (Landfrieden) against attacks arising from their adherence to the Augsburgische Confessions-Religion …, so sie aufgericht oder nochmals aufrichten möchten.26 The revolutionary aspect of this agreement was the attempt to come to terms with religious diversity by agreeing on keeping the peace without any definite limitation on the agreement—that is, without any strict connection between keeping the peace and an agreement in matters of religion. The Peace of Augsburg achieved this by establishing—in connection with the Treaty of Passau—that all sequestration of property of the Church of Rome by reforming magistrates that had occurred up until August 1552 should now also be protected under the agreement for peace. This technical approach achieved a compromise between adherents of the different faiths. While force had played and continued to play a role in reformations and counterreformations in German lands, most reformations had been accomplished within a framework of active consultation among theologians, estates, and citizens. Issues of taxation and recruitment of resources for wars and princely feuds were likewise not regulated by these agreements. Both Passau and Augsburg remained traditional in their vocabulary in that the parties involved were by no means states or territories, but princes and estates. As Bernd Christian Schneider has recently shown, the formula cuius regio, eius religio did not appear in the sources before 1587. By that time, the imperial Diet had just ruled (in 1582) to link representation at the Diet neither to dynastic lineages nor to all noblemen given princely dignities by the emperor but to principalities hitherto acknowledged.27 Schneider found that legal specialists had to concentrate on the problem of who could actually claim the ius reformandi, the right to the activity described in the Augsburg treaty as the aufrichten oder nochmals aufrichten of the Augsburg Confession or of Roman Catholicism. Even the precise extent of the group addressed in 1555 remained anything but clear. In conflicts about the right to reform, for instance between the count of Öttingen and a monastery (1590s) or with regard to vassals of one prince with land lying within an area claimed to be the territory of another, lawyers and legal scholars had to debate which of the various parties owned the ius reformandi and toward whom it could be exercised. They also struggled to establish whether the ius reformandi was possibly an outgrowth of some other original right, or to which other privilege it was related. At the same time, contradictory formulations in the work of the jurist Joachim Stephanus (1544–1623) suggested that religion was connected to territory. Schneider argues that from the early seventeenth century onward, authors like Christoph Besold increasingly understood the ius reformandi

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as part of territorial superiority, not least because it could not be understood to be a right devolved from the powers of bishops. Bishops plainly could not be considered to have the privilege of choosing between two confessions. By logic, one of these confessions had to be heretical. Thus, the ius reformandi must have been connected to another realm of legal privilege. As Schneider points out, authors such as Besold, Carpov, and Engelbrecht concluded “what the Stephani Brothers around 1600 did not dare to write: that there must be a right of civil authority (obrigkeitliches Kirchenrecht) above and beyond the jurisdiction of bishops and its devolution to princes.”28 Thus, in the course of debate and only from the 1620s onward, it became unavoidable to assume that the civil authority of territorial superiority had to be the source of the right to reform the church. At the same time, princely interest in subsuming neighboring but less powerful members of Germany’s higher nobility still subject only to the emperor led to attempts to interpret specific single legal acts—for instance an enfeoffment or the presence of such a nobleman at an earlier Diet—as demonstrating their status as subject to the prince in question. In this context, allegations about ancient fatherlands, when their geographical extension proved the extent of territorial rule, played a further role.29 Superioritas territorialis, to be sure, was in itself a new term and had to be inferred by the existence of a varying number of existing privileges, such as higher jurisdiction, representation at a Diet, or Vogtei (i.e. the office to protect the church in a given area). The ultimate goal of this development was to infer from such scattered rights a comprehensive power over church and subjects in a defined spatial unit. From the possession of this comprehensive power, further individual rights such as taxation and jurisdiction could be derived. Subjected to superioritas, subjects had to prove every possible exemption, and even those could possibly be overturned by arguing that superioritas involved the right of extralegal measures in case of necessity.

Territorial State Building: Contemporary Legal and Political Developments During the course of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, territories in the empire not only became the main arena of administrative reform and legal change but also developed, through the course of the political and legal battles between princes and estates, distinct constitutional characteristics that distinguished Bavaria from Brandenburg, Saxony from Mecklenburg, Trier from Hesse. The gradual accumulation of territories was changing the political and legal landscape of the empire, but it did not introduce territorial absolutism wholesale. Rather, each emerging territory acquired its own specific “historic” constitution as a result of the varying and shifting relations between princes, vassals, and subjects, and

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the consequential effect of innumerable contracts, decisions, privileges, dynastic house laws, and other treaties. The changing relevance of Roman law, the emergence of a historic fundamental and specialized public law of the empire, and the new secular law of nature all left their stamp on the arguments made by princes and subjects in their conflicts. Political, constitutional, legal, and social historians attempted to understand the interrelation of power interests, social power resources, political circumstances, and legal and political thought in tracing in detail how negotiations between princely dynasties and their estates worked, what arguments were used, and what consequences ensued.30 At the core of German reasoning on public power remained the concept of the res publica as the institutional configuration of public order, raised above the society of citizens and subjects and involving supreme power to rule over subjects. This development went back at least to Leonardi Bruni, the famous Florentine statesmen who argued in his commentary on Aristotle that the society of citizens needed, in order to acquire permanence, the governing order of the res publica.31 The need for rule moved into the center of what was understood to be indispensable for a society to live together. In Germany, Philip Melanchthon followed this trend when, in his 1530 commentary on Aristotle, he defined any polity as a legitimate order in which some order, and others obey.32 By the last quarter of the sixteenth century, Petrus Victorius even alleged in his own influential commentary on Aristotle that the existence of an unequivocal order of rule and obedience, addressed as res publica, was the single most important condition for the existence of any human society.33 As these developments took place in political thought, legal scholars in Germany began to mention the geographical location of a given plaintiff as an issue in determining the validity of a claim of rule and to understand the possessions of princes as consolidated administrative units under a single rule. Ulrich Zasius delineated the Roman origins of feudalism primarily in order to prove that all magistrates, including the emperor, remained bound by civil laws.34 He argued that feudal relations had been derived from agreements between patrons and clients within Roman society and had been extended to captured and occupied areas.35 The relations built on this basis, between princes and those receiving a fief, had to be understood as contracts enforceable by law.36 Only the Roman emperor—and then every rex in regno—could give a fief.37 Zasius assumed that dukes in Germany descended from military leaders of (late Roman) imperial troops, who had probably been given territories by the emperors to keep them loyal.38 In his discussion on controversies regarding fiefs, Zasius emphasized the boundaries of a given area and thus linked princely power with a legal territorial district rather than simply bundles of varying rights. Vassals in such an area had to be assumed to be part of the estates.39 Moreover, legal dictionaries referred to the provinces of the later Roman Empire and their heads, the presides provinciarum, to provide an example for this new

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meaning of patria. For example, Johannes Spiegel’s Lexicon Iuris Civilis of 1549 cited among the listed meanings (significationes) of patria the patria potestas, i.e., the legal power of the father over his family. But it also listed patria as provincia, a spatially defined area in which all powers and administrative agencies necessary for the upkeep of political order (ordinationes politiae) were held by a single magistrate.40 The influential Marburg lawyer Nicolaus Vigelius organized a further edition of this dictionary in 1577. The entry on provincia was copied from the article on patria from the 1549 edition with additional comments on the duty of caritas to the patria as well as a reference to Johannes Oldendorp’s In Verba Legum XII Tabularem Scholia. This work was added to various editions of the dictionary so readers could immediately check the reference. Oldendorp’s commentary described the office and legal rights of various magistrates in Roman law, and in particular the presides provinciarum, the heads of the provinces. These references were included in the later edition of the same dictionary, the Lexicon Iuridicum, of 1612.41 By that time, princes’ lawyers were beginning to use the terms provincia and patria to indicate the late-medieval bundles of jurisdictions and rights held by their employers. These rights were seen as expressions of the exclusive, quasi-imperial, jurisdictional and administrative powers of princes over anyone living within a spatially defined area named by these terms.42 In the ensuing conflicts between princes and estates, as well as in the scholarly literature, the emerging territories were thought to bind the supreme magistrate, the prince, to specific legal procedures. The underlying understanding of relations among princes and the inferior nobilities, and sometimes even citizens, as those among lords and enfeoffed vassals was never quite entirely pushed to the margins by the political terminology of majesty, territorial superiority, and subject-hood. The increasing weight of the assumption of ius superioritatis of the imperial estates over a more or less ill-defined group of subjects and vassals did shape the nature of interrelated hierarchies within the empire, but it did not change it radically in favor of territorial absolutism. Some major legal scholars, like Tobias Paurmeister, while maintaining the limits of imperial power, insisted that everyone physically in a territory must also be subject to the prince enfeoffed with the principality of this geographic region.43 Christoph Besold, however, distinguished between in territorium and de territorio.44 Moreover, some authors were accused of being “monarchomachs.” One of them, Johannes Althusius, was explicitly attacked with this term by Henning Arnisaeus, the major proponent of territorial absolutism.45 These authors held not only that princes should rule according to the written laws, statutes, contracts, and the Herkommen but also that specific groups among the subjects and vassals of the prince could enforce princely compliance with the laws. Horst Dreitzel listed around a dozen German authors under this term, and one might add a few more. Among them were Lutheran legal scholars such as Friedrich Pruckmann, Heinrich Bruning, Valentin Forster, Bartholomaeus Volcmarus, and Jakob Multz; Lutheran theologians like

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Johann Gerhard and Jacob Fabricius; Reformed theologians like David Pareus; Lutheran authors of politicas like Reinhard Koenig and Christian Liebenthal, and Reformed writers of politicas like Hermann Kirchner and Johannes Althusius.46 The date of their publications ranged from Mathias Cuno’s De pactis liber in 1590 to Reinhold Condit’s Repraesentatio majestatis from 1690.47 For one example we can turn to Bartholomaeus Volcmar’s De Iure Principum aliorum magistratum synoptica Tractatio (Frankfurt, 1618). Chapter IX dealt with the problem of which kind of defense was appropriate against the prince. Like other authors, he denounced the killing of the father and any illicit action by the subjects; he reminded readers that Luther had warned against any war against Charles V. It remained characteristic of these considerations to approach the issue with caution, in particular with regard to single subjects. However, Volcmar then reminded his readers from Scripture (I Kings 12) and the writings of Bodin and Althusius that the people had no obligation to the tyrant—whether the usurper void of title or the tyrant ex exercitio. Lord and vassals were obligated to the patria (in this context, it was typical to use this term for the territory in question), and beyond the bounds of legality the actions of princes were seen as null and void (proterea eius decreta nulla sunt).48 Self-defense to secure life and limb was legitimate, and the defense of religion even more so (multo magis in causa religionis). Volcmar pointed out, quoting Nehemiah 4 and a letter from Luther edited by Melanchthon in 1547, that the task of correcting and defending rested with the ephors. Volcmar thus cited three different kinds of resistance—allegiance to the patria, not the prince, the licit defense of one’s life, and the specific privileges of groups in Germany to correct a superior magistrate—that had been developed by the 1620s as types frequently referred to, without however any clear indication of who these persons might be.49 Moreover, some legal scholars argued that the law provided for resisting actions of a magistrate threatening not only life and limb but also the goods of the vassal and subject.50 Feudal law provided for intervention by the emperor or the right to resist by vassals if they were maltreated, for that meant that the fief had deteriorated in worth. Thus, Heinrich Rosenthal still insisted in his Tractatus synopsis totius iuris feudalis (1610) that while a vassal may never injure his lord and dominus (laedere personam domini), he could resist, and so could his own sub-vassals (sed aliter ei vel eius subsidiaries resistat) against illegal actions of the lord. The vassal could, as long as the body of the lord was not injured, confront his lord, in court and otherwise. In the case of an illegal interference of the lord into the enfeoffed goods, even injuring the lord in defense remained legitimate.51 Many of these authors, such as Maulius, Wesenbeck, and Rosenthal, were cited by Christoph Besold on the connection of the ius reformandi to superioritas territorialis. Besold used these as examples for the argument that princes could be held accountable to some court of justice.52 He himself was careful not to delineate how that actually had to be brought about in matters of general principle,

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but rather insisted on the factual legal framework for protecting public rights and private goods. Born in Tübingen in 1577, Besold was raised in the Lutheran household of his father, a Tübingen attorney (Hofgerichtsadvokat). He studied at Tübingen, came into contact with Kepler, and was appointed Professor Pandectarum in 1610. Between 1614 and 1635 he served as rector of the university seven times. In 1635 he publicly announced his conversion to Catholicism, although he had taken this step privately five years earlier. Until this point, his Thesaurus Practicus in particular and his wide range of legal learning had made him a wellknown authority in this area. Besold received and propagated the maiestas realis– personalis division to fit empirical reality with Bodin’s terminology.53 In his publications during the 1620s, Besold referred to the late medieval mystic Johannes Tauler (ca. 1300–1361) and to the Lutheran Johann Arndt, who was severely criticized by Lutheran clergy as dogmatically unsound.54 Besold himself was twice, in 1622 and 1626, charged with being unsound in faith but weathered both allegations. In 1628 and 1629 he wrote statements on the issue of the restitution of Catholic monasteries in Württemberg, a pressing issue in light of the 1629 Edict of Restitution promulgated by Emperor Ferdinand II in the wake of early Catholic victories in the war.55 As Württemberg had been occupied by Charles V from 1548 to 1552 and its ecclesiastical lands and institutions had been recaptured for the Church of Rome, it had secularized them again after 1552, and thus could be seen as in violation of both the Treaties of Passau and Augsburg. Christoph Besold exasperated his prince by arguing that if Catholics had to accept that the capture of their property up until August 1552 was legalized by the Treaty of Augsburg, whether legitimate or not, then the recapture of any piece of property seized after August 1552 had also to be accepted by Lutherans. Thus the preaching of the gospel by Luther and his adherents and the necessary consequences for reforming a corrupt church—by sequestration of further property of the Church of Rome in the areas of Protestant control—were described by him as a process devoid of inherent, i.e., religious, legitimacy and made legal only by the force of circumstances in 1555.56 Besold’s statements on the notion of territory and religious freedom in the 1620s show how variable the framework of the emerging territorial state and in particular the legal interpretation of cuius regio, eius religio actually remained. Besold acknowledged various meanings of the term territorium but emphasized one of them in particular: the territory as jurisdictional district in which a magistrate, lawfully instituted, exercised the territorial law (jus terrendi).57 But in Public Treasure (1619), Besold himself continued to distinguish between physical location within a geographical area acknowledged to be in possession of a prince (in eines Fürsten Land/in territorio) and actual subjection to that prince (unter eines Fürsten Landsobrigkeit/de territorio), with the fact of an oath of allegiance (Erbhuldigung) being the major source of evidence.58 Thus, he did not support the notion upheld by many princes’ lawyers, including a number of his colleagues

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in the service of the Duke of Württemberg, on the issue of the monasteries, that physical location within a territory automatically rendered a person subject to a prince. Nor did he agree that princes could break the law in an emergency situation. In his 1620 Politicorum libri duo, he insisted that violation of the principles of nature constituted tyranny.59 He distinguished maiestas realis—exercised by the Imperial Diet—and maiestas personalis—exercised by the elected king—and referred to monarchomachs, such as Althusius and Danaeus, in arguing that the original source of authority remained the corporate people.60 The political unit as a whole, understood according to Roman law as universitas or the legal (fictitious) person of the corporate people, acting through its magistrates, had a right to prevent damage to its laws and properties and to defend itself to this end.61 This unit is addressed here as territorium. In his account of territorial law, magistrates are explained to be syndici or procurators administering the rights and possessions of the corporate body in question.62 While this defense appertains only to the lawful magistrate, the prince remains subordinated to the republic whose majesty he administers. His subjects do have a right to resist at least in matters of religion, referring to the father of Lutheran orthodoxy, Johann Gerhard.63 In his 1626 Praecognita politices, Besold defined several objectives of the state, among them, of course, control of religion. With references to Johann von Staupitz, Valentin Weigel, and Johann Arndt, and with an emphasis on piety, Besold took not an anti-confessional but a decidedly non-confessional stance. At the core of his religion was the simple belief that God became human and that Christ died for us.64 His Law of Majesty was based on these other arguments but emphasized that the law of nature provided a general fundamental law protecting the exercise of religion as it must be granted in a legitimate order. Besold distinguished, as was common, the primary law of nature (procreation, self-defense) and the secondary law of nature, the law of peoples (ius gentium). Intelligible by reason, this also included the duty of obedience to fatherland and parents ( pietas in patriam et patres)—but that held true not only for the subjects but also for the prince. The famous passage in 1 Samuel 8, describing wide-ranging powers for kings and used for arguments in favor of absolutism, was thus understood with reference to Melanchthon and to Johann Gerhard as a description of tyranny.65 Further, Besold reminded the reader that Christ and the apostles did not proselytize with force, that the church must be without weapons, and that superiors must not compel any belief—not even the Christian one—on their subjects. He cited Luther that those who had the honor of being Christians were not God’s true people, but that God’s true people were those who were prosecuted for heresy. He underpinned this approach with the stunning allegation that the law of nature, under which all government remained, demanded freedom of conscience and that every subject could believe what he wanted.66 He pointed to Moscow and the Netherlands as examples of the productivity of broad toleration.67

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Conclusion Besold’s use of the term territorium as a universitas under the law bound magistrates to legal procedure. His use of the term religion, essentially reduced to natural religion, restrained the legal enforcement of religion even under the Peace of Augsburg, which Besold did not wish to undermine, to a bare minimum. Bound to legal procedure, restrained by the rights of estates and subjects to defend their property and to litigate against illegal encroachments by princes, and limited by Besold’s curious approach to the meaning of religion, cuius regio, eius religio still left the princes with the ius reformandi but in a very restricted sense. There is ample evidence that subjects and estates did refer to Besold when suing their princes.68 None of this contradicts the evidence on prosecution, in particular prosecution under the Counter-Reformation during the first two-thirds of the seventeenth century in Austria, Bohemia, the Upper Palatinate, and elsewhere. But we should make a more determined effort to distinguish specific princely and confessional politics, for instance by the Habsburgs, from the controversial process of territorial state formation as such. Territorial estates did successfully struggle for confirmation of their privileges, referring in their cases to legal scholars such as Besold and Althusius. Writers like Samuel Treuer could well adopt natural law and arguments from Locke on legal cases of territorial estates against their princes, as in the Mecklenburg affair.69 To be sure, nowhere do we find claims here for the active political participation of mere subjects. But the claim of Leonard Krieger, made half a century ago about the peculiar nature of “German freedom,” is perhaps in need of revision.70 Significant sections of Lutheran jurisprudence did build, under the specific circumstances of the empire, a strong case for the legal protection of subjects and estates, not least with regard to their consciences. With regard to the emergence of the territorial state within the empire, the empire was possibly more varied and remains less well understood then older accounts would have it.

Notes 1. See now Dietmar Willoweit and Hans Lemberg, eds., Reiche und Territorien in Ostmitteleuropa: Historische Beziehungen und politische Herrschaftslegitimation (Munich, 2006). 2. The term: John Morrill, “‘Uneasy lies the Head that Wears the Crown’: Dynastic Crises in Tudor and Stewart Britain,” in The Stenton Lecture (Reading, 2005), 11. 3. Thomas Babington Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays, Edinburgh Review (April 1842). 4. On Protestants see Eike Wolgast, “Die Sicht des Alten Reiches bei Treitschke und Erdmannsdörffer,” in Imperium Romanum – irregulare corpus – Teutscher Reichs-Staat: Das Alte Reich im Verständnis der Zeitgenossen und der Historiographie, ed. Matthias Schnettger (Mainz, 2002), 169–188; for Catholics see, for instance, Johannes Janssen (1829–1891),

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Allgemeine Zustände des deutschen Volkes seit dem Augsburger Religionsfrieden vom Jahre 1555 bis zur Verkundigung der Concordienformel im Jahre 1580 (Freiburg, 1890), 247; on the increasing weakness of the empire; see still Erwin Iserloh, Josef Glazik, and Hubert Jedin, eds., Reformation, Katholische Reform und Gegenreformation (Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte, Bd. 4) (Freiburg, 1985 [1967]), 311: “Mit der Aufgabe der ausschliesslichen Geltung des einen, wahren katholischen Glaubens war die Idee des Reiches zutiefst getroffen. Dieses war zum blossen Bund von Territorialstaaten herab gesunken.” Here, Ultramontanist Catholic and modern secular historiography since the 1970s agree: see Johannes Janssen, Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, vol 4: Allgemeine Zustände des deutschen Volkes stei dem sogenannten Augsburger Religionsfrieden vom Jahre 1555 bis zur Verkündigung der Concordienformel im Jahre 1580, Freiburg 1890, 3; Marc Raeff, The Well Ordered Police State: Social and Institutional Change through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600–1800 (New Haven, 1983). Leonard Krieger, The German Idea of Freedom: History of a Political Tradition (Boston, 1957). Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (1950), German translation by Hermann Dörries, 7th ed. (Göttingen, 1980), 212; see Martin Luther, Von weltlicher Obrigkeit, wie weit man ihr Gehorsam schuldig sei (1523), WA 11, 245–281; here Martin Luther, Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. Karin Bornkamm and Gerhard Ebeling, vol. 4 (Frankfurt, 1982), 36–84, 63, 38–39. Walter Sparn, “Vernuenftiges Christentum,” in Wissenschaften im Zeitalter der Aufklärung, ed. Rudolf Vierhaus (Göttingen, 1985), 18–57; David Sorkin, “Reclaiming Theology for the Enlightenment: The Case of Siegmund Jacob Baumgarten (1706–1757),” Central European History 36 (2003): 503–530. Christoph Besold, De iure Magistrate, Strassburg 1625, sectio II, De Ecclesiastico Majestatis Iure, c VI, 130, 132; Robert von Friedeburg, “The Juridification of Natural Law: Christoph Besold’s Claim for a Natural Right to Believe What One Wants,” Historical Journal 53 (2010): 1–19. Bainton, Here I Stand, 343; WA 11, 314: Dass Christus ein geborner Jude sei (1523); Christoph Besold, De Iure Ordinibusque Civium (Strasbourg, 1626), c V De Hebraeorum, 77. Horst Dreitzel, Absolutismus und ständische Verfassung in Deutschland: Ein Beitrag zur Kontinuität und Diskontinuität der politischen Theorie in der frühen Neuzeit (Mainz, 1992), 33–39. The conflict is documented extensively in Staatsarchiv Marburg, Bestand 73, no. 1816. See on this conflict Robert von Friedeburg, “The Making of Patriots: Love of Fatherland and Negotiating Monarchy in Seventeenth Century Germany,” The Journal of Modern History 77 (2005): 881–916, 904. See Berndt Hamm, “Reformation ‘von unten’ und Reformation ‘von oben’: Zum Problem reformhistorischer Klassifizierungen,” in The Reformation in Germany and Europe: Interpretations and Issues, ed. H. R. Guggisberg (Heidelberg, 1993), 256–279. The towering landmark of revision on the late Middle Ages remains Peter Moraw, Von offener Verfassung zu gestalteter Verdichtung: Das Reich im späten Mittelalter 1250–1490 (Berlin, 1985); one possible starting point to enter the considerable recent scholarship is Schnettger, Imperium romanum – irregulare corpus – Teutscher Reichsstaat; albeit from different points of view see Heinz Schilling, “Wider den Mythos vom Sonderweg: die Bedingungen des deutschen Weges in die Neuzeit,” in Reich, Regionen und Europa in Mittelalter und Neuzeit: Festschrift für Peter Moraw, ed. Paul-Joachim Heinig et al. (Berlin, 2000); Georg Schmidt, Das Alte Reich: Staat und Nation in der Frühen Neuzeit 1495–1806 (Munich, 1999); Schmidt, “Angst vor dem Kaiser? Die Habsburger, die Erblande und die deutsche Libertät im 17. Jahrhundert,” in Reichsständische Libertät und Habsburgisches Kaisertum, ed. Heinz Durch-

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17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

23.

24.

25. 26.

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hardt (Mainz, 1999), 329–348; K. O. v. Aretin, Das Alte Reich, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1993– 1997); and Volker Press, Kriege und Krisen: Deutschland 1600–1715 (Munich, 1991). Both the Johannes Althusius society, Emden/Münster, and the Erasmus Center for Early Modern Studies, Rotterdam (www.erasmus.org) provide networks for this kind of cooperation. See the various publications of Peter Moraw, the main figure of German late medieval history, among them Peter Moraw, “Königliche Herrschaft und Verwaltung im spätmittelalterlichen Reich (ca. 1350–1450),” in Das spätmittelalterliche Königtum im europäischen Vergleich, ed. Reinhard Schneider (Sigmaringen, 1987), 185–200; Georg Schmidt, “Der Wormser Reichstag von 1495 und die Staatlichkeit im Hessischen Raum,” Hessisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 46 (1996): 115–136. Ernst Schubert, “Der rätselhafte Begriff ‘Land’ im späten Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit,” Concilium medii aevi 1 (1998): 15–27, 15–16. Ernst Schubert, Fürstliche Herrschaft und Territorium im späten Mittelalter (Munich, 1996), 1–5. Karl Friedrich Krieger, König, Reich und Reichsreform im Spätmittelalter (Munich, 1992), 75–77. Christian Hesse, Amtsträger der Fürsten im spätmittelalterlichen Reich (Göttingen, 2005), 192: “…das Land nicht in Ämter eingeteilt war, sondern sich aus ihnen zusammengesetzt hat.” See v. Aretin, Das Alte Reich; Press, Kriege und Krisen; Schmidt, Das Alte Reich. Peter Michael Hahn, Fürstliche Territorialhoheit und lokale Adelsgewalt: Die herrschaftliche Durchdringung des ländlichen Raumes zwischen Elbe und Aller 1300–1700 (Berlin and New York, 1989). More examples, for instance the imperial intervention in Cologne and Bavaria at the beginning of the Spanish War of Succession, could be cited. Trier: Hermann Weber, Frankreich, Kurtrier und das Reich 1623–1635 (Bonn, 1969), 20; Mecklenburg: Robert von Friedeburg, “Natural Jurisprudence, Argument from History and Constitutional Struggle in the Early Enlightenment: The Case of Gottlieb Samuel Treuer’s Polemic against Absolutism in 1719,” in Early Modern Natural Law Theories: Contexts and Strategies in the Early Enlightenment, ed. Tim J. Hochstrasser and Peter Schröder (Dortrecht, 2003), 141–168; Württemberg: Gabriele Haug-Moritz, Württembergischer Ständekonflikt und deutscher Dualismus: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Reichsverbands in der Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1992). Summarizing on the eighteenth century: Werner Trossbach, “Fürstenabsetzungen im 18. Jahrhundert,” Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 13 (1986): 425–454. Andreas Knichen, De sublimi et regio territorii iure synoptica tractatio, in qua principum Germaniae regalia territoriu subnixa, vulgo Landesobrigkeit indigenata… luculenter explicantur (Frankfurt, 1600); the standard account on him remains Dietmar Willoweit, Rechtsgrundlagen der Territorialgewalt (Cologne, 1975). Gerhard Menk, “Recht und Raum in einem waldeckischen Reichskammergerichtsprozess,” Geschichtsblätter für Waldeck 88 (2000): 12–47. Volker Henning Drecoll, ed., Der Passauer Vertrag (1552): Einleitung und Edition (Berlin, 2000), 25, 31: while a common ground in religion was alleged by Maurice as a basis of an agreement—different from the allegation in 1555 that no compromise had been reached— the aim was already that no estate of the empire should attack another due to the religious problems. A definite solution to the religious problem, by whatever way possible, was still envisaged for the near future. On 1555 see Arno Buschmann, Kaiser und Reich: Verfassungsgeschichte des Heiligen Römischen Reiches Deutscher Nation vom Beginn des 12. Jahrhunderts bis zum Jahre 1806 in Dokumenten, vol. 1 (Baden-Baden, 1994), 217, 219, 224.

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27. Thus, neither the multiplication nor the extinction of dynastic lines led to more or fewer seats in the Diet. While there were ca. 160 cases of imperial endowments with princely status between 1582 and 1806, only nineteen new princes made it into the Diet between 1653 and 1754. See Helmut Neuhaus, Das Reich in der frühen Neuzeit (Munich, 1997), 17. 28. Bernd Christian Schneider, Ius Reformandi (Tübingen, 2001), 312, 318. On the relation of this development to the crisis of religious peace in Germany from the 1580s see Ronald Asch, “No Bishop No King oder Cuius regio eius religio: Die Deutung und Legitimation des fürstlichen Kirchenregiments und ihre Implikationen für die Genese de ‘Absolutismus’ in England und im protestantischen Deutschland,” in Der Absolutismus – ein Mythos? Strukturwandel monarchischer Herrschaft in West- und Mitteleuropa (ca. 1550–1700), ed. Ronald G. Asch and Heinz Duchhardt (Cologne, 1996), 79–123. 29. Willoweit, Territorialhoheit, 269; Gerhard Menk, “Die Chronistik als politisches Kampfinstrument: Wilhelm Dilich und Marqard Freher,” in Hessische Chroniken als Gegenstand und Mittel der Landes- und Stadtgeschichte, ed. Gerhard Menk (Marburg, in press). 30. For this interdisciplinary approach—involving political thought, legal history, and social history—to a comparative study of European history see the recent volumes on the notion of patria and on analyses of monarchies in times of crisis by Robert von Friedeburg, ed., Murder and Monarchy: Regicide in European History, 1300–1800 (Houndsmith, 2004); von Friedeburg, ed., Patria und Patrioten vor dem Patriotismus: Pflichten, Rechte und die Rekonfigurierung europäischer Gemeinwesen im 17. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden, 2005); von Friedeburg, Europa in der frühen Neuzeit: Fischer Neue Weltgeschichte (Stuttgart, 2011). 31. Leonardo Bruni “Aristotelis libri politicorum,” in Aristotelis opera com Averrois commentariis, vol. 3, fol. 247 (Venice, 1562) on Aristoteles 1276b: Nam si civitas est societas quaedam (societas autem civium) variata reipublicae gubernandae forma, necessarium utique videretur, civitatem quoque non eandem permanere. 32. Philip Melanchthon, CR (Corpus Reformatorum) 16, 435–436, identified res publica with politia, but also with imperium (“res publica seu politia seu imperium”) and further argued that the civitas was a society of citizens through law constituted for mutual use and defense. The political order, however, was one in which some ruled and others obeyed (“civitas est societas civium jure constituta, propter mutuam utilitatem ac maxime propter defensionem—politia est legitima ordinatio civitatis secundum quam alii praesunt, alii parent”). 33. Petrus Victorius, Commentarii in VIII libro Aristotelis de optimo statu civitatis (Florence, 1576), 209. “Est autem res publica ordo civitatis, ceterorumque magistratuum, et maxime illius, qui summam potestantem habet.” For this argument see Wolfgang Mager, “Republik,” in Lexikon der geschichtlichen Grundbegriffe, vol. 5 (Stuttgart, 1994), 549–569, here 568–569. 34. Ulrich Zasius, Usus Feudorum epitome, Omnia Opera, vol. 4 (Lyon, 1550), 244–341. 35. Ibid., 244, 1: “Siquidem ab urbis Rom. Initiopotentes populari causas tuendas susceperunt, quos clientes nominabant, qui se & sua in potentum ditionem commendabant…Verissimile est, cum Romani I provinciis Gallia, Germania & alibi victricia signa circum tulissent, bona pars militum Romanoru in provinciis remansisset, ipsos cum multum eis esset agri, vicinos pro clientulis invitasse, eisqu. Agros & fundos nomine clientelae concessiss, atque ita temporis, quod omnia variat, processu, feuda, caeterisqu. Id genus emerisse concessiones.” 36. Ibid., col. 245: “Feudum autem esse contractum nominatum, post variou opinionum fluctus obtinuit.” 37. Ibid., col. 255, 5. 38. Ibid., col. 255, 6: “Nos ducis originem ab exercitus Romani ducibus emanasse putamus, quos ab Romani Imperii Principibus, territoriis donatos esse verisimile est, ut tamen ab eis recognoscant.”

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39. Ibid., col. 327, “…quo loco fieri potest, ut idem vasallus in Curia et extra Curiam diversis respectivus nominari possit.” 40. Spiegel, Lexicon Iuris Civilis, ex variis autorum commentariis (Leiden, 1549), 426. 41. Nicolaus Vigelius, Institutiones Iuris Publici (Basel, 1577), 2010–2011; Johannes Oldendorp, In Verba Legum XII Tabularem Scholia, in Johannes Oldendorp, Title II De Magistratibus, c. XV, alleging that the rights of the presides provinciarum had reemerged as part of the transferral of imperium and were now the “mandatis principum”, in: Lexicon Iuridicum, ed. Hermann Vultejus (Cologne, 1612), 39; on the heads of the provinces see also Nicolaus Vigelius, Methodus Iuris Civilis (Basel, 1601), 32–33. 42. E.g., Johannes Althusius, Dicaeologicae Libri Tres: Totum universum ius, quo utimur methodice complectentes (Herborn, 1617), L I, c 113: “patriae suae administratione”; Johannes Althusius, Jurisprudentia Romana Methodice Digesta Libri duo (Herborn, 1607), c IX; see for disputations works such as by Heinrich Kornmann, Ad municipalem et de Incolis. Roma communis nostra Patria est: Commentarius (Marburg, 1604). 43. Tobias Paurmeister, Iurisdictione Imperii romani Libri II (Hanover, 1608), C VIII, n 21, 31, 39, 514–58. 44. Christoph Besold, De Aerario public Discursus (Tübingen, 1619), quaestio II, 89. 45. Henning Arnisaeus, De Autoritate Principum in Populum semper inviolabili, commentario Politica Opposita seditiosis quorundam scriptis qui omnem Principum Majestatem sujiciunt censurae Ephorum et populi, 1612. I used the 1636 Strasbourg edition. 46. Jacob Fabricius, Einundreissig Kriegsfragen (Stettin, 1631) comes to mind. On him see Robert von Friedeburg, Widerstandsrecht und Konfessionskonflikt: Notwehr und Gemeiner Mann im deutsch-britischen Vergleich 1530–1669 (Berlin, 1999), 90–97. 47. Horst Dreizel, “Politische Philosophie,” in Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie: Die Philosophie des 17. Jahrhunderts, vol. 4: Das Heilige Römische Reich deutscher Nation: Nordund Ostmitteleuropa, ed. Helmut Holzey and Wilhelm Schmidt Biggemann (Basel, 2001), 609–866. 48. See Bartholomaeus Volcmar, De Iure Principum aliorum magistratum synoptica Tractatio (Frankfurt, 1618), c XI, 117. For other examples see Robert von Friedeburg, “The Making of Patriots: Love of Fatherland and Negotiating Monarchy in Seventeenth Century Germany,” The Journal of Modern History 77 (2005): 881–916. 49. See for the gradual development of these three core forms of resistance in the empire between the later 1520s and the 1620s Robert von Friedeburg, Self defence and Religious Strife in Early Modern Europe: England and Germany, 1530–1680 (Aldershot, 2002), chapters 2, 3 and 4, 56–156. See respectively 117, 118, 123–126. 50. Heinrich Rosenthal, Tractatus et synopsis totius Iuris Feudalis (Cologne, 1610), C 10, concl. 20, 58–60, concl. 33, 125–128. See in particular p. 59. “Vasallo dominum pro defensione sui cum moderamine offendere licit; Magistratum contra ius vim in bonis inferentem, etiam in persona laedere licitum.” 51. Ibid. 52. Christoph Besold, “De Republica Curanda,” in Besold, Republicae naturam et constitutionem (Strasbourg, 1626), c IX, de Republica Curanda, 175–176. 53. On Besold: Horst Dreitzel, Absolutismus und ständische Verfassung in Deutschland: Ein Beitrag zur Kontinuität und Diskontinuität der politischen Theorie in der frühen Neuzeit (Mainz, 1992); Barbara Zeller-Lorenz, Christoph Besold (1577–1638) und die Klosterfrage (Tübingen, 1986). His conversion and the unusually complicated and chaotic state of his publications have so far prevented any comprehensive formation of a state of research on him similar to other major contemporaries, such as Arnisaeus or Althusius. 54. Hans Schneider, Der fremde Arndt: Studien zu Leben, Werk und Wirkung Johann Arndts (1555–1621) (Göttingen, 2006).

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Zeller-Lorenz, Besold, 174–181. Ibid., 204. Christoph Besold, De iure rerum…. (6) de jure territorium (Strasbourg, 1624), 265. Christoph Besold, De Aeraro publico (Tübingen, 1619), 89–90. Christoph Besold, Politicorum libri duo (Frankfurt, 1620), book I, paragraph 2, n. 35 (p. 39). Ibid., lib I, c II, n 2–4, 54–55. Christoph Besold, De iure rerum,… (5) aliarumque universitatum (Strasbourg, 1624), 224–234. Christoph Besold, De iure rerum,… (6) ac item territorium (Strasbourg, 1624), c IV, 241–244. Besold, Politicorum Libri duo, lib I, c 12, n 78, 67–68: “universitas potest agere contra injuriantem....universitas reru communiter territorio appellatur;” lib I, c IX, Paragraph 5, n 50, n 57, pp. 863–864: “Tunc enim Reipublicae, major quam Regis potestas est.” Christoph Besold, Praecognita Politices proposuit (Strasbourg, 1626), C I, 14–16. Christoph Besold, De Iure Maiestate (Strasbourg, 1625), 67–68, 78. Ibid., 119, 129–130, 133: “Die sein nicht Gottes Volk, welche den Namen, Schein und Ehre davon haben. Die sein Gottes Volk die den Namen und Schein haben, dass sie Ketzer, Abtrünnige und des Teufels eigen seyn,” 132: “Juris naturalis est, conscientiam libere habere & credere quicquid velis.” Ibid., 132–135. Friedeburg, “Patriots,” passim. Ibid.; Friedeburg, “Natural Jurisprudence.” Krieger, The German Idea of Freedom.

Chapter 5

THE ENTROPY OF COERCION IN THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE Jews, Heretics, Witches

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eligion and authority has become what the late Heiko A. Oberman liked to call “a neuralgic theme.” Journalists, historians, and professors of religious studies rush to explain violence connected with religion, especially in Islamic countries, but occasionally in humbler places such as Northern Ireland. The French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie set a tone early in the game. In 1979 he compared the Iranian mullahs to “the monks of the Catholic League,” who represented “the popish fundamentalism … still lurking in the popular sensibility” that emerged “intact, triumphant” with an organization that was “not liberal … but democratic, pre-revolutionary, manipulative, even totalitarian.”1 Thoughtful writers in early modern Europe would not have shared Le Roy Ladurie’s surprise. They knew that religion was the foundation of human community but also a potential source of strife. The Strasbourg magistrate Jacob Sturm observed in 1534, “in our times scarcely anything else so unites people’s minds or drives them apart as unity or disunity in religion does.”2 The Englishman Francis Bacon put it more elegantly: “Religion being the chief band of human society, [it] is a happy thing, when itself is well contained within the true band of unity.”3 Such writers recognized that the circumstances of religious unity and difference profoundly influenced whether religion strengthened or undermined social order. Many writers of a later era have us believe that massacres of one religious

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community by another were everyday occurrences in early modern times. The truth is that even during the wars of religion between the 1560s and 1640s, mass inter-communal violence causing great loss of life was a rare event. Some tens of thousands died in the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacres in France, some 600 in the Valtellina rising of 1620, and perhaps 12,000 in the Ulster revolt of 1641. Far more frequent were acts of state terror that, unlike communal violence, could drastically change the course of history. In the duchy of Savoy the Waldensian communities were attacked, dispersed, and the survivors driven into permanent exile; in Ireland at the end of the 1640s enormous numbers of Catholic Irish were driven west across the Shannon, and some of them were enslaved. It could hardly have been otherwise, for violence belonged to the essential character of the centralized territorial state, the formation of which was the great, defining change of the early modern era. Early modern war-making and state-making constituted, writes Charles Tilly, “quintessential protection rackets with the advantage of legitimacy.” Together, they “qualify as our largest examples of organized crime.”4 To the “advantage of legitimacy” belonged the state’s appropriation of religion, which Bacon identified as one of the “four pillars of government.”5 Inter-communal violence, by contrast, occurred most frequently in weakly governed polities, where external forces disrupted the religious convivencias6 that depended on locally generated webs of familiarity, custom, exchange, and the rationality of everyday life. Quite apart from communal likes and dislikes, local convivencias could be quite stable, especially if they meshed with the programs of regimes that were not large, heavily militarized, or aggressively expansionist. This was especially true if the regimes tended to arbitrate and judicialize rather than exploit religious differences for well-defined political gain. Such was largely the case in the early modern German lands.7 Some of the early modern Holy Roman Empire’s peculiar political character is illuminated by the fortunes of three groups whose security was not governed by the Peace of Augsburg of 1555: Jews, heretics, and witches. Their fates were too varied to be comprehended under a vague category of “otherness” or “alterity,” terms that essentialize them as much as did the contemporary epithet “enemies of God” (or “enemies of Christ”). This study’s goal is quite different. It aims neither to examine aspects of the three populations’ particular histories nor to compare and contrast them one with another. Its subject is rather the intensification, one might say “thickening,” of political life in the early modern Holy Roman Empire as seen in the efforts of imperial and, above all, local authorities to regulate, discipline, control, and even eliminate some of the populations most difficult to integrate into imperial political life.8 This, not the particular histories of the empire’s Jews, heretical sects, and witches, significant as they are, forms the principal object of this study. The focus is rather on the empire as a structure of governance and on the weight of custom, regulation, and judicialization that tended, though

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at different times and paces and for different reasons, to reduce coercive measures against these populations. On this subject it is easy to overestimate the significance of the Religious Peace of Augsburg of 1555 for the treatment of non-Christians (the Jews), Christian dissenters (the Anabaptists), and persons and groups newly defined as diabolists, practitioners of a counter-Christian religion of devil-worship (the witches). It is true that the Peace wrote into imperial law the rulers’ right to cleanse their lands of dissent by imposing on religious recusants the classic early modern norm of conformity or exile. It thereby sanctioned an imperial convivencia among the rulers, and for the subjects it meant that individual Lutherans or Catholics could be coerced toward religious conformity, though they were rarely prosecuted for heresy. The long-term achievement of the Peace of 1555 was to create largely peaceful confessions out of mutually hostile churches. Yet it hardly affected the treatment of groups that stood outside the imperial convivencia: Jews, heretics (chiefly Anabaptists), and witches. The following paragraphs discuss the treatments of these three groups, one after the other, and then suggest some conclusions about the declining use of force against these groups in the Holy Roman Empire. This tendency is called here the “entropy of coercion.”

Jews: From Expulsion to Discrimination The history of the Holy Roman Empire’s Jews between 1500 and 1650 displays two principal tendencies. First, and more important from the perspective of Jewish history, was the movement of Ashkenazic Jewry out of the empire’s longsettled lands along the Rhine and the Danube into the northern German lands and out toward the vast spaces of Poland, Lithuania, and the Baltic. By 1650 Ashkenazic Jewry had formed two great branches, one in the Holy Roman Empire and the other in East Central Europe. Second, and more important from an imperial perspective, was the improvement of the legal security that encouraged the growth of Jewish populations and a stabilization of their distribution in patterns that would characterize the German-speaking Jewry into the modern era. These two tendencies form the prehistory of what Jonathan Israel has named “the zenith of Jewish influence in early modern Europe.”9 Looking forward from 1500, no one could have foreseen such fortunes for the empire’s 35–40,000 Jews. A series of spectacular anti-Jewish actions, each type of which had a long history, marked the era just before the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in the German lands: the ritual-murder affair of Simon of Trent in South Tyrol (1475), the Brandenburg host-desecration (1510), and the clearing in 1519 of the Regensburg ghetto, the empire’s largest.10 Although expulsions of Jews occurred well into the sixteenth century and discrimination against them continued through the early modern era, the typically medieval accusa-

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tions, prosecutions, and executions were declining in frequency when Charles V ascended the imperial throne in 1519. A new age of imperial Jewish protection now began. Whereas in former times emperors had frittered away to princes and cities their regalian right of Jewish protection, under Charles V a new policy of direct protection began. Repeatedly, representatives of imperial Jewry appealed to him—and in his absence to his vicar, King Ferdinand—for the confirmation of old grants and for new mandates of protection against local authorities. Under Charles’s name appeared new general charters for Jews in 1530 and in 1541, which proclaimed imperial protection from attacks on Jewish synagogues and schools, unsubstantiated charges of ritual murder, and deprivation of goods and liberty on the public roads. Late in his reign, Charles signed the imperial police law of 1548, which required the emperor’s permission to admit or expel Jews.11 Charles V’s new laws were by no means simply acts of grace and favor. The Jewish communities paid, and paid him well, for their new privileges. Just as important, however, was the lobbying by prominent Jews of his councilors and even himself. Among these the most prominent and certainly the most remarkable was Josel of Rosheim (ca. 1480–1554), an Alsatian who since around 1520 had risen steadily to become the principal spokesman for Jewish interests in the empire and the kingdom of Bohemia. Josel’s prominence in the record, to be sure, owes something to his own account of his activities.12 Still, there is no reason to question his contributions to the consolidation of imperial legal protection for the empire’s Jews. The gradual consolidation of Jewish status in imperial law reflected the emergence of new attitudes among Christian jurists, some of whom began to see in the Jews imperial subjects who, though they unfortunately did not accept the true faith, should not be disturbed without cause. Most famous of these writers is the Swabian jurist Johannes Reuchlin, himself a student of the Jewish Kabbalah and an antagonist of Johannes Pfefferkorn, a Jewish Christian who wrote at least eleven books against the Jews and whose accusations led to Reuchlin’s celebrated trial for apostasy to Judaism. In his controversy with Pfefferkorn over Jewish books, Reuchlin reminded his fellow Christians that “the Jew is as much a creature of God as I.”13 More to the point is Reuchlin’s opinion of 1511 about whether Hebrew books should be confiscated. They should not be, he wrote, because the empire’s Jews had the rights of Roman citizens, which they shared with the Christians, though without relief from the dishonor to which Christ’s death rightfully condemned them. By the following century this suggestion had grown into a norm, which the seventeenth-century Giessen jurist Theodor von Reinkingk formulated: “The Jews, if they live quietly and peacefully, are to be tolerated and may not be expelled.”14 The jurists’ rethinking resonated with a more general change in attitudes among educated persons. Formerly an intolerable theological conundrum, the Jews were becoming the object of an anthropologizing curiosity. A new ethnographic lit-

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erature on Jews appeared, most of it the work of Jewish converts to Christianity. Their writings provided the first well-informed descriptions of Jews’ ceremonies, beliefs, and ways of life. The most influential of these writers, Anthonius Margaritha, was the son of a prominent Regensburg rabbi and a Christian convert. His book of 1530 on The Whole Jewish Faith set out to expose Judaism as an unbiblical religion that posed a danger to the Christian faith, and he argued against imperial protection and for expulsion of the Jews from the empire.15 At the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, Josel of Rosheim was invited to defend the Jews in a public disputation of Margaritha’s accusations that the Jews slandered Christ and Christianity, proselytized Christians, and sought to destroy the authority of Christian rulers. Josel describes the event in customarily terse fashion: “In 1530 there was an assembly [the Imperial Diet] of princes of the empire and the nobles,” he tells, “in order to establish preventive laws and regulations, and the princes and nobles intended to abolish usury. At that time, with God’s help, I stood firm, and I obtained from the Emperor the renewal of our privileges from the Emperor Sigismund. The accusers were silenced and there was peace in the land for a little while.”16 Margaritha, by contrast, was arrested and banished from the city. In Catholic writing the new, less theological view of the Jews continued through the Reformation era. The striking exception that proves the rule was Luther’s arch-critic, Johannes Eck, the sixteenth century’s principal Catholic promoter of the blood libel.17 Less clear is the story among the Protestants. Luther’s volte-face from his early, positive attitude toward Jews and his vicious On the Jews and Their Lies of 1543 are notorious, of course, but they do not represent the norm in early Protestant thinking on this issue. Strasbourg’s Martin Bucer and Wittenberg’s Philip Melanchthon regarded the Jews with ambivalence, Nuremberg’s Andreas Osiander ran hot and cold about the Jews, and Zurich’s Ulrich Zwingli gave them hardly a thought.18 Such revisions of medieval attitudes toward the Jews had begun before the Reformation and continued through it. Popular visual portrayals of Jews, it is true, continued unchanged through the sixteenth century.19 But there is no evidence that either the theologians or popular images had much lasting influence on legislation and regulation. This is not to say that they exerted no influence. In 1543, the year of Luther’s notorious pamphlet, his own prince, Elector John Frederick of Saxony, expelled the Jews from his lands. Josel of Rosheim blamed the Saxon expulsion on “that priest whose name was Martin Lo Tohar [Luther]—may his body and soul be bound up in hell,” who “stirred up so much trouble between the rulers and their peoples that the Jews could hardly maintain themselves.”20 Josel had tried to head off this event. In 1539 he traveled to Frankfurt, where the Protestant Smalkaldic League’s assembly was in session. There he delivered letters of appeal to John Frederick and to Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg. By his own account, at Frankfurt Josel defended his people against Protestant theologians as

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he had nine years earlier against Margaritha. “It so happened that through the disputations that I had in the presence of many gentile scholars,”21 he relates, “I was able to refute the arguments of Luther and Bucer and their followers with proofs from our Holy Torah, and they acknowledged the truth of my words.”22 And then “a miracle within a miracle was performed for us, for it was revealed and made known to many, and to the same Margrave Joachim, that all those martyred persons who had been burnt at the stake [in Brandenburg] in the days of his father in the year 5270 (1509/10)—38 Jewish souls—were burnt because of a lying, malicious, false accusation.”23 Josel claims that when the two electors heard these truths, they “repented of their evil ways and gave them [the Jews] a foothold in their lands. To this day Duke Joachim has faithfully kept his word, but the Duke of Saxony has gone back on his promise, and has done us great harm by outlawing us. For that reason, he has been overthrown, and has received his just deserts.”24 The agent of his ruin was none other than Emperor Charles, who in the Smalkaldic War of 1547 captured John Frederick and stripped him of offices and lands. Josel’s story takes his readers toward the spaces where the concrete integration of Jews into the political structure had to take place, if at all—the territorial principalities. It will not do to place too much weight on Charles V and his interventions, because the regulation of everyday life depended less on imperial laws than on territorial ones. Yet these were not alternative but complementary regulations, for the series of territorial Jewish ordinances ( Judenordnungen) that appeared from around 1530 or so, owed much to principles laid down in the imperial statutes of 1530 and 1548. In state after state, new territorial laws fixed the legal abilities and disabilities of Jews. This new statutory regulation of Jewish life in the territories began in the Rhine Palatinate in 1515, followed by laws in the lands of Mainz, Bavaria, and Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and Hesse. Against this wave of integrating laws stood but one old-style expulsion, the Saxon act of 1543. The Jewish ordinance issued in 1585 for Hesse-Darmstadt by Landgrave George I (1549–1596) is a fairly typical example of the new disciplining of Jewish life. It is distinguished in its genre by a relative absence of anti-Jewish invective, though it contained, as other Jewish ordinances did, grossly discriminatory measures, notably with respect to dress. The preamble states most clearly the landgrave’s purpose, which is to set “the way in which the Jews currently living under our protection and those whom we shall admit hereafter, should conduct themselves.”25 This Protestant ordinance is much concerned with religious matters. Among the ordinance’s prohibitions are a requirement that Jews swear not to blaspheme against our Saviour and Sanctifier Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Virgin Mary; His holy name; or our Christian faith amongst themselves; nor to burden poor, simple Jews with fabricated human rules and teachings which are not in accordance with the Law and the Prophets, but rather utterly to refrain from all blas-

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phemy and in their teaching [of ordinary Jews] to comport themselves as described in the writings of Moses and the Prophets.26

They may not found new synagogues, initiate disputations with Christians or ridicule their faith, raise prices to unfair levels, engage in “questionable practices or financing,”27 or attempt to bribe local officials. Harshest is the provision that “any Jew who dishonors or has sexual relations with a Christian woman or virgin shall be arrested by our officials without mercy and subsequently—though only with our prior knowledge—punished by death.”28 Finally, while the princely ordinance protects his Jewish subjects against competition from foreign Jews, they must pay him “the requisite protection money that each has promised every year, remitting it to our steward of each town in whose assigned district they reside at the appointed time.” In return his officials “shall protect and defend them against anyone under our authority in their own affairs. They shall also be assisted in obtaining everything to which they are entitled.” The Hessian ordinance’s provisions resemble those found in many other Jewish ordinances of the sixteenth century. The stiff price of protection in terms of restrictions and prohibitions supports Dean Bell’s judgment that the new regime of security became “in many respects, part of a longer and on-going trend of marginalization of the Jews.”29 The continuing, increasingly codified discrimination and the lack of recourse against princely power explain why, at the very time the territorialization of Germany Jewry was taking place, Jewish leaders continued to seek the emperor’s protection. They combined the political tactics Josel of Rosheim had pioneered with a program to create a new order of Jewish institutionalization of Jewish life. In 1603 rabbis and Jewish communal officers gathered at Frankfurt to devise a plan for Jewish self-government under the emperor.30 They aimed to fix a tax schedule for all Jews, to enhance the authority of the rabbinical courts over religious affairs, and to establish new Jewish courts to deal with other matters. The novelty of this comprehensive new political order drew opposition from local and territorial rulers. The princes’ attitudes, coupled with Emperor Rudolf II’s inaction, scuttled the plan, though the Frankfurt assembly’s “regulations concerning community life were considered to be binding upon all Jewish communities in Germany.”31 When, a decade later, the last major anti-Jewish action of the medieval type erupted at Frankfurt, Emperor Matthias did intervene.32 The Fettmilch affair at Frankfurt is named for its leader, Vinzenz Fettmilch, an immigrant gingerbread baker who in May 1614 turned a classic guilds-vs.-magistrates quarrel into an anti-Jewish riot. He led a large Christian mob into the Frankfurt ghetto, where they fought a street battle with armed Jews, in which two Jews and one Christian were killed. Overpowered, nearly 1,500 Jews fled the city by water. The day of reckoning came, however, at the end of September, when the elector of Mainz and the landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt sent troops to enforce an imperial mandate of 20 July in favor of Frankfurt’s Jews and against the rebels. Following a

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year-long trial for treason, Fettmilch and his chief lieutenants were beheaded on 28 February 1616. The leader’s head was posted on a tower over the main bridge, where a young Goethe apparently saw it. The returning Jews, waiting outside a gate, were then restored to their quarters. The scene was captured by Elhanan ben Abraham Helen (fl. 1616), who tells with some satisfaction how the Jews were led back into the city and ensconced in their quarter, guarded by troops who posted imperial eagles around them. “On every street we walked,” he tells, “the trumpets blew forcefully. All the townsfolk within earshot wished that they had let us stay.”33 As for Fettmilch and his gang, well, “this is what awaits all ‘bad boys’ who would rule by terror.”34 The imperial restoration of Frankfurt’s Jewish community occurred almost one hundred years after the clearing of the Regensburg ghetto. Although the new order often prescribed harshly discriminatory conditions, for many of the empire’s Jews it was surely an improvement on a past that had been punctuated by periodic reigns of terror.

Heretics: From Dissent to Obscurity Canon law defines as heretics those who pertinaciously adhere to a doctrine contrary to a point of faith clearly defined by the Church or taught by it. The medieval Church dealt with heresy by prosecuting individuals and groups. Heresy was a capital crime, and if condemned, heretics could save themselves only by recanting their errors. Because they involved huge numbers of persons, the religious parties of the Reformation era clearly could not have been prosecuted for heresy in the customary manner. Absent religious toleration, the only practical alternative was to give recusants the choice of conformity or exile. In the German lands, the Religious Peace provided a political solution to a criminalization. From an early phase of the Reformation movement onward, it was recognized that the empire’s political character made the old treatment of heresy impossible, once the heretics enjoyed political protection from princes and urban magistrates. This left the separatist dissenters, who enjoyed no political protection, and who became the only significant groups of Christians to be prosecuted for heresy and—a legacy of the Peasants’ War—rebellion. They acquired the blanket name “Anabaptists,” and the classic judicial procedure was employed against them for over half a century.35 In the early years, the 1520s, some of these heretics—i.e., Anabaptists—were tried by summary lay courts, and some were killed without any trial at all. The Swabian League’s assembly declared on 27 February 1528 that Anabaptists should be executed, men by the axe and women by water, if they recanted, and by fire if they did not.36 Two years later, in 1529, after the Imperial Diet legislated the death penalty for Anabaptists and others who were named “Spiritualists,” the task of repression fell almost entirely to local authorities and not, except in the Habsburg Netherlands, to Inquisitorial courts.

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The tiny groups of Anabaptists accounted for, according to current estimates, the lion’s share of executions for heresy in the German lands between 1523 and 1600. About 850 executions can be verified, although it is thought that 1,100 is probably closer to the mark. Most—80 percent—occurred during a seven-year wave between 1527, two years after the Peasants’ War, and 1533; nearly half took place in the years 1528 and 1529. The main wave of executions ended with the Anabaptist kingdom at Münster in 1533/34. Thereafter the tempo rapidly declined, although imprisonment, trial, and execution remained significant if diminishing threats, especially in southern Catholic lands, down to the eve of the Thirty Years’ War. More than half the executions occurred in the hereditary lands of Ferdinand I, chiefly eastern Austrian duchies and Tyrol, followed by Bavaria and Salzburg. While the historiography of Anabaptism gives the southwest (Switzerland, Swabia, and Strasbourg) pride of place, the tale of Anabaptist martyrdom played out principally in the southeastern lands. In the beginning, the Catholic rulers of the southeast showed themselves ready to ignore the protections canon law prescribed and to try Anabaptists as rebels. A ducal law of 1527 reserved to the Bavarian dukes the right to condemn to death even those who had recanted and taken the sacrament. In Lower Austria in the same year, the provost was ordered to proceed against obdurate Anabaptists “without the solemnity of law,” although when the same was ordered in Tyrol, the regime at Innsbruck and the courts replied that such procedures were contrary to Tyrolean traditions and liberties.37 Eventually, King Ferdinand admitted in 1534 that most Anabaptists were not rebels, and Austrian policies toward Anabaptists softened thereafter. One apparent reason for the decline in trials and executions from the mid 1530s on was the authorities’ recognition of the difficulty of distinguishing heretics from their neighbors. Anabaptist historiography, which casts its stories in terms of whole communities, leaders, and splits, fails to do justice to the flows of individuals in and out of sectarian circles. Both the authorities and the dissenters themselves often found it difficult to establish the boundaries between dissent and dissatisfaction on the one hand, and membership in constituted communities on the other. The Anabaptists, of course, became ever more adept at disguising their views, although the main defense was emigration. Whole communities migrated to the more tolerant east, especially Moravia. Furthermore, the rulers’ implication in the political toleration of open heresy on the part of Protestants and Catholics may have lessened their will to persecute hidden, fugitive heresy. And their will determined the steady decline of trials and executions after the initial peak, for in the perspective of imperial history, the hunting, catching, trying, and executing of Anabaptists was never a popular affair.38 This was especially true outside the southeast and a few other polities (notably Bern), and in the northern German lands executions of Anabaptists were relatively rare. Of fifty-seven accused Anabaptists arrested at Cologne in June 1565, only one suffered death.

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Even in the Low Countries, where heretics were tried before ecclesiastical courts, the toll remained much lower than in the southern lands. Of the estimated 1,120 to 1,600 cases handled by the inquisitor Pieter Titelmans in the Low Countries during the mid sixteenth century, just 127 (7.9 to 11.3 percent) led to executions. This figure agrees roughly with execution rates in other parts of Europe.39 Except for the Anabaptists and a few others who were tried for heresy and/or rebellion, between Catholics and Protestants—heretics to one another—political means prevailed in the German lands. After 1555, imperial law held both Catholics and Protestants to be Christians. Emperor and Imperial Diet thus approved de facto the toleration, indefensible in principle, of two religions on the imperial level but not, some exceptions aside, on the territorial and civic levels. Most princes and magistrates of imperial cities possessed the right to enforce religious conformity; their subjects had no such liberty of religion.40 Protestant princes and cities tended to exercise their right to coerce with less consistency than did Catholic rulers, who made what Arno Herzig calls the most consistent efforts “to enforce as a principle of state the mono-confessionalism guaranteed by the Religious Peace of Augsburg of 1555.”41 Among the many reasons for this difference should be mentioned a tradition of religious coercion unbroken since the Middle Ages, the late onset of the Catholic Reformation after almost two generations of unequal confessional conflict, a relatively clear doctrinal and disciplinary program framed by the Council of Trent, and an incomparably effective international network of support. The Catholics thus came to surpass the Protestant pioneers of mass religious coercion. By no means did such measures produce religious uniformity. Most unsettled were conditions in the religious no-man’s-land of the empire’s northwest, where, until well into the Thirty Years’ War, programs of religious cleansing usually failed. Even where and when they had the proper will, the higher authorities often failed to crack the resistance of magistrates who promoted local convivencias for the sake of communal unity.42 In some of the larger imperial cities, the magistrates tended toward leniency. This was the case at Ulm, which tolerated a considerable Catholic minority, and Strasbourg, where the magistrates tolerated Dominican women’s convents and even sent their Protestant daughters to be educated by the nuns.43 In what Kaspar von Greyerz has called the “late city reformations” of Colmar, Aachen, Hagenau, and Dortmund, the Lutherans had to contend with either the Calvinist advance in the west or the Catholic revival in the south, with the result that the Protestant Reformation succeeded partially, not totally.44 The fluctuation of a magisterial will in pursuit of both religious conformity and civic unity and peace often passed over individuals and groups—“nicodemites”— who conformed outwardly or not at all.45 In those few imperial cities for which the Peace of Augsburg dictated formal local convivencias, space remained open to eccentric decisions by individuals. In December 1598, when Augsburg magistrates interrogated local artisans suspected of Anabaptist activity, they questioned

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David Altenstetter, age forty-eight, about his failure to attend church. According to records of the goldsmith’s reply, he has heretofore been unattached in religious matters, for although born in a Catholic place, he later moved to Switzerland, where the Zwinglian faith is established. But after he came to Augsburg, he sometimes heard the preachers of the Confession of Augsburg [Lutherans] and sometimes the Catholic preachers. He nonetheless joined neither religion, but if he has to join one, he will become a Catholic, though he will first need proper instruction in that faith.46

Although Altenstetter went “more often to the Cathedral, because the Catholic religion seems more forthright, and he likes the Cathedral preacher better than the Confession of Augsburg’s preachers,” on Sundays usually he stayed home or went walking. He often heard, he added, “good things preached in both churches. And he hopes that no one will force him, based on what he has said, to choose precipitously either the one religion or the other.”47 The goldsmith was what a later age would call a “seeker,” a willing Christian attracted to both confessions but unwilling to choose one over the other. He knew his own mind and went his own way, finding more and less admirable elements in each confession. His testimony illustrates a seeming paradox: whereas the coexistence of two religious communities in one city promoted the hardening of the cultural boundaries between them, it also reduced religious coercion. This situation serves to remind us of the fact that, polemical sermons, books, and pamphlets aside, the clarification of confessional boundaries allowed a mutual, if grudging recognition of the fact that, as Strasbourg’s Jacob Sturm once wrote, “both sides are Christians, … may God have mercy!”48

Witches: From Persecution to Oblivion The capital crime of witchcraft consisted in the manipulation of supernatural forces to do harm, for profit or vengeance, to another person or persons. When late medieval inquisitors turned their attention from heresy to witchcraft, the latter was an inconceivable, even mysterious phenomenon that suggested no concept of itself. The diabolical theory—witches form Satan’s counter-church—supplied the first means of understanding witchcraft as more than simply a mysterious, random practice. One might even argue that the invention of the diabolical theory and the gradual revelation of its inadequacies to the phenomenon it aimed to explain, made witchcraft as (an alleged) practice into a necessary step toward the cessation of trials for witchcraft. Some of the most important modern studies of the subject, H. C. Erik Midelfort has pointed out, “suggest that the full European belief in witchcraft … was a learned fantasy.”49 Recent advances in our understanding of witch-hunting in early modern Europe draw deeply on studies of trials in the German lands, the “mother of all

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sorcerers.”50 Witch-hunting nearly always involved a collaboration between local people, who wanted to be freed of witches, and their rulers, who for one reason or another agreed to undertake the task of purgation. Eva Labouvie states categorically that while “the rulers had no special interest in trials for witchcraft, the rural population established a veritable inquisition.”51 Wolfgang Behringer holds this to be true at least of the mass trials that peaked in the southern and Rhenish ecclesiastical states in the late 1620s and early 1630s. “The hunting of witches was popular,” he writes, and “in the largest hunts the people were the driving force.”52 At times and places, local hatred of witches overbalanced authority and fueled a cascading terror, with which authorities initially had to collaborate willynilly. At such moments, wrote the Jesuit Friedrich Spee following the mass trials of the late 1620s, “If we constantly insist on conducting trials, no one of any sex, fortune, condition, or rank whatsoever who has earned himself even one enemy or slanderer who can drag him into the suspicion and reputation for witchcraft can be sufficiently safe in these times.”53 Much of the recent revision depends on being able to distinguish credibly the ordinary accusations and prosecutions, which went forward on a local basis against persons—commonly older, single women accused of classic maleficence against neighbors, especially children and pregnant mothers, and livestock—from the “witch panics” that gripped specific territories and spared no one. Although the mass trials lie at the heart of recent and current folkloric notions of witchhunting, they stand out by their exceptional scope and character. They occasioned blatant misuses of the law, the involvement of children as both accusers and victims, and the destruction of persons of all estates, from nobles, cathedral canons, and magistrates down to very humble folk. Once started, as Robin Briggs describes, the panics raged until “some incident [focused] accumulated doubts, followed by a sudden collapse of the whole process.” The most tumultuous and bloody events of this kind occurred in Catholic ecclesiastical states that ran from Bamberg and Würzburg in Franconia to Mainz and then northward to Trier and Cologne54—the lands that seventeenth-century Protestants called “priests’ alley.”55 In the longer term the effect of such actions was “to instill a much more cautious attitude, which prevented any recrudescence of witch-hunting at this intense level.”56 While they raged, however, the tolls were very large: 300 and 600 executions in Bamberg and Würzburg respectively and perhaps 2,000 in the lands of Cologne. In the Holy Roman Empire, prosecution for witchcraft took place before secular courts. And although the Caroline Law (Lex Carolina) of 1532 defined witchcraft as a secular crime, hunting witches was undertaken not by the imperial regime but by the rulers of the hundreds of territorial states, ecclesiastical and secular, and self-governing cities. Geography is thus essential to understanding the uneven patterns of witch-hunting in the German lands.57 The geography of witch-hunting divides the German lands into two distinct zones. The first, a zone of relatively few trials and executions, encompasses the Lower Rhenish area

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(Cleves-Jülich, the northern and eastern parts of the northern plain—Electoral Brandenburg, Electoral Saxony—but not Mecklenburg) and Bavaria. A second zone of relatively numerous executions and trials comprises Lorraine, the Rhenish electoral states (Trier, Cologne), Westphalia, Nassau, Swabia, and Franconia. Large, well-consolidated territorial states prosecuted and executed few witches relative to their sizes and populations; the highly fragmented regions of the empire’s old heartlands prosecuted and executed many. The same conclusion applies within regions. In the well-consolidated southeast, Bavaria, Salzburg, and Austria executed far fewer persons (ca. 1,800) than did the highly fragmented southwest and Franconia (ca. 8,000). And within the most highly fragmented regions, large states (Württemberg, Hesse, and Cleves-Jülich) were less active than small ones. The Palatinate, which declined to prosecute witches at all, lay in the same region as the belt of prince-bishoprics where witches were avidly hunted. The events in these, some of the empire’s most weakly governed territorial polities, confirm the hypothesis that the more centralized, more strongly governed states persecuted less and reined in the prosecutions earlier than did more weakly organized ones. The relationship of witch-hunting to religious confession is more complicated. It is true that the strongest repressions occurred in the lands of Catholic princebishops. As the Mediterranean lands of intact Catholicism demonstrate, the more intense pursuit of witches in Catholic lands is related to the Holy Roman Empire and especially the Catholic Church’s condition and political situation there, not to Catholicism tout court. In the southern lands of intact Catholicism, Spain and Italy, witchcraft, like heresy, came before the ecclesiastical courts. The Inquisitions, Spanish and Roman, exercised “procedural safeguards that made convictions more difficult to obtain” and required “a review of all death sentences by central Inquisitorial authorities.”58 In these courts, judicial skepticism about the diabolic theory of witchcraft and willingness to prosecute for it led to the earliest steps to cease judicial actions against accused witches. The situation was quite different in the empire, where demonologists were more influential more generally and among the Catholics in particular. In the late sixteenth century, Martin Del Rio, an Antwerp-born Jesuit of Spanish descent, saw no problem in prosecuting witches as agents of a vast diabolic conspiracy. Protestant authors tended to be more moderate, even when they accepted the possibility of witchcraft in principle. In the later sixteenth century, as the great witch panic was getting underway, Johann Weyer, a Protestant physician from Brabant in the Low Countries, counseled caution concerning accusations of witchcraft. He did not disbelieve in the veracity of witchcraft confessions, an indispensable means of proof, but he deployed them as evidence for his own arguments about witchcraft as a demonic delusion or a sign of mental illness.59 Skepticism about hunting witches first surfaced in legislation, however, in Catholic Bavaria, where the ducal advisors split on the issue. The moderates’ views helped to inform the Bavarian witchcraft law of 1611, which Wolfgang

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Behringer calls “the most detailed law ever drafted on this subject.”60 This law reveals what Stuart Clark calls “a radically sceptical position concerning these legal issues while remaining indifferent to the demonological problems posed earlier by Weyer and his followers” and concentrating on “the conduct of trials according to the standards of natural reason and equity.”61 Then, too, arguments for and against hunting witches crossed confessional boundaries with some ease. In the small Lutheran duchy of Saxe-Coburg during the 1620s, opponents of prosecution borrowed from the Catholic skeptics in Munich, while proponents took arguments from a Bamberg Jesuit. In the end, there was far more at stake than ideas and explanations of witchcraft. The judges and other officials had to take into account, of course, the outlays of money and time of finding and prosecuting witches. This turned into an expensive and onerous business, for a single case could result in the calling of an immense number of witnesses and the compiling of an enormous judicial dossier.62 Still, for about ninety years ridding the land of witches remained part of the authorities’ obligation to preserve and promote the public good. The task was most obvious in the villages and small towns, the classic sites of witch-hunting, where the traditional concept of witchcraft as malefice—doing harm to one’s neighbor by supernatural means—sometimes merged with the diabolic idea of the crime. The result is revealed in documents of the 1650s from the small town of Siegen (Nassau), where local magistrates lobbied for the prosecution of witches. These criminals, they related, made “compacts with the Devil, using forbidden spells against both men and animals, robbing milk from cows by magical means, making human skin hard and impenetrable, magically closing boxes and chimneys … and all sorts of other magical things that are practiced all over the place.” Such practices “are to be regarded as a powerful skill, against which soon no one will be able to protect and guard his children and servants.”63 Many signs were ambiguous. Still, the tracks of Satan were often not easy to identify. While “forbidden things, ceremonies, and illicit charms” might “open the door for the Hereditary Enemy to sow his cursed seed,” as a mandate of 1591 at Trier declared, collecting the grease from the church bells on New Year’s Eve and mixing it with fat to heal the wounds of man and beast could be a sign of Satan’s service or merely an idle superstition.64 These ambiguities notwithstanding, village and small-town folk hated and feared witches, and they called on district officials and magistrates for help against these enemies. Lawyers and judges may well have shared some of the people’s antipathy for witches, but they also had to respond for reasons connected with their offices and their growing sense of custody for law and order. In time, the entropy of witch-hunting—a gradual decline of prosecutions— depended not on a waning of belief in witchcraft as malefice died out in the villages and small towns (all over Europe witchcraft trials were extremely rare in the larger cities) but on the growing unwillingness of judges and other officials to act on accusations. The gradual hardening of reservations on jurisprudential grounds

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grew more slowly than it had earlier in the courts of the Spanish and Roman Inquisitions, but it did grow. The reluctance to prosecute arose far less from a new skepticism about witchcraft itself than from a gradual hardening of reservations about the possibility of the practice of witchcraft producing the effects claimed by the demonologists and their followers. The physicians, too, joined in to further complicate the picture, as malefice through demonic aid might just as well have happened through poisoning.65 The growing reluctance to hunt witches on the part of the professions—lawyers, physicians, and theologians—found its most powerful expression in Friedrich Spee’s Cautio criminalis. Printed in 1631 at Rinteln, a Protestant city in Westphalia (today in Lower Saxony), it contained the era’s most widely read argument by a German against hunting witches.66 Reflection on the ongoing wave of “witch panics” convinced Spee that such eruptions were fueled by the release and welling up and intensification of tensions and emotions inherent in everyday life. “It is incredible,” he lamented, “what superstitions, jealousies, lies, slurs, mutterings, and the like there are among the common people in Germany, particularly (it is embarrassing to say) among Catholics, which the authorities do not punish nor preachers reproach, and which first arouse the suspicion of magic. All divine punishments which God threatens in the Holy Scriptures are committed by witches. God no longer does anything, nor nature, but everything is done by witches.”67 Thus there is a common cry, and “everyone shouts with great passion that the authorities should therefore investigate the witches—of which they themselves created so many with their own tongues.”68 At first the authorities do not know where to begin, “because they have no indications or proofs and hesitate on grounds of conscience to undertake something out of the blue,” but after two or three admonitions they begin the trials. The common people howl that the delays warrant suspicion, and princes, advised by who knows whom, say the same, for “in Germany it is dangerous to arouse the disfavor of princes.” When at last the judges go to work, having no proofs against her—Spee names his personified victim “Gaia”—they turn to circumstance and rumor. If her manner of life is evil, that is how witches are; if good, well, witches commonly try to appear virtuous. From this point, according to Spee, completing the fatal path from evil tongues to the scaffold is but a matter of time. Against this end worked the intensification of governance and professions. But a generation had passed since Spee’s book saw print, before prosecutions of accused witches began to decline in the German lands.

Conclusions: The Entropy of Coercion Jews, heretics, witches: the fact that each group gradually lost its status as “enemies of God” can hardly be understood by lumping them together as a uni-

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fied group of persecuted “others.” For one thing, the grounds, chronologies, and methods employed against them differed too greatly. Over the course of the sixteenth century the expulsions of Jews diminished, and so did their prosecution for traditional crimes: the blood libel, host desecration, blasphemy, and usury. There arose a new political situation determined by the new imperial policy and laws, the incorporation of Jews into territorial ordinances, and heightened political activity on the part of Jewish leaders such as Josel of Rosheim. These elements fashioned a net of enhanced legal protection by regularizing Jewish participation in the legal life of the empire, territories, and cities. The German Jews acquired a fixed, though not uniform, legal status—except in a few states, such as Saxony. They did not, of course, gain freedom from discrimination. The treatment of heretics developed along quite different lines. It is true that Catholics and Protestants commonly regarded one another as heretics—obdurate adherents of false and anti-Christian teachings—almost from the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation. Yet the very scale of the task simply dwarfed the traditional, judicial means of dealing with doctrinal deviance. Instead, a purely political settlement was reached by the emperor and the princes of both parties. The Religious Peace of Augsburg of 1555 included two radical departures from past practice. First, disregarding the central religious question of heresy, the Peace created an imperial convivencia, which protected the emperor’s direct subjects—the imperial princes, nobles, and cities—from prosecution for the crime of heresy. Second, borrowing a leaf from traditional treatments of the Jews, the Peace allowed rulers to expel their own recusants, subjects who refused to conform to the established religion. This double-tiered disposal of the problem of Christian heresy, unique in Europe, left as targets of the judicial treatment of heresy only the dissenters generically called Anabaptists. Except for the brief, anomalous Anabaptist kingdom at Münster in Westphalia in 1534/35, these folk were poor, few in number, unarmed, and dispersed. In a symbolic way, repression made the Anabaptists the new Jews of the sixteenth century. They suffered lynching and summary justice, as well as extended trials, but the duration of their repression was brief because their image, forged in the tumultuous days of the second half of the 1520s, was in fact contradicted by the obvious tenor of their way of life. By 1580 or so, the prosecution of Anabaptists had lost its appeal. As it did so, the campaigns against the witches, the most savagely persecuted category of person, were just beginning. Between 1500 and 1650, about thirty witches died for every executed heretic A chronological overview of these events produces a very interesting picture. Around 1520 the prosecutions of Jews for religious crimes and the main wave of expulsions were coming to an end, just as the persecution of Anabaptists as heretics was beginning. Around 1570, when the persecution of Anabaptists was coming to a close, the ordeal of the witches was just beginning. One is tempted to combine these stories into one story of repression against three successive groups—

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from Jews to Anabaptists to witches. This image, while in itself suggestive, does not help explain why the repressions ran their course and ceased. To comprehend that, we must turn not to the targets but to the agents of repression. One cannot combine these three stories under the blanket term of “enemies of God,” that is, perceived threats to the Christian common good, for this category included not only the Ottomans but at times also the rival Christian confessions. Therefore, if these stories are to be unified at all, it can only be done from the perspective of the political order that made repression—and toleration—possible. The best possibility for an explanation lies in the gradual, well-documented “thickening” of governmental and judicial operations in combination with the professions. Whatever the meanings of their separate stories, the combined story of Jews, heretics, and witches belongs to the history of state formation of and within the Holy Roman Empire, that is, empire and territories. The crucial sites of the process were the territorial principalities; its chief actors comprised jurists, physicians, and sometimes theologians such as Spee. They were principal agents of the imperial-territorial entropy of coercion and also of the accumulating “statehood” (Staatlichkeit) of the early modern Holy Roman Empire.69 The entropy of coercion was not simply a reflex of state-building in the usual sense of the term. What created spaces for flexibility in the treatment of persons who lay by common consent outside the bounds of the normal life of Christian polities was difference of perspective between rulers and subjects on the need for repression. For the common people the descending order of those worthy of repression was: witches, Jews, and Anabaptists; for the rulers it was: Anabaptists, Jews, and witches. The Jews held a modest economic interest for the common people but much more for the rulers. Anabaptists as rebels interested rulers a good deal but the common people not much. The witches, finally, were of urgent concern to the common people, while to the rulers both accused and accusers were sources of disorder in the countryside and small towns. As regards worthiness of discrimination, rulers and subjects also differed. Discriminating against Jews was both popular and political; chasing down Anabaptists as rebels was political; hunting witches was popular. The empire’s confessional geography also helps to explain some of the differences. Erik Midelfort has pointed out that after 1600 the tendency to execute for the crime of witchcraft began to decline in Protestant lands but actually increased in Catholic ones, a pattern he links to the evolution of different Protestant and Catholic theories of witchcraft.70 A more likely explanation of the confessional difference is perhaps the different psychological situations of Catholic and Protestant regimes and their advisors. The Catholics, once the first shock of the Reformation was over, had a full command of past practice and past thinking. The Protestants, by contrast, had to sort through their traditions—religious, theological, and legal—and determine what should be retained and what discarded. Theology aside, it is not difficult to understand why the Protestant authorities, themselves

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branded as “heretics,” might be more skeptical about prosecuting Anabaptists for heresy and about the proposed analogy between heresy and witchcraft. These are mere suggestions, and they give no help in drawing a confessional map of treatment of the Jews, something no one has been able to do. Confessionalization did influence the outcomes, as the Jews gradually evolved through legal protection into a kind of small, almost honorary confession. The Anabaptists, by contrast, fled into the dark corners and cracks of the confessional order, though in time they, too, could under certain circumstances come to form a small confession. The witches, however, as an anti-confession of Devil-worshippers, remained outside, and when the authorities ceased to persecute them, the witches returned to the anonymity whence they had come. By around 1700, “enemies of God” no longer resided in the German lands. This study has examined how three kinds of outsiders fared under the consolidation of political authority and power in the early modern Holy Roman Empire. It emphasizes not the distinct experiences of these categories of persons themselves but how their treatment illustrates the political evolution of the empire and its territories toward intensified regimes of regulation and surveillance. Such regimes tended to replace brute coercion for modern modes of coercion through law. In this respect the Holy Roman Empire evolved as a fully European polity, not an anomalous, much less a pathologically aberrant, political formation.

Notes 1. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Carnival in Romans, trans. Mary Feeney (New York, 1979), xiv. 2. Hans Virck et al., eds., Politische Correspondenz der Stadt Straßburg im Zeitalter der Reformation, 5 vols. (Strasbourg, 1882–1898; Heidelberg, 1928–1933), vol. 2, 237, no. 259. 3. Francis Bacon, “The Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral (1625),” in Francis Bacon, ed. Brian Vickers (Oxford, 1996), 344. 4. Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making,” in Bringing the State Back In, ed. Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (Cambridge, 1985), 169. 5. Bacon, “Essays,” 367. 6. This commonly used term from Iberian medieval history seems very appropriate for the arrangements of coexistence in early modern Europe. 7. I use the name “Holy Roman Empire” for the entire polity and “German lands” (a fifteenthcentury term) as a collective term for the smaller polities it contained. 8. By “intensification” I mean the late medieval and early modern consolidation of authority and control through the promotion of more effective political institutions with the object of making governance more direct, efficient, and reliable. The concept has been developed in this sense above all by Peter Moraw, Von offener Verfassung zu gestalteter Verdichtung: Das Reich im späten Mittelalter, 1250–1490 (Berlin, 1985), 21–27. 9. Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550–1750 (Oxford, 1989), 123. 10. Dean Phillip Bell, “Jewish Settlement, Politics, and the Reformation,” in Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation, ed. Dean Phillip Bell and Stephen Burnett (Leiden, 2006), 433. On Simon

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13.

14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

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of Trent, R. Po-Chia Hsia’s Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial (New Haven, 1992), needs to be read with Wolfgang Treue’s Der Trienter Judenprozeß: Voraussetzungen – Abläufe – Auswirkungen (1475–1588), Forschungen zur Geschichte der Juden, series A, vol. 4 (Hanover, 1996). On the Brandenburg affair of 1510, see Heiko A. Oberman, Wurzeln des Antisemitismus: Christenangst und Judenplage im Zeitalter von Humanismus und Reformation (Berlin, 1981), 129–134, available in English as The Roots of Antisemitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation, trans. James I. Porter (Philadelphia, 1984). Bell, “Jewish Settlement, Politics, and the Reformation,” 435–438. Josel von Rosheim (ca. 1480–1554). This is the German form of his name, of which the Hebrew form is Joseph ben Gershon mi-Rosheim or Joseph ben Gershon Loanz. A newly published English translation of his writings from Hebrew makes them widely accessible for the first time The Historical Writings of Joseph of Rosheim: Leader of Jewry in Early Modern Germany, ed. Chava Fränke-Goldschmidt and Adam Shear, trans. Naomi Schendowich, Studies in European Judaism (Leiden, 2006). Despite its great value as an accessible version of the text, the volume’s apparatus contains many inexactitudes and some errors in points of historical fact. Quoted by Erika Rummel, “Humanists, Jews, and Judaism,” in Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation, ed. Dean Phillip Bell and Stephen Burnett (Leiden, 2006), 20. On the notorious Reuchlin affair, see ibid., 13–20; and Erika Rummel, The Case of Johann Reuchlin: Religious and Social Controversy in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Toronto, 2002). Quoted by J. Friedrich Battenberg, Die Juden in Deutschland vom 16. bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts, Enzyklopädie Deutscher Geschichte, vol. 60 (Munich, 2001), 16. Maria Diemling, “Anthonius Margaritha on the ‘Whole Jewish Faith’: A Sixteenth-Century Convert from Judaism and his Depiction of the Jewish Religion,” in Bell and Burnett, Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation, 303–334. Josel of Rosheim, “Chronicle,” in Josel of Rosheim, The Historical Writings, 321 line 15–322 line 2. In Bell and Burnett, Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation, see Erika Rummel, “Humanists, Jews, and Judaism,” 3–32; Christopher Ocker, “German Theologians and the Jews in the Fifteenth Century,” 33–68; Robert Bireley, “The Catholic Reform, Jews, and Judaism in Sixteenth-Century Germany,” 249–268. In Bell and Burnett, Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation, see Thomas Kaufmann, “Luther and the Jews,” 69–104; Timothy J. Wengert, “Philip Melanchthon and the Jews: A Reappraisal,” 105–136; R. Gerald Hobbs, “Bucer, the Jews, and Judaism,” 171–198; Joy Kammerling, “Andreas Osiander, the Jews, and Judaism,” 219–248. Yaacov Deutsch, “Von der Juden Ceremonien: Representations of Jews in Sixteenth-Century Germany,” in Bell and Burnett, Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation, 335–356. Josel of Rosheim, “Chronicle,” 329 lines 1–4. The editor indicates that the Hebrew phrase, which means “the impure one,” is a play on Luther’s name. Protestant theologians. This was not a diet of the empire but an assembly of the Protestant alliance known as the Smalkaldic League. Josel of Rosheim, “Chronicle,” 329 lines 1–6. Ibid., 329 line 13–330 line 3. Ibid., 330 lines 3–8. Excerpted from Friedrich Battenberg, Judenverordnungen in Hessen-Darmstadt: Das Judenrecht eines Reichsfürstentums bis zum Ende des Alten Reiches. Eine Dokumentation (Wiesbaden, 1987), 66–68, by Bernd Roeck, ed., Gegenreformation und Dreissigjähriger Krieg 1555– 1648 (Stuttgart, 1996), 79–84, here at 80. The English translations are by Heidi Eberhardt Bate. Roeck, Gegenreformation, 80.

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31. 32.

33.

34. 35.

36.

37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43.

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Ibid., 82. Ibid., 83; and there, too, the remaining quotations in this paragraph. Bell, “Jewish Settlement, Politics, and the Reformation,” 434. Rivka Ulmer, ed. and trans., Turmoil, Trauma, and Triumph: The Fettmilich Uprising in Frankfurt am Main According to Megillas Vintz, Judentum und Umwelt/Realms of Judaism, vol. 72 (Frankfurt, 2001), 23–26. Ibid., 25. On the Fettmilch affair, see Rainer Koch, “1612–1616. Der Fettmilchaufstand: Sozialer Sprengstoff in der Bürgerschaft,” Archiv für Frankfurts Geschichte und Kunst 63 (1997): 59–79; and Ulmer, Turmoil, Trauma, and Triumph, 15–50. Elhanan ben Abraham Helen, “Megillas Vintz,” in Ulmer, Turmoil, Trauma, and Triumph, 191. The text is presented in the original Judeo-German (Yiddish), German (a translation of ca. 1700), English, and Modern Hebrew. Ibid., 183. Claus-Peter Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, 1525–1618 (Ithaca, 1972); Brad Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA, 2001), is comprehensive though not so full on the German lands. On the entire subject, see Peter Burschel, Sterben und Unsterblichkeit: zur Kultur des Martyriums in der fruhen Neuzeit, Ancien Regime, Aufklärung und Revolution, vol. 35 (Munich, 2004). The Swabian League, a large regional association of princes, nobles, and free cities, was founded in 1488 and dissolved in 1534. See Horst Carl, Der Schwäbische Bund 1488–1534: Landfrieden und Genossenschaft im Übergang vom Spätmittelalter zur Reformation, Schriften zur südwestdeutschen Landeskunde, vol. 24 (Leinfelden-Echterdingen, 2000). Clasen, Anabaptism, 377. One hardly needs to add that the persecuted groups themselves saw this history very differently. Gregory, Salvation, 80. There were three important exceptions. The Religious Peace decreed a regime of confessional parity in four southern imperial cities. According to two (contested) corollaries, ecclesiastical principalities could not be taken over to the Protestant confession (the Ecclesiastical Reservation), and Protestant subjects of ecclesiastical princes could not be forced to emigrate (the Declaratio Ferdinandea). Otherwise, subjects could be required to choose between conformity to the established religion and emigration. This is the provision behind the famous rule named by a Greifswald law professor: “whose the rule, his the religion” (cuius regio, eius religio). On this document, see now Axel Gotthard, Der Augsburger Religionsfrieden, Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte, vol. 148 (Münster, 2005). Arno Herzig, Der Zwang zum wahren Glauben: Rekatholisierung vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2000), 9. See David Luebke’s contribution to this volume. Peter Lang, Die Ulmer Katholiken im Zeitalter der Glaubenskämpfe: Lebensbedingungen einer konfessionellen Minderheit (Frankfurt, 1977); François-Joseph Fuchs, “Les catholiques strasbourgeois de 1529 à 1681,” Archives de l’Eglise d’Alsace /Archiv für elsässische Kirchengeschichte, n.s. 22 (1975): 142–169; Amy E. Leonard, Nails in the Wall: Catholic Nuns in Reformation Germany (Chicago, 2005). Kaspar von Greyerz, The Late City Reformation in Germany: The Case of Colmar, 1522–1628, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz, vol. 98 (Wiesbaden, 1980), ix, 169–205. Nicodemites (the coinage is contemporary) were those who conformed to the established religion but practiced another, usually proscribed one. Nicodemus was the Pharisee who came to Jesus by night (John 3:1–2).

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46. Roeck, Gegenreformation, 104–108, and there, too, the following quotes in this paragraph. 47. Ibid., 108. 48. Thomas A. Brady, Jr., “‘Sind also zu beiden theilen Christen, des Gott erbarm.’ Le mémoire de Jacques Sturm sur le culte publique à Strasbourg (août 1525),” in Horizons européens de la Réforme en Alsace: Mélanges offerts à Jean Rott pour son 65e anniversaire, ed. Marijn de Kroon and Marc Lienhard (Strasbourg, 1980), 75–76 lines 76–99. Publications de la Société Savante d’Alsace et des Régions de l’Est, vol. 17. Strasbourg, 1980. 49. H. C. Erik Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Stanford, 1999), 54. 50. Wolfgang Behringer, “Allemagne, Mère des sorcières: Au coeur des persécutions,” in Magie et sorcellerie en Europe du Moyen Age à nos jours, ed. Robert Muchembled (Paris, 1994), 59–98. For a brief, solid overview, see Brian Levack, “The Great Witch-Hunt,” in Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation, ed. Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1994–1995), vol. 2, 607–640. The best general work on Europe is Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (New York, 1996); on the German lands, best are Wolfgang Behringer, Hexen und Hexenprozesse in Deutschland (Munich 1995), and Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (New Haven, 2004). 51. Eva Labouvie, Zauberei und Hexenwerk: Ländlicher Hexenglaube in der frühen Neuzeit (Frankfurt, 1991), 58. 52. Behringer, Hexen und Hexenprozesse, 189. See in his study of a witch-panic in the Allgäu, Shaman of Oberstdorf: Chonrad Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night, trans. H. C. Erik Midelfort (Charlottesville, 1998), 118: “But generally, the demand coming from the bishop’s government ran oddly parallel to a demand coming from the locality.” 53. Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld, Cautio Criminalis, or, A Book on Witch Trials, trans. Marcus Hellyer (Charlottesville, 2003), 221. 54. Briggs points out that the wave between 1627 and 1631 “coincides with the moment when the Counter-Reformation reached its political zenith in Germany”; the panics “took place in areas hardly touched by the conflict.” Briggs, Witches and Neighbors, 197. 55. This is not the only figurative meaning of the term “Pfaffengaße.” It could also refer to the north-south belt of ecclesiastical states along the Rhine from Chur through Constance, Basel, Strasbourg, Speyer, Worms, Mainz, and Trier to Cologne. 56. Briggs, Witches and Neighbors, 197. 57. Based on figures in Behringer, Hexen und Hexenprozesse, 193. 58. Levack, “The Great Witch-Hunt,” 615. 59. On Johann Weyer (or: Johannes Wier), see the introduction to the English translation of his De Praestigiis daemonum, in Johann Weyer, Witches, Devils, and Doctors in the Renaissance, ed. George Mora and Benjamin Kohl, trans. John Shea (Binghamton, 1991), xxvii– xciii. 60. Wolfgang Behringer, Mit dem Feuer vom Leben zum Tod: Hexengesetzgebung in Bayern (Munich, 1988), 11. 61. Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1999), 205. 62. For example, in a Brunswick trial in 1663. See Tempel Anneke: der Prozess gegen die letzte ‘Hexe’ von Braunschweig 1663, ed. Karlwalther Rohmann (Hildesheim, 1983); The Trial of Tempel Anneke: Records of a Witchcraft Trial in Brunswick, Germany, 1663, ed. Peter A. Morton, trans. Barbara Dahms (Calgary, 2005). 63. Gerhard Schormann, Hexenprozeße in Deutschland (Göttingen, 1986), 105–106. 64. Ibid., 106.

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65. See Thomas Robisheaux, The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village (New York and London, 2009), esp. 228–270, who shows how the theologians, too, supplied new friction to the wheels of witch-hunting. 66. Rinteln, since 1621 seat of a small university, was ruled by the counts of Schaumburg-Oldenburg, whose lands lay along the Middle Weser River. With the extinction of that house in 1640, nine years after Spee’s book appeared, a partition of the county brought Rinteln under the landgraves of Hesse-Cassel. See also Italo Michele Battafarano, Spees Cautio Criminalis: Kritik der Hexenprozesse und ihre Rezeption (Trent, 1993). For biographical details, see Karl-Jürgen Miesen, Friedrich Spee – Pater, Dichter, Hexen-Anwalt (Düsseldorf, n.d.). 67. Spee, Cautio criminalis, 214. 68. Ibid., 214. 69. The leading advocate of the concept of the empire as a “federative nation” is Georg Schmidt, Geschichte des alten Reiches: Staat und Nation in der Frühen Neuzeit 1495–1806 (Munich, 1999). See also Dieter Langewiesche and Georg Schmidt, eds., Föderative Nation: Deutschlandkonzepte von der Reformation bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg (Munich, 2000). The best orientation to this discussion, which is a historiographical fruit of the German reunion of 1989, is Peter H. Wilson, “Still a Monstrosity? Some Reflections on Early Modern German Statehood,” The Historical Journal 49, no. 2 (2006): 565–576. 70. H. C. Erik Midelfort, “Witchcraft and Religion in Sixteenth-Century Germany: The Formation and Consequences of an Orthodoxy,” Archive for Reformation History 62 (1971): 266–278.

Chapter 6

CONFLICT AND CONCORD IN EARLY MODERN POLAND Catholics and Orthodox at the Union of Brest

d Mikhail V. Dmitriev

T

he history of religious intolerance in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, unlike the history of Polish tolerance in the same period, has not been studied in any systematic fashion. This situation distorts our vision of the confessional landscape of Eastern and Central Europe in the early modern period. In particular, the political decline of PolandLithuania in the second half of the seventeenth century and the ascendancy of Russia cannot be understood adequately without taking into account the Polish state’s failure to accommodate religious and cultural differences in the first half of the seventeenth century and during the crisis of 1648–1668. In this respect, the contrast between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is truly impressive. In the sixteenth century, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Jews, and (from the 1550s) Protestants coexisted more or less peacefully. The Warsaw Confederation of 1573 laid a firm foundation for the future cohabitation of various confessions. The situation changed dramatically, however, after the Union of Brest (1595/96), a contentious accord between Orthodox and Catholics negotiated with Rome. Was this important change ironically a result of this very attempt to accommodate Orthodox-Catholic differences? Or did some other factors, religious and non-religious, lead to the gradual decline of tolerant attitudes and politics in the first decades of the seventeenth century? This question is the focus of my essay.

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Here I will develop two arguments. First, the religious crisis resulting from the Union of Brest represented a challenge that the Polish ruling elites were not able to treat and cure on the basis of the principles proclaimed in 1573; thus the confessional struggle in the aftermath of Brest revealed that tolerant attitudes were not deeply rooted in the minds of Polish ruling groups. Second, the church Union concluded by the Ruthenian bishops with the Roman See in 1595/96 represented a cultural misunderstanding (in the sense of Anglo-Saxon cultural anthropology), and as such caused sharp and long-lasting confessional conflicts in Ukraine and Belarus in the seventeenth century.1 From 1500 to 1570, the policy of the state toward the Orthodox was characterized by unprecedented toleration. On the other hand, Catholic missionary activities among the Orthodox population were rather successful in the last decades of the sixteenth century. Catholic schools were founded, and Orthodox young men were among their students. Catholic doctrine was disseminated through printed propaganda and preaching. Members of the most powerful noble and gentry families became prized targets of conversion. Finally, there was an attempt to introduce the Gregorian calendar among the Orthodox populace. This provoked resistance and revolts in L’viv, Łuck, Vilnius, and other places with mixed populations. As a result, the Polish government made concessions, and the Orthodox people were permitted to use their old calendar. This situation of relatively peaceful coexistence changed radically after the Union of Brest was concluded. The Union resulted, on the one hand, from the religious policy of the Polish state and Roman Curia in Eastern Europe, and on the other hand from internal conflicts in the Orthodox church in Ukraine and Belarus, which had sharpened in the 1580s. It was a struggle between Orthodox bishops, the patriarch of Constantinople, and the Orthodox laity united into confraternities. This conflict led a number of bishops to sign a declaration of their readiness to accept Roman jurisdiction in June 1590. In 1595 a delegation of Orthodox bishops left for Italy, and in December 1595 the Union was proclaimed in Rome. The decision was confirmed by a synod of Ruthenian clergy in Brest in October 1596. Paradoxically, the Union of Brest was the fruit of sincere aspirations on both sides, Catholic and Orthodox, to overcome the schism, to join efforts in reforming Christian culture, and to calm “disorders” within the Kievan Metropolitanate. Peaceful cohabitation and cooperation were supposed to crown the unionist program. However, instead of religious peace and reconciliation, the Union caused a bitter confrontation between the Orthodox population and new GrecoCatholics or Uniates and Catholics. The most famous example here is the fate of Jozafat Kuncewicz, Uniate archbishop of Połock, who was murdered in 1623 in Vitebsk by an Orthodox mob, and whose corpse was dragged through the streets of Vitebsk before being thrown into the Daugava river. The Orthodox population of Vitebsk was cruelly punished, leaders of this community were executed,

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and the city lost its urban liberties. Earlier, the wojt Khodyka and the priest Juzephowicz had also been murdered in Kiev. Later, in the course of uprisings (especially after the 1648 Khmelnytsky uprising, in which religious motives played a central part), the Cossacks massacred hundreds of Uniate clergy and followers of union. In the second part of the seventeenth century, Catholics and Uniates took revenge on Cossacks and the Orthodox population at large. Thus we are confronted with an inevitable question: why, after the Union of 1595/96, did this bloody confrontation occur? Many historians have either avoided the question2 or denied a direct connection between the Union and the bloody conflicts of the following century. They tend to shift the responsibility for the confrontation onto the uneducated Orthodox clergy or attribute it to the intrigues of the ambitious and arrogant Prince Ostrogski, the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian government, Constantinople hierarchs, stubborn Orthodox confraternities, and the unhappy political circumstances of the first half of the seventeenth century.3 Others, like M. Grushevs’kij,4 are inclined to look for national motives behind the religious strife; still others (Z. Wojcik, H. Dylagowa,5 E. Ch. Suttner6) have written about mistakes and miscalculations of the Polish government and Roman See. There are also those who examine Brest primarily through the prism of politics. Many historians, and not necessarily Orthodox ones, believe that the Union was imposed, foisted on the Kievan church, which, being compelled to accept it, rose against Rome, Poland, and Catholic proselytism. Such a highly biased and simplistic explanation (offered by M. O. Koialovich, S. M. Soloviev, metropolitan Makarij [Bulgakov], I. Vlasovskii, I. Ogienko, and by Soviet historians and propagandists7) is unconvincing, for it is perfectly well known that the Union was concluded in response to the initiative of the Orthodox bishops, who were supported, indeed, by the bulk of the clergy and many laymen. In recent years the positions have been drawing closer. E. Ch. Suttner, for instance, has recently admitted that the Union separated Christian communities more than it brought them together. This fact casts the problematic relationship contemporary Catholics had with Orthodoxy in a different light.8 Recently the question of the consequences of the Brest has been raised by a well-known specialist in the history of the Greek-Catholic church, H. Dylagowa, who came to the conclusion that the Union deepened rather than eased religious, social, and “national” contradictions in Ruthenian society. “The hatred with which the various movements in Ukraine in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries regarded the Union” is a spur for further research.9 The circumstances and consequences surrounding Brest are certainly quite puzzling. One would think that violence would never have taken place since the church Union, as it was announced in Brest in 1596, had been approved and supported by the bulk of the Orthodox clergy. However, this was not the case. More than that, in 1596 many of those who were supportive of the Union abruptly changed their minds and became

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fervent opponents of it. Some of those persons are well known: Gedeon Balaban, bishop of L’viv; Mikhail Kopystenski, bishop of Przemyśl; Nikifor Tur, abbot of the Kievan Cave monastery; and Konstantyn Ostrogski, of course. In searching for an answer to the question about the causes of Orthodox hatred toward the Union and Uniates, and keeping in mind that before 1595 nothing seemed to augur such an outcome, we encounter another question: is there anything in the very events of 1595/96 that could have caused the outburst of violence? I will address this issue in the last part of my essay.

Religious Crisis: 1595/96 Preparation for the Union had been carried on since June 1590 with variable success.10 In August–September 1595 the events took a dramatic turn more than once. At some moments the destiny of the union project hung by the thinnest of threads. It is enough to recall that in August 1595 Konstantyn Ostrogski claimed that he would send his soldiers to intercept the Ruthenian bishops’ embassy to Rome. In the course of a gathering of royal counselors in Cracow in September 1595 some Polish dignitaries suggested giving up the whole enterprise. What is more, orders not to come to Cracow were sent to two Ruthenian bishops (K. Terlecki and I. Pociej) who were supposed to travel to Rome; however, these letters reached their residences after they had left.11 Nevertheless the embassy was sent, and on 24 September 1595 Sigismund III issued a proclamation about the Union to come.12 Thus the Rubicon was crossed. From that time on—in contrast to the previous period—Polish authorities began to play a very active part in the struggles between opponents and supporters of the Union. The main point was either to recognize or not to recognize the right of anti-Union Orthodox clergy to continue their pastoral activities and to retain church properties after the official proclamation of the Union. In other words, state power was to decide to what extent the norms of toleration, proclaimed by the Warsaw Confederation in 1573, applied to anti-Union Orthodox clergy and laymen. After the royal decree about the Union issued by Sigismund III had been nailed to city gates, the L’viv Orthodox brotherhood announced its refusal to obey the Uniate metropolitan.13 In November 1595 Vilnius Orthodox clergy addressed a letter to F. Skumin-Tyszkiewicz informing him of their rejection of the Union with the Roman See.14 In December 1595 the lay representatives of the Vilnius Orthodox community refused formally to recognize M. Ragoza (the Uniate metropolitan) as their religious head, before his position was compromised by an accusation of religious treason.15 The protest of the Pinsk clergy against the Union is also dated December 1595. In this protest we find mention that similar announcements were made in other regions as well.16 Despite K. Chodynicki’s

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opinion that there was no solidarity in opposition to the Union on the part of the nobility, P. N. Zhukovich has provided evidence that shows that the nobility of Ukrainian lands were unanimous in their opposition to the Union. The Slonim regional assembly or sejmik in the Great Duchy of Lithuania took a less resolute but nevertheless anti-Union position.17 It was during the Warsaw Sejm in 1596 (26 March–6 May) that the question of the Union became the subject of an open political debate.18 Prince Ostrogski and other Orthodox delegates supported the Protestants in their struggle to maintain the Warsaw Confederation, and in response the Protestants stood up for the Orthodox in the question of the Union. Ostrogski, as before, attempted to call the council and requested the deposition of Pociej and Terlecki. The Sejm did not make any decision on this point. The Orthodox delegates declared that they would not recognize in their estates the authority of “bishops-apostates.” On 7 May 1596 Ostrogski registered in the Warsaw city books (księgi grodskie) a corresponding protest.19 Another protest, not accepted in the Warsaw chancellery and, therefore, brought on behalf of all Orthodox nobility into the books of another town, was more extensive and uncompromising.20 In April 1596 a protest against the Union was brought on behalf of the Vilnius Orthodox community,21 and, in response Sigismund III demanded that the preachers and priests of the Vilnius confraternity be brought to court. There he sentenced Stefan Zizani and his adherents to exile.22 In summer 1596 in Vilnius and Kiev legal suits were launched against Uniate Metropolitan Ragoza, and extrajudicial protests took place, so that the king interfered to protect him.23 At the same time I. Pociej undertook a number of actions in order to break the resistance of the Brest confraternity.24 As becomes clear from the events of autumn 1595 through early 1596, the support of the king and Rome became the decisive factor in the realization of the Union project. Nevertheless, it would not be correct to say that the Polish government and the Curia shared a common point of view. The royal court, unlike Vatican officials, more or less understood the dangerous consequences of a conflict with the Orthodox for the commonwealth. The differences of approach to the Union are seen in the documents and the events of 1595. Sigismund III seemed to be ready to make some concessions to the Union adversaries. Clement VIII, nevertheless, in an official letter of 7 March 1596 addressed to Ragoza, demanded that a provincial synod be called with participation of only those bishops who had publicly pronounced the Catholic creed following the same formula that had been used in Rome in December 1595.25 Three Catholic bishops were to attend the council as the Pope’s representatives. The official documents confirming the fact were to be sent to Rome to be kept in the archives “for the eternal memory of descendants.” The question about future councils had been discussed already during the Sejm, and on 12 May 1596 Sigismund III addressed a special document to metro-

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politan Ragoza, in which he informed him that Pociej and Terlecki had returned from Rome and permitted him to call a council in Brest in which only adherents of the Union (and no adversaries) should participate.26 The only question to be submitted for discussion was the question of the establishment of the unity of the churches. The king advised Ragoza not to be in a hurry with the announcement of the time and place of the council and expressed his hope for the metropolitan’s firmness.27 On 14 June 1596 Sigismund III published a proclamation about the coming church council. Here he officially announced that only Catholics and Union adherents were expected to attend the council.28 The practical preparation of the council was fully in the hands of the Polish government, nuncios, and Jesuits.29 The initiators of the Union were almost pushed aside from the preparation of the final act of the entire project. The events of spring to summer 1596 illustrated that fears of growing confrontation were well-grounded. From the very beginning, instead of a unifying council of Orthodox and Catholic clergy, the Polish government faced a fierce confrontation of two councils—one Orthodox, the other pro-Union. In the end, each excommunicated the other.30 By autumn 1596 an open schism split the Orthodox church into two hostile camps and the the confessional disintegration of Ukrainian-Belarusian society had begun. Immediately after the Council of Brest, metropolitan Ragoza announced in a special missive that he had deposed all clergy who had not joined the Union.31 On 2 (11) October 1596 in his circular charter, Nikephoros, exarch of the patriarch of Constantinople, announced the condemnation of the clergy who had joined the Union, ordered that neither the metropolitan nor the pro-Union bishops be mentioned in prayers, and permitted two bishops who had not joined the Union to receive believers from other dioceses in their eparchies.32 The resolutions of the Brest Orthodox council were sent to Constantinople, where Meletios Pegas became patriarch and started his struggle against the Union. In fact the situation was taking a tragic turn, though at first very few seemed to recognize all the negative consequences of the open confrontation. Jan Zamoyski may have been an exception. In his conversations with B. Vanozzi, an envoy from Rome, Zamoyski expressed his anxiety that as a result of Brest a broad Orthodox-Protestant opposition would be formed and would establish connections with the enemies of Poland—German Protestants. The response from Rome was neglect.33 The Pope answered the reports from Poland only on 18 January 1597 and sent a papal bull to D. Solikowski, Catholic archbishop of L’viv.34 Only by the end of 1596 did the serenity of the Catholic parties give way to the first signs of anxiety. On 28 December 1596 Nuncio Malaspina reported to Rome the difficulties of the Union.35 Nevertheless, he seems not to have been aware of the dramatic nature of the situation. Thus, in January 1597 Malaspina wrote to Rome and understatedly noted that Ostrogski could not obtain the support he had been hoping for.36

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Ruthenian Nobility and the Union in 1596/97 What was the first reaction of the Orthodox nobility to the Union? According to K. Chodynicki, the nobility were almost indifferent to it. At the Sejm in 1596 only the Kievan and Wołyń provinces came out with a protest against the Union. Others remained indifferent. At the same time Chodynicki considers the protests against the Union “to be the result of the activity of individuals and not a spontaneous mass reaction.”37 However, this is only true for 1596. The Union council gathered only in October 1596. The Sejm took place in spring (from 26 March to 6 May 1596). By May 1596 it was still not clear if the Union was to be concluded, whether the requirements of the Orthodox party would be met, and what the exact conditions of church reunification would be. It seems that this lack of clarity was a major reason behind the slow reaction of the sejmiki in 1596. A relevant example can be found in the instructions to the Nowogródek sejmik from 25 September 1596. The local nobility sent two representatives to the Brest church council, ordering them to allow no changes in the status of the Orthodox church and to make an appropriate protestation if the rights and privileges of the Orthodox church and “Russian people” were violated.38 It is important to note, however, that the idea of eventual union between the two churches was not rejected out of hand. At the sejmiki of early 1597, which took place in the crown lands of the commonwealth, the nobility of the Rus’ palatinate and of the Halicz, Chołm, and Wołyń lands protested against the Union. As is now known, Prince Ostrogski was present at the sejmik in Łuck, and there is no doubt that his authority played a great role in passing the anti-Union resolutions. The protest against the Union was placed first in the sejmik’s instructions to representatives sent to the general Sejm, and a reference to the Warsaw Confederation was made. The Wołyń delegates were to do everything possible in order to stand up against “the violation of the general confederation in what concerns oppression and forcing our Ruthenian people to change their religion and to submit themselves to a foreign [church] authority.”39 The Wołyń nobility took a very hard position toward new Uniate hierarchs: “foreign bishops … should be deposed, and other ones, belonging to the ancient Greek religion, should be nominated in their places.”40 Had such a decision not been passed, the delegates were expected to send protests to the Senate, the Chamber of Ambassadors (izba poselska), and the tribunals. However, some of the Wołyń nobility backed the Union, which led to a split of the sejmik. Each party chose separate delegations to the general Diet. As for the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the reaction of its nobility to the Union varied. Some of the sejmiki—Nowogrodek, Wołkowysk, and Vitebsk—supported it. The position taken by the Połock sejmik is difficult to decipher, for the documents are unclear. In the instructions passed by the Oszmiany district from 19 January 1597, there is only a mention in general terms that the norms of Warsaw Confederation should be respected.41 The Vilnius and Lida sejmiki

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protested against the Union. It is interesting that some of the ethnically Polish nobility (sejmiki in Poznań, Cracow, and Kalisz) were also against the Union. At the same time, the nobility of the Płock palatinate, which was known for zealously defending the Catholic church’s interests, acclaimed the Union and asked its representatives to work toward carrying on and strengthening the accord “of the Greek faith with the Catholic.”42 In February 1597 the proceedings of the Warsaw Diet began, and in the very beginning the Orthodox envoys lodged a firm protest against the Union.43 This Sejm played an important role in the history of the church union in the commonwealth, showing that the Union was consistently and firmly promoted by the Polish government.44 This became apparent less in the Sejm debates but more in the legal prosecution of Nikephoros, the plenipotentiary representative of Constantinople’s patriarch in Poland, who was accused of spying for the Ottoman Empire.45 The tribunal of the Sejm did not find Nikephoros guilty and ordered that the investigation be continued. Nevertheless Nikephoros was arrested and jailed in Malbork Castle. Some time later he died.46 Many elements remain unclear in the “Nikephoros affair.” There are reasons to believe that Nikephoros was arrested on the ground of falsified letters and that the whole suit was generated by Chancellor Zamoyski in order to prevent anti-Union opposition from broadening and to undermine the emerging alliance between the Protestants and Orthodox. Not only the course of parliamentary investigation (which, contrary to O. Halecki’s words, did not prove that Nikephoros was a “Turkish agent”47) but also the report of B. Vanozzi, Cardinal Gaetani’s secretary, about his visit to Zamoyski in December 1596, support this argument.48 Zamoyski told Vanozzi about intercepted letters of “this Greek, who is maintained now by the prince Ostrogski.” In these letters Nikephoros allegedly called on the Turkish government to launch a war against Poland, taking advantage of an opportune moment. When speaking about this, Zamoyski added (his words were put in Latin in the Italian text of the letter): “These letters will come up, they will come up for sure, if it is necessary.”49 What were the first results of the crisis caused by the church union in 1596/97? It became evident that the Union encountered strong opposition at the upper levels of Orthodox society. This opposition was supported by Protestant leaders. An alliance between Protestants and Orthodox Christians began to develop. On the other hand, the Polish government and Catholic leaders showed their readiness to do everything possible to foster the union project. The Union was becoming an acute problem of Polish politics. Its first political repercussion was the confrontation between two confessional groups of the Polish gentry.

Religious Wars in Eastern Europe in the 1590s–1660s? This confrontation between Union proponents and its enemies continued, with varied intensity, from 1597 to the 1630s. This history has been well charted.50

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Finally, in 1634/35 King Władysław IV and the Sejm were compelled to recognize a dual hierarchy of two Orthodox churches, although Rome refused to accept this decision. From this point forward each Ukrainian and Belarusian diocese had two bishops—one Orthodox and one Greek Catholic (Uniate). The greatest crisis began in 1648/49 with the Cossack uprising led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky. Were the events of 1648–1667 a war of religion? This question was formulated long ago, but there is still no satisfactory answer. Foreign visitors to Ukraine who saw the years of war between the Cossacks and the Polish state (no matter whether they came from Russia or from the West) thought that “the Cossacks fought the Poles for their faith.” The enemies of the rebels, the “aliens,” were identified unambiguously with the non-Orthodox (e.g., Catholics or Jews). The Uniate clergy took a decidedly pro-Polish position. The Uniates were seen as “Poles,” that is, Catholics, and were persecuted equally cruelly by the rebellious Cossacks and their allies. Liquidation of the Union and restoration of all rights and possessions of the Orthodox church was one of the most important demands of the rebels. At some moments the Union was close to being abolished. It was in large part saved by the uncompromising position of Vatican diplomats. However, the true turning point of this struggle took place when the Cossacks intervened militarily. When did the Cossacks enter the “battlefield”? M. S. Grushevs’kij considered 1610 to be this moment, for in this year Cossacks formally protested against the pro-Union actions of A. Grekovich in Kiev.51 Grushevs’kij assessed their declaration as an expression of “full solidarity of Cossacks with the Ukrainian intelligentsia in religious (or, more properly, national-religious) struggle and their readiness to serve this cause with all their strength.”52 Of even greater importance was the symbolic gesture of hetman P. Sagajdaczny, who in 1615 enrolled the entire “Zaporogi host” (Vojsko zaporozhskoe) into the Kiev Orthodox confraternity. The same year Russian informers reported from Ukraine that the Cossacks refused to support the Polish army in its operations against Turks and Tatars, because “Poles” (liakhi) wanted to convert Cossacks to their “Polish faith” (ljashskaja vera).53 The most telling evidence of how the Cossacks took part in the anti-Union struggle is reflected in the events of 1620, when Patriarch Theophanes of Jerusalem arrived in Ukraine and secretly ordained new Orthodox bishops along with the metropolitan. This new evidence undercuts the arguments of an older generation of historians who were more skeptical about the Cossacks’ role in the restoration of the Kiev Orthodox Metropolitanate. The Cossacks and the local Orthodox clergy played the decisive role in these events.54 The resurrection of the Orthodox hierarchy could only lead to the escalation of religious violence, and indeed confessional conflict began to grow. In Kiev, two chiefs of the pro-Uniate camp, the wojt Chodyka and a priest, Jusefowicz, were captured and assassinated by Cossacks and burghers.55 P. N. Zhukovich provides convincing evidence that they fell victim to the spontaneous actions of

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the Orthodox rank and file. In fall 1625, while being interrogated during the investigation, the Cossacks said they wanted to protect the Orthodox church and themselves against violence from the Uniates.56 In November 1623, in Vitebsk, the religious revolt against actions of the local Uniate archbishop I. Kuncewicz exploded. Kuncewicz was cruelly murdered, and the town community punished equally cruelly by the Polish authorities. Under these circumstances, the Polish government began to realize that “the Cossack problem” was intrinsically linked to “the Union problem.” Answering the Polish government’s demands to punish those who were guilty of causing turmoil, the Cossacks referred to the persecution of the “Orthodox faith” in various places and asked repeatedly for a protection of “the ancient Greek religion.”57 All this resulted in an open military conflict between the Cossacks and the Polish army. The Cossacks were defeated, and the so-called Kuruków agreement between them and the Polish court was signed. Thereafter Cossack resistance to the Union weakened for a number of years, but violence resumed in 1630. In the meantime, advocates and opponents of the Union continued to face each other at sessions of the Sejm and Sejmiki, at law courts, in towns and cities, in parishes and monasteries. It stands beyond any doubt that from the 1610s to the 1640s the Cossacks were the main force behind and main basis of the anti-Union movement. Their hostility toward the Uniate church and their active involvement in the confessional struggle has been examined in a variety of contexts. It was their support that strengthened the position of the Orthodox clergy and cast the very survival of the Union in Ruthenia in doubt. But what ideas about Union and Orthodoxy were shared by the Cossacks? What did confession mean to them? To what extent were they manipulated? New and highly relevant data on this account have been uncovered by B. N. Floria, who has convincingly demonstrated that there is a way to reconstruct the religious motives of the Cossacks and other “plebeian” participants in the Ruthenian “religious wars” on the Orthodox side.58 Muscovite authorities were attentive observers of the events in Ukraine and Belarus as reflected in the documents of Russian frontier chancelleries. By exploring the interrogatory proceedings and depositions of Russian spies, travelers and merchants from Ukraine and Belarus, and those who immigrated to Russia from the 1620s to 1640s, Floria has provided insights into the “mass mind” of the Ruthenian population. His analysis illustrates that there was no difference between union and Catholicism in the minds of the masses. Confessional violence was perceived to be a consequence of the Poles’ efforts to compel the Orthodox to convert to an alien Catholic faith. Thus, the Union was regarded as a product of a foreign religious assault on the Orthodox church, not a result of internal developments within the Kievan Metropolitanate. B. N. Floria’s findings help us understand the religious convictions of the Cossacks, who believed that they bore the main responsibility for defending the religious rights of “the Ruthenian people.” Accordingly, all Polish measures against

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the Cossacks were viewed by them as directed against Orthodoxy as well. And what is more, unlike the burghers, and high and middling or middle rank clergy and nobility, who saw the Sejm and other political institutions as the main venues for defending their rights, the Cossacks quickly came to the conclusion that their only recourse against the Poles and the “Polish faith” was the military. In this respect, the Cossacks’ mistaken belief in the early 1630s that the heir to the Polish throne, the young Władysław, was a secret proponent of the Orthodox faith, and that he would restore the rights of the Orthodox church, is especially remarkable and relevant. Floria’s preliminary research results will certainly undergo scrutiny, but it is already beyond question that the Cossacks’ participation in the religious struggles of the 1620s–1640s was continuous, active, and spontaneous, with confessional motives playing a central role in their actions. On the whole, the religious split caused by the Union of Brest was deep, open, and profound. Without the support of the Polish state and church authorities the Union had little chance to survive in Ukraine and Belarus in the first half of the seventeenth century. At the same time, in the 1620s to 1640s numerous attempts to revise the 1595/96 terms and to conclude a “new union” took place. A number of Orthodox clergy advocated rapprochement with Rome and with Polish Catholics despite the bitter division provoked by the Union.59 The idea of reconciliation was still alive and attractive in certain circles. Nevertheless, all these tentative initiatives failed, for the Orthodox proponents of the “new union” did not accept the conditions of union as they were defined by the Vatican. These contacts and arguments revealed the profound difference in Catholic and Orthodox ways of imagining the “ideal” church union. They proved that Catholic and Orthodox visions of how the ancient schism might be overcome diverged radically. In this respect, the attempt to hold a common Uniate-Orthodox church council in 1626–1629 is relevant. On 31 March 1626 (after the closing of the Sejm) Sigismund III, possibly acting on a demand from the Uniate metropolitan I. Rutski, addressed the people and the clergy of Ukraine and Belarus in an official document that sanctioned the holding of a council of the Uniate church in Kobryń on 6 September 1626 and invited the Orthodox clergy to participate (although not expressis verbis). The initiative of the king and the Uniate metropolitan was not supported in Rome. The Roman authorities thought that a joint synod would do more harm than good for the Union because there could not be anything in common between Uniates and the Orthodox “as between light and darkness” (con quella ragiona che la luce non puo haver con la tenebre alcuna communicatione). A nuncio was prescribed to oppose the idea of a council by all means and with all his authority; he was told to prevent it in any possible way, by joint efforts of the king, the metropolitan, and state officials.60 In the end, the Orthodox also rejected the idea of a joint council. It seemed now that the time for reconciliation between Uniates and the Orthodox had finally passed. Nonetheless, new steps toward rapprochement were

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made by both sides at the Warsaw Sejm of 1629. Contact between the Orthodox and Uniates resulted in yet one more plan for a joint council, this time in L’viv. Yet the Roman Curia continued to reject the initiative of the Orthodox and the Uniates. The nuncio had forbidden Uniate participation and proscribed any doctrinal discussion with the Orthodox. Metropolitan Rutski declared his submission to the nuncio, but the council was summoned nonetheless. The Orthodox, however, did not come to L’viv. They held their own council in Kiev. Thus one more attempt at reconciliation had failed.61

The Church Union of Brest (1596): casus belli? In my previous studies I have tried to determine why the Union did not receive the backing of the Orthodox clergy, either in 1596 (after the Ruthenian embassy had returned from Rome) or later—despite the fact that in 1590–1595 most of the Ruthenian clergy had supported the initial unionist project.62 Sharp religious conflicts, as we have seen, followed the Union of Brest. This appears especially dramatic as soon as we take account of the fact that in the sixteenth century, relationships between Catholics and Orthodox Christians were in large part peaceful. In trying to explain the “religious wars” that replaced the “religious peace” it may be most helpful to examine how the coming union was understood by both Roman and Orthodox clergy in the years leading up to 1595, and how significant their differences were in approaching church reunification. Study of the relevant sources confirms the basic fact: on the eve of the Union, indeed until the second half of 1595, a majority of Orthodox clergy were inclined to support rapprochement with Rome. This being the case, we need to explain what happened. Why did this large group of clergy and laymen alter their views? What changed their enthusiasm and support into a resolute rejection of union? There are many sources at our disposal to answer this question: declarations of the Orthodox clergy, answers of the Catholic church and secular authorities, correspondence of the Orthodox bishops and laymen involved in preparation of the Union, correspondence of the Pope’s representatives in Poland with Rome, the internal correspondence of officials in the Roman Curia, records in tribunal and chancellery books (księgi grodzkie), polemical writings, letters, treatises, sermons, and documents coming from Constantinople. Among these materials are a number of documents written by both Orthodox and Catholics between 1590 and 1595: a June 1590 declaration that was the initial impulse for negotiations,63 an instruction and declaration signed by the end of 1594,64 a declaration of the L’viv bishop Balaban and the Halicz clergy in January 1595,65 and finally, the “32 articles” compiled in June 1595.66 There are also many letters, a small book titled Unia Greków z Kościołem Rzymskim by I. Pociej67 (who became second metropolitan of the Uniate church, after M. Ragoza), official responses by nuncio

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Malaspina and Sigismund III to the Ruthenian bishops, correspondence between Malaspina and the Vatican, and so on. An examination of all this material provides some insights into the intentions and illusions of those who embarked on the unionist plans on the Orthodox side. The desires and claims of the Orthodox clergy found their most coherent and complete expession in thirty-two articles signed by every bishop by June 1595 and sent to Rome later that summer.68 This document is well known. Published many times, it has nonetheless been somehow misunderstood and underappreciated by scholars. The claims presented in the “32 articles” can be reduced to five major themes. First, the Ruthenian bishops desired that all ancient Orthodox traditions in ritual, doctrine, and church organization be preserved after union. Second, there were a number of measures that intended to improve the position of the Orthodox clergy within the commonwealth. After the Union, the Ruthenian clergy were to be given the same rights and privileges as the Catholic clergy. Third, the authority of the Ruthenian clergy within the Orthodox church had to be strengthened considerably by royal decrees—meaning the prerogatives that would ensure bishops’ control over brotherhoods, schools, presses, local churches, monasteries, parish clergy, etc. The bishops wanted to assume all the powers and responsibilities over brotherhoods and laymen in general that were contested by lay patrons of the local churches. The Union was viewed as a means to carry out internal reforms in the Orthodox church. Fourth, there were a number of provisions intended to slow the Latinization of Orthodox society. In particular the Uniates would have no right to join the Catholic church (art. 15). Even people excommunicated from the Orthodox community were not to be accepted by the Catholics (art. 30). Bringing a halt to Latinization and to the penetration of Catholicism in the Ukrainian and Belarusian lands is one of the rarely mentioned motives of the “32 articles.” Fifth, the process of selecting a metropolitan was quite specific (art. 10–11). The metropolitan had to be elected by a council, approved by the king (more precisely, chosen among four candidates suggested by the sobor/synod [art.10]), and only confirmed by the pope. The papal blessing, in turn, had to be confirmed by two Orthodox bishops (art. 11). Furthermore, if the new metropolitan were ordained as bishop prior to his election as metropolitan, there would be no need to petition the Papacy for its assent. Needless to say, such a proposal had very little chance of approval from a Tridentine ecclesiastical administration.69 Had the “32 articles” been admitted by the Catholic church, serious conflicts would certainly have been avoided. It is difficult to imagine, however, that Clement VIII would have ever acquiesced. At the same time, it is equally clear that the conditions sent to Rome went too far and were entirely unrealistic. Yet the Orthodox bishops, in a special letter conveying the “32 articles,” did insist

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that acceptance of all articles was conditio sine qua non for union: “Quae omnia petita a nobis si obtinuerimus, Sanctitati Vestrae cum omnibus successoribus suis nos et successores nostri … subque regimine Sanctitatis Vestrae semper esse volumus.”70 How were the articles, the conditions of union, received and perceived in Rome?71 The articles were sent in advance, and some months later two bishops (K. Terlecki and I. Pociej) arrived in Rome. A commission to study them was set up, but, strangely enough, there is practically no trace of the commission’s deliberations or expert analysis. There are only two indirect echoes of how the articles were read: by the Dominican scholar J. Saragosa, who was asked to give his opinion; and by a certain unknown theologian, whose views were published at the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is easy to see why their reactions were skeptical, and why the articles were not taken seriously in Roman circles as a preliminary condition for church union. The reasons were expressed quite transparently. As J. Saragosa put it, to be received in the Holy Church is a deed indispensable for salvation; therefore entering the church must be undertaken unconditionally and with no other motive in mind. Saragosa articulated very clearly that the only precondition for union was “total and resolute conformity to the Latin church in everything that concerns basic tenets of faith—in content as well as in terms,” “some alterations being tolerable in rites and ceremonies.”72 From that quotation and many other documents, it can be easily seen that the Orthodox bishops and the western theologians were looking at the Union from two totally different perspectives. More generally, there were clearly divergent patterns of religious thinking between East and West in the late sixteenth century. What did happen in Rome from November 1595 to March 1596?73 No negotiations took place, and nevertheless on 23 December 1595 the Orthodox bishops signed an act of obedience to Rome, recognizing not only the supreme authority of the pontiff but also the decrees of Trent and all teachings, norms, and rules of the Catholic church, including its positions on the Filioque clause, purgatory, original sin, and justification.74 Only two essential concessions were made: first, the right to retain eastern liturgical traditions was granted, and second, the metropolitan was given the authority to consecrate bishops, provided the consecration was approved later by the pope. The Union was proclaimed on 23 December 1595. The bishops left Rome as late as March 1596. What were Pociej and Terlecki doing for almost three months? Were they disappointed or satisfied by their visit to Rome? How did they justify for themselves the fact that the “32 articles” were not taken into consideration by the Roman authorities? Why and with what mood did they sign their professiones fidei, which stood in blatant contradiction to the content of “32 articles”? These intriguing questions have not been examined in any depth.75 Whatever the circumstances surrounding the genesis of the Union were, the basic fact remains that it was concluded. How was it understood post factum, in Rome

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and by proponents of the Union in Ukraine and Belarus? We have many documents at our disposal to answer this question: the papal constitution Magnus Dominus, the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem, a series of papal breves sent to Poland and Rus’, correspondence between Poland and Rome, internal correspondence in the Vatican, and so on. All these documents reveal that the Union was understood by the Catholic side as an act of repentance, as “conversion” from “heresy,” as unconditional recognition of papal authority, as giving up what were labeled errores, haereses, and schismatae. Especially telling are formulas used in the long series of sixteen official breves sent by Pope Clement VIII to Poland. Even in the missive addressed to Ragoza, the pope uses the term conversio: “propter conversionem vestram ad hanc vestram matrem carissimam sanctam Romanam Ecclesiam.”76 Speaking of the December 1595 ceremony, the pope wrote: “iidem Episcopi duo catholicae fidei professionem de scripto fecerunt, tam suo quam vestro nomine omnesque haereses, et schismata, et errores detestati sunt, et eos praesertim, qui vos hactenus a Sancta Romana Catholica Ecclesia separarunt.”77 The term “heresy” is frequently quoted in other breves (“omnes haereses, et schismata detestati sunt, et fidei catholicae professionem rite fecerunt, et nobis … veram obedientiam praestiterunt”78) and even in the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem (the bishops “omnes suos et ipsorum errores, haereses et schismata damnaverint”79). There are two more typical examples. D. Solikowski, Catholic bishop of L’viv, wrote to Nuncio Malaspina that Terlecki and Pociej were to travel to Rome “obedientiae praestandae causa, se per omnia subdentes potestati suae Sanctitatis, et renunciantes suo patriarchae.”80 The instruction of the Vatican to Malaspina in 1595 demanded that the Union should be prepared “nel modo che piu si desidera per la unione et uniformita della Chiesa.”81 In internal correspondence, Vatican officials were writing about the purposes of the bishops’ visit. They were coming in order to “unirsi in tutto et per tutto con la chiesa romana.”82 Malaspina wrote to Rome in 1595 that bishops would come to Rome “resignati di voler far cio, che li sara ordinato per servitio dell’anime loro, et del grege a loro commesso.”83 After Pociej and Terlecki came to the Vatican, the aim of their visit was viewed in internal correspondance in Rome as “soggetatione al Pontifice Romano”; “alcuni Vescovi Rhuteni gia scismatici vengono in Roma … a riconescere la Chiesa Apostolica et Romana, et rendere a Sua Beatitudine la debita obedienza.”84 According to breves, Terlecki and Pociej “sanctae huic Apostolicae Sedi perpetuam obedientiam praestiterunt.”85 It is relevant that in talking about submission to Rome, the Vatican documents use the term unitas and not unio. Characteristically, the standpoint of Polish secular officials and church representatives when writing on union was a bit more cautious. There is no need to say that the Union, as it was brought by Pociej and Terlecki from Rome back to Ruthenia, was very far from what was intended and dreamt of by Orthodox clergy in the early 1590s. The Orthodox proponents of unionist ideas must have

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been deceived by the terms of the Union with Rome as they were defined from November 1595 to March 1596. This deception was, as far as I am in position to judge, the main reason why the Union was rejected and attacked in 1596 by the same people who acclaimed its prospect in the early 1590s. It seems that even I. Pociej, the main architect of the Union project, disappeared from view in the first years after the Council of Brest. Neither M. Ragoza nor his colleagues G. German, D. Zbirujski, and I. Gogol (three other bishops who embraced the Union) seemed happy with the actual settlement. At least, we do not know much about their sentiments and whether they took seriously the norms formally imposed by the Roman documents concerning the Union (Filioque, purgatory, prayers for popes in church services, recognition of Tridentine decrees, etc.). There is, however, one thing that must not be overlooked. Even in October 1596 in Brest, even after the Brest synods, through the whole first half of the seventeenth century, many leaders of the Orthodox camp kept supporting the idea of union—but on conditions quite different from those proclaimed in Rome and Brest. They still believed that a union of equals, union as contract, as alliance, as agreement that would be worked out by a common synod like the Florentine union—that, in one word, such a neo-union was achievable and desirable. The Roman Curia, however, did not make any concessions even in the most critical moments of confrontation between Poland and Ukrainian Orthodox society in the first half and in the middle of the seventeenth century, although a compromise was vitally indispensable for the survival of the Polish-Lithuanian state. What was behind this amazing incapacity to understand each other and find compromise in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century? Orthodox historians in the past claimed that the entire process was marred by Catholic hypocrisy, sham, cheating, aggression, and an insatiable craving for religious expansion. Catholic and Uniate historians would emphasize the concessions made by the Vatican and the non-religious factors in the hostilities following the Union of Brest. In my view, the critical issue is the nature of the Catholic church after Trent. Post-Tridentine Roman Catholicism was not characterized by a spirit of flexibility or compromise. Behind this rigidity stood a certain confessionally shaped mentality and ecclesiastical tradition that had been strengthened during the Counter-Reformation. The only possible way to conceptualize, to perceive the Union, in this era was the idea of unitas, uniformity, and not that of unio, or alliance of churches different but equal in dignity. In other words, any Uniate church was viewed only as an integral part of the whole Roman church without any exception and without any substantially specific status. Therefore, the Ruthenian bishops hoped in vain that they would occupy a special position within the giant building of European Catholicism. But why did the Orthodox elites not understand this? Why did the Catholics not comprehend that for the Orthodox people it was as impossible to give up their errores and haereses as it was for Catholics to question papal primacy? I do

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not have a full answer. One can point to mutual ignorance, but this would be especially astonishing in the case of Catholics as they had every opportunity to learn about the Christian East. Apparently, knowledge did not lead to understanding; otherwise Rome’s policy would have been very different. It seems that Latin clergy were unable to take seriously an ecclesiology that was profoundly non-western. At the same time, Othodox clergy had precious little insight into a very different Latin ecclesiology. Such a situation was caused not by lack of information alone. Orthodox leaders could have read Augustine and Innocent III; the Latins could and did read the Greek fathers. Yet mutual understanding did not result. The Union of Brest is a particular and special case of a more general phenomenon reflecting the confessional and cultural incompatibility of two Christian mentalities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This incompatibility (or, to put it more cautiously, the very low level of compatibility) is especially striking in situations of direct contact and polemic, as in the interaction between Patriarch Jeremy and the Tübingen theologians of the 1570s;86 as in the meeting of Ivan the Terrible with the Protestant Jan Rokita;87 as in polemics between the patriarch of Alexandria, Meletios Pegas, and I. Pociej; as in the Ruthenian polemics generated by the Union of Brest; as in the entire history of the Union itself. From this perspective, the history of the Union of Brest is one of failure—but a failure that offers the historian a fascinating window into eccleasiatical relations between East and West. A study of Polish, Ruthenian, and Roman sources related to the genesis of the Union of Brest leads one to conclude that non-religious motives— Ostrogski’s ambitions, the clergy’s striving for power, the brotherhoods’ national and social aspirations, the gentry’s desire to preserve cultural separateness, the Cossaks’ instrumental attitude to religion, and so forth—fail to explain why the Union was rejected. On the other hand, analysis of these sources makes us realize how differently Catholics and Orthodox people understood the Union. The Orthodox and the Catholic actors in this drama spoke two different confessional languages when talking about union, its premises, and conditions. Listening to each other, they did not hear what their counterparts were saying. In this respect, the Union was most assuredly a cultural and confessional misunderstanding. Would it be an exaggeration to claim that this confessional and cultural misunderstanding between Catholic and Orthodox Christians of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth became one of the main causes of the religious violence that followed the Union of Brest? Was the Union a casus belli? If we understand casus belli as a “pretext” for war, it obviously was. If we understand casus as “cause,” our answer will never be definitive, since historians have difficulty supplying answers to the question “why?” At the very least, however, the problems generated in the wake of the Union revealed the weakness of tolerant discourse in Polish culture. The conflicts that broke out after the proclamation of union allow us to judge whether tolerant attitudes were actually deeply embedded in the culture

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and fabric of Polish-Lithuanian society. The impossibility of achieving a viable and lasting religious compromise between Roman and Orthodox churches after 1596, on the basis of terms suggested by the Roman See in 1595, undermined the emerging tradition of Polish tolerance and seems to be one of the reasons (if not the reason) for growing confessional tensions. The peaceful settlement of this problem was achieved neither in the 1590s, nor later, although Catholic-Orthodox cohabitation before 1596 was peaceful. Perhaps the one conclusion we can reach is that the Union of Brest became a sort of unanticipated experiment that revealed the profound structural differences of two Christian mentalities.

Notes 1. Among the rare studies on intolerance in early seventeenth-century Poland-Lithuania, Wacław Sobieski’s book Nienawiść wyznaniowa tłumów za rządów Zygmunta III (Warsaw, 1902) is one of the best known. Janusz Tazbir’s prolific studies have provided very valuable insights into a large number of particular issues; see, for example, Święci, grzesznicy i kacerze: Z dziejów polskiej kontrreformacji (Warsaw, 1959); Arianie i katolicy (Warsaw, 1971); Historia Kościoła katolickiego w Polsce (1460–1795) (Warsaw, 1966); Szlachta i teologowie: Studia z dziejów polskiej kontrreformacji (Warsaw, 1987); La République nobiliaire et le monde: Études sur l’histoire de la culture polonaise à l’époque du baroque (Wrocław, 1986); Piotr Skarga: Szermierz kontrreformacji (Warsaw, 1983). Studies on Polish Protestantism—the best synthetic study is by Gottfried Schramm, Der polnische Adel und die Reformation, 1548–1607 (Wiesbaden, 1965)—and Polish Jewish history in the first half of the seventeenth century are illuminating, too; see for example Zenon Guldon and Jacek Wijaczka, “The Accusation of Ritual Murder in Poland, 1500–1800,” in Jews in Early Modern Poland, ed. G. D. Hundert (London, 1997=Polin, X,), 99–140; Zenon Guldon and Jacek Wijaczka, Procesy o mordy rytualne w Polsce w XVI–XVIII wieku (Kielce, 1995); Daniel Tollet, Accuser pour convertir: Du bon usage de l’accusation de crime rituel dans la Pologne catholique a l’époque moderne (Paris, 2000); Daniel Tollet, “Cohabitation, concurrence et conversion dans la Confédération polono–lituanienne au tournant des XVIe et XVIIe siècles,” in Frontiers of Faith: Religious Exchange and the Constitution of Religious Identities 1400–1750, ed. Eszter Andor and Isztvan Gyorgy Toth (Budapest, 2001), 67–78; Hanna Wegrzynek, “Czarna legenda” Żydów: Procesy o rzekome mordy rytualne w dawnej Polsce (Warsaw, 1995). For our subject, most relevant are numerous works on the confessional struggles caused by the Union of Brest. The following works point to some aspects of links between the Union of Brest and the decline of tolerance in Poland: Platon Nikolaevich Zhukovich, Bor’ba protiv unii na sovremennykh ej pol’sko-litovskikh sejmakh (Saint Petersburg, 1897); Platon Nikolaevich Zhukovich, Sejmovaja bor’ba pravoslavnogo zapadnorusskogo dvorianstva s cerkovnoj uniej (do 1609 goda) (Saint Petersburg, 1901); Platon Nikolaevich Zhukovich, Sejmovaia bor’ba pravoslavnogo zapadnorusskogo dvorianstva s cerkovnoj uniej (s 1609 goda), vols. 1–6 (Saint Petersburg, 1903–1912); Mykhailo S. Grushevs’kij, Istoriia Ukrainy–Rusi, vol. 7: Kozac’ki chasi—do roku 1625 (Kiev, 1995 [Kiev and L’viv, 1909]); Mykhailo S. Grushevs’kij, Istoriia Ukrainy–Rusi, vol. 8: Roki 1626–1650 (Kiev, 1995 [Kiev, 1922]); Kazimierz Chodynicki, Kościół prawosławny a Rzeczpospolita Polska: Zarys historyczny. 1370–1632 (Warsaw, 1934); Evgeniy Fedorovich Shmurlo, Rimskaia kuriia na russkom pravoslavnom vostoke v 1609– 1654 gg., vols. 1–2 (Prague, 1928); Zbignew Wójcik, Dzikie Pola w ogniu: O Kozaczyźnie w

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dawnej Rzeczypospolitej (Warsaw, 1968); Jan Dzięgielewski, O tolerancję dla zdominowanych: Polityka wyznaniowa Rzeczypospolitej w latach panowania Władysława IV (Warsaw, 1986); Henryk Wisner, Rozróżnieni w wierze: Szkice z dziejów Rzeczypospolitej schyłku XVI i połowy XVII wieku (Warsaw, 1982); Henryk Wisner, “Sejmiki litewski i kwestia wyznaniowa, 1611–1648,” in Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce 23 (1978); Boris Nikolaevich Floria, “Kievskaia mitropoliia, Rossiia i kazackoe vosstanie 1625 goda,” in Mezhkonfessional’nye sviazi v stranakh Central’noj, Vostochnoj i Iugo-Vostochnoj Evropy v XV—XVII veka, ed. B. N. Floria, Slaviane i ikh sosedi 7 (Moscow, 1999), 143–151; Boris Nikolaevich Floria, “Konflikt między zwolennikami unii i prawosławia w Rzeczypospolitej (w świetle źródeł rosyjskich),” Barok. Historia-Literatura-Sztuka 3, no. 2 (1996): 23–52; Boris Nikolaevich Floria, “Polozhenie pravoslavnogo naseleniia Smolenshchiny v sostave Rechi Pospolitoj (1620s–1640s),” Revue des études slaves 70, no. 2 (1998): 333–345; Boris Nikolaevich Floria, “Prerogativa Sigismunda III smolenskoj shliakhte. K istorii religioznoj neterpimosti v Rechi Pospolitoj pervoj poloviny XVII v.,” in Floria, Mezhkonfessional’nye sviazi, 138–142; Boris Nikolaevich Floria, “Kozaczyźna wobec przemjan religijnych na ziemiach ruskich Rzeczypospolitej w latach trzydziestych XVII w.,” Mowią Wieki, no. 12 (1995): 3–9; Boris Nikolaevich Floria, “Les conflits religieux entre adversaires et partisans de l’Union dans la ‘conscience de masse’ du peuple en Ukraine et en Biélorussie (première moitié du XVIIe siècle),” XVIIème siècle 55, no. 3 (2003): 431–448; Boris Floria, “Nowe materiały do dziejów powstania Kozackiego 1625 roku,” Przegląd Wschodni 5, no. 1 (1998): 27–42. Recent surveys by Borys Gudziak such as Crisis and Reform: The Kyivan Metropolitanate, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the Genesis of the Union of Brest (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998) (cf. review by Mikhail Dmitriev in Belorussiia i Ukraina: kultura i istoriia (2003): 355–372) and Serhii Plokhy’s The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine (Oxford, 2001) serve as a good introduction to this field for the English-speaking audience. For example: Bernard Dupuy, “L’Union de Brest jugée avec le recul du temps,” Istina 35, no. 1 (1990): 17–123. Edward Likowski, Dzieje Kościoła unickiego na Litwie i Rusi w XVIII i XIX wieku, 2 vols. (Warsaw, 1906), vols. 1–2; Edward Likowski, Unia Brzeska (r. 1596) (Poznań, 1907; first edition: Poznań, 1889), Ukrainian translation: E. Likowski, Berestejs’ka unia (L’viv, 1916); Julian Pelesch, Geschichte der Union der ruthenischen Kirche mit Rom von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart, vol. 1 (Vienna, 1882); Oskar Halecki, From Florence to Brest (1439– 1596) (Hamden, 1968; first edition: Rome, 1958); Grushevs’kij, Istoriia Ukrainy–Rusi, vol. 8; Chodynicki, Kościół prawosławny; Ambroise Jobert, De Luther à Mohila: La Pologne dans la crise de la chrétienté, 1517–1648 (Paris, 1974); Ambroise Jobert, “L’Etat polonais, la liberté religieuse et l’Eglise orthodoxe au XVII siècle,” Revue internationale d’histoire politique et constitutionelle, no. 19–20 (1955): 236–243; Athanasius G.Velikij, Z litopisu khristians’koj Ukrajni, vols. 5–7 (Rome, 1972–1973). Mykhailo S. Grushevs’kij, Istoriia Ukrainy-Rusi, vols. 5–8 (Kiev, 1994–1995); Mykhailo S. Grushevs’kij, Istoriia ukrajins’koj literaturi, vols. 5–6 (Kiev, 1995); Mykhailo S. Grushevs’kij, Kul’turno-nacional’nij rukh na Ukrajni v XVI– XVII vici (L’viv, 1912), reprinted as Mykhailo S. Grushevs’kij, Dukhovna Ukrajna: Zbirka tvoriv (Kiev, 1994). Hanna. Dylagowa, “Unia Brzeska—pojednanie czy podział?” in Unia Brzeska: Geneza, dzieje i konsekwencje w kulturze narodów słowiańskich, ed. R. Łużny, F. Ziejka, and A. Kępiński (Cracow, 1994), 45–53. Ernst Ch. Suttner, “Brachte die Union von Brest Einigung oder Trennung für die Kirche?” Ostkirchliche Studien 39 (1990): 3–21; Ernst Ch. Suttner, “Gründe für den Miserfolg der Brester Union,” Der Christliche Osten 45 (1990): 230–241. Sergey Mikhailovich Solov’ev, Sochineniia: Kniga V. Istoriia Rossii s drevnejshikh vremen, vols. 9–10 (Moscow, 1990); Makarij (Bulgakov), Istoriia Russkoj Cerkvi, Kniga 6: Period

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samostoiatel’nosti Russkoj Cerkvi (1589–1881): Patriarshestvo v Rossii (1589–1720), Otdel 1: Patriarshestvo Moskovskoe i vseia Velikiia Rossii i Zapadanorusskaia mitropoliia (1589–1654) (Moscow, 1996); Ivan Vlasovs’kij, Naris istorii ukrains’koj prevoslavnoj cerkvi, vols. 1–4 (New York, 1955–1956); Ivan I. Ogienko, Ukrains’ka cerkva: Narisi z istorii ukrains’koj pravoslavnoj cerkvi, vols. 1–2 (Prague, 1942). Suttner, “Brachte die Union von Brest Einigung,” 3–21. Dylagowa, “Unia Brzeska—pojednanie czy podział?” 45–53, here 51. For details see: Zhukovich, Sejmovaja bor’ba (do 1609 goda); Halecki, From Florence to Brest; Chodynicki, Kościół prawosławny a Rzeczpospolita Polska; Mikhail V. Dmitriev, Mezhdu Rimom i Car’gradom: Genesis Brestskoj cerkovnoj unii 1595–1596 gg. (Moscow, 2003); Borys Gudziak, Crisis and Reform. Dmitriev, Mezhdu Rimom i Car’gradom, 193–198. N. Ivanishev, ed., Arkhiv Iugo-Zapadnoj Rossii, part 1, vol. 1 (Kiev, 1859), no. 114, 468– 471. [Denis Zubrickij], Letopis’ L’vovskogo stavropigial’nogo bratstva (Saint Petersburg, 1850), 35. I. Grigorovich, ed., Akty, otnosiashchiesia k istorii Zapadnoj Rossii, vol. 4 (Saint Petersburg, 1851), no. 90, 123–124. Akty, izdavaemye Vilenskoiu Arkheograficheskoiu Komissiej, vol. 8 (Vilnius, 1875), no. 9, 23. Zhukovich, Sejmovaja bor’ba (do 1609 goda), 172, n. 366. Ibid., 194–197. Ibid., 202–207. Ivanishev, Arkhiv Iugo-Zapadnoj Rossii, part 1, vol. 1, 533–534. Ibid., 534–536. Ibid., no. 123. Grigorovich, Akty, otnosiashchiesia k istorii Zapadnoj Rossii, vol. 4, nos. 94–95. Makarij (Bulgakov), Istoriia Russkoj Cerkvi, Kniga 5: Period razdeleniia Russkoj cerkvi na dve mitropolii: Istoriia Zapadnorusskoj, ili Litovskoj, mitropolii (1458–1596) (Moscow, 1996), 350–351. Ibid., 352. “…volumus, ut tu Frater Archiepiscope nostra etiam auctoritate suffultus, Synodum Provincialem indices, et Episcopos tuos convoces, ut singuli profiteamini in publico Conventu fidem Catholicam ex eadem formula integre, quemadmodum Episcopi duo Oratores vestri hic professi sunt.” From “Breve Clementis VIII ad Archiepiscopos et Episcopos Nationis Ruthenae,” in Julian Pelesch, Geschichte der Union der ruthenischen Kirche, vol. 1, app. IV, 625. Zhukovich, Sejmovaja bor’ba (do 1609 goda), 208. Zhukovich quotes the unpublished original of this document. Opisanie dokumentov arkhiva uniatskikh mitropolitov, vol. 1 (Saint Petersburg, 1897), no. 189, 86 (draft). Grigorovich, Akty, otnosiashchiesia k istorii Zapadnoj Rossii, vol. 4, no. 97, 134–135. See: Serhii N. Plokhy, Papstvo i Ukraina: Politika Rimskoj kurii na ukrainskikh zemljakh v XVI—XVII vv. (Kiev, 1989), 74–75. See Halecki, From Florence to Brest, 367–380; Chodynicki, Kościół prawosławny a Rzeczpospolita Polska, 322–346; Leonid V. Timoshenko, Berestejska uniia 1596 r. (Drogobich, 2004), 177–188. Grigorovich, Akty, otnosiashchiesia k istorii Zapadnoj Rossii, vol. 4, no. 109. Ibid., no. 111. Halecki, From Florence to Brest, 398, n. 17. Athanasius G. Welykyj, ed., Documenta Pontificum Romanorum historiam Ucrainae illustrantia (1075–1953), vol. 1: 1075–1700 (Rome, 1953), no. 161.

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35. Athanasius G. Welykyj, ed., Documenta Unionis Berestensis eiusque auctorum (1590–1600) (Rome, 1970), no. 254, 403–404. 36. Ibid., nos. 259–260, 409–410. 37. “Manifestacje więc wobec unji były raczej rezultatem działalności poszczególnych jednostek, a nie masowym, żywiołowym odruchem społeczeństwa ruskiego.” Chodynicki, Kościół prawosławny a Rzeczpospolita Polska, 359. 38. Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych (Warsaw), Archiwum Radziwiłłów, II, no. 350 (copy of instruction from 25 September 1596). I am grateful to Boris Nikolaevich Floria, who directed me to this document. 39. “nieprzywiedzeniu do kłotni generalnej konfederacyej, w opprimowaniu i ciśnieniu do obcej zwierzchności i odminienia religiej naród nasz Ruski.” E. Barwiński, ed., Dyaryusze sejmowe r. 1597, Scriptores Rerum Poloniacarum XX (Cracow, 1907), 397. 40. “Wladykowie obcy… aby byli z urzędów zruceni, a inszy religiej Greckiej starozytnej aby nastawieni byli.” Barwiński, Dyaryusze sejmowe r. 1597, 397. 41. Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych (Warsaw), Archiwum Radziwiłłów, no. 371, f.1 (“A naprzód ma by[ć] confoederatia przysięgą zmocniona inter dissidentes in religione Christiana wcale zachowana y sprawiedliwość przedka na gwałtowniki pokoju iawne y fortelne postanowiona była, y co się wykroczyło aby było naprawiono”). 42. See Zhukovich, Sejmovaja bor’ba (s 1609 goda), part 4 (1623–1625), apps., 3–14; Chodynicki, Kościół prawosławny a Rzeczpospolita Polska, 361–366. 43. Makarij (Bulgakov), Istoriia Russkoj Cerkvi, Kniga 6: Period samostoiatel’nosti Russkoj Cerkvi (1589–1881): Patriarshestvo v Rossii (1589–1720), Otdel 1: Patriarshestvo Moskovskoe i vseia Velikiia Rossii i Zapadanorusskaia mitropoliia (1589–1654), 151ff. 44. Barwiński, Dyaryusze sejmowe r. 1597. For analysis see Zhukovich, Sejmovaja bor’ba (s 1609 goda), part 4 (1623–1625), apps. 1–28; Kazimierz Lewicki, Książę Konstanty Ostrogski a Unia Brzeska 1596 r. (L’viv, 1933), 185; K. Chodynicki, Kościół prawosławny a Rzeczpospolita Polska, 366–370. Some circumstances, on the basis of Vatican sources, were clarified by Halecki, From Florence to Brest, 403–407. See as well Jan Rzonca, Sejmy z lat 1597 i 1598. Cz.1. Bezowocny sejm z 1597 r. (Warsaw, 1989). 45. See Zhukovich, Sejmovaja bor’ba (s 1609 goda), part 4 (1623–1625), apps. 20–28; Chodynicki, Kościół prawosławny a Rzeczpospolita Polska, 368–370; Lewicki, Książę Konstanty Ostrogski, 197–209; Yuriy N. Kurakin, “Politicheskij process nad konstantinopol’skim ekzarkhom Nikiforom (Paraskhesom Kantakuzinom) v istorii Brestskoj unii 1596 g.,” in Osmanskaia imperiia i narody Central’noj, Vostochnoj, Yugo-Vostochnoj Evropy i Kavkaza v XV–XVIII vv., ed. G. G. Litavrin, Slaviane i ikh sosedi 4 (Moscow, 1992), 122–144. 46. We do not know when Nikephoros died. In 1605 I. Pociej wrote in a letter to Lew Sapieha: “Nicefor na Malborgu zdechł” (Lewicki, Książę Konstanty Ostrogski, 208). 47. “His trial … produced an overwhelming evidence of his role as Turkish agent” (Halecki, From Florence to Brest, 406–407). 48. Ibid., 401–402. 49. Ibid., 402. 50. Zhukovich, Sejmovaja bor’ba (do 1609 goda); Zhukovich, Sejmovaja bor’ba (s 1609 goda), parts 1–6; Chodynicki, Kościół prawosławny a Rzeczpospolita Polska; Dzięgielewski, O tolerancję dla zdominowanych. 51. M. S. Grushevs’kij, Istoriia Ukrainy-Rusi, vol. 7, 393–397. 52. Ibid., 399. 53. Leontiy Vojtovich et al., eds., Dokumenti rosijkikh arkhiviv z istorij Ukrajni, Tom 1: Dokumenti do istorii zaporoz’kogo kozactva 1613–1620 rr. (L’viv, 1998), no. 29, 90. 54. See J. Pietrzak, Po Cecorze i podczas wojny Chocimskiej: Sejmy z lat 1620 i 1621 (Wrocław, 1983); Yuriy Micik, “Iz listuvannia ukrains’kikh pis’mennikiv-polemistiv 1621–1624 rokiv,”

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in Zapiski Naukovogo tovaristva imeni T. Shevchenka, vol. 225: Praci istorichno-filosofs’koj sekcii (L’viv, 1993), 311–347. For details: Zhukovich, Sejmovaja bor’ba (s 1609 goda), part 4 (1623–1625), 144–150. See Zhukovich, Sejmovaja bor’ba (s 1609 goda), part 5 (1623–1625), 15. Cf. Grushevs’kij, Istoriia Ukrainy-Rusi, vol. 7, 530–531. Chodynicki, Kościół prawosławny a Rzeczpospolita Polska, 460. Boris N. Floria, “Konflikt między zwolennikami unii i prawosławia”; Boris N. Floria, “Otrazhenie religioznykh konfliktov mezhdu protivnikami i priverzhencami unii v ‘massovom soznanii’ prostogo naseleniia Ukrainy i Belorussii v pervoj polovine XVII v.,” in Brestskaia uniia i obshestvenno-politicheskaia bor’ba na Ukraine i v Belorussii v konce XVI—nachale XVII v., Chast’ 2: Brestskaia uniia 1596: Istoricheskie posledstviia sobytiia, ed. Boris. N. Floria (Moscow, 1999), 151–174, in French as Boris N. Floria, “Les conflits religieux entre adversaires et partisans de l’Union dans la ‘conscience de masse’ du peuple en Ukraine et en Biélorussie (première moitié du XVIIe siècle),”; Boris N. Floria, “Nacional’no-konfesijna svidomost’ naselennia Skhidnoj Ukrajni v pershij polovini XVII stolittia,” in Berestejska uniia ta vnutrishne zhittia Cerkvi v XVII stolitti, ed. B. Gudziak and O. Turij (L’viv, 1997), 124–134 (discussion: 134–147). Boris N. Floria, “Vopros o ‘novoj unii’ v ukrainsko-belorusskom obshchestve 20-kh–40-kh gg. XVII v.,” in Floria, Brestskaia uniia i obshestvenno-politicheskaya bor’ba, 122–150; Plokhy, Papstvo i Ukraina, 139–158; Shmurlo, Rimskaia kuriia na russkom pravoslavnom vostoke, parts 1–2, passim; Chodynicki, Kościół prawosławny a Rzeczpospolita Polska, 449–512. Shmurlo, Rimskaia kuriia na russkom pravoslavnom vostoke, parts 1–2, apps., no. 9 (25), 43–44. Ibid., 63–68. See as well I. Khoma, “Ideia spil’nogo synodu 1629 r.,” in I. Khoma, Kievs’ka mitropoliia v berestejskim periodi, ed. I. Khoma (Rome, 1979), 77–108. Dmitriev, Mezhdu Rimom i Car’gradom, 133–260; Mikhail V. Dmitriev, “L’Union de Brest (1595–1596), les Catholiques, les Orthodoxes: un malentendu?” in Stosunki międzywyznaniowe w Europie Środkowej i Wschodniej w XIV—XVII wieku, ed. M. Dygo, S. Gawlas, and H. Grala (Warsaw, 2002), 39–60. Welykyj, Documenta Unionis Berestensis, no. 2, 7–8. Ibid., no. 17, 19, 32–35, 36–38. Ibid., no. 22, 43–44. Ibid., no. 41, 42, 61–75. [Ipatiy Potej], “Uniia Grekov s kostelom Rimskim. Vilno, 1595,” in Russkaia istoricheskaia biblioteka, vol. 7 (Saint Petersburg, 1882), 111–168. “Artykuły na które caucij potrzebuiemy od panów Rzymian pierwei anizlo do iednosći s Kościółem Rzymskim przystąpiemy,” in Welykyj, Documenta Unionis Berestensis, no. 41, 61–67; Latin translation, 68–75. Cf. O. Halecki’s and I. Patrylo’s interpretations of the “32 articles” (Halecki, From Florence to Brest, 289 passim; I. Patrilo, “Artikuli Berestejskoj unii,” Analecta Ordinis Sancti Basilii Magni 15 (1996): 47–102. Welykyj, Documenta Unionis Berestensis, no. 45, 81. For details: Dmitriev, “L’Union de Brest.” “Nel primo, è necessario che si conformino omninemente con la determinatione della Chiesa Latina, e quanto alla sostanza, et quanto alla forma delle parole, non concernendo questo punto riti o cerimonie, nelle quali sarebbe tolerabile qualche alteratione, ma l’essenza della fede” (Welykyj, Documenta Unionis Berestensis, no. 137, 194). For details: Halecki, From Florence to Brest, 315–341; A. G. Welykyj, “Alle fonti del cattolicesimo ucraino,” in “Miscellanea in honorem Cardinalis Isidori (1463–1963),” special issue, Analecta Ordinis Sancti Basilii Magni 4 (10), nos. 1–2 (1963): 66–67; A. M. Amman,

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77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

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“Der Aufenhalt der ruthenischen Bishöfe Hypatius Pociej und Cyrillus Terlecki in Rom im Dezember und Januar 1595–1596,” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 11 (1945): 103–140; Makarij (Bulgakov), Istoriia Russkoj Cerkvi, Kniga 5: Period razdeleniia Russkoj cerkvi na dve mitropolii: Istoriia Zapadnorusskoj, ili Litovskoj, mitropolii (1458–1596), 338–347; Zhukovich, Sejmovaja bor’ba (do 1609 goda), 173–176; Dmitriev, Mezhdu Rimom i Car’gradom, 198–208; Mikhail V. Dmitriev, “Posol’stvo Ipatiia Potiia i Kirilla Terleckogo v Rim v 1595– 1596 gg.,” Slavianovedenie, no. 2 (1996): 3–21. Welykyj, Documenta Unionis Berestensis, no. 143, 213–214 (Pociej’s professio fidei). Some observations: Dmitriev, Mezhdu Rimom i Car’gradom, 204–207; Dmitriev, “Posol’stvo Ipatiia Potiia i Kirilla Terleckogo.” “[P]ropter conversionem vestram ad hanc vestram matrem carissimam sanctam Romanam Ecclesiam”: Welykyj, Documenta Unionis Berestensis, no. 181, 278; other instances of using the term “conversio”: no. 181, 281, and no. 183, 284. Speaking about the December 1595 ceremony proclaiming the Union, the pope wrote: “idem Episcopi duo catholicae fidei professionem de scripto fecerunt, tam suo quam vestro nomine omnesque haereses, et schismata, et errores detestati sunt, et eos praesertim, qui vos hactenus a Sancta Romana Catholica Ecclesia separarunt”: ibid., no. 181, 279. Ibid., no. 181, 279. Ibid., no. 174, 269. Analogous formulations: no. 171, 265–266; no. 172, 267; no. 173, 268; no. 175, 271; no. 176, 271–272; no. 178, 274 and so on. Ibid., no. 193, 292. Ibid., no. 27, 49. Ibid., no. 30, 51. Ibid., no. 67, 119. Ibid., no. 37, 59. Ibid., no. 82, 129. Ibid., no. 181, 279. See, for example, D. Wendebourg, Reformation und Orthodoxie: der ökumenische Briefwechsel zwischen der Leitung der Württembergischen Kirche und Patriarch Jeremias II. von Konstantinopel in den Jahren 1573–1581 (Göttingen, 1986). V. A. Tumins, ed., Tsar Ivan IV’s Reply to Jan Rokyta (Paris, 1971).

Chapter 7

CONFESSIONALIZATION AND THE JEWS Impacts and Parallels in the City of Strasbourg

Debra Kaplan

C

onfessionalization is a paradigm that has been used to describe the convergence of religious and political developments during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In the mid sixteenth century, different religious groups drew up confessions in which clerics articulated specific religious beliefs and doctrines. In order to enforce adherence to these newly defined religious values among believers, religious leaders aligned themselves with the political authorities of burgeoning early modern states. Thus, the confessionalization process comprises the ways in which religious and political leaders sought to control both the public and private worlds of their adherents through education, discipline, and the delineation of appropriate moral and social behaviors.1 As Heinz Schilling has noted, scholarly application of the confessionalization model has enabled historians to identify parallels between the various confessions instead of focusing on the differences between them. Thus, the similar developmental processes of the Lutheran, Reformed, Catholic, and even Anglican confessions can be explored at length, underscoring the ways in which religion led to the emergence of the early modern state. Schilling comments that although other groups such as Anabaptists, various other radical reformed sects, and the Jews were part of the societal fabric of early modern Europe, they are external to the confessionalization model, since they lacked the necessary connections to state power. Nevertheless, Schilling acknowledges that certain aspects of the paradigm do apply to the Anabaptists.2 Recent scholarship has argued that by reconceptualizing the paradigm, the scholar may apply some of the features of confessionalization to minority groups

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lacking a state power, thus pointing to parallels between the experiences of the Christian confessions and those of both Anabaptists and Jews. Gerhard Lauer advocates using the confessionalization model as an aid to interpreting the evolution of Judaism from early modern to modern times. He argues that an increase in mysticism and messianic movements, the composition of Jewish legal codes, and the proliferation of literature aimed at teaching women and children all point to an intensification of belief and a subsequent development of orthodoxy and heterodoxy.3 Lauer claims that this growth in piety and practice, along with the boundaries drawn between orthodox and heterodox, mirrors aspects of confessionalization. Building on Lauer’s thesis, Michael Driedger argues that since Anabaptists demonstrate a similar process of “intensification of belief,” one may draw parallels between Christian confessions and Anabaptists, as well as between the minority communities of Anabaptists and Jews.4 There may be benefits to stretching the confessionalization paradigm to include additional religious groups and to think, as Lauer suggests, of religion as a force that propelled historical developments. Nevertheless, such redefinitions lead to both a blurring of key differences between these communities and to imprecision about internal communal developments. Lauer himself correctly lists many differences between the Jewish experience and the experiences of the Christian confessions. I would argue, moreover, that Lauer’s description of sixteenthand seventeenth-century Jewish history as a burgeoning orthodoxy (as opposed to what he terms “tradition”) disregards the continuity between the medieval and early modern periods, positing a rupture with the past that is often an overstatement. For example, Lauer argues that the Shulhan ‘Arukh, a codification of Jewish law that was undertaken by the Sephardic rabbi Joseph Karo (d. 1575), represents a growing orthodoxy.5 While even Karo’s contemporaries feared that such a compilation might lead to a rigidity in Jewish legal writings that was detrimental to maintaining local customs, nuances of the law, and rabbinic authority, it is difficult to contend that Karo’s intention was to create “orthodoxy,” a term normally reserved for nineteenth-century Jewish groups such as those led by Samson Raphael Hirsch, who consciously withdrew from the more liberal society in Frankfurt am Main.6 As Lauer notes, the Shulhan ‘Arukh was closely based on the medieval ‘Arba’ah Turim, a similar fourteenth-century codification of Jewish law; rather than the genre or a new drive toward orthodoxy, the novelty in Karo’s work was the use of print as a medium. Contemporary rabbinic hesitation about Karo’s work and other new and similar codifications centered on the dangers of disseminating Jewish legal texts in print, and on the transition from oral study of the Torah to print culture.7 The differences in intention and in form between formal Christian confessions and the Shulhan ‘Arukh—which was not intended as a manual of social discipline demanding orthodox behavior, but was rather a baseline upon which local custom and other factors would build—must be clarified and under-

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scored.8 In addition, Lauer’s assertions about messianism and mysticism must take into account medieval precedents, regional differences, and variations in scale and influence. For example, there is much debate about the impact of Lurianic Kabbalah, a mystical movement based on the teachings of R. Isaac Luria of Safed (d. 1572), upon the masses. Even if its rites were disseminated, this elite teaching differs from the more global messianic frenzy surrounding Sabbatai Zevi in 1666, which in turn differs in scale from the smaller messianic movement led by David Reuveni and Shlomo Molkho earlier in the sixteenth century.9 When applying a broad model of the power of religion in history such as confessionalization, extreme care must be taken to preserve critical details and distinctions.10 In addition, one must be precise in pointing to parallels between Jews and Anabaptists. While Driedger stresses their commonalities as “two communities of religious minorities who were partially excluded from early modern European society,” it is critical to recall that like their non-radical counterparts—and unlike the Jewish minority—Anabaptists were born of the Reformation. Parallels between Anabaptists and members of other confessions, all struggling with the same issues, are therefore not surprising.11 In contradistinction, though impacted by the Reformation, the Jews did not participate in it. Despite the fact that Jews did not undergo a parallel confessional process, many historians have erred in the opposite direction by casting the study of Jews completely aside when analyzing the framework of confessionalization. Schilling, for example, claims: “Beyond the Christian confessions vital Jewish communities existed in many European countries, though they, too, were isolated and deprived of any chance to influence the larger European societies of this era.”12 This depiction of Jewish communities and their place within general early modern history flies in the face of current Jewish historiography and is not supported by archival data. Physical boundaries or residential isolation were by no means the standard across Europe. The Jews of eastern Europe and those residing in most of the Holy Roman Empire lived side by side with their Christian neighbors and were neither sequestered nor isolated.13 Ghettos were the pattern only in Italian cities and in three exceptional cases in the empire: Frankfurt, Worms, and Prague. Moreover, current research on life in the ghettos demonstrates that these were not closed communities. Indeed, Christians entered the ghettos daily, and many reverberations of Italian culture, such as Baroque music and rhetorical sermons, could be found within the ghetto walls.14 A new assessment of confessionalization and its relationship to Jews is thus necessary. The relevance of confessionalization for the Jews cannot be ascertained through applying and altering the paradigm to fit the Jewish experience. However, the fact that Jews did not undergo this process as their Christian neighbors did does not mean that they were unaffected by the phenomenon. My contention is that it is through an examination of the concrete interactions between Jews and their Christian neighbors during the period in question that we may

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assess the relevance of confessionalization for the Jews and its impact upon them. In addition, an analysis of Jewish-Christian relations offers a lens through which confessionalization can be more fully comprehended. By exploring the attitudes of confessionalized Christians toward one minority, the Jews, nuances in interconfessional dynamics and policies emerge. Indeed, the methodological approach of this essay, which looks at tangible relationships in a specific location, follows the approach of scholars who have debated the applicability of the confessionalization paradigm. For example, Marc Forster has challenged the confessionalization thesis by demonstrating that piety often stemmed from the people and that confessional identity was not always cultivated from the top down.15 Amy Leonard’s work further highlights that magistrates often failed in their attempts to confessionalize local residents.16 Both of these scholars expand our view of religious life in the early modern period beyond the confines of the confessionalization thesis by consulting with source materials that allow the historian to glimpse daily realities, rather than what authorities wished daily realities would be. Given the conclusions of Leonard’s work in particular, which like this essay, deal with Strasbourg, I will discuss magisterial attempts at confession building, rather than confessionalization, so as not to adopt all of the assumptions inherent in the confessionalization paradigm. As was the case in most other German cities, Jewish-Christian relations in Strasbourg were not relations between members of two faiths residing in the same city. Like other cities in the Holy Roman Empire, Strasbourg had expelled its Jews multiple times, with a final expulsion in 1391.17 Indeed, the Jews of the empire were expelled from most cities during the fourteenth through the early sixteenth centuries. Thus, by the beginning of the Reformation, most cities of the empire did not contain Jewish populations. Given that the Reformation began as a primarily urban event, it is important to note, as Tom Brady has, that any social history of the Jews in the Holy Roman Empire must approach the subject of the Reformation and the Jews from a starting point that recognizes that the major areas of Jewish settlement did not much overlap with the heartland of the Lutheran Reformation.18 Indeed, Jews had been banned from Strasbourg for almost one hundred and fifty years when Strasbourg’s magistrates abolished the Mass in 1529. The adoption of the Tetrapolitan Confession, the subsequent decision to adopt the Augsburg Confession as well, the Smalkaldic War, the accommodation of Catholicism during the Interim, and the city’s eventual embrace of Lutheranism all transpired without any Jewish presence in the city.19 Nevertheless, despite the ongoing prohibition on residence that continued until 1791, Jews were present in the city on a daily basis. While many Jews throughout the empire migrated to eastern Europe and to Italy, some Jews opted to remain, moving outside the cities to the towns and villages in the Alsatian countryside. These Jews entered the city for economic reasons. This phenomenon was not exclusive to Alsace and Strasbourg but occurred in other

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regions, including Thuringia, Fürth, Swabia, and the Markgrafschaft Burgau.20 Once inside these cities, Jews traded with local Christians, selling wine, animals, and food, and also engaged in money lending. The daily Jewish presence in the city left its traces in Strasbourg’s magisterial policies, both official and unofficial, as well as in archival correspondence and court cases. Thus, we can outline the evolution of policies governing Jewish-Christian relations, which indicate that there was a shift in policy during the height of confessionalization. The first part of this essay deals with this shift. In the second part I will compare how Jews were treated and perceived with how Strasbourg and its magistrates dealt with the multiple confessions living within its walls, identifying parallels and directions for future research that emerge from such a comparison with the Jews.

The Impact of Confessionalization At the outset of this inquiry, it is critical to note that the fact that Jews did not reside within city walls generates an important distinction between laws regulating cross-confessional contacts and laws regulating Jewish-Christian contacts. By the mid sixteenth century, when the process of confessionalization began to unfold, Strasbourg’s population included Lutherans, Calvinists, and Catholics. Even Anabaptists, Schwenkfeldians, and members of other radical sects resided in the city. In contrast, although Jews were a daily presence in the city, there was no officially sanctioned or demarcated Jewish space within the city—no Jewish neighborhood, homes, or synagogues. Therefore, laws designed to regulate proper space and behaviors for various religious groups differed markedly in the case of the Christian confessions and sects and the case of the Jews. Despite this critical distinction, the fact that Jewish-Christian relations were a part of the overall magisterial program for social discipline is demonstrated clearly in a Polizeiordnung from 1628.21 The Polizeiordnung comprises policy for the daily economic and religious lives of the city’s residents, as well as rulings regulating the behaviors of the poor, of foreigners, and of Jews. Based heavily on previous legislation such as the Wittenberg Concord of 1598, this ordinance prescribes specific behaviors for residents of the city of Strasbourg, including details dictating marriage practices, the taking of the sacraments, church attendance, baptism, and the selection of godparents. Parents are reminded to educate their children by sending them to church, and residents are reminded that Sundays and holidays are holy, so that work is to be avoided. The ordinance restricts gambling in private homes on Sundays and holidays and seeks to prevent residents of the city from buying unnecessary goods on these days.22 The ordinance also forbids attending “fremde Kirchen,” referring to previous mandates issued in various years between 1540 and 1605 that prohibited the resi-

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dents of Strasbourg from attending services in a foreign church. Recognizing that Strasbourg’s population comprised members of “not-included religions”—presumably Catholicism and Calvinism—as well as “the secret sects of Anabaptists, Schwenckfeldians, Wigelians, and other radicals,” the police order decrees that attendance at any of these services would be a punishable offense. Some of the magisterial reasoning is made clear from the text, which discusses the “errors” of the forbidden religions, as well as their “evil customs.”23 These examples demonstrate how religious doctrines were combined with magisterial legislative power to construct, via law and discipline, a standardized and proper society. Naturally, the section concerning the Jews does not and could not possibly echo these specific regulations. While Jews were in the city on a daily basis, they did not reside within city walls, nor were they living under the jurisdiction of Strasbourg. Jewish rituals or life cycle events were not celebrated in this Christian space. In places where Jews did reside, such as the lands of the archbishop of Strasbourg, one of the largest landowners in Alsace, there were laws regulating Jewish ceremonies such as funerals and circumcisions.24 Because of their residential policy, these issues were irrelevant to Strasbourg’s magistrates, and as we might expect, magisterial laws concerning Jews were of an economic nature. The Polizeiordnung reiterates that Jews may not reside in city limits, nor may they obtain safe conducts in order to enter the city. The promulgation continues to instruct that Jews may not trade, nor buy and sell goods, food, or horses, nor lend money to Christians. This ban was extensive, as it barred Jews from conducting any economic transactions with residents of Strasbourg and even with any “foreigners” who had entered Strasbourg’s area of jurisdiction. Finally, the ban invalidated all previous contracts between Jews and Christians, annulling all debts that were owed to the Jews.25 More interesting than the content of the policies governing Jewish-Christian economics in the city, however, is the language the Polizeiordnung uses to describe the rationale motivating these policies: As is also apparent from the old chronicles and history books, what sudden, dangerous and bloodthirsty practices, attacks, and evil has been done to this city by the Jews and those who belong to them.26

Explaining that these types of activities had gone on throughout time, the text continues to point to some of the contemporary problems with the Jews, which led to poverty among Christians: Until this day, then, they, the Jews proceed with their deceitful, evidently profitable, usurious and self-interested contracts and dealings in such a way—as they have already done for years [and as was] first hinted to through their great misdeeds—that thereby, they in many different ways, encumber Christians to lose their blessed God, and …

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ruin our means and bring [us] to bitter poverty. … Aside from all that, they are open and stated enemies of our only Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ and all that is known in his holy name. They are not easy to tolerate in Christian communities; on the contrary, as much as it is possible [one should] report them, shun them and when possible, show them the way and completely get rid of them.

At first glance, these references to Jews seem like traditional medieval stereotypes; indeed, the authors of the Polizeiordnung are conscious of this fact, citing “the old chronicles and history books.” However, familiar though these stereotypes and images of the Jew may be, this text both constitutes a linguistic departure and reflects an evolution in magisterial policy toward the Jews. Compare the language of the Polizeiordnung to the first law enacting Jewish policy during the Reformation period in Strasbourg, dated 16 March 1530: We, Bernhart Wurmbser the Knight, the Mayor and Council of Straßburg, declare: Since we, through much experience and inquiries have learned how many of our burghers, subjects, and those who belong to us, in the city and in the rural areas, have become troubled through borrowing from the Jews, and the ensuing usury, such that a few desert their wives, children, and their good ways, and come to poverty. … Hereupon, we ask each and every of our burghers, subjects and those who belong to us in the city and in rural areas, that from here on, they borrow or receive nothing, whether a little or a lot, from any Jew.27

The text of the law refrains from the use of medieval stereotypes and instead highlights magisterial concerns about poverty, families, and orphans. These concerns are not surprising, given that it was at this time that city magistrates took over aspects of social welfare that had previously fallen under the mandate of the church.28 Indeed, harsh language about the Jews is absent in both laws governing Jewish-Christian economics that were passed in the first half of the sixteenth century. Harsh negative imagery does not appear until 1616, when the law refers to the Jews as “greedy, cheating, usurious, and self-benefiting in all of their dealings.”29 This is followed by the language of the 1628 Polizeiordnung.30 I would argue that the shift of language that we see in the laws from 1616 and 1628 mirrors a shift in policy that is discernible from about 1570 onward. In the period before 1570, whereas magisterial law mandated that every burgher or subject of the city “borrow or receive nothing, whether a little or a lot, from any Jew,” the archives are replete with court cases and correspondence detailing Jewish commerce in the city; after 1570, these cases virtually disappear.31 Moreover, these pre-1570 transactions were not conducted without magisterial knowledge. On the contrary, some of the records indicate that members of the city council were themselves involved in this “forbidden” commerce with Jews.32 Furthermore, drafts and a final version of a contract, referred to as a “Vertrag,” between local rural Jews and Strasbourg’s magistrates have been preserved in the city archives, documenting the fact that the magistrates tacitly permitted these

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economic contacts as long as litigation was brought to the municipal, rather than the imperial court.33 Two economic factors led to the formation of this contract between Jews and the residents of Strasbourg. First, local Jews needed to earn a living, and second, archival data show that their money lending services were indispensable to those Christians seeking large loans as well as to those seeking petty cash.34 These needs, particularly those of Christian subjects, impelled the magistrates to permit Jewish commerce and to develop a framework for economic transactions. The terms of the contract, which allowed the magistrates jurisdiction and control over JewishChristian encounters, addressed their concerns of regulating poverty and family abandonment as well as any concerns they had about imperial impingement on their rights. Thus, the contract enabled the magistrates to balance a myriad of concerns, providing cash for their residents while maintaining city privilege and proper social order. Municipal court cases and correspondence between Jews and the magistrates indicate that the contract was effective and enforced in the Jewish community under threat of excommunication.35 However, there is a sharp decline in magisterial court cases beginning in 1570, with only two cases out of thirty-five occurring after 1570, one from 1592 to 1594, and one in 1610.36 The lack of court cases appearing before the magistrates does not indicate the cessation of such trade and lending. Indeed, money lending logbooks, imperial court cases, and even legislation coming out of Strasbourg’s magistracy indicate that such transactions between Jews and Christians continued after 1570.37 Rather, what accounts for the post-1570 decline in court cases seems to be the magistrates’ abandonment of the contract as the policy governing Jewish commerce, and their subsequent attempt to implement laws prohibiting or limiting Jewish transactions. Appearing before a magisterial court had been a part of the contract; without it, there was no impetus for Jews to continue to have matters adjudicated in a municipal venue. Indeed, since the suspension of the contract led to a magisterial ban on Jewish commerce, appearing before the magisterial court in an attempt to adjudicate forbidden commerce would be illogical. Archival correspondence offers further evidence of a shift in magisterial policy. The law promulgated on 19 April 1570 prohibited any and all Jewish uses of the city of Strasbourg and areas under its jurisdiction. Whereas after the previous promulgations restricting and prohibiting Jewish commerce, there is no record of any Jewish response, this law sparked protest. During 1571 and 1572, the Jews petitioned both the magistrates and the Emperor Maximillian II (who wrote to the magistrates on the Jews’ behalf ), beseeching them to reopen the city.38 I have not found any specific impetus for this magisterial change in policy, such as a Jewish violation of the contract that might cause its rescission. However, given that the shift in policy is accompanied by a shift in language and imagery, and

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considering the context of Strasbourg in the 1570s, the paradigm of confessionalization may hold the key to understanding this evolution. By the mid to late sixteenth century in Strasbourg, a shift toward adopting Lutheran orthodoxy was well underway. According to Lorna Jane Abray, by midcentury, the first generation of reformers was replaced by a new generation of men of “limited vision and stifling orthodoxy.”39 During this era, when the process of confession building was under way, the city magistrates and clerics sought to establish a unified Lutheran identity through the enactment of policy and the implementation of social discipline. Abray explains that the new generation of leaders, who came of age after the onset of reform, was unfamiliar with anticlericalism and thus trusted in its religious leaders. Therefore clerics gained control, and steps were taken to confessionalize Strasbourg, a process that culminated with the Church Ordinance and Wittenberg Concord signed in 1598. The Polizeiordnung from 1628 illustrates how Strasbourg’s magistrates enacted this policy. The various rules contained therein were designed to compel Strasbourg’s residents to comport themselves in a manner befitting Lutheran subjects of the city. Baptisms, marriages, the observance of Sundays and holidays, and the instruction of children in church-run institutions were mandated. Church attendance was to be regulated in several ways. The laws commanded that one attend church generally, as well as during life cycle events, and they also urged the taking of sacraments and attendance at sermons. By prohibiting other activities on Sundays and holidays, attendance at church was further promoted. Finally, the laws asserted that one was to attend the proper and correct services, namely those of the Lutheran majority. Other confessions and sects were depicted as evil and misled, and attendance at their services was prohibited. Similar mandates, which were “intended to stifle religious argument” with members of other confessions, further supported this attempt to regulate religious life and identity, a critical part of the process of confession building.40 And what of the section dealing with the Jews? The harsh language and policies exhibited in the Polizeiordnung were an attempt to draw tighter boundaries between Jews and Christians as a parallel to the process of confession building. As Lutherans, Calvinists, and Catholics sought to implement their respective confessions and to establish good practices and social unity among their adherents, Strasbourg’s magistrates also sought to highlight the firm boundaries setting good Lutherans apart from Jews. Just as the practices of other confessions were in “error” and represented “evil customs,” so, too, were the Jews the “enemies of Christ,” permanently outside the Christian community. Both the laws and the traditional stereotyped image of the Jews marked the Jew as an outsider, someone more appropriately kept at the margins of Christian society. The confession building mentality, then, led to greater distance not only between Christian confessions but also between Christians and Jews.

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The tactics of demarcating boundaries and of exclusion had been employed in medieval times. Historians have argued that accusations against the Jews frequently reflected internal Christian angst. Medieval and even early modern Jewish communities often, in the Christian perspective, served as the Christians’ mirror image, reflecting that which was not Catholic or Christian.41 Gavin Langmuir argues that Christian theological developments of the thirteenth century, such as the belief in transubstantiation, led to uncertainty among Christians. Their reaction, as Miri Rubin and Langmuir have shown, was to create miracle stories of bleeding hosts, in which the Jews, playing the role of Christ-killers, reenacted their crime by desecrating the Eucharist.42 The need to define the Jew as other was perhaps still more potent during the Reformation. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Christians faced an even deeper existential crisis, and the very definition of what it meant to be a good Christian was in question. One thing was certain: the Jew was definitely not part of that category, and was, perhaps, its antithesis.43 Therefore, as part of their program to create a proper Lutheran city, Strasbourg’s magistrates sought to curtail the contact that city residents had with Jews, much as they sought to implement boundaries between Lutherans and members of other confessions. Furthermore, alongside the policy change the magistrates employed language replete with familiar stereotypes and imagery that, while bearing no legal significance, was certain to evoke an emotional response of revulsion and hatred, thereby reinforcing the boundaries that they sought to erect. Thus, internal Christian struggles and the process of confession building did impact the Jew. While commerce between Jew and Christian continued, the atmosphere of ease in which these transactions had occurred in the city gradually dissipated. Whereas before 1570 a Jew could transact freely in the city and would appear before the magistrates when a transaction had gone awry, beginning in 1616, the enforced policy mandated that he be escorted through the city during his stay to ensure that his business was both proper and limited. Beginning in 1639, Thurnhüttern, or gatekeepers, searched the Jews at the entrance to the city. This process continued through the eighteenth century.44 In Strasbourg, at least according to magisterial policy, confession building mandated the increasing divide between Jews and Christians, not only between Christians of different confessions.

Parallels Given that the Reformation wreaked havoc on what had been a largely monolithic Latin Christendom, spurring the emergence of different Christian denominations, it is not surprising that the Jewish experience can shed light on confessionalization and confession building from a comparative perspective. For centuries, the Jews had been the minority in the Christian world. The onset of the Refor-

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mation and the ensuing process of confessionalization ultimately allowed for the coexistence (though not always a peaceful one) of various Christian groups living side by side in Western Europe. Thus, the structural similarities between JewishChristian relations and between the self-definition and exclusion that were part of the confession building process make a comparison of the two rich in insights. Given that the program of social discipline mandated in the Polizeiordnung comprises regulations about both, the comparison of Jews and members of other confessions seems all the more significant. What we have seen about Jewish-Christian relations in Reformation Strasbourg raises questions about the implementation of confessional policy as well. In the case of the Jews, laws did not dictate reality—before 1570, even the magistrates disregarded their own laws. But once confessionalization was underway these laws were contravened by residents of the city in violation of the magistrates’ preferences. This same question can be asked of laws about different confessions. While policies separating members of one confession from members of another were enacted, how far-reaching were these on a daily basis? To what extent was confessionalization taking place on the ground?45 An additional question arises from an analysis of Jewish-Christian policy as enacted in the 1628 Polizeiordnung and in other laws as well. Despite the vituperative rhetoric condemning Jews as Christ-killers in the Polizeiordnung, an exception was made to allow the Jews to trade in food and horses. This was presumably allowed due to the needs of the residents of Strasbourg, affected as they were in 1628 by the Thirty Years’ War. Given the devaluation of coin and the ensuing inflation, and the need for horses, both horses and food were commodities that were to be obtained at any cost. Thus, even after confession building began, the practical dimension of magisterial decision making, manifest so clearly in the formation of a contract with the Jews in 1534, persisted. Can the same be said of interconfessional relations? These comparisons raise serious questions for future research. Yet, because the Reformation in Strasbourg has been documented extensively, particularly in the period before 1590, some preliminary suggestions can be offered here. Amy Leonard’s work on Strasbourg demonstrates that during the sixteenth century, the magistrates left local convents open as types of finishing schools, in order to ensure that erstwhile unmarried women had a place in the city. Dealing with this same earlier period, John Derksen has argued that due to their political connections and wealth, Schwenckfeldians often received better treatment from the magistrates than other religious radicals in Strasbourg.46 Abray also explains that different practical factors were at work in determining magisterial policy toward different confessions and sects in Strasbourg. A heritage of honor and of the belief in freedom of conscience (ideology), combined with the desire to maintain civic peace (practicality), led the magistrates to generally permit individuals to observe as they chose, even if that choice was one that the city found to be in error from

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a doctrinal perspective.47 Moreover, larger political needs, based on Strasbourg’s geographic location at the border of Catholic and Calvinist lands, encouraged the magistrates to permit the practice of various confessions, while condemning their content. Members of different confessions remained in the city of Strasbourg, even as confessional lines such as those delineated in the Polizeiordnung were drawn. We may assume that these Calvinists and Catholics interacted with their Lutheran neighbors, much as the Christians interacted with the Jews. In addition, as was the case with the Jews, the magistrates, despite their desires to create a unified Lutheran society, allowed realpolitik to influence the scope of their decisions. In both cases, pragmatic concerns, be they economic, historical, or political, led to what might be construed as an inclusive policy, whereas negative policies were still legislated in order to maintain Strasbourg’s distinct identity as a Lutheran city. It is critical, however, to note that although at times pragmatism overrode identity politics among both the city residents and the magistrates, these day-today interactions, whether between Jews and Christians or between Christians of various confessions, did not erode the need for distinctions between groups set up in literature, print, sermons, and policy. While modifications to and violations of policy occurred, these real-life encounters could not eliminate boundaries or the perceived need for them. The comparative data about local Jews facilitate the historian’s recognition of the need for nuance in applying the confessionalization paradigm, realizing that while programs for social discipline were implemented, these could be modified and, of course, honored in the breach. But though these laws were ignored by Jews, residents of the city, and at times even by the magistrates, historians must not overlook their significance. The enactment of these laws was not without purpose; their promulgation, though not always effective in regulating economic transactions, did help create and maintain boundaries between Jews and Christians. Based on preliminary evidence, the same seems to have been the case in relations between members of different confessions. We have seen that the Polizeiordnung and other similar laws sought to reinforce Lutheran practices throughout the city, and we can question the extent to which these ideologies were applied. Political and traditional concerns led the magistrates to practices differing from what clerics had preached, yet this did not halt the importance of maintaining and continuously reenacting the legislation and condemnation of various nonLutheran confessions. Though the magistrates, as Abray suggests, were forced to contend with the conflicting ideals of their religion versus their belief in freedom of conscience, it would be a mistake to assert that the rhetoric condemning other sects was merely pro forma. It, too, served a purpose, highlighting the important distinctions between true Christians and those who followed erroneous sects and confessions.

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Notes 1. There is an extensive literature on confessionalization. As an introduction see R. Po-Chia Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation (London, 1989); Wolfgang Reinhard, “Zwang zur Konfessionalisierung: Prologomena zu einer Theorie des konfessionellen zeitalters,” Zeitschrift fur Historische Forschung 10 (1983): 257–277; Wolfgang Reinhard, “Reformation, Counter Reformation and the Early Modern State: A Reassessment,” Catholic Historical Review 75 (1989): 383–404; Heinz Schilling, “Confessionalization in the Empire: Religious and Societal Change in Germany Between 1555 and 1620,” in Religion, Political Culture and the Emergence of Early Modern Society, ed. Heinz Schilling (Leiden, 1992), 205–245. 2. Heinz Schilling, “Confessional Europe,” in Handbook of European History 1400–1600, vol. 2, ed. Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy (Leiden, 1995), 642–643. 3. Gerhard Lauer, “Die Konfessionalisierung des Judentums: Zum Prozeß der religiösen Ausdifferenzierung im Judentum am Übergang zur Neuzeit,” in Interkonfessionalität – Transkonfessionalität – binnenkonfessionelle Pluralität, ed. Kaspar von Greyerz, Manfred JakuboskiTiessen, Thomas Kaufmann, and Hartmut Lehmann (Gütersloh, 2003), 250–283. Another attempt at applying the confessionalization paradigm to Jewish history can be seen in Dean Philip Bell, “Confessionalization and Jews in Early Modern Germany: A Jewish Perspective,” in Politics and Reformations, Histories and Reformations, ed. Christopher Ocker and Thomas A. Brady (Leiden, 2007), 345–372. 4. Michael Driedger, “The Intensification of Religious Commitment,” in Jews, Judaism and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany, ed. Dean P. Bell and Stephen G. Burnett (Leiden, 2006), 269–299. I am grateful to Stephen Burnett for informing me of this essay before its publication. 5. Lauer, “Die Konfessionalisierung des Judentums,” 261–262. 6. On Hirsch, see David Ellenson, “German Jewish Orthodoxy: Tradition in the Context of Culture,” in The Uses of Tradition, ed. Jack Wertheimer (Cambridge, 1992), 5–22. 7. See, for example, the writings of R. Hayyim ben Bezalel of Friedberg, whose opposition to the commentary of R. Moses Isserless on the Shulhan ‘Arukh is found in the introduction to his Vikuah Mayim Hayyim. The excerpt is printed in Chaim Tchernowitz, Toldot ha-Poskim, vol. 3 (New York, 1947). Also see Elchanan Reiner, “The Ashkenazi Elite at the Beginning of the Modern Era: Manuscript Versus Printed Book,” Polin 10 (1987): 85–98; Eric Zimmer, Fiery Embers of the Scholars (in Hebrew) (Be’er Sheva, 1999). 8. Joseph Davis, “The Reception of the Shulhan ‘Arukh and the Formation of Ashkenazic Jewish Identity,” AJS Review 26, no. 2 (2002): 251–276. 9. For a summary of the debate about Lurianic Kabbalah, see Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, “Continuity and Revision in the Study of Kabbalah,” AJS Review 16, nos. 1–2 (1991): 161–192. On Sabbatai Zevi, see Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Zevi, trans. R. J. Zvi Werblowski (Princeton, 1973). For a discussion of the different messianic and mystical movements, their precedents, and interrelations, see Moshe Idel, Messianic Mystics (New Haven, 1998). 10. While Lauer considers Sabbateanism to be one heterodox movement among several, and points to the development of orthodoxy as early as the mid sixteenth century, contemporary scholarship places the date of a growing need for orthodoxy after the Sabbatean movement, as a reaction to it. See Elisheva Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy (New York, 1990). Carlebach demonstrates that in the wake of Sabbateanism, rabbis sought to quash even hints of what they perceived as heresy within the community. For a recent discussion of orthodoxy in the wake of Sabbateanism, see David B. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History, (Princeton, 2010), 146–153.

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11. Driedger, “The Intensification of Religious Commitment,” 298. 12. Schilling, “Confessional Europe,” 641–642. 13. For a recent look at the Jews in early modern Poland, see Magda Teter, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era (Cambridge, 2006). 14. Robert Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy, trans. Anthony Oldcorn (Berkeley, 1994); David B. Ruderman, ed., Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (New York, 1992). A wonderful example of this can be see in the case of Sara Copia Sullam, a Jewish woman living in the Venetian ghetto during the seventeenth century, whose letters to Christians include references that indicate her high level of education in Renaissance and Christian sources. See Franz Kobler, ed., Letters of Jews Through the Ages from Biblical Times to the Middle of the Eighteenth Century, vol. 2 (London, 1952), 436–437. The influence of Baroque music on Jewish music is best exemplified by the work of Salomone de Rossi. The interactions between Jews and Christians inside the ghetto are documented by Leone Modena, a rabbi of the Venetian ghetto, as Modena reports that Christians came to hear the sermons that he preached in the ghetto. For excerpts from his sermons, published as Midbar Yehudah, see Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching 1200–1800 (New Haven, 1989), 405–411. 15. Marc Forster, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque (Cambridge, 2001). For overviews of the debates about the confessionalization paradigm, see Joel F. Harrington and Helmut Walser Smith, “Confessionalization, Community, and State Building in Germany, 1555– 1870,” Journal of Modern History 69, no. 1 (1997): 77–101; Thomas A. Brady, Jr., “Confessionalization—The Career of a Concept,” in Confessionalization in Europe, 1555–1700, ed. John M. Headley, Hans J. Hillerbrand, and Anthony J. Paplas, (Aldershot, 2004), 1–20. 16. Amy Leonard, Nails in the Wall: Catholic Nuns in Reformation Germany (Chicago, 2005). 17. For the history of Jews in Strasbourg, see Gerd Mentgen, Studien zur Geschichte der Juden im mittelalterlichen Elsass (Hanover, 1995); Élie Scheid, Histoire des Juifs d’Alsace (Paris, 1887). 18. Thomas A. Brady, Jr., “German with a Difference? The Jews of the Holy Roman Empire,” in In and Out of the Ghetto, ed. R. Po-Chia Hsia and Hartmut Lehmann (Cambridge, 1995), 292. 19. The history of the Reformation in Strasbourg has been studied extensively, making this a useful case study. See Miriam Usher Chrisman, Strasbourg and the Reform (New Haven, 1967); Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg 1520–1555 (Leiden, 1978); Brady, Protestant Politics: Jacob Sturm (1489–1553) and the German Reformation (Atlantic Heights, 1995); Lorna Jane Abray, The People’s Reformation: Magistrates, Clergy, and Commons in Strasbourg, 1500–1598 (Ithaca, 1985); James M. Kittelson, Towards an Established Church: Strasbourg from 1500 to the Dawn of the Seventeenth Century (Mainz, 2000). 20. There is much recent scholarship on rural Jewry. See, for example, Rotraud Ries, Jüdisches Leben in Niedersachsen im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Hanover, 1994); Daniel Cohen, Die Landjudenschaften in Deutschland (Jerusalem, 1996); Sabine Ullmann, Nachbarschaft und Konkurrenz (Göttingen, 1999); Stefan Rohrbacher, Die jüdische Landgemeinde im Umbruch der Zeit (Göppingen, 2000); Stefan Litt, Juden in Thüringen in der Frühen Neuzeit (1520– 1650) (Cologne, 2003); Claudia Ulbrich, Shulamit and Margarete, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Leiden, 2004); Sabine Hödl, Peter Rauscher, and Barbara Staudinger, eds., Hofjuden und Landjuden; jüdisches Leben in der Frühen Neuzeit (Berlin, 2004). 21. Der Statt Straßburg PoliceÿOrdnung, Getruckt bey Johann Carolo (Strasbourg, 1628). On social discipline in early modern Europe, see Gerhard Oestreich, Geist und Gestalt des Frühemodernen Staates (Berlin, 1969), 179–197; David Sabean, Power in the Blood (Cambridge, 1994). 22. PoliceÿOrdnung, Title I. 23. Ibid., 1628. 24. Archives Dèpartementales du Bas Rhin (hereafter ADBR) G 2621.

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29.

30.

31. 32.

33.

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PoliceÿOrdnung, Title X. Ibid. Archives Municipales de Strasbourg (hereafter AMS) III/174/21/82. Robert Jütte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1994); Thomas Max Safley, Charity and Economy in the Orphanages of Early Modern Augsburg (Atlantic Highlands, 1997). “wie gar Betrüglich, Gewinnsüchtig, Wucherlich und Eigennützig die Juden in allen ihren und Contracten und Handlungen umbgehen.” AMS R 7, 104–105; Isidore Loeb, “Les Juifs à Strasbourg depuis 1349 jusqu’à la Rèvolution,” Annuaire de La Societe des Etudes Juives 2 (Paris, 1883): 141. Two subsequent laws, enacted in 1639 and 1648, do not contain negative imagery about the Jews: AMS X, 342, AMS III/174/20/83. However, rather than reflecting a softening of the magisterial attitude toward the Jews, I believe this absence is due to the short form of the law, as evidenced by two data points. First, the 1639 law, which is a short promulgation, contains policy that is harsher than that of the early sixteenth century, as it establishes a search of all of the Jews who entered the city (discussed below). Second, a shorter version of the 1628 Polizeiordnung, only comprised of economic regulations for Jews, has also been preserved in the archives. This text, like the laws from 1639 and 1648, merely states the policy without commentary. See AMS X, 328. AMS III/174/20/82. The members of the councils who are listed as having been involved in transactions with Jews include Martin Krossweiler, Hans Hag, Assmus Krug, and Sebastian Schach. For their involvement in the city council, see Jacques Hatt, Liste des Membres du Grande Sénat de Strasbourg: des stettmeistres, des ammeistres, des conseils des XXI, XIII et des XV, du XIIIe siècle à 1789 (Strasbourg, 1963). AMS III/174/21/96–97, 100–101; AMS III/174/22; AMS III/174/25; ADBR C78. A critical edition has been prepared by Hava Fraenkel-Goldschmidt: Joseph of Rosheim: Historical Writings (Hebrew), ed. Hava Fraenkel-Goldschmidt (Jerusalem, 1996), 364–370. Details of the contract include the provision that Jews were to bring litigation only to the local magisterial court and would refrain from bringing cases to the Reichskammergericht at Rotweil. The Jews also agree that if, unbeknownst to them, a stolen item were brought to them as a pawn, the item would be returned and the Jew would forgo compensation. Details on money lending can be found in archival logbooks. See AMS VI/168/6; AMS VI/99/1; AMS VI/13/10. AMS III/174/21; AMS III/174/38/64–68; AMS III/174/38/41. AMS III/174/38/154–156; AMS VI/392/1. The law from 1616 annuls all contracts that had taken place since that date of 19 April 1570, thereby indicating that such commercial activity continued despite the 1570 enactment. AMS R 7, 104–105. AMS III/174/33/1–2; AMS III/174/38/142–143, 147–148; AMS III/174/33/3. Abray, People’s Reformation, 12–13. For a discussion of this time period, see 142–162. Lorna Jane Abray, “Confession, Conscience, and Honour: The Limits of Magisterial Tolerance in Sixteenth-Century Strassburg,” in Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation, ed. Ole Peter Grell and Robert Scribner (New York, 1996), 101. For an overview of this position, see Robert Bonfil, “Aliens Within: The Jews and AntiJudaism,” in Brady et al., Handbook of European History, vol. 1, 265–266. Gavin Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Anti-Semitism (Berkeley, 1990); Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (New Haven, 1999). For example, comparisons between Jews and papists recur in Luther’s treatises. Similarly, Catholic polemics against the Jews often contained anti-Protestant messages. See Martin

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Luther, On the Jews and Their Lies, trans. Martin H. Bertram, in Luther’s Works, vol. 47: The Christian in Society IV, ed. Franklin Sherman (Philadelphia, 1971); Teter, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland, 122–141. AMS X, 342; Der Statt Straßburg Thurnhütter Ordnung (Strasbourg, 1659); Der Statt Straßburg revidierte Thurnhütter Ordnung (Strasbourg, 1711). For the period before confessionalization, the fluidity between different groups has been demonstrated in Augsburg by Michele Zelinksy Hanson, Religious Identity in an Early Reformation Community: Augsburg, 1517–1555 (Leiden, 2009). John Derksen, From Radicals to Survivors (Utrecht, 2002), 169f. Abray, “Confession, Conscience, and Honor,” 97–98.

Chapter 8

MARY “TRIUMPHANT OVER DEMONS AND ALSO HERETICS” Religious Symbols and Confessional Uniformity in Catholic Germany

d Bridget Heal

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eligious rituals—in particular those associated with the Virgin Mary and with the Eucharist—have rightly been identified as one of the ways in which early modern Catholic elites sought to manage religious conflict and diversity in Central Europe. Anna Coreth’s Pietas Austriaca: österreichische Frömmigkeit im Barock explored the devotion that members of the house of Habsburg showed to Mary, as well as to the cross of Christ and to the Eucharist. Coreth drew particular attention to the Habsburgs’ dedication to the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, brought to Central Europe, she suggested, from Spain by Emperors Charles V and Ferdinand I.1 She emphasized the political significance that Austria’s ruling dynasty ascribed to Mary’s cult: Ferdinand II pledged in the Holy House of Loreto and at the Styrian shrine of Mariazell to expel sectarian preachers from his territories.2 Ferdinand II also made Mary generalissima of his armies during the Thirty Years’ War, and Ferdinand III placed his whole territory “under the protection, care and patronage of the most glorious virgin Mary” and erected Vienna’s Mariensäule (Marian column) in 1647 to commemorate the city’s deliverance from the Swedes. As William Bowman argues in his preface to the recent translation of Coreth’s book, the Habsburgs “genuinely believed in the political and even military efficacy of performing these acts.” Moreover, under their

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patronage, and that of the provincial aristocrats who sought to imitate them, popular Marian piety flourished; as Coreth suggested, “the attitude of the ruling house … set the tone in all areas.”3 In Bavaria, Germany’s most effective Catholic state, a similar pattern emerged. Wittelsbach Marian piety had a long history, dating back to at least the reign of Albrecht V (1550–1579), but it reached its apogee under Duke (from 1623 Elector) Maximilian I, who had a deep personal devotion to Mary and who commended his territories to her protection. Maximilian’s Hofkapelle in the Munich Residenz, for example, was dedicated to Maria Immaculata and bore an inscription: “For the Virgin and Queen of the world… conceived through a miracle in order to conceive through a miracle, the most abject Duke Maximilian has built this chapel” (1601).4 Maximilian was particularly devoted to the Virgin of Altötting. He gave costly gifts to her shrine, and in secret he dedicated himself to her, signing with his own blood a pledge that was sealed and hidden in her silver tabernacle. After Maximilian’s death his heart and that of his first wife were placed side by side in the chapel at Altötting, a custom subsequently observed by all dukes and kings of Bavaria. For Maximilian, Marian devotion also undoubtedly served a political function. Maximilian promoted Mary as patron of Bavaria and as champion of the Catholic cause. In 1615/16, for example, a statue of Mary as the Apocalyptic Woman by the artist Hans Krumper was placed on the exterior of the Munich Residenz. Her plinth bears the title accorded to her by the duke, “Patrona Boiariae,”5 and in a cartouche placed above her is the beginning of an antiphon, “Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, sub quo secure laetique degimus” (“we take refuge under your protection, under which we live safely and joyful”).6 When possible, Maximilian chose to undertake important political actions on Marian feast days. His troops set out to occupy the bi-confessional city of Donauwörth, for example, on 8 December 1607, the feast day of Mary’s conception.7 During the Thirty Years’ War the name of Mary was the battle cry of the Bavarian army, and Maximilian’s soldiers fought under banners depicting the Virgin. In 1620 the first great Bavarian-Imperial victory at the Battle of the White Mountain was ascribed to Mary’s intercession, and to express their gratitude Maximilian and Emperor Ferdinand II subsequently had a chapel dedicated to the Virgin built on the site of the engagement.8 Within Bavaria the dissemination of Marian piety was linked to the assertion of princely authority; Maximilian’s courtiers were expected to demonstrate their Catholic credentials by joining the Jesuits’ Marian sodalities. All of his subjects had to own a rosary, and whenever the Ave bell was rung, they were expected to kneel down and pray, wherever they were. This type of Marian piety, which invoked Mary as a symbol of Catholic triumph and celebrated the immaculate Virgin as the embodiment of the unblemished true church, was fostered, as Coreth observed, by the Jesuits.9 Some elements of Habsburg Marianism were undoubtedly inspired by the devotions of

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their Wittelsbach neighbors. Ferdinand II’s military banners showing the Virgin and Ferdinand III’s Mariensäule, for example, copied Bavarian examples. Ultimately, however, the common source for the Marian piety of both ruling houses was the Society of Jesus. Members of the order fostered Marian piety wherever they went, defending key Marian doctrines (in particular that of the Immaculate Conception), founding Marian sodalities, promoting Marian pilgrimage cults, distributing Marian images, and staging Marian dramas, such as the one performed in Dillingen an der Donau in 1617 entitled Deiparae Virginis triumphus, which lasted for three days and involved a cast of over 300 people.10 The Jesuits’ Marian piety was highly polemical. Peter Canisius, whose missionary work earned him the title of Germany’s “second apostle,” described her as “conqueror of devils and triumphant over demons and also heretics.”11 While such a designation was not new—we have only to think, for example, of the rosary’s legendary role in St. Dominic’s thirteenth-century struggle against the Albigensians—it gained much greater significance in the aftermath of the Reformation. In his 1577 text De Maria Virgine incomparabili, Canisius wrote that Catholics should “revere and imitate the most sacred Virgin at home and in public,” in defiance of those who abused “the most excellent mother of the Lord” and fabricated lies about her.12 Under the Jesuits’ tutelage Marian piety was politicized as demonstratio catholica, as a way of delineating Catholic belief and practice. Like the cult of the Virgin, the cult of the Eucharist was a quintessential element of Counter-Reformation devotion. With the doctrine of transubstantiation and the worship of the Eucharist, especially through the feast of Corpus Christi, affirmed at Trent in defiance of Protestant criticism, it is not surprising that the veneration of the body of Christ became a badge of Catholic identity.13 This cult, like the Marian cult, was promoted by the Jesuits and comprised, as Coreth argued, a central element of the pietas Austriaca. Emperor Ferdinand II, for example, ordered members of his court to participate in Corpus Christi processions and prescribed the public veneration of the Eucharistic sacrament in times of danger. Like the cult of the Virgin, the cult of the Eucharist became a symbol of dynastic authority. Coreth wrote of the Habsburgs’ “faith in the bread of Christ as a source of strength for their imperial dominion,”14 and in Bavaria the celebration of Corpus Christi was actively promoted by the Wittelsbach dukes. By 1582, participation in Munich’s Corpus Christi procession was compulsory for state officials, and in that year a total of 3,082 clergy and lay people joined in the elaborate spectacle.15 The Wittelsbachs saw such rituals as an effective way of securing the spiritual welfare of their territories. They also, however, provided an opportunity for the princes to strengthen their ideological and political authority.16 On the basis of such evidence, ritual and piety seem to fit well with the confessionalization paradigm formulated by Heinz Schilling and Wolfgang Reinhard.17 Marian devotion has been described by Reinhard as a rite of differentiation, an Unterscheidungsritus that set Catholics apart from their Protestant neighbors.18

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Marian and Eucharistic devotion can be understood as key elements of the reform program promulgated by Central Europe’s ruling elites and as parts of the process by which these elites sought to create a confessionally uniform and disciplined “society of subjects.”19 Yet we have only to turn to David Luebke’s 1997 article “Naïve Monarchism and Marian Veneration in Early Modern Germany” to realize that the significance of such powerful symbols was not easily circumscribed. Luebke’s evidence demonstrates that the state cult of the Immaculata could be manipulated by troublemaking peasants, and “exposed to forms of popular cultural appropriation that ran at political cross-purposes to its original intent.”20 In 1738 a group of peasants from Charles VI’s Outer Austrian territories exploited what Luebke describes as the “seditious potential of Marian veneration” in their quest to persuade the Habsburg emperor to repeal a manumission treaty concluded with their local Benedictine abbey. As recent work on Catholic identity has demonstrated, the dissemination of innovations in ritual and piety beyond the court and its immediate environs depended upon the active engagement of local populations.21 A top-down model, which is what the confessionalization thesis is, cannot on its own explain the flourishing of baroque piety that occurred in Central Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Forms of Marian and Eucharistic piety might, on occasion, serve as demonstrations of political and confessional loyalty to Catholic states or monarchs, but ordinary Christians participated in religious rituals—processions, pilgrimages, confraternity life, the veneration of images—primarily because these rituals were important in their own lives. In some territories, state-sponsored ritual merged relatively seamlessly with popular expressions of piety (“voluntary religion,” in Trevor Johnson’s words22): in the southern German Imperial Free City of Augsburg, for example, where the local Catholic cult was heavily influenced by the nearby Wittelsbach court; in the Upper Palatinate, reCatholicized after 1521 by Elector Maximilian I; in Habsburg Constance; and in Styria, where there was “mass participation” in devotional practices such as Marian pilgrimage.23 In all of these areas, members of the Jesuit order served as effective mediators of religious culture. Elsewhere, however, Marian and Eucharistic ritual did not foster religious uniformity, and a pluralism of religious practice persisted. Even in predominantly Catholic areas—for example, the Free City of Cologne—religious rituals might retain a myriad of meanings. In Cologne, the landscape of Marian and Eucharistic piety was as much about local and parochial tradition as about princes’ struggle to defend and unite the true Catholic Church under “the sign of the unblemished and immaculate Virgin.”24 And the lingering attachment of some Protestant communities to Marian images and rituals demonstrates that Mary was much more than a rite of differentiation. Religious symbols, just like individual believers, could transgress confessional boundaries. The scholarly focus on confessionalization—on the parallel, state-driven development of Calvinist,

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Lutheran, and Catholic confessional identities—has tended to draw attention away from the pluralism that existed within those confessions and from the interactions that occurred between them.25 The imperial city of Augsburg was one of Germany’s most important urban centers, with a population of around 30,000. Because of its traumatic confessional history, and because of its close links with nearby Bavaria, Augsburg provided a fertile breeding ground for the type of militant Counter-Reformation piety promoted by the Wittelsbachs. Here the relationship between Marian and Eucharistic devotion and state authority was more complex than in Bavaria. Augsburg was officially bi-confessional, and until 1629 its city council was concerned with promoting religious peace, not the religious uniformity striven for by the great Catholic territorial rulers.26 Yet by the early seventeenth century, Augsburg’s Catholic elite, inspired by the Jesuits, had created a Marian cult that looked very much like that sponsored by the Wittelsbach court. And in this city where Protestants and Catholics lived side by side, Marian piety had become a litmus test of confessional allegiance. Augsburg’s situation was very particular. Its Catholic cult had been entirely destroyed during the 1530s and was restored in the aftermath of the 1548 “armed Diet” through the combined efforts of the city’s bishops, the Jesuits (in particular Peter Canisius, who served as cathedral preacher from 1559 to 1567), and members of the Fugger family. All traces of medieval Marian veneration had been wiped out during the Reformation. Feast days, processions, and confraternities had been abolished, and the city’s churches had been “cleansed” of their idolatrous Marian paintings and statues. Augsburg’s Catholic elite was, therefore, presented with a tabula rasa with regard to Mary’s cult. Some elements of pre-Reformation Marian veneration were restored—the cathedral chapter, for example, commissioned what was effectively a copy of an altarpiece by Hans Holbein the Elder that had been destroyed by iconoclasts—but by the later decades of the sixteenth century the Virgin that dominated Augsburg’s Catholic cult was the militant Virgin of the Counter-Reformation.27 Two local pilgrimage shrines testify to the distinctively Counter-Reformation flavor of Augsburg’s Marian piety. Since 1554 the Jesuits had taken pastoral responsibility for the Marian shrine at Loreto near Ancona in Italy. Individual Jesuits sought to disseminate Loreto devotion wherever they went. Canisius described it as the most important Marian pilgrimage place of his time, and Wilhelm von Gummpenberg, author of the monumental Atlas Marianus, encouraged the founding of numerous German copies of the Holy House between 1632 and his death in 1675.28 The Habsburgs were also keen promoters.29 It was Augsburg, however, that was home to one of the earliest Loreto chapels north of the Alps. Founded in 1602 by Karl Langenmantel, it housed a copy of the Madonna of Loreto that had originally belonged to Anton Fugger, and pilgrimage to it flourished, in particular during the traumatic era of the Thirty Years’ War.30

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In the same year—1602—Regina Imhof, widow of Augsburg’s Bürgermeister, obtained permission to construct a church dedicated to “Maria Hilf ” on the Lechfeld, an area of meadow just outside Augsburg. The shrine itself was, again, Italianate, modeled on the Santa Maria Rotunda in Rome.31 Its dedication also had an important historical and distinctively Counter-Reformation pedigree. In thanks for the Holy League’s victory at the Battle of Lepanto, Pope Pius V had officially added the invocation “Mary aid of Christians” to the Litany of Loreto.32 The dedication “Maria Hilf,” taken from this most commonly used Marian litany, was, therefore, an invocation of Mary’s aid against the enemies of the Catholic faith. Beneath a 1618 engraving of the Lechfeld chapel’s grace-giving image is inscribed the antiphon that had been used on the banner of the Holy League’s flagship at Lepanto: “Santa Maria Succurre Miseris” (Holy Mary help of the wretched).33 Augsburg’s chapel of “Maria Hilf ” was an early example of what became a classic Counter-Reformation dedication, the most famous example being, of course, the shrine near Passau begun in 1624. Like members of the Houses of Wittelsbach and Habsburg, the Fuggers, Augsburg’s leading Catholic family, sought to promulgate Marian piety as a means of strengthening Catholic identity. In 1590, for example, in an act that presaged Duke Maximilian I’s prescription that all his subjects must own rosaries, Octavian Secundus Fugger gave a hundred simple rosaries as gifts to the schoolchildren of Oberkirchberg.34 The Fuggers also made extensive use of visual imagery in their quest to renew Mary’s cult. Between 1584 and 1630 members of the family commissioned at least nine new Marian altarpieces for Augsburg’s Catholic churches. These altarpieces demonstrate the extent to which the Bavarian court, with its state-sponsored Marianism, functioned as a devotional and cultural lodestone for Augsburg’s Catholic elite. They were painted by artists closely associated with the court. Christoph Schwarz and Peter Candid, for example, were court painters to Duke Wilhelm V, while Peter Paul Rubens, who painted a magnificent altarpiece for Augsburg’s Heilig-Kreuz Kirche in 1627 at the behest of Ottheinrich Fugger, had worked for Duke Maximilian I. Employing the dynamism and drama characteristic of baroque art, they show Mary in a distinctly Counter-Reformation way. Without exception, they focus on Mary’s apotheosis—her Assumption and/or Coronation—and on her glory and veneration.35 Such images referred, of course, not only to the Virgin’s own exaltation but also to the triumph of the church that she embodied. Such examples could be multiplied. In Catholic Augsburg, Mary’s power and protection were publicly invoked during processions, and the Jesuits’ Marian sodalities, which constituted the vanguard of Counter-Reformation Catholicism, dominated the city’s confraternal life.36 In this Swabian city the Virgin certainly was, as the Habsburg and Wittelsbach models lead us to expect, a symbol of Catholic triumph. And Marian devotion provided, as Canisius and his fellow Jesuits wished, a visible boundary between confessions. In 1636, for example,

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Augsburg’s Catholic magistrates expelled Abraham Raiffinger, a local painter, whom they described as a “tremendous enemy of Mary” on account of his blasphemous behavior. Among other crimes, he had, on the feast day of Mary’s Assumption, bared his bottom to a local Catholic woman and demanded that she kiss him there “on account of Our Lady.”37 Augsburg’s Eucharistic piety, like its devotion to Mary, had been wiped out during the Reformation and was restored largely thanks to the combined efforts of the Jesuits and Fuggers. In 1560 only twenty people joined the city’s Corpus Christi procession,38 but during the early seventeenth century this annual event became the most elaborate regular procession in the city, involving hundreds of clergy, lay people, images, banners, and theatrical displays. In 1604 the Capuchin Ludwig Sax, aided by Markus Fugger, founded a Corpus Christi confraternity at the church of Heilig Kreuz, which had long been a focus of sacramental piety in Augsburg on account of its miraculous host, the wunderbarliches Gut.39 The section of the Ritual (published by Bishop Heinrich V von Knöringen in 1612) devoted to the commemoration of Corpus Christi provides compelling evidence of the polemical value ascribed to such piety: “Among all of the celebrations of the Catholic Church there is not one that is more exclusive to Catholics, and offends the eyes of the heretics more acutely, than [that of ] the most holy body of CHRIST alone. Thus it is fitting that this [feast] be celebrated most solemnly both in the Divine Office as well as in processions according to the abilities of the place.”40 Augsburg’s story was by no means unique. Ritual and piety were successfully deployed elsewhere in the empire to define confessional boundaries and to foster a distinctively Counter-Reformation Catholic identity. Constance, for example, was a formerly Zwinglian city that had been forced to surrender to Habsburg Austria in 1548.41 There the process of re-Catholicization, spearheaded by the Jesuits, created a civic devotional culture that, like Catholic Augsburg’s, reflected the politicized ritual and piety of the Counter-Reformation. Constance’s citizens credited Mary with saving their city during the Swedish siege of 1633. According to the Capuchin Father Theobald von Konstanz, writing in 1698, Mary not only imparted courage to the defenders of the city, but also personally deflected the Swedes’ cannonballs. The Jesuits organized an annual procession to the Loreto Chapel that had been constructed outside the city by Constance’s bishop and Marian sodality. This procession reminded Constance’s citizens of Mary’s role as protector of their city. In 1662, it included a tableau with a representation of Mary sheltering Constance beneath her cloak. In 1683—when the Ottoman Turks were besieging Vienna—Constance’s bishop and cathedral chapter erected a Marian column on the Münsterhof. The attempts of the bishop and Jesuits to inculcate a Catholic communal self-understanding were apparently successful. In Constance, as in Augsburg, new Tridentine brotherhoods dominated the confraternities. The Jesuits’ Marian Bürgerkongregation incorporated a large part of

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Constance’s artisan population, and in 1698 the council renewed an inscription over the city’s Kreuzlingen Gate, where the Swedes had attacked. It showed an image of Mary and read “Praesidium civibus, terror hostibus” (a protector for citizens, a terror for enemies).42 When the Upper Palatinate was re-Catholicized by Maximilian I of Bavaria after 1628, compulsory conversion was accompanied by an extensive program designed to revive the territory’s liturgical and devotional system. Ritual and piety—participation in confraternities, in processions, in pilgrimage, and in the cult of saints—were, Trevor Johnson has demonstrated, actively promoted as a means of shaping a Catholic society. In keeping with Wittelsbach tradition and Jesuit spirituality, the cults of the Eucharist and of the Blessed Virgin Mary received particular attention. Ten and Forty Hour Devotions to the Eucharist were popularized, and from 1676 there was a Confraternity of the Perpetual Adoration of the Sacrament in Amberg. The Upper Palatinate adopted new forms of Marian piety. Beginning in 1634, for example, pilgrimage to the Mariahilfberg at Amberg flourished. While such devotions were disseminated by the elite, they fell on fertile soil. By the 1660s, Johnson argues, the Oberpfalz (accustomed, as it was, to confessional change) had been successfully re-Catholicized.43 Mary was promoted as a means of strengthening Catholic identity elsewhere, too. For example, Julius Echter von Messpelbrunn, bishop of Würzburg from 1573 to 1617, presided over what Marc Forster has described as “the classic example of confessionalization in an ecclesiastical territory” and made Mary an important part of his campaign for Catholic renewal.44 In the Pfalz-Neuburg, Count Wolfgang Wilhelm (1614–1653) also used Marian piety as part of his drive for reCatholicization. A portrait painted around 1650 shows him as the scourge of the evangelical faith, trampling the Augsburg Confession underfoot. On the table beside him are a carved wooden statue of the Virgin and Child and a plan of the Hofkirche in Neuburg, which was dedicated to Mariä Himmelfahrt, richly decorated with Marian images and symbols and given over to the Jesuits.45 The prominent and often well-received deployment of new forms of Marian and Eucharistic piety by Central Europe’s elites should not, however, blind us to the pluralism of religious practice that persisted throughout the early modern era. The Rhineland metropolis of Cologne provides particularly compelling evidence of the survival of traditional forms of ritual and devotion. Although geographically remote from the Habsburg and Wittelsbach courts, the city was closely linked to Munich in the aftermath of the Cologne War (1583–1589) by the election of a series of Wittelsbach archbishops. Under their leadership Mary was, not surprisingly, invoked as a symbol of Catholic triumph. In 1631, for example, the Jesuit church of Maria Himmelfahrt, which had been founded in 1618 by Archbishop Ferdinand von Bayern and his brother Maximilian I, acquired a new set of bells. These were, at Maximilian’s request, cast from cannons that had been captured by Count Tilly at the siege of Magdeburg. Cologne’s first

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Figure 8.1. Master of St. Severin, altarpiece of the Cologne rosary brotherhood, ca.1500–1510. Copyright Rheinsiches Bildarchiv, Nr.90164

baroque church was literally crowned by a trophy of the Catholic triumph over heresy.46 Two images, both produced for Cologne’s rosary brotherhood, also suggest that there was a significant transformation in the nature of Marian devotion (Figures 8.1 and 8.2). The first, produced in around 1500, shows members of the brotherhood gathered beneath Mary’s outspread cloak. The second, produced during the seventeenth century to summon members to celebrate the feast of the rosary, shows Mary trampling Turks beneath her feet. She holds a sword in her right hand, and the Christ Child clutches the bloody head of one of her victims. Behind her the sea battle of Lepanto rages, and an inscription pleads “Queen of the most sacred rosary, fight for us.” The Marian piety of this medieval confraternity (founded in 1475) had, it seems, acquired a distinctly militant edge during the confessional conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.47 Yet ultimately in Cologne the forces of the Counter-Reformation—above all the Wittelsbach archbishops and the Jesuits—did not manage to establish a monopoly over Marian veneration as they had done in the south. We need, of course, to remember the peculiarities of Cologne’s situation. The city had obtained its Reichsunmittelbarkeit only relatively recently (1475), and the archbishop-electors continued to pose a considerable threat to its independence. The Wittelsbachs, therefore, were never going to serve as a cultural lodestone for Cologne’s Catholics as they had done for Augsburg’s. The Jesuits founded their first German com-

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Figure 8.2. “Triumphus SS.mi Rosarii,” invitation to the feast of the rosary for members of the Dominicans’ rosary confraternity, seventeenth century. Copyright Rheinsiches Bildarchiv, Nr.L17731

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munity in the city in 1544, but they found it very hard to get properly established in Cologne. While the city’s reform-minded circle of clerics welcomed them, they were treated with suspicion by the council. As a result, they never played as significant a role in Cologne’s religious life as they did in Augsburg’s, where they had the support of the reforming bishop Otto Truchseß von Waldburg and the Fuggers. Moreover, the strength and continuity of Cologne’s sacred capital—the number and significance of its own ecclesiastical institutions and devotional cults—made it less susceptible to Counter-Reformation pressure than Augsburg. The forces of the Counter-Reformation were not presented, as they had been in Augsburg, in Constance, or in the Upper Palatinate, with a post-Reformation tabula rasa. The cult of the Virgin, as promoted by the Jesuits and their fellow reformers, had to engage with and accommodate local traditions, which continued to flourish under the supervision of the council and in the city’s parishes. Mary was only one of “holy” Cologne’s patron saints. Cologne’s oldest civic seals bore images of St. Peter, and the relics of the Three Kings, St. Ursula, and St. Gereon were all preserved within the city walls.48 From the perspective of the city council, however, Mary was especially significant. While the cults of the Three Kings, Ursula, and Gereon were largely under the control of the archbishop, cathedral chapter, and other ecclesiastical foundations, Mary could be relatively easily appropriated. In the early 1440s, for example, the council commissioned a splendid altarpiece (formerly attributed to Stefan Lochner and now given to the anonymous Dombild Meister) showing Mary surrounded by Cologne’s other key saints.49 This altarpiece was installed in the Ratskapelle, which was dedicated to “Maria zu Jerusalem.” This chapel was the liturgical midpoint of the free city. Solemn Mass was celebrated there before council sittings, before the election of a Bürgermeister, and during the reception of foreign sovereigns and ambassadors. It served as a stage for civic self-representation. Mary’s prominence in the Ratskapelle—there were two richly clothed images of her as well as the painted altarpiece—testifies, therefore, to the importance that the council accorded to her cult.50 The other church that played a key role in the council’s religious devotion was the collegiate foundation of St. Maria im Kapitol. The city’s two most exclusive confraternities, both dedicated to Mary, met there, and a number of important civic rituals took place there.51 Marian images demonstrate the abiding importance of parochial traditions within Cologne, some of which Catholic authorities tried in vain to reform. While there were new Marian iconographies—such as the rosary print (Figure 8.2)—most of the city’s medieval Marian images remained in situ until the baroque refurbishing campaigns of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, or until the French occupation and secularization of 1794–1814. A comparison between triptych wings painted by Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder in around 1530 and panels dating from the late sixteenth century indicates the continued popularity of traditional Marian iconographies (Figures 8.3 and 8.4). On the

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Bruyn panels, which were probably painted for an altarpiece in St. Maria im Kapitol, the donor kneels before St. Stephen. Mary appears holding the Christ Child, crowned, standing on a sickle moon and surrounded by a mandorla of light. The late sixteenth-century panels show the Virgin and Child in a similar way, crowned and surrounded by light. The donor—a canon from St. Andreas—

Figure 8.3. Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder, wings from an altarpiece (Virgin and Child, and donor with St. Stephen), ca.1530. Copyright Rheinsiches Bildarchiv, Nr.142181 and 142183

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Figure 8.4. Wings of the so-called Drolshagen altar from St. Andreas, Cologne, after 1581. Copyright Dorothea Heiermann, Cologne.

kneels before the Virgin and Child, his hands clasped in prayer. These panels, and others like them, testify to a Marian piety that was shaped not by the Italianate and post-Tridentine sensibilities of the Fuggers and Wittelsbachs, but by local visual and devotional precedents. The treatment as well as the appearance of Marian images remained traditional. Parishioners at the church of St. Laurenz, for example, continued to adorn their Marian statues and to carry them in elaborate processions, despite the attempts of Catholic reformers to limit such practices.52 In 1549 Cologne’s synod decreed that no procession should carry more than one image of the Virgin or any other saint, “lest we should see great and small, cult and non-cult statues, and think

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about a material object rather than concentrate our thoughts on heaven above.”53 Multiple competing images of the Virgin would, it was thought, prevent worshippers from comprehending the true significance of the ritual. But by the early decades of the seventeenth century, St. Laurenz had at least seven and perhaps as many as nine Marian statues, all of which were even more richly decorated than they had been in the pre-Reformation period. One is referred to repeatedly in inventories as the “parish Mary,” reflecting the highly localized character of this Marian piety.54 Moreover, despite the reforming efforts of numerous synods, elaborate processions continued, provoking a disaffected priest at St. Maria Ablaß to lament that even in Rome itself images were not carried with such pomp.55 In Cologne it was, in general, images such as St. Laurenz’s “parish Mary” and the Gothic silver statue housed at St. Maria im Kapitol, rather than the Habsburgs’ immaculate virgins or the state-sponsored Madonnas of Altötting and Mariazell, that commanded people’s affections. Examples of the continued importance of traditional forms of Marian piety could be multiplied. Cologne had no Loreto cult until the final quarter of the seventeenth century and no “Maria Hilf ” cult at all. Its most important miracle-working image was the Milan Madonna, supposedly brought from Italy together with the relics of the Three Kings in 1164 and housed alongside them in the cathedral. In Cologne, unlike in Augsburg, traditional Marian confraternities survived alongside the Jesuits’ Marian sodalities. Unlike the Jesuit assemblies, these traditional confraternities retained a good deal of autonomy and were concerned above all with social integration and self-representation, rather than with reforming society. They venerated their patron with Masses, processions, and gifts, but they did not proselytize, and their Marian piety was not polemical.56 Traditional and Counter-Reformation Marianism were not, of course, incompatible. In the cults of the Immaculate Conception and of the rosary, for example, Mary was celebrated both as patron of Cologne and as leader of the universal Catholic struggle against heresy. But the diversity of Marian devotion in “holy” Cologne demonstrates the abiding importance of local and parochial religious ritual. Here the Counter-Reformation failed to overcome what Philip Soergel described as the “centrifugal tendencies” of traditional religious practices.57 The Wittelsbachs and their Jesuit minions were unable to dictate a uniform style of religious life, as they had done in southern Germany. Cologne provides a particularly good example of the continued diversity of Catholic Marianism, but even in areas without a continuous Catholic history, discipline in devotion could be hard to achieve. In the Upper Palatinate, for example, local devotees resisted Tridentine purists’ attempts to prevent the multiplication and adornment of Marian images and the processions associated with them. Amberg’s parish priest requested a statue of the Blessed Virgin that could change position and be dressed according to the liturgical season.58

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Cologne’s Eucharistic devotion reveals a similar pattern. There were some manifestations of characteristically Counter-Reformation piety. In 1591, for example, Cologne’s papal nuncio introduced the city to the Forty Hour Prayer before the exposed sacrament.59 But while Soergel was able, in his study of Bavaria, to conclude that “Corpus Christi became one of the most important of the German Counter-Reformation’s annual rites,” Cologne’s sacramental piety confirms once again the continued importance of local tradition.60 In Cologne, unlike in Munich or Augsburg, there was no great annual Corpus Christi procession. Instead there was the long-established Große Gottestracht, a sacrament procession that took place each year on the second Friday after Easter. It was, as Joseph Klersch wrote, a “markedly civic affair.”61 It was organized by the city council, which invited the cathedral chapter and Cologne’s other important spiritual institutions to participate. In keeping with the ancient tradition of the Flurumgang (the solemn visitation of the boundaries of a community), it went around the city walls. And the council used it as an opportunity to promulgate its Morgensprachen (the decisions and prescriptions concerning civic life read out from the town hall). Because of the importance of this Gottestracht there was no general Corpus Christi procession in Cologne, even during the era of the CounterReformation. The small Corpus Christi processions that did take place were not organized under the aegis of the council or the bishop but in individual parishes where they, like the Gottestracht, retained their connections with traditional Flurumgänge and also gradually became associated with the annual commemoration of each parish church’s consecration.62 With the sacrament, therefore, as with Marian piety, we must acknowledge the abiding importance of local and parochial custom. We cannot think in terms of a hegemonic Counter-Reformation cult with consistent political connotations, nor see post-Tridentine piety purely as the product of ecclesiastical and secular officials’ attempts to impose order, discipline and uniformity. Two final Marian images demonstrate the dangers of conceptualizing Marian devotion, or other forms of piety, primarily as rites of differentiation. Figure 8.5 shows a print produced in Augsburg in 1632 to commemorate the arrival of Gustav Adolph. Here, as in a number of other broadsheets produced in 1631 and 1632, the Swedish king is depicted as the savior of the Protestant church, which he freed, as the inscription beneath puts it, from “the pope’s tyrannical power.”63 On the left, interspersed with Old Testament paeans to God’s power, we see the true Christian church, while on the right its enemies and persecutors are identified with the Beast of Revelation and Whore of Babylon. Mary appears on the left as the Woman of the Apocalypse, surrounded by the sun, standing on the moon and crowned with stars, representing the church (as she had done since the time of Ambrose and Augustine).64 Here she stands beside Gustav Adolph, yet only six years later, on the anniversary of the Battle of the White Mountain, Maximil-

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Figure 8.5. Print produced in Augsburg in 1632 to commemorate the arrival of Gustav Adolph. Copyright Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg, Einblattdruck nach 1500 Nr. 196.

ian I erected his Mariensäule (again showing Mary standing on a sickle moon) in Munich in thanks for that city’s preservation from destruction by Swedish troops. Was this print perhaps intended to reassure Augsburg’s Catholic citizens and to demonstrate that the Swedes’ Lutheranism presented no threat to true Christian piety? Lutheranism preserved an important place for Mary, and Marian images and feast days frequently survived in Lutheran areas, but her presence in this polemical piece is nonetheless surprising.65 Even at the height of the Thirty Years’ War, Mary’s cult was clearly much more than an Unterscheidungsritus. Figure 8.6 shows an altarpiece from the Lutheran church in Sebeş (Mühlbach) in southern Transylvania. This church’s Saxon congregation had retained an altarpiece with a carved Madonna dating from ca. 1524–1526 until the 1720s, when the Catholic governor of Transylvania, Count Sigismund Kornis, decided that they were not worthy to own such a treasure and confiscated it. The congregation complained with great force, however, and appealed to their Nationsgrafen, the Protestant Dr. Andreas Teutsch. When Teutsch refused to help and Kornis removed the image, there was, according to a Jesuit report, much sobbing, wailing, and crying among the congregation. Kornis eventually ordered a copy to be made and returned to them.66 This gift of a sculpture

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Figure 8.6. Altarpiece, Parish Church, Sebeș (Mühlbach), ca.1524–1526 with later alterations. Copyright Cipran Firea, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

of the Blessed Virgin Mary from the representative of the last great proponent of the pietas Austriaca, Emperor Charles VI, to a group of his Protestant subjects confirms that as a way of imposing confessional uniformity, Mary had her limitations.

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Notes 1. On Iberian Marianism see Miri Rubin, Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (New Haven and London, 2009), 379–385. 2. On Mariazell see Laura Lynne Kinsey, “The Habsburgs at Mariazell: Piety, Patronage, and Statecraft, 1620–1760” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2000) and Regina Pörtner, The Counter-Reformation in Central Europe: Styria 1580–1630 (Oxford, 2001), 241–242. 3. Anna Coreth, Pietas Austriaca: österreichische Frömmigkeit im Barock (Munich, 1982) and Anna Coreth, Pietas Austriaca, trans. William D. Bowman and Anna Maria Leitgeb (West Lafayette, 2004), xii, xxiii, 48–55. For a discussion of the role of the political elite in promulgating new forms of piety see Karl Vocelka, “The Counter-Reformation and Popular Piety in Vienna: A Case Study,” in Living with Diversity in Early-Modern Europe, ed. C. Scott Dixon, Dagmar Friest, and Mark Greengrass (Basingstoke, 2009). 4. Georg Schwaiger, “Maria Patrona Bavariae,” in Bavaria Sancta: Zeugen Christlichen Glaubens in Bayern, ed. G. Schwaiger (Regensburg, 1970), 31. 5. Ludwig Hütl, Marianische Wallfahrten im süddeutsch-österreichischen Raum (Cologne and Vienna, 1985), 115. 6. Dieter Albrecht, Maximilian I. von Bayern 1573–1651 (Munich, 1998), 295. 7. Andreas Kraus, Maximilian I: Bayerns grosser Kurfürst (Graz, 1990), 75, 115. See also Benno Hubensteiner, Vom Geist des Barock. Kultur und Frömmigkeit im alten Bayern (Munich, 1978), 117–118. 8. Herbert Glaser, ed., Wittelsbach und Bayern, 6 vols. (Munich, 1980), vol. 2, part 2, 566. 9. Coreth, Pietas Austriaca, 47. 10. Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg, 4o Bild 1–25. This is a shortened, printed German translation of the original Latin text. 11. Helmut Dotterweich, Der junge Maximilian: Jugend und Erziehung des bayerischen Herzogs und späteren Kurfürsten Maximilian I. von 1573 bis 1593 (Munich, 1962), 73. 12. Peter Canisius, De Maria Virgine Incomparabili (Ingolstadt, 1577), preface. 13. On Trent and the Eucharist see Lee Palmer Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy (Cambridge, 2006), 208–231. 14. Coreth, Pietas Austriaca, 18, 22. 15. Philip Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints: Counter-Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria (Berkeley, 1993), 88–89. 16. Ibid., 80, 160–161. 17. See Wolfgang Reinhard, “Was ist katholische Konfessionalisierung?” in Die katholische Konfessionalisierung: wissenschaftliches Symposium der Gesellschaft zur Herausgabe des Corpus Catholicorum und des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte 1993, ed. W. Reinhard and H. Schilling (Gütersloh, 1995), 419–452. 18. Ibid., 430; Johannes Burckhardt, Das Reformationsjahrhundert: Deutsche Geschichte zwischen Medienrevolution und Institutionenbildung, 1517–1617 (Stuttgart, 2002), 109. 19. Thomas A. Brady, Jr., “Confessionalization: The Career of a Concept,” in Confessionalization in Europe, 1555–1700, ed. John M. Headley, Hans J. Hillerbrand, and Anthony J. Paplas (Aldershot, 2004), 4. 20. David Luebke, “Naïve Monarchism and Marian Veneration in Early Modern Germany,” Past and Present 154 (1997): 71–106, especially 75, 93, 104. 21. Marc Forster, Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque: Religious Identity in Southwest Germany, 1550–1750 (Cambridge, 2001); Trevor Johnson, Magistrates, Madonnas and Miracles: The Counter-Reformation in the Upper Palatinate (Basingstoke, 2009). 22. Johnson, Magistrates, Madonnas and Miracles, 317.

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23. Pörtner, though, notes that the crypto-Protestant communities in the rural mountainous regions of Upper Styria “remained impervious to this kind of propaganda.” Pörtner, The Counter-Reformation in Central Europe, 241–244. 24. Coreth, Pietas Austriaca, 51. 25. Thomas Kaufmann, “Einleitung,” in Interkonfessionalität – Transkonfessionalität – binnenkonfessionelle Pluralität: Neue Forschungen zur Konfessionalisierungsthese, ed. Kaspar von Greyerz, Manfred Jakubowski-Tiessen, Thomas Kaufmann, and Hartmut Lehmann (Gütersloh, 2003), 9–15. 26. On the religious history of Augsburg see, for example, Herbert Immenkötter, “Kirche zwischen Reformation und Parität,” in Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg: 2000 Jahre von der Römerzeit bis zur Gegenwart, ed. G. Gottlieb (Stuttgart, 1984), 391–412 and Carl A. Hoffmann, “Konfessionell motivierte und gewandelte Konflikte in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts: Versuch eines mentalitätsgeschichtlichen Ansatzes am Beispiel der bikonfessionellen Reichsstadt Augsburg,” in Konfessionalisierung und Region, ed. P. Frees and R. Kiesslng (Constance, 1999), 99–120. 27. On Marian devotion during Augsburg’s Reformation and on Christoph Amberger’s copy of Holbein’s lost altarpiece see Bridget Heal, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany: Protestant and Catholic Piety, 1500–1648 (Cambridge, 2007), 117–128, 163–171. 28. Walter Pötzl, “Loreto in Bayern,” Jahrbuch für Volkskunde 2 (1979): 187–218. 29. Franz Matsche, “Gegenreformatorische Architekturpolitik: Casa-Santa-Kopien und Habsburger Loreto-Kult nach 1620,” Jahrbuch für Volkskunde, new series 1 (1978): 81–118. 30. An earlier example was constructed in 1584 by Kryštof Lobkovic in southwest Bohemia. Jan Bukovský, Loretánské kaple v Čechách a na Moravě (Prague, 2000), 24; Jan Diviš, Pražská Loreta (Prague, 1972), 17. I am grateful to Professor Howard Louthan for bringing this to my attention. On the Augsburg shrine see Pötzl, “Loreto in Bayern” and Walter Pötzl, Loreto—Madonna und Heiliges Haus: Die Wallfahrt auf dem Kobel. Ein Beitrag zur europäischen Kult- und Kulturgeschichte (Augsburg, 2000). 31. Alexandra Kohlberger, Maria Hilf auf dem Lechfeld: 400 Jahre Wallfaht (Augsburg, 2003). 32. Pötzl, Loreto, 76. 33. Kohlberger, Maria Hilf, 65. 34. Norbert Lieb, Octavian Secundus Fugger (1549–1600) und die Kunst (Tübingen, 1980), 124. 35. On these commissions see Heal, The Cult of the Virgin Mary, 171–184. 36. On processions see Alexander Fisher, Music and Religious Identity in Counter-Reformation Augsburg, 1580–1630 (Aldershot, 2004). 37. Stadtarchiv Augsburg, Reichsstadt, Strafamt, Urgichten, Nr. 322, August 1636 (Abraham Raiffinger, Kunstmaler). 38. Fisher, Music and Religious Identity, 86. 39. Ibid., 185. 40. Quoted in ibid., 247. 41. On Reformation Constance see Bruce Gordon, The Swiss Reformation (Manchester, 2002), 291–292. 42. Wolfgang Zimmermann, “Städtische Frömmigkeit und barocke Konfessionskulktur in Konstanz (1650–1700),” in Christoph Daniel Schenck, 1633–1691, ed. Rosgartenmuseum Konstanz, Augustinermuseum Freiburg, Württembergisches Landesmuseum Stuttgart (Sigmaringen, 1996), 33–51. 43. Johnson, Magistrates, Madonnas and Miracles, chaps. 7–10. 44. Marc Forster, “With and Without Confessionalization: Varieties of Early Modern German Catholicism,” Journal of Early Modern History 1 (1997): 328. Walter Ziegler, “Würzburg,” in Die Territorien des Reichs im Zeitalter der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung:

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46. 47.

48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63.

64. 65. 66.

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Land und Konfession 1500–1650, vol. 4, ed. A. Schindling and W. Ziegler (Münster, 1992), 116–120. Horst Stierhof, Das biblisch gemäl: Die Kapelle im Ottheinrichsbau des Schlosses Neuburg an der Donau (Munich, 1993), 114–115. See also Jeffrey Chipps Smith, “The Art of Salvation in Bavaria,” in The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences and the Arts 1540–1773, ed. J. W. O’Malley (Toronto, 1999), 582–588. Die Jesuitenkirche St. Mariae Himmelfahrt in Köln: Dokumentation und Beiträge zum Abschluss ihrer Wiederherstellung 1980 (Düsseldorf, 1982), 320–323. On Cologne’s rosary confraternity see Rebekka von Mallinckrodt, Struktur und kollektiver Eigensinn: Kölner Laienbruderschaften im Zeitalter der Konfessionalisierung (Göttingen, 2005), 67–72 and Heal, The Cult of the Virgin Mary, 256–258. Klaus Militzer, “Collen eyn kroyn boven allen steden schoyn: Zum Selbstverständnis einer Stadt,” Colonia Romanica: Jahrbuch des Fördervereins Romanische Kirchen Köln e. V. 1 (1986): 15–20. This altarpiece is now located in the cathedral. Klaus Militzer and Wolfgang Schmid, “Das Inventar der Kölner Ratskapelle von 1519: Edition und Kommentar,” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 58 (1997): 229–237. Wolfgang Stracke, “St Maria im Kapitol,” Colonia Romanica 11 (1996): 79–103; Mallinckrodt, Struktur und kollektiver Eigensinn, 266. Heal, The Cult of the Virgin Mary, 223–228. J. Hartzheim, ed., Concilia Germaniae (Cologne, 1765), vol. 6, 557. Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln, Alte Kölner Pfarrarchive, Dom, St. Laurenz, D II 17, “Anstellung des Offermans und Inventare der ihm übergebenen Kirchengeräte,” 1530– 1562, fol. 4r; Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln, Dom, St. Laurenz, D II 6, “Verzeichniß der H. Gefäß und sämtlichen Kirchengeräthen der St. Laurenz-Pfarrkirche,” 1551, fol. 6v and fol. 7r. Stephan Isaac, Wahre und Einfältige Historia Stephani Isaaci (n.p., 1586), fol. 14v. Heal, The Cult of the Virgin Mary, 250–260. Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, 163. Johnson, Magistrates, Madonnas and Miracles, 229–230. Fisher, Music and Religious Identity in Counter-Reformation Augsburg, 97. Soergel, Wondrous in His Saints, 80. Joseph Klersch, Volkstum und Volksleben in Köln (Cologne, 1979), 238. On the Corpus Christi processions see ibid., 269–276; on the Große Gottestracht see also Uta Scholten, “Die Stadt als Kultraum: Prozessionen im Köln des 17. Jahrhunderts,” in Kunstgeschichtliche Studien: Hugo Borger zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. K. G. Beuckers et al. (Weimar, 1995), 109–111. Two versions of the broadsheet are published in John Roger Paas, The German Political Broadsheet 1600–1700, vol. 6 (Wiesbaden, 1998), 229f. For other similar images (without the Virgin Mary) see ibid., vol. 5 (Wiesbaden, 1996), 1370, 1371, 1372, 1373. Hilda Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion (London, 1985), 84–86, 97–98. Heal, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Early Modern Germany, 64–115. Harald Krasser and Theobald Streitfeld, “Zur Wiederauffindung der Madonna des Mühlbacher Altars,” in Studien zur siebenburgischen Kunstgeschichte, ed. G. Gündisch et al. (Cologne and Vienna, 1976), 96–109.

Chapter 9

HERESY AND LITERACY IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY HABSBURG MONARCHY

d Regina Pörtner

Heresy and Literacy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe Over the past two decades, the role of literacy in religious dissent has received much attention from medieval and early modern historians. In investigating this complex subject they have made a strong case for setting aside conventional chronological boundaries. Changes and continuities in popular uses of literacy, for instance, and the longevity of clerical misconceptions about them would make rewarding subjects for long-term, comparative studies. Instructive forays into this vast field have been made by historians exploring the significance of literacy across the spectrum of medieval heresy.1 In connection with this it has been convincingly argued that clerical caste identity in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was supported by limited elite literacy, the mystification of the book, and the related social and political aggrandizement of those who had access to learning. The equation of heresy and ignorance that dominated ecclesiastical accounts of religious dissent in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries reflected the clergy’s educational monopoly and the wider dichotomy of lay-clerical society. This was to change gradually in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the diffusion of pragmatic literacy for practical, administrative purposes resulted

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in the increasing perception that lay literacy challenged the privileged position of the clergy as the learned order.2 Adding to these pressures was the threat that heretical movements like Catharism, Albigensianism, and Waldensianism posed to the spiritual authority of the church. Preaching and memorizing of sermons were essential to creating and sustaining group identity among the followers of these groups, but so were selective literacy and the use of manuscripts. Apostate clergy frequently took the lead, primarily because they were literati in the original sense of possessing Latin literacy. Among the Waldensians in particular, allegiance to a set of “canonical” texts that were circulated in manuscript and in minuscule books has been shown to have been of crucial importance in creating and maintaining group identity. The Dominican order and the Inquisition, as executives of the church’s response to the challenge of heresy, were to introduce a significant variation on the stereotype of the illiterate heretic. The emphasis was now on the causal connection between heresy and ignorance, defined as inadequate, erroneous knowledge rather than as illiteracy pure and simple: limited, eclectic theological knowledge and presumptuous critiques of clerical learning henceforth prominently characterized the heretic as a false prophet.3 This shift of emphasis was reflected in artistic representations of the triumph of orthodoxy over heresy as the superior, true form of learning: one frequently represented motif in thirteenth-century art was a scene of religious dispute in which two little books were thrown into the fire, with the heretic’s book being consumed while St. Dominic’s book leaps out.4 The ability to assert its sole authority of defining doctrinal truth and circumscribing the intellectual as well as social ambit of learning was pivotal to the church’s success in containing the centrifugal forces of religious dissent in the Middle Ages. However, the breakdown of this control in the Reformation did not simultaneously end the ambivalence of lay literacy. Radical uses of Scripture in the propaganda of the German Peasants’ War of 1524–1526, and more widely among the radical sects of the Reformation, seemed to bear out apprehensions shared by the Lutheran Reformers about the perilous implications of popular literacy and untutored study of the Bible. In exploring the link between literacy and receptiveness to religious dissent in the Reformation, historians have stressed the importance of rising levels of literacy as both an essential precondition and major outcome of the Lutheran controversy. The centrality of Scripture and catechetical instruction to the varieties of the Reformed faith have been summed up in the formula, “the religion of the book.” The evidence for the impact of the printing press and cheap, massproduced prints on the volume and geographical extent of dissenting religious discourse in the sixteenth century has traditionally been cited in support of the notion of the supremacy of the written word in the Reformation. However, modern revisionist accounts have addressed the imbalance inherent in this concept by highlighting the significance of preaching and other forms of non-written pro-

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paganda. Their studies have drawn attention to the complex interaction of written and oral communication in shaping religious identities. Studies of popular religion have moreover illustrated the significance of the visual dimension. Representations of ecclesiastical authority and of key doctrines expressed in religious symbols, artefacts, and ceremonies became the objects of acts of iconoclasm and satirical inversion, thus challenging the validity of key doctrines, or the power of the clergy and the church’s authority of defining belief.5 Accounts of the early Reformation in England and Central Europe have benefited from consideration of the cognate movements of Lollardy and Hussitism as precursors of the Reformation, though there is an element of anachronism in this approach. More recent analyses of the extent and uses of literacy in these communities have avoided such fallacies and have shed light on similarities among Reformed religious practices with regard to modes of preaching, religious instruction, and, in the case of Lollardy, practices of communal reading and exegesis.6 The sophisticated literature on the function of literacy in twelfth- to fifteenthcentury heresies could be drawn on for instructive comparisons regarding the role of literacy and the appropriation of texts in shaping religious identities before and after the Reformation. As previously indicated, historians investigating the uses of literacy among Waldensians have depicted them as communities whose group identity and beliefs were to a considerable extent defined by allegiance to a set of texts that were read—or read aloud, discussed, copied, and memorized. The transformation of literacy through the availability of cheap prints (including primers) and the impact of religious instruction and elementary schooling obviously need to be taken into account for any meaningful comparison, but this nevertheless leaves scope for investigating continuities and changes in popular literacy and in attitudes toward the book as a material object in pre- and postReformation religious communities. The complex relationship between language, ethnicity, and religious identity could be a further theme for a comparative study focusing on the religious and cultural functions of vernacular translations for the Waldensians, Lollards, Hussites, and the sixteenth-century German and Central European Reformation movements. To cite but one example from the Reformation’s periphery in the Habsburg Monarchy: in the Slovene Reformation, the preparation and diffusion of vernacular translations of the Bible and Lutheran devotional literature established a link between heresy and literacy that rendered the use of Slovene as a written language suspicious in the eyes of the Catholic authorities for the rest of the sixteenth and much of the seventeenth centuries.7 The relation between religious dissent and literacy for the Protestant communities of eighteenth-century Austria is the subject of the following case study. More specifically, the aim is to assess the significance of literacy and the uses of religious literature for the formation and survival of a popular religious counterculture in the heartland of the Habsburg Monarchy.

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Crypto-Protestantism and Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Austria and Bohemia When Joseph II issued the famous Patent of Toleration in October 1781, he officially terminated a policy of religious persecution that had been pursued by a succession of Habsburg monarchs since the days of Ferdinand II. Their periodic inquisitions and the resilience of Austrian Protestantism after 1781 testify to the limits of the Counter-Reformation in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Patent of Toleration itself was indicative of a profound change in the relationship between the emerging Austrian state and the church. During the final stages of religious persecution (which lasted, with interruptions, from 1731 to 1781), the issue of how to account for the survival of Protestant enclaves in Bohemia, Upper Styria, and Upper Carinthia resulted in mutual recriminations among the secular and ecclesiastical authorities. In the second half of the century, the Enlightened cause for toleration was espoused by members of the higher ranks of officials, like the Styrian government commissioner Count Wolf von Stubenberg or Baron Franz Karl von Kressel, an avowed Freemason and close confidant of Joseph II. Their clerical opponents may have been right in suspecting that these officials, in composing their reports on incidents of religious unrest in Styria in 1772/73 and in Moravia in 1775, aimed to supply the proponents of toleration in Vienna with further arguments from local evidence. In any event, the drift of their reports was consonant with the reforms of the 1760s that had been accompanied by a sustained critique of the Jesuits’ control of higher education. Clerical censorship was first pruned and then taken over by the state. While it is hard to gauge the actual support for principled toleration beyond the circle of known Josephists in the 1760s, there was at least a growing body of opinion among government officials in Vienna and the provinces in favor of an extension of the sort of pragmatic toleration that Maria Theresa had felt compelled to grant to foreign Protestant minorities in the Austrian capital and that she ceded in strictest secrecy to the Wallachian Protestants in 1777.8 The more precarious situation of the Protestant populations of Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary was repeatedly put to good propagandistic use by the Prussian government in its conflicts with Vienna, for example in 1740/41, when Frederick II posed as liberator of the Protestants of annexed Silesia. Frederick’s propagandists capitalized on the discontent of the Hungarian Protestants on the eve of the Seven Years’ War in hopes of stirring up trouble in the monarchy and canvassing support from Europe’s Protestant courts and the wider public. Prussia’s efforts were substantially facilitated by Maria Theresa’s decision to resume the deportation of Austrian Protestant subjects as settlers to the depopulated regions of Hungary and Transylvania. Emperor Charles VI had adopted this measure several times in the 1730s to stamp out heresy in Upper and Inner Austria in the wake of the notorious expulsion of approximately 20,000 Protestants from the archbish-

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opric of Salzburg in 1731. Against the background of the lingering conflict with Prussia, Maria Theresa revived this policy in 1752 as part of a wider, systematic effort to convert or expel any remaining crypto-Protestants, whom she viewed as Prussia’s fifth column inside the monarchy’s heartland. Following up the haphazard missionary efforts of the Jesuits in 1750–1752, and drawing inspiration from the successes of the Jesuit missionaries in Bohemia in the 1730s, in 1752 the empress created networks of permanent missions in the affected regions of Austria. The missionary personnel were recruited from neighboring Salzburg and from the local secular and regular clergy, including the Society of Jesus, whose houses possessed landed property and incorporated parishes in Styria and Carinthia. In making the archbishop of Salzburg and his suffragan clergy finance the missions in Upper Austria, Styria, and Carinthia, Maria Theresa emphatically repeated her father’s charge that the clergy had failed to live up to those pastoral duties for which they had been lavishly endowed by Ferdinand II and his successors.9 The missionaries’ monthly reports were sent to special religious commissions of government officials and representatives of the higher clergy. These commissions were affiliated with the provincial governments of Austria, who in turn reported back to Vienna. A further element of surveillance and repression was created in the shape of so-called houses of conversion in the Upper Styrian towns of Judenburg and Rottenmann, and in Thalheim and Kremsmünster in Upper Austria. The idea for these houses seems to have originated with a member of the Salzburg clergy and may have been inspired by the “house of converts” that Pope Paul III had founded in 1542 in Rome for the conversion of Jews. Like the Austrian houses, this institution was financed by its inmates.10 The Austrian houses were used as places of arrest and forcible religious instruction for Protestants who refused to take the Catholic oath. They were sometimes kept locked up for months at their own expense, and as the number of incorrigible heretics increased, additional places of detention were created at some of the religious houses in Styria. If they remained unresponsive to these pressures, these heretics were eventually deported to the underpopulated parts of Hungary and Transylvania, so that they and their families would serve an economically useful purpose as settlers. The Austrian clergy made the importance of family tradition and the close-knit nature of the crypto-Protestant parish communities the starting point of their demand for more frequent deportations, euphemistically described as “transmigrations” in official usage. However, Maria Theresa continued to consider them a last resort because they caused social disruption in the rural communities and exacerbated tensions with the Protestant princes of the empire. To rescue as many souls as possible for the Catholic faith, children and youths below the age of sixteen were not allowed to accompany their parents but were kept at the public orphanage in Graz or else placed with Catholic households as servants. On reaching the age of discretion, they were given the choice of taking the Catholic oath or following their parents into exile.11

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Predictably, deportations antagonized the landed nobility, who showed little concern for their tenants’ religious views, protesting instead that the government was depriving them of their most valuable subjects. This complaint is borne out by the government records: the most self-confident and unbending Protestants were almost invariably substantial farmers and heads of extended households who would make every effort to take their families and servants with them into exile. They turned out to be hard to replace even if they were forced to sell their farms at a pitiful price or leave part of their property behind. The fact that there was no rush among the Catholic population to buy up cheap land was indicative of reservations beyond mere financial constraints. The missionaries’ reports mention a few Catholic informers, but amicable relations between crypto-Protestants and Catholics seem to have been the rule. The pattern of scattered settlements and single farms in these mountainous regions made cooperation and mutual aid indispensable, so there were palpable economic and social interests in favor of solidarity. As a result, the missionary clergy struggled to elicit incriminating information. Informers invariably retracted their statements if ordered to repeat them face to face with the accused, and the hope of financial—rather than spiritual—reward seems to have been the main incentive. As a Jesuit missionary in Upper Styria acidly observed, “where there is no money, there are no Swiss.” The government files record a steady stream of complaints from the missionary clergy and local officials about the lack of cooperation from the local landowners, some of whom even tipped off suspects about imminent house searches.12 Of even greater potential consequence were the repercussions of this policy on foreign relations. In the reign of Charles VI, the transmigration of at least 624 Upper Austrians and 180 Carinthian Protestants to Hungary and Transylvania in 1734–1736 was a source of conflict with the Corpus Evangelicorum in Regensburg, who argued that the Austrian Protestants were protected by the terms of the Peace of Westphalia. Maria Theresa’s more energetic efforts resulted in the deportation of at least 3,300 Protestants from Upper Austria, Carinthia, and Styria from 1752 to 1774 and embroiled her in an acrimonious exchange with the Protestant representatives of the empire on the eve of the Seven Years’ War. Protestant persecution and forcible transmigration arguably contributed to the cooling of relations between London and Vienna that preceded the change of alliances in 1756. When the British ambassador in Vienna, Sir Robert Murray Keith, informed Newcastle in a February 1752 letter of the rumoured likely appointment of the Francophile Kaunitz as state chancellor, he added an account of a recent petition of Austrian Protestants in Vienna, which he likewise deemed of political interest. The supplicants claimed to be speaking on behalf of 8,000 to 9,000 coreligionists who were planning to make a public declaration of their faith to force a change of religious policy. Keith commented on the likelihood of the petitioners’ transmigration, as they were in fact not covered by the Peace of Westphalia.13 It is a measure of Maria Theresa’s belief in the validity of the

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Counter-Reformation equation of heresy and subversion that she stuck to her highly controversial policy of transmigrations virtually until the end of her reign. The last transport of Styrian Protestants took place in 1775, and in January 1780 the empress issued orders for the deportation of a group of obstinately heretical Moravian Protestants.14 Who, then, were these clandestine Protestants whom Maria Theresa continued to perceive as politically dangerous “heretics”? How important was literacy to their religious identity, and were the secular and ecclesiastical authorities right in assuming that they were confronting an essentially uniform phenomenon so that counter-measures that had worked in one territory were indeed automatically applicable to the rest? Let us begin with Bohemia. It has been argued that in terms of quantifiable results, the Bohemian Counter-Reformation was a sweeping success and heresy a marginal phenomenon. At the time of the Battle of the White Mountain (1620), by scholars’ estimates up to 90 percent of the population was non-Catholic. By 1781, only 75,000 Bohemians and Moravians, equating a mere 2 percent of the population, officially registered as Calvinists or Lutherans. Their geographical distribution suggests the survival of clusters in northern and northeastern Bohemia and western Moravia, with some residual Protestantism in central Bohemia and the south.15 However, beneath the smooth surface of Counter-Reformation Catholicism there was a vibrant, if highly fragmented, autonomous religious subculture in which the legacy of Hus and the autochthonous Bohemian Reformation blended in idiosyncratic ways with foreign influences. The seeds of heterodoxy had been sown even earlier in Bohemian society: since 1318, the Inquisition had detected Waldensians, Beghards, Beguines, and other sects. The Waldensians of southern and western Bohemia were by far the largest group, making up about half of the 4,400 persons interrogated between 1335 and 1355. The predominance of this sect, which had filtered into the Bohemian lands from southern Europe since the thirteenth century, seems significant as it may have formed the starting point for a tradition of religious dissent with a distinctly literary slant. The influence of Hussitism, the Czech Brethren, and Lutheranism was most easily recognizable to the eyes of eighteenth-century inquisitors, but nonCatholic beliefs were frequently too amorphous and mingled with pagan magical beliefs to allow for neat categorization.16 Missionaries searching for evidence of crypto-Protestantism were frequently confronted with unexpected confessions of highly individualized beliefs of a diverse provenance, including some evidence of conversions to the Jewish faith. Since 1717, secular and ecclesiastical authorities had paid special attention to the diffusion of heretical books through peddlers and migrants from the empire and Hungary, and their concerns were fully borne out by the amount of heretical literature confiscated by parish and missionary clergy. According to a study of the ecclesiastical records, which do not have returns for every year, authorities

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collected at least 49,538 books in the period from 1746 to 1780. It has been estimated that the real figure for Czech and German-language literature from Zittau, Halle, Berlin, and Leipzig that was lost to religious censorship and confiscation in the eighteenth century is at least twice as high.17 Statements from interrogation transcripts furnished the clergy and secular authorities with further evidence of a popular “rage” for reading and an incredible emotional attachment to religious books, which the rural population “love unto death,” as the grand vicar of Prague complained. One Bohemian missionary confided that he had given up hope of ever seeing these pernicious books disappear.18 There are striking similarities here with Austrian crypto-Protestants, whose bookishness and love of reading are amply documented in the Austrian interrogation transcripts.19 However, the nature of the connection between literacy and heterodoxy in Bohemia differs in important respects. As previously mentioned, Bohemia’s complex religious history made for ambiguous religious identities, as reflected in the heretics’ eclectic literary tastes. Suspects’ household libraries would thus frequently consist of a mix of orthodox Catholic devotional works along with Protestant and other non-Catholic books. In addition, there might be manuscript copies of charms and prayers of a superstitious variety, like the popular St. Christopher’s prayer for treasure hunting. Such diverse reading matter was indicative of a low level of doctrinal awareness, and suspects who were caught in the first instance on suspicion of holding Lutheran beliefs frequently turned out to be hard to pin down doctrinally in the subsequent interrogations. As with Austrian crypto-Protestants, there was an element of dissimulation in some of the vague and naïve answers that went on record. However, there is no comparable evidence from Austria for the existence of confessionally mixed libraries. It seems plausible to assume a causal connection between the more discriminating choice of reading matter and the predominance of explicitly Lutheran responses in interrogations. Occasionally there would be an affinity to crypto-Calvinist Flacian views that had gained currency in these regions in the sixteenth century.20 As will be shown, attempts to induce the Austrian suspects to give up their Lutheran books in exchange for Catholic literature were a dire failure. In contrast, doctrinal ambiguity would account for the overall success of the same strategy when applied in the Bohemian missions of the 1730s. A further notable difference between the Austrian and the Bohemian cases concerned the significance of the book as a material object. Reverence for the authority of the written word, especially for printed texts, was a common trait among Austrian and Bohemian heretics. However, there was no Austrian equivalent to the identification of the contents of a book with its physical materiality that seems to have been widespread among religious dissenters in Bohemia. The word was the book, and if the book was taken away, then so was the doctrine it conveyed. At the opposite end of the scale of textual appropriation, religious suspects would claim authorship for “new” texts they had created by compiling

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extracts from existing works. Some of these examples are reminiscent of preReformation attitudes toward sacred texts as objects of veneration if not mystification.21 The Austrian evidence, by contrast, suggests that books were cherished for their religious message. Devotional works such as hymnbooks, postils, and Pietist prayer books were especially popular for the spiritual comfort they offered solitary readers in the more remote regions of the Alps. In addition to these individual uses of literature there were communal reading practices associated with conventicles and domestic religious instruction. The Austrian records testify to the widespread possession of large, leather-bound exegetical books, which Lutheran heads of household would use for the religious instruction of their families and servants. Books were means of instruction, edification, and consolation, and in spite of individual predilections for specific titles they were ultimately interchangeable as material objects, whereas the religious message they conveyed was definitely not, as the failed attempt at replacing Protestant works with Catholic books was to show. Literacy among the eighteenth-century Austrian Protestants supported a tradition of religious beliefs that might be described as orthodox Lutheran with a strong regional flavor. This outcome reflects the more straightforward history of religious dissent in the Austrian duchies. Lutheranism had been received throughout Austria in the first half of the sixteenth century and had taken deep roots in the lower Alpine regions with the connivance or active encouragement of the local nobility. Systematic persecution had set in under Ferdinand II, who, however, prioritized submission over re-Catholicization, a policy that he tried to implement through a mixture of legal coercion and threats of military action. Ferdinand III brought his father’s work to a conclusion in 1648 by effectively reserving the Habsburgs’ ius reformandi for the lands of the monarchy. The primacy of foreign policy in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries meant that outside Hungary inquisition and persecution remained haphazard during the reigns of Leopold and Joseph I. As mentioned previously, Charles VI and Maria Theresa met the challenge of eighteenth-century crypto-Protestantism with counter-measures that combined elements of persuasion and coercion. A common feature of the Bohemian and Austrian inquisitions concerns the perception of the causes and most prominent characteristics of heresy. The most frequent entries in the official government records and missionary reports refer to the possession and sale of books, the extent of literacy, and indeed the bookishness of the crypto-Protestant population. While the Bohemian evidence has been the subject of a ground-breaking investigation of reading practices and confessional identities, there is as yet no comparable study for the abundant Austrian material.22 A modern account of eighteenth-century Protestant revivalism that mentions the case of Austrian crypto-Protestantism argues that the very persistence with which the theme of books and bookishness keeps coming up in the Austrian government records should be seen as proof of the blinkered perception

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of the secular and ecclesiastical authorities, who were “victims to an extraordinary degree of the myth that Protestantism was the religion of a book.”23 The implied statement about the relationship between print and Protestantism would in itself merit further discussion, but the more important point here is that nothing could be more misleading than to assume that a widespread and carefully cultivated tradition of literacy and its practice in a communal context were accidental to the survival and identity of Austrian crypto-Protestantism. A very different picture emerges from any actual probing into the numerous interrogation transcripts, lists of confiscated literature, and reports by the clergy and secular authorities. A capacity for the discriminating use of religious literature emerges from this evidence as one of the defining features of crypto-Protestant identity. Literacy and the multiple uses of religious literature were firmly embedded in the social structure of the rural society of these regions as a “situated social practice” that was designed to transmit and preserve a set of beliefs and a habitus that were exclusive to the members of the crypto-Protestant communities.24 In the following, it will be argued that, far from reflecting any preconceived notion, the authorities’ appreciation of the importance of literacy and possession of books for the Protestant tradition since the sixteenth century was in fact the direct outcome of their encounter with suspects who did not fit the stereotype of deluded, ignorant rustics. The missionaries’ reports and the government’s comments document how the authorities were gradually disabused of their misconception of heresy as either underdeveloped confessional awareness and doctrinal ignorance, or the product of mere manipulation by Prussian provocateurs. In spite of Maria Theresa’s deep suspicions, the provincial governments were unable to discover any evidence of subversive Prussian activity in the Austrian duchies.25 Governmental perceptions at the beginning of the final phase of the CounterReformation in the wake of the Salzburg emigration are neatly epitomized in Charles VI’s instruction of August 1733 for the Inner Austrian government in Graz. Crypto-Protestantism in Styria and Carinthia is defined as a residue of the Reformation that had eluded the campaign against heresy at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Its survival testified to the clergy’s neglect of pastoral care, and possibly to the interference of foreign powers that were suspected of sending incendiary letters and secret emissaries. Such fears of conspiracy notwithstanding, Charles upheld his earlier penal decrees of 1732 and 1733, which distinguished between foreign agents—who were to be dealt with severely and might even be put to death—and their misguided victims. The secular authorities and lords were exhorted to bear in mind that the spread of erroneous religious views among the rural population was “no matter that can be put right by force, rather, everything depends on the measured application of leniency.” Catechetical instruction was to be introduced for the youths of the affected regions, but the clergy were to teach in an inoffensive manner, and instruction in the Catholic articles of faith should be mixed with the exposition and refutation of heterodox doctrine.

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The same suave approach was to be adopted when taking away sectarian books from the peasants. The clergy were to persuade them with kind words and offer some money as well as Catholic books by way of compensation. The decree roundly condemned as futile the practice of confiscating Protestant books without following this up with religious instruction. The decree of 1733 made special mention of itinerant book sellers among the list of potentially suspect foreigners, but Charles VI insisted that proper surveillance must not result in depriving the rural population of the pleasure they derived from their reading skills (“an dießer ihrer Khunst und darob haltenden Lust”). Much sharper criticism was meted out to the clergy: “The present damage and religious scandal could have been prevented if the clergy had extended their apostolate a bit to the mountains, and indeed if the clerical lords in these regions had looked after the spiritual welfare of their subjects, who had been put under their overlordship religionis causa in the first place.” Considering the number of pious foundations and benefices that had been bestowed on them it seemed only fair that the clergy should pay for the missions, construction of churches, and any other remedial activity that was now needed as a result of their carelessness.26 Charles VI’s response thus acknowledged that sectarian literature and reading skills played a part in crypto-Protestantism. However, these factors are seen as of secondary importance if compared to the impact of clerical neglect and foreign interference. This interpretation was in line with contemporary elite assumptions about the cultural and intellectual capacities of the lower orders. Still, this did not preclude some perceptive observations on the peasants’ uses of books and their literary predilections. For example, when discussing the nature of a suitable Catholic book for distribution in Inner Austria at a meeting of the religious commission in 1733, the bishop of Seckau in Styria suggested that it include a catechism and epistles for each Sunday of the church year and should have a large format, “which the peasants prefer.” The archdeacon of Graz agreed on the desirability of a large format and suggested the inclusion of the complete gospel plus epistles and exegesis. By contrast, any explicit treatment of controversial theological issues was to be avoided. The Styrian councillor Count Corbinian Saurau ventured to propose that “the peasant must find his own opinions” in the new book. Revealing his wider reform agenda, he demanded that the authority of placing books on the index for confiscation should rest solely with the government. The idea that Protestant books could be simply replaced with Catholic ones was shared by the clergy and the government and testifies to their belief that, in substance, heresy amounted to no more than a lack of religious instruction and low doctrinal awareness. The evidence from the Bohemian missions may have strengthened this misconception. However, any notion that Austrian dissent could be dealt with in the same way was soon proved naively optimistic. In 1734, it was decided to have 2,000 copies printed of a catechism by the Jesuit Lorenz Forer, which had originally been composed as an anti-Calvinist tract. It

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was hoped that the costs of printing might to some extent be recovered by selling the book at a small charge. As it was, this initiative misfired entirely; by 1740, the missionaries in Styria and Carinthia had not sold a single copy, and even when offered for free the book found almost no takers.27 In contrast, another experiment in Catholic literary propaganda seemed at first sight a striking success. In 1752, the clergy in Upper and Inner Austria encouraged the dissemination of a supposedly Catholic postil by the Franciscan Johann Croendonck. The book had been approved by the archbishop and printed several times in Salzburg since 1677, and it had just been adopted for the mission in Upper Austria at the recommendation of the bishop of Passau, Count Joseph Dominicus Lamberg. The book’s avowed purpose was to explain the gospel and epistles as read out on Sundays for the instruction and edification of adults and children. The version that came into circulation in Inner Austria was printed in Hessian Sulzbach in 1721. It was well received by the population in the suspect regions, until one of the missionary clergy subjected its contents to closer inspection and alarmed the authorities in Salzburg. Government action was swift, but the imperial decree of 31 March 1753 that ordered the withdrawal of the postil from circulation further exacerbated rural opposition to the missionaries’ efforts.28 A few quotations will explain the different responses. For example, Croendonck seemed to be asserting the priesthood of all baptized Christians, and he expounded on the proper election of parish clergy. Other propositions seemed to question the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist, while still others presented a thinly veiled rendition of the sola fide doctrine. His observations on the conduct of the higher clergy may originally have been intended as an Erasmian swipe at the lax morals of some late–seventeenth-century monks and prelates indulging in baroque luxury, but in the given context they seemed to make for a straightforward Lutheran sermon: It is a sad state of affairs that our bishops, pastors, and prelates are negligent, lazy, and morose. They do not preach, but fling the Bible under the bench and instead of studying they amuse themselves with gambling; they prefer to read at the bottom of their drinking cups rather than in the epistles [“in calicibus, dann in codicibus”], they study the tithe register more assiduously than Holy Scripture, they practice their skills in drinking rather than writing [“in bibere alß in scribere”]. What is the life of many clergymen but fornication, both inwardly and outwardly, in spirit and in body?

To round out his verbal assault on the higher orders, Croendonck lashed out at the nobility who banqueted with the prelates and shared their taste for idle and frivolous conversation. Understandably, this message was as welcome to the Protestant population as it was alarming to the authorities. If Count Saurau had once considered the inclusion of some of the common man’s opinions as essential for the success of a Catholic postil, then Croendonck surpassed all expectations in the least desirable sense.29

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The Croendonck affair occurred at a time when governmental perceptions of heresy were undergoing a profound change. For one thing, Maria Theresa’s personal piety made matters of faith intrinsically matters of state, and a political priority well beyond even her devout father’s concerns. There is no indication that she ever viewed religious toleration other than in negative terms, that is, as an acknowledgement of the practical limitations of her power. Secondly, there was the experience of the futile missionary efforts and literary campaign in Austria in the 1730s, which contrasted unfavourably with the Bohemian experience and resulted in the summary deportations of 1734–1736. Most important of all was the first Austro-Prussian conflict over Silesia in 1740–1748, in which the Protestant minority of the lost province played a dubious part.30 As recovery of Silesia remained high on the agenda of Austrian foreign policy, any stirrings of domestic Protestantism were bound to assume a menacing aspect. Against this background, Maria Theresa set herself energetically to the struggle against heresy. She paid particularly close attention to the reports of the government and the missionary clergy that supplemented and confirmed the information from the older parish and visitation records and shed light on a long-standing link between Lutheranism and education. It emerged that Protestantism had sunk deep roots in the affected regions as a result of the founding of elementary schools on the estates of the Protestant nobility in the sixteenth century. In the case of Upper Styria, these modest beginnings had expanded into a remarkably dense network of parish schools by the mid eighteenth century. In contrast, primary education was non-existent in most of the Slovene parts of Inner Austria, where the population had remained largely unaffected by heresy. The palpable connection between heresy and literacy on the one hand, and orthodoxy and the absence of elementary schooling on the other, was made much of by the clergy in an effort to divert attention from the issue of clerical neglect. However, the clergy’s petitions for the summary abolition of primary schools was met with a cool reception from the empress. Like her father, Maria Theresa was fully persuaded of the economic and moral utility of literacy and was by the 1750s pressing for an extension of elementary schooling in competition with Prussia. Her decrees for the detection and suppression of heretical books and for the draconian punishment of book dealers nevertheless demonstrate her concern about the local evidence of the combined impact of endogamous marriage and a tradition of literacy on the creation of Protestant enclaves. The interrogation transcripts reveal that female relatives played a key role in giving boys and girls instruction in reading, writing, and religion. Women were usually in charge of the illicit hedge schools, which were widespread in Austria but seem to have played no comparable part in eighteenth-century Bohemia. Female literacy was frequently commented upon by the authorities. For example, the commissioners’ reports for Stadl in Upper Styria in 1773 noted with some emphasis that men and women were equally articulate and able to read and write.

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Women’s part in religious instruction could even make them the backbone of community resistance. A missionary report of 1753 for the Upper Styrian district of Wörschachwald, for example, reported that two local heretical women had been arrested and transferred to a neighbouring town for having brought “ignominy” on the clergy by constantly thwarting their educational efforts. The women had instructed each other in feigning ignorance in matters of doctrine when interrogated. They read suspect books if forced to attend Mass, and they exerted a bad influence on their husbands.31 In the same year, the Jesuit missionary in Pürgg in Upper Styria complained that a female parish schoolteacher distributed pernicious books among her teaching assistants (Lehrjünger).32 The influence of women points to the centrality of the family as the smallest unit of the crypto-Protestant community. Confessional allegiance in general determined the choice of spouses, though mixed marriages were not unknown, and kinship ties connected individual crypto-Protestant households within a wider regional network in which, as has been shown, Protestants and Catholics lived peacefully side by side. Literacy as a social practice helped preserve and stabilize the distinct religious identity of these communities, and there were various ways by which Protestant books came into the country. There was a pattern of seasonal labor migration to Hungary or the empire, and books were often bought on commission. In addition, professional peddlers worked clandestinely to smuggle various other goods as well as Protestant literature, a feature that was more widespread among Alpine communities. In 1778, a notorious heretic quipped that Lutheran books were just like other contraband: there was no sin in possessing them, but one had to conceal them carefully from the authorities and be prepared to pay a fine if caught. This quip is revelatory of the wider social meaning of heresy and literacy. Among the population of the lower Alpine regions it formed part of an autonomous way of life that expressed itself in various other ways. For example, the official reports reveal a youth culture that regulated premarital sexual relations and was therefore targeted alongside Protestantism by the clerical and secular authorities as a kind of secular heresy.33 Literacy helped sustain this self-sufficient and autonomous way of life. It could be an indispensable commercial skill, as in the case of the Protestants of Stadl in Upper Styria, who in addition to farming engaged in the corn, cattle, and linen trade with Italy. By giving access to a religious literature that was designed to comfort as much as to educate, literacy catered to the spiritual needs of a population who, for at least part of the year, lived very withdrawn lives. This would explain the statements of strong emotional attachment to these books. For example, in 1773, Maria Lettnerin (the widow of a notorious Upper Styrian heretic) handed over a Lutheran Bible, catechism, and a popular Pietist postil to missionary clergy to prevent a closer search of her home. When the missionaries proceeded to inspect a boarded-up window and discovered more books, she “complained heartrendingly

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that by taking away these books they would take away her heart’s comfort, and that she was now determined never to go to confession again.” On an earlier occasion in 1752, two siblings from a Protestant family threatened the clergy with violence when their books were confiscated and fled the country by night after having announced that “if they were not left their books, they would leave their country.”34 The decisive difference between these statements and similar ones from Bohemia lies in the more discriminating use of literature and the higher level of confessional awareness among the Austrian suspects as demonstrated by their rejection of Catholic literature and their doctrinally firm responses in interrogations. Gradually, these features persuaded the empress of the autochthonous nature of Austrian Protestantism. Against this background it is logical that the authorities were preoccupied with the book, the book dealer, the surprisingly erudite heretic, and the clandestine conventicle. For every book that was confiscated or dragged out of one of the innumerable hiding places, there seemed to be ten recently bought ones that were somehow secreted into the country. In September 1753, the Bavarian Jesuit missionary Anton Haymerle reported that during the eighteen months of his stay among the 3,000 souls of the parish of Pürgg in Upper Styria, he had discovered no less than 700 heretical books. In the similarly sized parish of Stadl, the local clergy in the course of five years sniffed out no less than 914 books from a bitterly hostile population. There was no more talk of heretics as innocent if obtuse simpletons. Suspects like the eloquent Martin Sonnleitner, who was accused of teaching false doctrine and holding conventicles, were described as “well-read and dangerous” or “sophisticated and erudite.” Similarly, the widespread, pernicious practice of private Bible study and exegesis drew comment. In January 1773 the local missionary reported to the chaplain of the archbishop of Salzburg that in this place, good doctrine and solid controversial theology, and a firm knowledge of Scripture are essential, because the local farmers know the Bible, and many are quite erudite. They know how to distinguish between the books of the Old and the New Testament, and they are so set on their own pettifogging interpretations that it takes solid arguments to dissuade them. They would scoff at the priest who dared propose commonplaces. But who are these men? I have not met the like of them.35

These remarkably erudite heretics may have been at the extreme end of the scale of crypto-Protestant literacy, but the evidence from missionary letters, government reports, and interrogation transcripts vividly illustrates the ardor and imaginativeness with which the Austrian crypto-Protestants had appropriated the literary legacy of the Reformation in general, and Lutheran Biblicism in particular. Far from being a mere phantom that haunted the minds of the Catholic authorities, an entrenched tradition of literacy and a discriminating use of literature gave eighteenth-century crypto-Protestantism its distinctive intellectual substance and was of palpable relevance as a habitus and living social practice.

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Notes 1. See Peter Biller and Anne Hudson, eds., Heresy and Literacy, 1000–1530 (Cambridge, 1994). The chapters in this collection cover a wide range of examples from England and Europe. For case studies of Catholic and Lutheran literacy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries see Hans Erich Bödeker, Gerald Chaix, and Patrice Veit, eds., Le Livre Religieux et ses Pratiques (Göttingen, 1991). Further relevant titles are cited below. 2. In Biller and Hudson, Heresy and Literacy, see Peter Biller, “Heresy and Literacy: Earlier History of the Theme,” 1–18, and Robert I. Moore, “Literacy and the Making of Heresy, c. 1000–c.1150,” 19–37, at pp. 20, 24–25, 33. On the spread of pragmatic literacy see Richard Britnell, “Pragmatic Literacy in Latin Christendom,” in Pragmatic Literacy East and West, 1200–1330, ed. Richard Britnell (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1997), 3–24. 3. Moore, “Literacy and the Making of Heresy,” 24–25; Biller, “Heresy and Literacy,” 1–9. The cases of the Cathars, Albigensians and Waldensians are discussed in the chapters by Peter Biller, Lorenzo Paolini, Anne Brenon, Pierette Paravy, and Gabriel Audisio in Heresy and Literacy. Contrasting accounts of Waldensian literacy are discussed by Peter Biller, “The Oral and the Written: The Case of the Alpine Waldensians,” Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies 4 (1986): 19–28. In comparison with Cathar literacy see Peter Biller, “The Topos and Reality of the Heretic as Illiteratus,” in Religiöse Laienbildung und Ketzerabwehr im Mittelalter, ed. Dieter Harmening (Würzburg, 1994), 1–27. Biller’s starting point is the pioneering essay by Herbert Grundmann, “Litteratus—Illiteratus: Der Wandel einer Bildungsnorm vom Altertum zum Mittelalter,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 40 (1958): 1–65. The subject of Waldensian literacy and their oral tradition is dealt with authoritatively by Gabriel Audisio, The Waldensian Dissent, trans. Claire Davison (Cambridge, 1999), 143–160. For the final period 1460–1560 see Gabriel Audisio, “Were the Waldensians More Literate than Their Contemporaries?” in Biller and Hudson, Heresy and Literacy, 176–185. 4. The visual evidence is cited in Biller, “Heresy and Literacy,” 8. 5. The Reformers’ ambivalent attitude toward popular literacy and the wider nexus of Lutheranism, print, and literacy are the subjects of Richard Gawthrop and Gerald Strauss, “Protestantism and Literacy in Early Modern Germany,” Past and Present 104 (1984): 36–43, and Robert Scribner, “Heterodoxy, Literacy and Print in the Early German Reformation,” in Biller and Hudson, Heresy and Literacy, 255–278, as well as Gerald Strauss, “Lutheranism and Literacy: A Reassessment,” in Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1800, ed. Kaspar von Greyerz (London, 1984), 112–118. The nexus of script, print, and religious reform in an English context is the subject of Julia Crick and Alexandra Walsham, eds., The Uses of Script and Print, 1300–1700 (Cambridge, 2004). 6. The relation between written and other forms of propaganda in Lollardy has been the subject of extensive research; see the seminal work by Anne Hudson, Lollards and their Books (London, 1985), and Margaret Aston, Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion (London, 1984). For popular iconoclasm in a Swiss context see Lee Palmer Wandel, Voracious Idols and Violent Hands (Cambridge, 1994). “Literacy and Heresy in Hussite Bohemia” is the topic of the essay by František Šmahel in Biller and Hudson, Heresy and Literacy, 237–254. For a Catholic account of Hussitism see Thomas A. Fudge, “Seduced by the Theologians: Aeneas Sylvius and the Hussite Heretics,” in Heresy in Transition, ed. Ian Hunter, John Christian Laursen, and Cary J. Nederman (Aldershot, 2005), 89–101. 7. Regina Pörtner, “Confessionalization and Ethnicity,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 93 (2002): 239–277, here 266–269. 8. For a different view that credits Theresian toleration with more positive qualities, see Grete Klingenstein, “Modes of Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in Eighteenth-century

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Habsburg Politics,” Austrian History Yearbook 24 (1993): 1–16. On Kressel’s links with Freemasonry see Helmut Reinalter, “frühfranziszeischer Reaktion,” in Freimauer und Geheimbünde im 18. Jahrhundert in Mitteleuropa, 2nd ed., ed. Helmut Reinalter (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), 35–80, 66. For Kressel’s standing at court and his self-confidently independent views on matters of reform see Franz Szabo, Kaunitz and Enlightened Absolutism 1753–1780 (Cambridge, 1994), 107–108, 151–152, and passim. Kressel was a member of the circle of Court Jansenists, alongside Fr. Ignaz Müller, Karl Anton Martini, and Simon Ambros von Stock, among others, and was in charge of the commission for the abolition of the Jesuits in Austria: Szabo, Kaunitz, 244–245. Maria Theresa’s views on Jansenism have most recently been discussed by Kerstin Schmal, Die Pietas Maria Theresias im Spannungsfeld von Barock und Aufklärung (Frankfurt am Main, 2001). For a judicious treatment of the battle for toleration and reform that was part of the dismantling of the confessional state see Szabo, Kaunitz, 229–257. In addition to the pioneering five-volume documentation by Ferdinand Maass there is now a handy selection of relevant decrees and memoranda edited by Harm Klueting, Der Josephinismus (Darmstadt, 1995). For a critical appraisal of factual errors and intellectual fallacies in older accounts of Josephism see chapters 3, 5, 11, and 12 in the collection of essays by Derek Beales, Enlightenment and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Europe (London and New York, 2005). 9. Prussian propaganda is discussed by Joachim Bahlcke, “Frederick II of Prussia, Austria, and the Hungarian Protestants: Bishop Márton Padány Biró of Veszprém and the Enchiridion Fide,” Austrian History Yearbook 31 (2000): 15–32. For an outline of the Austrian missions, their sixteenth and seventeenth century prehistory, and popular responses see Regina Pörtner, “Die Kunst des Lügens: Ketzerverfolgung und geheimprotestantische Überlebensstrategien im theresianischen Österreich,” in Kommunikation und Medien in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. J. Burkhardt and C. Werkstetter, Historische Zeitschrift, Supplementary Issue 41 (2005): 385–408. The relevant decrees for the creation of the religious commissions and missionary apparatus and the financing of their activities can be found in Religionsberichte Protestantismus, fascicles 1731–1735, XV-b-23 and 1751–1753, XV-b-24, Episcopal Archive Graz-Seckau, and Miszellen, Box 356, Styrian State Archive Graz. MSS 1302 of the Styrian State Archive comprises, among other documents, imperial decrees as well as transcripts for the religious commissions for Upper Austria, Styria, and Carinthia in the 1750s. For the administration of the Carinthian missions see Peter G. Tropper, Staatliche Kirchenpolitik, Geheimprotestantismus und katholische Mission in Kärnten (1752–1780) (Klagenfurt, 1989), with a discussion of finances at pp. 93–95. 10. The House of Conversion in Rottenmann was created by the imperial decree of 29/31 August 1752. A government memorandum of ca. 1757 demanded resumption of the prewar use of Baron Moschardt’s house in Judenburg as a House of Conversion; see Religionsberichte Protestantismus, fascicles for 1751–1753 and 1754–1770, XV-b-24, Episcopal Archive Graz-Seckau. For the Italian house of converts see John Edwards, The Jews in Christian Europe 1400–1700 (London and New York, 1988), 70–71. The Upper Austrian houses are mentioned by Rudolf Weiß, Das Bistum Passau unter Kardinal Joseph Dominikus von Lamberg, 1723–1761 (St. Ottilien, 1979), 423. 11. For a detailed account of the conflict with the Protestant representation in the empire and the impact of Austro-Prussian rivalry, see Regina Pörtner, “Migration und Herrschaftsverdichtung: Ökonomische Voraussetzungen konfessionell bedingter Untertanenmobilität in den Ländern der Habsburgermonarchie 1680–1780,” in Glaubensflüchtlinge, ed. Joachim Bahlcke (Münster, 2008), 347–373, at pp. 348–356, and Regina Pörtner, “Propaganda, Conspiracy, Persecution: Prussian Influences on Habsburg Religious Policies from Leopold I to Joseph II,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts 18/19 (2004): 457–476. On the transmigrations from the Austrian duchies

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15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

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to Hungary and Transylvania see Erich Buchinger, Die Landler in Siebenbürgen (Munich, 1980); Paul Brandtner, “Beitrag zur Geschichte der Transmigration inner- und oberösterreichischer Protestanten nach Ungarn: Iklád und Keresztur,” Deutsche Forschungen in Ungarn 4 (1939): 71–84; and Ernst Nowotny, Die Transmigration ober- und innerösterreichischer Protestanten nach Siebenbürgen im achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Jena, 1931). For an estimate of transmigrant numbers see Regina Pörtner, The Counter-Reformation in Central Europe: Styria 1580–1630 (Oxford, 2001), 258–259. Quotation from the missionary report by P. Anton Haymerle S.J. for Pürgg in Upper Styria, September 1753, Styrian State Archive, Miszellen, Box 351. Letter of 19 February 1752, National Archives, London SP 80/188. I would like to thank Professor Peter G. M. Dickson for bringing this information to my attention. An Imperial decree of 4 September 1773 is indicative of the changed perception of cryptoProtestantism, which paid more attention to the motives and conduct of the delinquents: the commission for religious affairs was abolished, the payment of rewards for informers that had been introduced in 1752 was likewise suppressed, and the need for regular elementary schooling was stressed. More differentiated perception did not, however, herald a change in favor of toleration: the 1773 decree ordered preparations for imminent transmigrations, and although the decree of 3/7 December 1774 put constraints on the scope of future deportations as the least desirable option, the system remained in force until its official termination by decree of 26 May/2 June 1775. Even then, obstinate heretics were incarcerated and subjected to forced religious instruction in the Styrian Houses of Conversion. Their transmigration was again contemplated in May 1779. Quoted documents in Religionsberichte Protestantismus, fascicles for 1771–1780, Episcopal Archive Graz-Seckau. Figures quoted from Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux, “Reading unto Death: Books and Readers in Eighteenth-Century Bohemia,” in The Culture of Print: Power and Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, ed. R. Chartier (Princeton, 1989), 191–229, here 196. For the geographical distribution see ibid., 196, 203, 207 and passim; also Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux “Le livre et l’hérésie, modes de lecture et politique du livre en Bohême au XVIIIe siècle,” in Bödeker et al., Le Livre Religieux et ses Pratiques, 131–155, 141. Examples of idiosyncratic beliefs are quoted in Ducreux, “Reading unto Death,” 203, 207– 208. For medieval Bohemian heresy see Šmahel, “Literacy and Heresy in Hussite Bohemia,” 237–238. Ducreux, “Le livre et l´hérésie,” 143–144, 148; places of publication are mentioned on p. 155. For evidence of “Hebraic sects” and Jewish bookdealers see Ducreux, “Reading unto Death,” 212. Ducreux, “Reading unto Death,” 200 and 201, quotation from the chief judge of the ecclesiastical court and grand vicar of Prague in 1735, and from a Bohemian missionary. Ducreux quotes a number of similar statements by the clergy and interrogated suspects. Abundant primary material exists in the form of interrogation transcripts, missionary reports, government decrees, records of the religious conferences, and correspondence between the clergy and the Inner Austrian government in the Episcopal Archive Graz Seckau, Religionsberichte Protestantismus, fascicles for 1731–1780. Governmental activities are documented in the Miszellen, Religionsakten, Styrian State Archive Graz. Boxes 350–351 cover the 1750s. Flacianism had some following among the estates and the rural Protestants in sixteenth -century Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola; see Pörtner, Counter-Reformation, 49, 52, 108– 109, and the literature cited in this work. Compare the evidence from interrogation transcripts quoted by Ducreux, “Reading unto Death,” 200, 211. For some instructive parallels with the status of religious books among the semiliterate and even illiterate population of early modern England and America, see

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23. 24. 25.

26. 27.

28.

29. 30.

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David Cressy, “Books as Totems in Seventeenth-Century England and New England,” The Journal of Library History 21, no. 1 (1986): 92–106. For Bohemia see the previously quoted studies by Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux. The missionaries’ reports offer some clues regarding the kind of literature that was in use among the Austrian crypto-Protestants, and sometimes lists of confiscated books were enclosed; see Friedrich Koch, “Seltsame Bücherschränke und deren Inhalt,” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für die Geschichte des Protestantismus in Österreich 2 (1881): 65–76; Tropper, Geheimprotestantismus, 191–193. On the possession, smuggling, and concealing of Protestant books, Paul Dedic, “Besitz und Beschaffung evangelischen Schrifttums in Steiermark und Kärnten in der Zeit des Krypto-Protestantismus,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 3rd series, vol. 58 (1939): 476–495; Paul Dedic, “Die Einschmuggelung lutherischer Bücher nach Kärnten in den ersten Dezennien des 18. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für die Geschichte des Protestantismus in Österreich 60 (1939): 126–177. For the diffusion and destruction of Protestant literature in the sixteenth century see Paul Dedic, “Verbreitung und Vernichtung evangelischen Schrifttums in Innerösterreich im Zeitalter der Reformation und Gegenreformation,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 3rd series, 57, no. 3/4 (1938): 433–458. Quotation from William Reginald Ward, The Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge, 1992), 111. For the concept of literacy as situated social practice see Michael Baynham, Literacy Practices (Harlow, Essex, 1997), 39–40, quotation on 186. On the issue of Prussian spies, see Regina Pörtner, “Propaganda, Conspiracy, Persecution,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des Achtzehnten Jahrhunderts 18/19 (2004), 457-476, quotation on 472. Quotations from the imperial decree of 29 August 1733, Episcopal Archive Graz-Seckau, Religionsberichte Protestantismus 1736–1750, XV-b-23. The details of the failed literary campaign are recorded in the record of the Religious Commission in Graz of 23 November 1733, and in the Imperial Decrees of 29 August 1733, 10 September 1734, 9 and 11 March 1740, Religionsberichte Protestantismus, Episcopal Archive Graz-Seckau, fascicles for 1731–1735, XV-b-23, 1736–1750, XV-b-23, quotations from the record of the conference on 22 March to 3 April 1734. The archpriest of Bruck an der Mur as Seckau’s representative in Upper Styria introduced the anti-educational theme that henceforth dominated the clergy’s response by warning that “reading makes for erudition”; ibid. The documents relating to the Croendonck affair can be found in Religionsberichte Protestantismus, fascicles for 1751–1753, XV-b-24, Episcopal Archive Graz-Seckau, see especially the letters by the Inner Austrian Government in Graz to the Provicar of Salzburg, Aloys Bertholdi, dated 29 August 1750 and 3 April 1753. Extract from Croendonck in Religionsberichte Protestantismus 1754–1770, XV-b-24, Episcopal Archive Graz-Seckau. In June 1741 the government in Vienna received reports from the duchy of Teschen that there existed a clandestine Protestant network and that the local Protestant population rejoiced at the Prussian successes. Letter by Ferdinand Gallas, imperial administrator of Czechowitz in Teschen, 9 June 1741, Haus- Hof- und Staatsarchiv Vienna, Österreichische Akten, Schlesien, Box 5, “Religions-Gravamina,” fascicle B., fol. 52–54. For Maria Theresa’s decrees on religion and education see Pörtner, “Kunst des Lügens,” 392–394, 397–405. Missionary reports by the Servite missionaries in Wörschachwald, 12 February 1753 and 17 February 1753, Miszellen, Box 350, Styrian State Archive Graz. Missionary report by Anton Haymerle, S.J. for the parish of Pürgg in Upper Styria, September 1753, Styrian State Archive Graz, Miszellen, Box 351.

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33. The statement on contraband is quoted in a missionary letter of 8 August 1778 from the parish priest of Stadl in Upper Styria to the court chaplain in Salzburg, Religionsberichte Protestantismus 1775–1778, XV-c-1, Episcopal Archive Graz-Seckau. For the more general points on migration and networks of peddlers see Laurence Fontaine and David Siddle, “Migration, Kinship and Commerce in the Alps, 1500–1800,” in Migration, Mobility, Modernization, ed. Laurence Fontaine and David Siddle (Liverpool, 2000), 47–69. For the nexus of regional culture, religious persecution and social discipline in the lower Alpine regions of Austria see Pörtner, “Migration und Herrschaftsverdichtung,” 356–371. 34. The case of Maria Lettnerin is reported by the Salzburg missionary in the parish of Haus, 3 July 1773. The incident involving the siblings is mentioned in a report of 4 March 1752 by the secular commissars for the same parish, Religionsberichte Protestantismus, fascicles for 1751–1753, XV-b-24, and 1771–1773, XV-b-24, Episcopal Archive Graz-Seckau. 35. Letter from the clergy in Stadl to the court chaplain in Salzburg, 7 January 1773, Religionsberichte Protestantismus, fascicles for 1771–1773, XV-b-24, Episcopal Archive GrazSeckau.

Chapter 10

UNION, REUNION, OR TOLERATION? Reconciliatory Attempts among Eighteenth-Century Protestants

d Alexander Schunka

Introduction The history of uniting or reuniting different confessional groups is as old as the confessional divisions themselves. Interconfessional dialogue became a prominent feature of religious life in the Reformation era. The fundamental constitutional laws of the Holy Roman Empire, such as the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 or the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, aimed at confessional unity and the abolition of schism. At least from the Marburg Colloquy (1529) onward, Central European theologians of different denominations met occasionally, usually under the guidance of political rulers, to discuss the problems of confessional division. Normally, such meetings yielded limited or even no practical results. At the same time, political authorities had to deal with confessional differences among their subjects—either by policies of forced religious homogenization, such as in the hereditary lands of the Catholic Habsburgs, or by princely orders advocating confessional toleration and concord, such as in the electorate of Brandenburg. Usually the attempts of the rulers to impose confessional peace neither resolved the practical problems of their subjects living in multi-confessional societies, nor addressed the root of the issue, namely the newly emerged plurality of conflicting religious truths that had developed since the Reformation. For centuries to come, the fractured nature of the Christian community saddened many but spurred others on to overcome these problems through confessional (re-) unification.1

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The questions and issues related to confessional unification were of great significance in the early modern era, especially in the decades around 1700. However, they have received disproportionately little attention in recent research2 compared to other topics such as “tolerance” and “secularization.”3 The reasons might be that the struggles for confessional unity seem somewhat old-fashioned and premodern, as Theodor Schieder once put it, or that they pale in comparison to the apparent success stories of tolerance and secularization that seem to lead straight into the modern era..4 It is obvious in retrospect that attempts to unite confessional groups between 1650 and 1750 were not successful. However, such attempts are significant when it comes to questions of religious dialogue or the relationship between religion and politics. What makes the topic so promising is not just the wealth of printed and unprinted sources—particularly in Central Europe around 1700, where innumerable writings by theologians, politicians, and other authors either supported or rejected a confessional reconciliation between the Christian denominations—but also the fact that these discussions increasingly involved territorial politics and led to the establishment of ecclesio-political communication networks across Protestant Europe.5 In the years around 1700 discussions on religious unification, especially in the Protestant churches of Central Europe, seemed to have gained new momentum. The reasons can be found in the political, theological, and intellectual developments of the period. From a political angle, a presumed or even visible rise of Catholicism and Catholic powers provoked increasing fear of “popery.” Theologically, the debate concerning toleration crossed traditional confessional blocks in a much wider sense than before and laid the groundwork for new types of movements and discussions. The rise of Pietism, Socinianism, and Deism, and the overall heterogeneous religious character of the early Enlightenment are all evidence of this new momentum. Intellectuals dealing with matters of confessional reconciliation were members of the Republic of Letters. Their issues were increasingly international in form and in content. Thus the discussions about an ecclesiastical union between the Lutheran and the Reformed faiths in BrandenburgPrussia and the Holy Roman Empire revealed strong influences from Poland, Great Britain, and Switzerland, in theological as well as in political respects. The present chapter focuses on attempts to unite Protestant denominations in Brandenburg-Prussia and Central Europe. The first part analyzes interconfessional dialogue around 1700 as it focused on tolerance and ecclesiastical (re-)union in its theological circumstances and implications. The following section draws upon the political background of the so-called Unionists and the political mood and situation surrounding unification talks.6 One of the basic assumptions is that all discussions about confessional or ecclesiastical reconciliation, rapprochement, or even unification around 1700 revolved around issues of authority in at least two respects. The first is that theologians and church politicians had to bear in mind the authority of their own confessional

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group, ranging from books and creeds that had special symbolic meaning, to the opinions of their leading theological figures. The second aspect is that these unification movements were largely dependent on the political authorities who provided the basis of the talks—or, in other cases, actively hindered them—, who were often the employers of unionist theologians, and who expected considerable political benefits from successful negotiations. The struggle for the right balance of authority between theology and politics seems to have been a central aspect of the discussions on confessional reconciliation in this period. This struggle maps the field between religion and the state in the time of the early Enlightenment and is therefore no less relevant than other roads to modernity despite the ultimate lack of success of these efforts.

Interconfessional Dialogue around 1700 The most important eighteenth-century German-language encyclopedia, the Zedler, contains a lengthy article of seventy columns entitled “Unions-Werck” (attempt at unification). Besides the fact that its sheer length and comprehensiveness illustrate the importance of matters of ecclesiastical union in the eighteenth century, it is a remarkable piece since it summarizes discussions on reconciliation of the Christian community from the time of the primitive church onward. The most substantial portion of the article is devoted to Protestant unification attempts. It is written from a moderate Lutheran position, largely based on the thought of Lutheran theologian Johann Georg Walch (1693–1775), and is a useful source for tracking Lutheran unification attempts and for understanding the contemporary significance of Reformed Unionists in the early eighteenth century. According to this article, an ecclesiastical union was not simply aimed at the alternating use of the same churches by Lutheran and Reformed believers that corresponded more closely to the notion of religious tolerance. The goal of a union of churches was the establishment of a joint divine service and the joint distribution of sacraments. The central question was whether there were fundamental differences between Lutheran and Reformed doctrine. The notion of predestination was, according to the author of the Zedler article, a fundamental obstacle to any rapprochement, as it was one of the central tenets of Calvinism and could not easily be overcome by the opinions of open-minded individuals such as the moderate, so-called “universalist” Reformed theologians. Differences on the sacraments were considered fundamental as well, as the Calvinist view of an exclusively spiritual presence in the Eucharist had to be brought into accordance with the Lutheran view of the sacrament as a medium of ensuring divine grace, a view Calvinists did not share.7 After a largely unbiased outline of the controversial positions on confessional and ecclesiastical reconciliation, the Zedler article concluded that all of these at-

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tempts were inevitably doomed to failure. It quoted the Huguenot theologian Pierre Jurieu who, from a Reformed point of view, had advocated four conceivable ways to unify the churches: first, to renounce the views of one’s own group and join the other; second, to prove that confessional conflicts were only quarrels about words and thus unimportant; third, to reach a state of tolerance between churches where everyone remains in his own group of believers but is free to join the divine services of others; finally, to cohabitate peacefully in silence and without controversies.8 All these options were, according to Zedler, unfeasible.9 The author of the article insisted that the fundamental differences between the Lutherans and the Reformed were not merely semantic, nor could they be solved by giving up one’s own confessional identity or, worse still, by abandoning the pursuit of religious truth. The notion of only one possible, authoritative truth on the matter of salvation, in accordance with Lutheran writers around 1700, was central in the author’s rejection of Jurieu’s system of unification. In his posthumously published Jus feciale divinum (Law of divine peace), the famous historian of Brandenburg-Prussia Samuel von Pufendorf had clearly drawn extensively from Jurieu’s treatise from a Lutheran point of view. His interpretation influenced the article in Zedler’s encyclopedia, and therefore it is necessary to take a closer look at this important text of 1695. Pufendorf rejected Jurieu’s system, though he considered the “abdication of a prior dogma” (§ 90. “De abdicatione priorum dogmatum”)10 as the “via perfectissima” to confessional unity. He showed some sympathy for Jurieu’s argument regarding quarrels over words (§ 91. “De Logomachiis”) as a result of his personal dislike of theological controversies, but considered tolerance in Jurieu’s sense (§ 92. “De Tolerantia”) as well as silent cohabitation (§ 93. “De silentio”) as detrimental for a union of the Protestant churches. He was thus unwilling to accept the authoritative Reformed dogma of predestination but envisioned an ecclesiastical union as a confederative system based on natural law.11 For the moment, however, he only proposed making common cause against the Catholic enemy (“communem causam contra Pontificios”) and leading a life according to the “praecepta Christi,” which could eventually prepare the way for a unification of the Protestant churches.12 Pufendorf distinguished between political tolerance on the one hand (the relationship between religion and territorial politics) and ecclesiastical tolerance on the other. What he called ecclesiastical tolerance (“Tolerantia ecclesiastica”) was based on the assumption that complete unity of belief is not necessary on nonfundamental articles of faith.13 Regarding the basic principles of belief, he proposed a confessional reconciliation among Protestants based on certain mutually agreed-upon fundamental articles he derived from natural law. Still, this did not lead him, as might be expected, to assume there was a general equality of religious beliefs—a necessary starting point for any form of religious tolerance. Along with the Reformed Prussian court preacher Daniel Ernst Jablonski and the theologian Samuel Strimesius of Frankfurt an der Oder, Pufendorf considered tolerance at

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best a preliminary stage toward union.14 In contrast to Jablonski and Strimesius, Pufendorf was more skeptical about reaching unification in the near future. From his point of view, a union with Catholics was unfeasible. Pufendorf ’s treatise not only popularized the work of the Huguenot writer Pierre Jurieu among German theologians but also contributed to or even relaunched an interconfessional debate on ecclesiastical reconciliation. The historian Pufendorf perpetuated local traditions of confessional dialogue initiated in the Electorate of Brandenburg at the time of the introduction of Calvinism in 1613. The Jus feciale divinum thus became a major topic in the unification talks centered on the Brandenburg court around 1700. The Reformed theologian Jablonski highly valued Pufendorf as a true follower of Protestant irenicism.15 But Pufendorf ’s treatise also opened doors for Jablonski when he began exchanging letters with the Lutheran cleric Johann Friedrich Mayer at Greifswald.16 Mayer, usually considered a striking example of strict Lutheran orthodoxy, had astonishingly published a text supporting France’s Reformed community, now persecuted after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. His openness to interconfessional considerations contrasted with his opposition to Pietism in his later life. His far-reaching theological contacts included Jablonski as well as the Hanoverian councilor Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Leibniz, however, became one of Pufendorf ’s sharpest critics. Unlike the court preacher Jablonski, Leibniz took part in the unification talks between Catholics and Protestants as well as in the ecclesio-political negotiations between the Lutheran territory of Hanover and Reformed Brandenburg-Prussia. Contrary to Jablonski, Leibniz denounced Pufendorf ’s treatise as dangerous for confessional reconciliation because of its anti-Catholicism, and he also deplored Pufendorf ’s contempt for philosophy, a science Leibniz considered essential for the development of an interconfessional foundation upon which further progress could be established.17 Unlike Jablonski and Pufendorf, Leibniz belonged to an irenic tradition actively promoting the possibility of an eventual unification with the Catholic church. In this respect, he advocated Protestant reconciliation as an important but not strictly consecutive step toward the reunion of the Christian denominations.18 In accordance with the seventeenth-century syncretist Georg Calixt of the University of Helmstedt, Leibniz considered predestination as a resolvable difference among Protestants; at the same time, he viewed the issue of a real presence in the Eucharist as an unsolvable but not fundamental difference.19 He worked on a philosophical system of reconciliation, trying to find a different notion of “substance” in order to resolve the problems of the Eucharist.20 Thus he was in part dissatisfied with the positions of Pufendorf and Jablonski, who seemingly either excluded the contradictions or simply considered them unimportant. Pufendorf in his Jus feciale divinum and the author of the Zedler article distinguished between an outward unification of church service and liturgy and an in-

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ner, spiritual union of believers.21 This differentiation can be found in the debates surrounding the unification attempts in Brandenburg-Prussia around 1700 and the conflict between Halle Pietism and the Brandenburg-Prussian Unionists such as Jablonski and Strimesius. Advocates of Pietism generally opposed a unification between Lutherans and Calvinists. Similar to Pufendorf, all leading Pietists insisted on insurmountable doctrinal differences regarding predestination, more than the problem of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. Pietists, however, advocated a union of hearts and spirits on the level of individual believers instead of uniting certain confessional denominations altogether. As is well known, Halle Pietism had no problems approaching and allying itself with the Reformed Prussian government institutions, particularly under King Frederick William I, but the Pietists were careful not to give up confessional characteristics that they considered central to the Lutheran faith.22 Although skeptical toward confessional reconciliation, Pufendorf ’s treatise created a link among the Protestant denominations and fostered dialogue on ecclesiastical unification. Despite Pufendorf ’s rather systematic approach toward religion and his own complex relationship to Pietism, it is not too surprising that the Prussian Pietist Johann Joachim Lange was fond of Pufendorf ’s treatise, considering its genuinely Lutheran attitude.23 It is somewhat more surprising that certain Swiss Reformed theologians, like Bénédict Pictet and Jérémias Sterky, accepted Pufendorf ’s opinion.24 Moreover, in a letter to the archbishop of Canterbury, the Genevan Jean-Alphonse Turrettini called for a broader effort to popularize Pufendorf ’s writings. He stressed that, since Lutherans such as Pufendorf had created such a receptive atmosphere in Brandenburg-Prussia, the opportunity for confessional unification should be seized.25 There were a number of reasons that Brandenburg was such a promising area for unification efforts. It was home to a long tradition of religious dialogue between the Protestant denominations.26 Many Reformed theologians, including the most important advocate of Protestant union, the court preacher Jablonski, favored a liberal, “universalist” notion of predestination, which—unlike the strict, “particularist” idea of the Synod of Dort (1618/19)—made theological dialogue with the Lutherans possible.27 The Reformed cantons of Switzerland, in contrast, were divided between these two camps. Swiss advocates of Reformed universalism (Jean-Frédéric Ostervald, Jérémias Sterky, and Jean-Alphonse Turrettini, among others) thus valued the guidance of Prussian theologians, and vice versa,28 even though Jablonski conceded that the differences within these two traditions of Reformed Protestantism were quite a serious obstacle in themselves.29 What Pufendorf had in common with Swiss Reformed ecclesiastics such as Turrettini was that he focused on certain fundamental articles of faith, an approach dating back to the sixteenth-century Consensus of Sandomir among Protestants in Poland, and to early seventeenth-century German theologians such as Nikolaus Hunnius and Georg Calixt.30 Whereas Hunnius had used the notion of

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fundamentals to stress the differences between beliefs, Calixt had tried to underline their similarities.31 According to Turrettini, fundamental articles were “those principles of religion, which so relate to the essence and foundation of it, and are of so great importance, that without them religion cannot stand, or at least will be destitute of a chief and necessary part.”32 Only Biblical doctrines related to salvation belonged to the fundamentals. Turrettini considered neither the different understandings of the Eucharist nor variant positions on predestination as insurmountable obstacles to an ecclesiastical union.33 The fact that Pufendorf ’s point of view was welcomed by a large number of Reformed theologians underlines the relevance of confessional unification from a Calvinist perspective, particularly in Brandenburg-Prussia with its Calvinist elite and majority of Lutheran inhabitants. Again, as Jablonski emphasized, differences in predestination were minimized by the liberal, “universalist” Calvinism in that area and should therefore be met with mutual tolerance.34 Along with Pufendorf, whom Jablonski appreciated as one of the most distinguished intellectuals of German Protestantism, the court preacher also believed that the interconfessional quarrels about Christ’s presence in the Eucharist were sometimes more impertinent than useful (they had, according to him, “mehr Vorwitz, als Frucht und Nutzen”).35 In his Kurtze Vorstellung der Einigkeit und des Unterscheides (A Short Description of Harmony and Difference, 1697), Jablonski argued that whereas both Protestant groups were able to agree on a true and real presence of the Lord in Holy Communion, Lutherans should not stress their notion of a local presence in bread and wine. Christ may be dimensionally bound in heaven, but nondimensional on earth, which would allow his simultaneous presence in thousands of places where people celebrate the sacrament of the Eucharist (“Spiritualis enim & hyperphysica praesentia est magis realis quam corporalis physica”).36 Jablonski proved to be a great pragmatic searching for a middle way (“Mittelstraße”). In contrast to Leibniz, he believed, “the chance and hope for a unification does not derive from a complete agreement of both parts, but from the fact that the diversity is not essential.”37 Leibniz seems to have been rather dissatisfied with what he saw as a trivial and superficial observation.38 However, the court preacher neither proposed that one side should give in to the other, nor considered the controversies as mere quarrels over words. He looked for a new stage of negotiations and thus proposed a rapprochement before solutions to all philosophical and theological problems were reached.39 That is, while Pufendorf and Leibniz tried to shape unificatory systems in advance in order to facilitate a later union, Jablonski advocated a preliminary union and excluded dogmatic differences in order to solve them at a later stage.40 He did not consider ecclesiastical tolerance as an important goal in itself; mutual toleration was feasible at most in a transitional period toward unification. Jablonski, as well as the Lutheran Gerald Wolter Molanus, considered tolerance, in the sense of refraining from mutual confessional oppression, as equally difficult or even harder to achieve than unity.

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Moreover, a state of tolerance could only be applied partially and would eventually lead to new envy and schisms. It was therefore worthwhile to struggle for a full ecclesiastical union.41 Most Unionist theologians agreed that there were some irresolvable differences between the Protestant denominations.42 However, they tended to argue that these existing differences between Lutheran and Reformed were not essential for the salvation of believers.43 Believers shared a common foundation: the Bible, the Apostle’s creed, and the Church fathers. Jablonski even argued that the Confessio augustana variata was just an explanation of the invariata and thus did not contradict it.44 Intellectuals such as Jablonski and the Frankfurt professor Strimesius or the Swiss theologians believed that certain concessions had to be made on the way to a confessional unification when it came to religious truth. The same applied for the worldly dimension of ecclesiastical dialogue that linked the discussion to the political sphere. In response to a growing international Catholic pressure around 1700, only a united Protestant front seemed able to withstand the threat and to protect the vested rights of European Protestants. In this fragile situation between different authoritative systems of religion and politics, pragmatics such as Jablonski, advocating interconfessional dialogue and ecclesiastical union, appear to have been even more progressive than those who tried to achieve religious toleration but adhered to dogmatic principles.

The Political Background of the Unionists The question of abandoning parts of an authoritative theological system in order to achieve confessional unification must also be seen as a political matter. Figures like Pufendorf or Leibniz, who were sometimes closely connected to the politics of their respective courts at Berlin and Hanover, illustrate that the talks were not limited to theologians. Both explicitly wished to include lay people in the discussion. As has been argued above, even the court preacher Jablonski seemed at times more of a church politician aiming at interconfessional dialogue than a theologian insisting on dogmatic differences. Jablonski, among others, believed that the first stage of uniting the confessions was a political rather than a theological issue; only after mobilizing the rulers and politicians should theologians provide the intellectual basis for discussions of liturgy, church administration, and doctrine.45 From the late 1690s onward, he considered approaching British politicians.46 The ecclesiastical union of Protestants, according to Jablonski, could be most successful if it were based on a common liturgy and church administration under the umbrella of the Anglican Church. One of his primary tasks in the following years was to establish contacts and communication networks across Europe that aimed at influencing the relevant rulers, church politicians, and intellectuals, mainly in Great Britain. Through his

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international contacts he was well aware of the fact that plans to reconcile Protestantism were not limited to Brandenburg-Prussia or the empire but were highly relevant elsewhere as well. These efforts were strongly influenced but not fully dominated by churchmen and university theologians. The Reformed university of Frankfurt an der Oder with its Unionist theologian Samuel Strimesius had its counterpart at the University of Oxford. Brandenburg-Prussian clerics around Jablonski exchanged letters with high-ranking members of the Church of England. Jablonski and others translated numerous devotional books and treatises from English into German or Latin, and thus popularized the Anglican faith and British culture in Brandenburg-Prussia and the empire.47 Jablonski’s explicit concern with unifying divine service and liturgy, as specified in a number of his letters and treatises, coincided with his strong links to the Anglican Church. The importance he attached to liturgy came from the fact that, from an Anglican point of view, the celebration of the sacraments (and the way they were celebrated) was the prime feature of worship.48 In practice, however, the confessional heterogeneity at the English court triggered a number of quarrels about Anglican worship. The presence at court of Lutherans such as Queen Anne’s husband, George of Denmark, or the Hanoverian kings after 1714, raised the question of their participation at Anglican services or, in particular, at the Anglican communion. This matter was central, if not for salvation then at least for reasons of political prestige. Jablonski’s interest in the Anglican liturgy and episcopal system was partly motivated by his own biography. As the grandson of John Amos Comenius, he could appeal to the well-established links between England and the Unitas Fratrum. These paved the way for his own studies as a youth in Oxford, as well as his ordination as a bishop of the Polish branch of the Brethren in 1699.49 He became an admirer of the liturgy and the episcopal system of the English High Church and exchanged letters with high-ranking church officials. In the early eighteenth century he established contacts with the movement for the reformation of manners in London centered on Thomas Bray and John Chamberlayne and with Oxford theologians. However, the court preacher was well aware of the fact that the Church of England had its own expectations regarding a Protestant reconciliation on the continent. These expectations derived from the belief that such a reconciliation would be beneficial for the Anglican Church as well: first, it would strengthen its own influence within England and calm religious strife between Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Deists, and Jacobite supporters; second, it would further reduce Catholic influence on the continent, essential for Britain; and third, it could help Britain become the chief arbiter of Protestant powers in Europe.50 At the same time British authorities, members primarily of High Church or Tory circles, put considerable effort into the religious and economic support of persecuted European Protestants.51 These are some reasons why individuals like Jablonski (and even Leibniz) placed their hopes in the Anglican Church as

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a negotiating and uniting power for the Protestant churches on the continent, desperately awaiting the Hanoverian succession to the English throne in order to establish even closer links between Britain and the empire.52 The situation within the Holy Roman Empire stoked fears of Catholic dominance and prompted Protestant politicians and ecclesiastics to act accordingly. The increasingly hostile political environment in 1697 proved crucial for advocates of Protestant union. They referred to the peace treaty of Rijswijk and its preference for Catholicism in the Palatinate, to the conversion of the Saxon elector who was to become king of Poland, and to the hopes that BrandenburgPrussia might gain Protestant supremacy in the empire in order to unify the other Protestant powers. According to Ezechiel von Spanheim, the Prussian envoy to London who was also busy with Unionist negotiations, simple interconfessional tolerance would not suffice in order to unite the Protestant powers against their common enemies. Even though political considerations should not be overestimated, the opportunities were to be seized. Spanheim agreed with Jablonski and the theologian Molanus from Hanover in their view that tolerance would be less useful than ecclesiastical union.53 Even Leibniz was well aware that a political alliance of Protestant states was the necessary precursor toward interconfessional toleration and an eventual “union des sentimens [sic].”54 Secretly, in order not to harm the Hanoverian Protestant succession to the English throne, Leibniz and the theologians of the Hanoverian University of Helmstedt did not lose sight of the idea of a Protestant-Catholic reunion. The Helmstedt theologian Johann Fabricius insisted on this point in particular. Jablonski, nevertheless, held a completely different point of view. Considering the Habsburg menace in Hungary and Silesia, French military and political actions in the Palatinate, and the constant Catholic threat to Protestants in Poland, he felt that, at least around 1700, a rapprochement with Catholicism was unacceptable.55 Significantly, it was the Helmstedt professor Fabricius who in 1707/08 caused a public scandal in Great Britain and Protestant Europe. He wrote a liberal theological tract that supported the controversial conversion of a key Hanoverian ally, the Protestant princess of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, to Catholicism in order to marry the Catholic prince of Spain and future Habsburg emperor. English media and church dignitaries alike raised sincere doubts about the confessional reliability of the Hanoverians and even wondered whether Protestant succession to the English throne was in danger. In Berlin, Jablonski seemed equally alarmed about this open threat to unification efforts.56 Although the political climate toward confessional union cooled in the following years due to a change of domestic policies in England as well as in Brandenburg-Prussia, and though a number of influential people died within a few years after 1710, the union talks did not completely come to a halt.57 In the following period they extended to the Imperial Diet and were accompanied by numerous, mostly polemical, treatises of all religious factions approving or criti-

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cizing a Protestant union.58 The result was a proposal of imperial peace among the Protestants in the 1720s; however, the negotiations eventually failed as most Protestant powers of the empire refused to sign it. Thereafter, Unionist efforts lost even more of their practical importance. One concrete result in Prussia was the introduction of churches for the simultaneous use of both Protestant groups, but this was exactly what the aforementioned article in Zedler’s encyclopedia did not consider as a sign of ecclesiastical union.59 It was merely the outcome of mutual toleration, based on the ruler’s authority and on the awareness of clearcut confessional denominations. However, in the political climate of confessional strife around 1700, even this was a successful step to soothe religious dissent on a local level. Regarding greater territorial or doctrinal matters, neither the political nor the religious powers had proved willing or able to compromise and give up a portion of their authority voluntarily.

Conclusion Theologians and philosophers who sought a reunion of Catholics and Protestants, such as the Protestant abbot Molanus or the Catholic bishop Spinola, based their efforts on the notion that every aspect of belief needed to be attributed to the Bible as the common basis.60 The influence of Patristic studies together with the presumed consensus of the first five hundred years of Christianity had served as a foundation for such discussions since the time of Georg Calixt and the seventeenth-century Syncretist controversy.61 Due to difficult political circumstances as well as personal theological preferences, Lutherans such as Leibniz and Molanus turned to an internal dialogue between Protestants without abandoning hope of an eventual reunion of Catholics and Protestants.62 Other intellectuals like Pufendorf and Jablonski seem to have been influenced not only by doctrinal matters but perhaps even more by the political atmosphere, a necessary “reformation of manners,” or the practical consequences of Protestant division that left certain groups vulnerable to persecution. However, the fear of losing one’s confessional identity continued to be a crucial issue and led to a hybrid situation between union, reunion, and toleration. Thus all discussions on confessional or ecclesiastical reconciliation, rapprochement or even unification around 1700 revolved around the problem of authority. The retention of confessional distinctions in order to preserve group identity and maintain what was perceived as necessary for salvation played a major role in the shaping of these discussions. The political circumstances formed the basic parameters of confessional dialogue and ecclesiastical unification. Even though the whole enterprise was a failure in the sense that full confessional or ecclesiastical unity was never realized, the unification talks help us measure ecclesio-political space in the period of the early Enlightenment, where religion and politics were still inseparably entwined.

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The history of confessional unification is in many ways not a success story. It can be argued that the failure of these discussions was based on the fear of losing religious authority, for those involved in these negotiations clearly realized that to achieve unity, authority would need to be ceded. Thus the debates about ecclesiastical union highlight the fact that the years around 1700 represent a crossroads in the challenge toward religious authority. For this reason alone, the history of these discussions is of much greater relevance than might otherwise be expected.

Notes 1. Howard Hotson, “Irenicism in the Confessional Age: The Holy Roman Empire, 1563– 1648,” in Conciliation and Confession: The Struggle for Unity in the Age of Reform, 1415– 1648, ed. Howard P. Louthan and Randall C. Zachman (Notre Dame, 2004), 228–285. Martin Heckel, “Die Wiedervereinigung der Konfessionen als Ziel und Auftrag der Reichsverfassung im Heiligen Römischen Reich Deutscher Nation,” in Die Reunionsgespräche im Niedersachsen des 17. Jahrhunderts: Rojas y Spinola – Molan – Leibniz, ed. Hans Otte and Richard Schenk (Göttingen, 1999), 15–38. 2. However, research has improved significantly in recent years; see Heinz Duchhardt and Gerhard May, eds., Union – Konversion – Toleranz: Dimensionen der Annäherung zwischen den christlichen Konfessionen im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Mainz, 2000) and Harm Klueting, ed., Irenik und Antikonfessionalismus im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Hildesheim et al., 2003). 3. For example: Heinrich Lutz, ed., Zur Geschichte der Toleranz und Religionsfreiheit (Darmstadt, 1977); Hans R. Guggisberg, ed., Religiöse Toleranz: Dokumente zur Geschichte einer Forderung (Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt, 1984); Winfried Schulze, “Pluralisierung als Bedrohung: Toleranz als Lösung,” in Der Westfälische Frieden: Diplomatie, politische Zäsur, kulturelles Umfeld, Rezeptionsgeschichte, ed. Heinz Duchhardt (Munich, 1998), 115–140; Peter Blickle, ed., Die Säkularisation im Prozeß der Säkularisierung Europas (Epfendorf, 2005). 4. Theodor Schieder, “Kirchenspaltungen und Kirchenunionspläne und ihre Rückwirkungen auf die politische Geschichte Europas,” Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 3 (1952): 591–605. 5. Catalogus derer Unions-Schrifften: oder vollständige Nachricht von allen bißher wegen der vorgeschlagenen Vereinigung der Evangelischen-Lutherischen und Reformirten Kirchen herausgegebenen Streit–Schrifften …, (s. l., 1723). Jan van der Haar, Internationale ökumenische Beziehungen im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert: Bibliographie von aus dem Englischen, Niederländischen und Französischen übersetzten theologischen Büchern (1600–1800) (Ederveen, 1997). Not as useful is Axel Hilmar Swinne, Bibliographia irenica 1500–1970. Internationale Bibliographie zur Friedenswissenschaft: kirchliche und politische Einigungs– und Friedensbestrebungen, Ökumene und Völkerverständigung (Hildesheim, 1977). 6. This term, although already in use in the eighteenth century, is somewhat misleading because it suggests more conformity of the movement than there might have been. 7. See “Unions–Werck,” in Grosses vollständiges Universallexicon aller Wissenschaften und Künste, ed. Johann Heinrich Zedler, vol. 49 (Leipzig and Halle, 1746), col. 1660–1730, 1717f. Zedler largely refers to Johann Georg Walch, Historische und theologische Einleitung in die Religions-Streitigkeiten der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, 5 vols. (Jena, 1733–1739). 8. Petrus Jurius, De pace inter protestantes ineunda Consultatio (Ultrajecti, 1688). 9. “Unions–Werck,” 1669f.

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10. Samuel Pufendorf, Jus feciale divinum, ed. Detlef Döring (Berlin, 2004), 104–108. 11. Detlef Döring, “Einleitung” to Pufendorf, Jus feciale divinum, vii–vxxviii. Detlef Döring, Pufendorf-Studien: Beiträge zur Biographie Samuel von Pufendorfs und zu seiner Entwicklung als Historiker und theologischer Schriftsteller (Berlin, 1992), 55–142. Matthias J. Fritsch, Religiöse Toleranz im Zeitalter der Aufklärung: Naturrechtliche Begründung – konfessionelle Differenzen (Hamburg, 2004), 26–48. In Pufendorf ’s theory, the contract replaces predestination. 12. Pufendorf, Jus feciale divinum, 108; Döring, “Einleitung,” lxif. 13. Pufendorf, Jus feciale divinum, 11f. (§ 4. “Tolerantia dissidentium”). Fritsch, Religiöse Toleranz, 45. Döring, Pufendorf-Studien, 88–97. 14. Walter Delius, “Berliner kirchliche Unionsversuche im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert,” Jahrbuch für Berlin–Brandenburgische Kirchengeschichte 45 (1970): 7–121, 45f. 15. Staatsbibliothek Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Francke–Nachlaß 11,2/10:20, Daniel Ernst Jablonski to Francis Lockier, 5 October 1695. 16. Ibid., 11,2/13:1, Daniel Ernst Jablonski to Johann Friedrich Mayer, 1 January 1700. Dietrich Blaufuß, “Der Theologe Johann Friedrich Mayer (1650–1712): Fromme Orthodoxie und Gelehrsamkeit im Luthertum,” in Korrespondierender Pietismus: Ausgewählte Beiträge, ed. Wolfgang Sommer and Gerhard Philipp Wolf (Leipzig, 2003), 319. 17. Döring, “Einleitung,” lxxii–lxxiv. Paul Schrecker, G.–W. Leibniz: Lettres et Fragments inédits sur les problèmes philosophiques, théologiques, politiques de la réconciliation des doctrines protestantes (1669–1704) (Paris, 1934), 44. 18. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Allgemeiner politischer und historischer Briefwechsel, vol. 14, ed. Gerda Utermöhlen et al. (Berlin, 1993), xlv–xlviii. Paul Eisenkopf, Leibniz und die Einigung der Christenheit: Überlegungen zur Reunion der evangelischen und katholischen Kirche (Munich et al., 1975), 163–168. 19. Hartmut Rudolph, “Zum Nutzen von Politik und Philosophie für die Kirchenunion: Die Aufnahme der innerprotestantischen Ausgleichsverhandlungen am Ende des 17. Jahrhunderts,” in Labora diligenter: Potsdamer Arbeitstagung zur Leibnizforschung vom 4. bis 6. Juli 1996, ed. Martin Fontius et al. (Stuttgart, 1999), 109. 20. Ibid. 21. “Unions–Werck,” col. 1715. 22. Martin Brecht, “Pietismus und Irenik,” in Klueting, Irenik und Antikonfessionalismus, 211– 222. 23. Döring, Pufendorf-Studien, 108–111. 24. Ibid, “Einleitung,” lxvf. 25. Lambeth Palace Library London, Gibson Mss. 932, 80 (1706). 26. Bodo Nischan, Prince, People, and Confession: The Second Reformation in Brandenburg (Philadelphia, 1994). 27. On the context see Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven and London, 2002), 300–329, esp. M. Amyraut’s position, 316f. 28. Max Geiger, “Die Unionsbestrebungen der schweizerischen reformierten Theologie unter der Führung des helvetischen Triumvirates,” Theologische Zeitschrift 9 (1953): 128ff. 29. Staatsbibliothek Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Francke–Nachlaß 11,2/12:20, Daniel Ernst Jablonski to Lionel Gatford, 17 October 1699. 30. Jan Rohls, Protestantische Theologie der Neuzeit, vol. 1 (Tübingen, 1997), 77f. Michael G. Müller, “Der Consensus Sendomirensis – Geschichte eines Scheiterns? Zur Diskussion über Protestantismus und protestantische Konfessionalisierung in Polen-Litauen im 16. Jahrhundert,” in Konfessionelle Pluralität als Herausforderung. Koexistenz und Konflikt in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Joachim Bahlcke et al. (Leipzig, 2006), 399f; Kai Eduard Jordt

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32.

33. 34. 35. 36.

37.

38. 39.

40. 41.

42. 43.

44. 45.

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Jörgensen, Ökumenische Bestrebungen unter den polnischen Protestanten bis zum Jahre 1645 (Copenhagen, 1942), 252–279. Hans Leube, Kalvinismus und Luthertum im Zeitalter der Orthodoxie [1928] (Aalen, 1966). Martin I. Klauber, Between Reformed Scholasticism and Pan-Protestantism: Jean-Alphonse Turretin (1671–1737) and Enlightened Orthodoxy at the Academy of Geneva (Selinsgrove, 1994). Jean-Alphonse Turrettini, Nubes testium, quoted in Martin Klauber, “The Drive toward Protestant Union in Early Eighteenth-Century Geneva: Jean-Alphonse Turrettini on the ‘Fundamental Articles’ of the Faith,” Church History 61, no. 3 (1992): 334–349, 342. Klauber, Between Reformed Scholasticism, passim. Daniel Ernst Jablonski, Kurtze Vorstellung der Einigkeit und des Unterscheides, printed in Rudolph, “Vom Nutzen,” 163f. Ibid. See Staatsbibliothek Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Francke–Nachlaß 11,2/10:20, Daniel Ernst Jablonski to Francis Lockier, 5 October 1695. Döring, “Einleitung,” lxxivf. Still, Jablonski called for a new philosophy of corporal presence that should be developed only after a primary agreement between Lutherans and Reformed was reached. See the letters in Johann Erhard Kapp, ed. Sammlung einiger Vertrauten Briefe, welche zwischen dem weltberühmten Freyherrn, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz, und dem berühmten Berlinischen Hof–Prediger, Herrn Daniel Ernst Jablonski … gewechselt worden sind … (Leipzig, 1745), 23, 37. “Die Möglichkeit und Hoffnung der Vereinigung besteht auch nicht darauf, daß beider Theile Meynung durchaus eins sey, sondern daß die diversitas nicht die essentia sey.” Ibid., 25. See Rudolph, “Vom Nutzen,” 117f. Kapp, Sammlung einiger Vertrauten Briefe, 38f. This approach was even more pragmatic than the one of the Lutheran abbott of Loccum, Gerald Wolter Molanus, who, in his negotiations for a reunion between Catholics and Protestants, proposed a preliminary union and temporary tolerance before setting up an ecumenical council. See Martin Ohst, “Einheit in Wahrhaftigkeit: Molans Konzept der kirchlichen Reunion,” in Otte and Schenk, Die Reunionsgespräche, 133–155, 148. Ibid., 145–148. Zedler’s article interestingly quotes Molanus here. See “Unions–Werck,” cols. 1690 and 1688. “Da hingegen die blosse Tolerantz, oder Aufhebung der harten Censuren eines Theils gegen das andere eben nicht leichter als die Union selbst zu erhalten und bey blosser Einführung der genannten Tolerantz, das Studium contradicendi beyderseits und eines Theils conatus, andern Theils metus reformationis und die Besorgniß einer künfftigen Unterdrückung und allerhand daraus fließende Ungelegenheiten bleiben werden.” See Delius, “Berliner kirchliche Unionsversuche,” 28. On Leibniz see Rudolph, “Vom Nutzen,” 109. Samuel Strimesius, Kurtzer Entwurff der wegen Einigkeit im Grund des Glaubens einzugehenden christlichen Vereinigung der Evangelisch-Lutherischen und Reformirten (Frankfurt, 1705). On the Swiss theologians see Rudolf Dellsperger, “Der Beitrag der ‘vernünftigen Orthodoxie’ zur innerprotestantischen Ökumene: Samuel Werenfels, Jean–Frédéric Ostervald und Jean-Alphonse Turretini als Unionstheologen,” in Duchhardt and May, Union – Konversion – Toleranz, 289–300. Jablonski, Kurtze Vorstellung, passim. Kapp, Sammlung einiger vertrauten Briefe, 61: “es müste der Weg zum Frieden erst durch Fürsten gebahnet werden, ehe Theologi denselben schliessen könnten und möchten wohl einige Potentaten unter der Hand darauf bedacht seyn.” See Jablonski’s correspondence with Patrick Gordon, Lambeth Palace Library London, Sion Mss. ARC L.40.2/L.29, 19v. Kapp, Sammlung einiger vertrauten Briefe, 61f.

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47. I am currently preparing a monograph on these relations. 48. The Liturgy Used in the Churches of the Principality of Neufchatel: With a Letter from the Learned Dr. Jablonski, Concerning the Nature of Liturgies. To which is added, The Form of Prayer lately introduced into the Church of Geneva, ed. Jean-Frédéric Ostervald (London, 1712), ix; cf. Delius, “Berliner kirchliche Unionsversuche,” 53f; Martin Schmidt, “Die ökumenische Bewegung auf dem europäischen Festlande im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert,” in Geschichte der Ökumenischen Bewegung 1517–1948, vol. 1, ed. Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neill (Göttingen, 1957), 162f. 49. The basic literature is: Hermann Dalton, Daniel Ernst Jablonski: Eine preußische Hofpredigergestalt in Berlin vor zweihundert Jahren (Berlin, 1903); Norman Sykes, Daniel Ernst Jablonski and the Church of England: A Study of an Essay towards Protestant Union (Birmingham, 1950). Relevant articles can be found in Joachim Bahlcke and Werner Korthaase, eds., Daniel Ernst Jablonski: Religion, Wissenschaft und Politik um 1700 (Wiesbaden, 2008). 50. Staatsbibliothek Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Francke–Nachlaß 11,2/12:11, Daniel Ernst Jablonski to Lionel Gatford, 4 July 1699. 51. Sugiko Nishikawa, “The SPCK in Defence of Protestant Minorities in Early Eighteenth– Century Europe,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 56 (2005): 730–748. 52. Alexander Schunka, “Brüderliche Korrespondenz, unanständige Korrespondenz: Konfession und Politik zwischen Brandenburg–Preußen, Hannover und England im Wendejahr 1706,” in Bahlcke and Korthaase, Daniel Ernst Jablonski, 123–150. 53. See Spanheim’s letter in Victor Loewe, Ein Diplomat und Gelehrter. Ezechiel Spanheim (1629–1710). Mit Anhang: Aus dem Briefwechsel zwischen Spanheim und Leibniz (Berlin, 1924), 182. 54. Rudolph, “Vom Nutzen,” 112f; Kurt-Victor Selge, “Das Konfessionsproblem in Brandenburg und Leibniz’ Bedeutung für die Unionsverhandlungen in Berlin,” in Leibniz in Berlin, ed. Hans Poser and Albert Heinekamp (Stuttgart, 1990), 170–185. 55. Staatsbibliothek Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Francke–Nachlaß 11,2/13:12: Daniel Ernst Jablonski to Johann Fabricius, 18 March 1700. Ibid., 11,2/12:12, Berlin 4 July 1699. 56. Niedersächsische Staatsbibliothek Hannover, Leibniz-Archiv, LBr 251, fols. 247–248, Daniel Ernst Jablonski to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 24 September 1708. On the context of the so-called “Post Boy Affair” see Georg Schnath, Geschichte Hannovers im Zeitalter der neunten Kur und der englischen Sukzession 1674–1714, vol. 4 (Hildesheim, 1982), 192–196. I am currently preparing an article on the topic. 57. On the shift of the year 1706 see Schunka, “Brüderliche Korrespondenz.” On the revival around 1710 see R. Barry Levis, “The Failure of the Anglican-Prussian Ecumenical Effort of 1710–1714,” Church History 47 (1978): 381–399. 58. Wolf-Friedrich Schäufele, Christoph Matthäus Pfaff und die Kirchenunionsbestrebungen des Corpus Evangelicorum 1717–1726 (Mainz, 1998). 59. On these rather practical outcomes see Thomas Klingebiel, “Pietismus und Orthodoxie: Die Landeskirche unter den Kurfürsten und Königen Friedrich I. und Friedrich Wilhelm I. (1688 bis 1740),” in Tausend Jahre Kirche in Berlin-Brandenburg, ed. Gerd Heinrich (Berlin, 1999), 293–324. 60. Karin Masser, Christóbal de Gentil de Rojas y Spinola O. F. M. und der lutherische Abt Gerardus Wolterius Molanus: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Unionsbestrebungen der katholischen und evangelischen Kirche im 17. Jahrhundert (Münster, 2002), 435f. 61. Andreas Merkt, Das Patristische Prinzip: Eine Studie zur theologischen Bedeutung der Kirchenväter (Leiden et al., 2001). Hermann Schüssler, Georg Calixt: Theologie und Kirchenpolitik. Eine Studie zur Ökumenizität des Luthertums (Wiesbaden, 1961). Rudolph, “Vom Nutzen,” passim. However, Johannes Wallmann, “Die Unionsideen Georg Calixts und ihre Rezep-

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tion in der katholischen und protestantischen Theologie des 17. Jahrhunderts,” in Otte and Schenk, Die Reunionsgespräche, 39–55, stresses that Calixt proposed regional toleration and parity but not the reunion of churches (45). 62. Eisenkopf, Leibniz und die Einigung der Christenheit.

Chapter 11

CONFESSIONAL UNIFORMITY, TOLERATION, FREEDOM OF RELIGION An Issue for Enlightened Absolutism in the Eighteenth Century

d Ernst Wangermann

I

n their effort to impose some kind of order and sense on the vast, unwieldy, and recalcitrant raw material of history, historians divide the past into periods like the ancient, medieval, and early and late modern periods, and arrange complex phenomena under various categories, analyzing for instance the phenomenon of absolutism under the categories of confessional and enlightened absolutism. These categories can be paired with related ones to suggest patterns that seem more or less logical. The three concepts in the title of my essay, each related to this volume’s theme of negotiating religious diversity, can be paired in this way: confessional uniformity with confessional absolutism, toleration with enlightened absolutism, and freedom of religion with a constitutional monarchy or a democratic republic. As a device for making the course of history more comprehensible, helping us to make some rational sense out of it, this method is quite legitimate. But it is not without its problems, for historical periods and categories cannot be separated absolutely one from the other. There is overlap, because dividing lines do not divide neatly and clearly, and the category to which a complex phenomenon can be assigned rarely does justice to all its aspects. In considering my three concepts in their Central European context, I shall try to bear these problems in mind. At one level, the Treaty of Westphalia, which is my starting point in this essay, was

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a landmark in the history of toleration. The Roman Catholic Emperor Ferdinand III had to recognize three religious confessions as legally entitled to coexist in the empire: the Roman Catholic confession and the Protestant confession in both its Lutheran and its Calvinist forms. At another level, however, the treaty documented the hegemony of the idea—the ideal, one might call it in the context of the ideas prevailing at the time—of confessional uniformity. This idea, though recently gaining ground again, probably seems outlandish to most of us now. What can explain its prevalence in the past? Was authority a fetish with which people were obsessed or that they worshiped for its own sake? I myself think that it reflected the assumption, widespread in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, that a stable social and political order was only possible within the framework of confessional uniformity; it was assumed that religious dissent was the high road to social and political rebellion.1 In line with this assumption, the Treaty of Westphalia granted the rulers of the empire’s constituent territories the ius reformandi. This gave each ruler the right to decide which of the three religious confessions recognized in the empire was to be the lawful one in his territory—and in most cases it was indeed the only one. To this decision on the part of the ruler, the subjects had to submit. Resistance to the ruler’s decision was treated as rebellion, a serious legal offense. To those unwilling to submit on conscientious grounds, the Treaty of Westphalia conceded the ius emigrandi, the right to emigrate to a territory in which the religion they wanted to profess and practice was lawful. The ius emigrandi included the right of the emigrants to take with them their families and the capital raised by the sale of their goods. Confessional uniformity, with a modest escape clause, was thus the order of the day in Central Europe. There were problems with this settlement. It raised questions to which neither the rulers at the time, nor historians today, had or have the answer. With regard to the Habsburg rulers, we can formulate these questions in the following way: How many subjects conformed to the lawfully established religious confession on the basis of a genuine conviction inherited from their fathers or a genuine conversion achieved by a Roman Catholic mission? How many, on the other hand, conformed for mainly pragmatic reasons, attending Catholic Mass on Sundays but in their heart of hearts remaining attached to the confession suppressed in the classic Counter-Reformation manner, with which we are all familiar? How widespread, in other words, was underground Protestantism (Kryptoprotestantismus)? It is my impression—let me emphasize this straight away—that in normal times, in the absence of crisis, rulers were generally prepared to let sleeping dogs lie. Underneath a veneer of confessional uniformity, a kind of tacit toleration seems to have been the rule, provided that the dissidents went about their nonconformist observances discreetly. But this could easily and quickly change. At the end of the 1720s, a Jesuit-educated prince-archbishop of Salzburg, Leopold Anton Count Firmian, provoked a crisis in his ecclesiastical principality by be-

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ginning his rule with an inquisition, entrusted chiefly to Jesuits from Bavaria, to discover which of his subjects were only outwardly conforming to the Roman Catholic religion. These Bavarian Jesuits judged who was a genuine Roman Catholic and who was not by Jesuit criteria. In other words, mere attendance at Mass on Sundays and feast days was not in their eyes sufficient proof of a genuine profession of the Catholic faith. Before long, this enquiry provoked a large number of peasants, mainly from the valleys of the Pongau and the remote region of Gastein, to demand the right to observe openly the Protestant Lutheran form of worship. The movement quickly grew, and evidently had some effective organization behind it. There was talk of a petition to the Corpus Evangelicorum, which represented the Protestant interest in the Reichstag, with nineteen thousand signatures, demanding the ius emigrandi. The archbishop, shocked and indignant, responded with the Edict of Emigration, in reality an edict of expulsion, which was read in all churches in November 1731. The purpose was—I quote the words of the edict—to “extirpate and uproot these unruly, seditious and rebellious folk utterly.”2 Europe, having become acquainted by this time with the case for toleration through the writings of Locke, Voltaire, and others, watched the expulsion of about twenty thousand Salzburg peasants with a mixture of fascination and horror, which inspired the many pictorial representations of the great migration in circulation at the time. These dramatic events were observed with particular anxiety by Emperor Charles VI, whose western territories bordered on the Archbishopric of Salzburg. He and his advisers were of course also concerned with the question of how many Habsburg subjects conformed only outwardly to the Roman Catholic faith, but they had prudently refrained from looking into this question too closely. Just as they feared, the “Salzburg transaction” made what had been a dormant problem acute and provoked an increase in the number of petitions demanding the right to observe the Protestant form of worship openly, or to be allowed to emigrate— twelve hundred petitions, it has been estimated, in the Salzkammergut alone.3 Charles VI’s government responded to this challenge with a general refusal to allow any further emigration from the Habsburg territories to Protestant territories in the empire. On 15 July 1733, the Court Chancellery sent the following instruction to the governor of Upper Austria: The matter [of emigration] is to be dealt with lentissime, the facultas emigrandi, the demand for which now derives more from seduction than from a genuine inner urge, should not be explicitly denied, yet neither expressive [sic] conceded, rather delayed and made difficult in every possible way … and under every kind of pretext; thus in effect prevented.4

This instruction marked the end of emigration on the grounds of conscience as provided for by the Treaty of Westphalia. But for the sake of ensuring confessional uniformity, which remained a fundamental objective of Habsburg religious

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policy, the government would still need the power to remove forcibly subjects who stubbornly refused to conform at least outwardly to the established religion. From 1733 onward, subjects denounced by the investigative commissions as “stubborn rebels and ringleaders” were sentenced to deportation to a territory recently recovered by the Habsburgs after a century and a half of Turkish occupation and in urgent need of development and settlement: Transylvania. When this principality was reincorporated into the Habsburg Monarchy in 1691, Emperor Leopold I confirmed the confessional status quo obtaining there. In addition to the three religious confessions recognized in the empire, the Socinians, persecuted in most European countries for denying the Trinity, enjoyed legal recognition in Transylvania. Thus, instead of emigration as provided for by the Treaty of Westphalia, transmigration (the official euphemism for deportation) became the order of the day. Transmigration enabled the Habsburg government in the eighteenth century to combine their preferred religious policy of enforcing confessional uniformity in their heartlands with their preferred economic policy of repopulating and developing the ravaged territories reconquered from the Turks. Whenever the Corpus Evangelicorum in Regensburg protested against the Habsburg refusal to grant Protestants the ius emigrandi, the government responded either by alleging that the deportees had forfeited the right to emigration by their “excesses” or by pointing to the fact that in Transylvania they were enjoying the right of free exercise of their religion, albeit far away from Protestant Germany in the fertile and salubrious, if underpopulated, principality of Transylvania.5 This far-reaching change in the way religious diversity was “managed” certainly calls for a general explanation. In a recent monograph on the first deportations from Carinthia to Transylvania in the reign of Charles VI, Stephan Steiner assumes a widespread “brutalization of authority” and an “erosion of existing legal structures and rights,” in which he sees, more than in any other aspect of this period, not only the explanation for the deportations, but the harbingers of a new era in which deportation of unwanted populations became standard practice.6 I find this unconvincing. It leaves contrasting aspects of the period such as the rational and humanitarian aspirations of the Enlightenment unrelated and unexplained. Moreover, as an explanation for the undisputed fact that the government of Charles VI eroded the Protestants’ ius emigrandi, I consider the manner in which Frederick William I of Prussia exploited the Salzburg emigration to polish his image as the champion of the Protestant cause and to develop his backward territories economically, historically more persuasive and logically more convincing than a general and apparently unmotivated “brutalization of authority.” I find myself in agreement here with another contributor to the present volume, Regina Pörtner, who has advanced as the “central thesis” of one of her recent essays “that the political and military rise of Brandenburg-Prussia and its exploitation

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of the religious issue in its rivalry with Austria, exerted a formative influence on Habsburg religious policies from the 1670s to the 1770s.”7 Sentences of deportation imposed on Protestants identified as “stubborn rebels and ringleaders,” passed at regular intervals and on a considerable scale from 1734 right through to the 1770s, kept Habsburg religious policy firmly within the Counter-Reformation tradition in this period. But from the very beginning, this persecution was accompanied—at least in intention—by an intensification of pastoral care and missionary activity of a kind that I had until recently associated only with the ecclesiastical reforms of Joseph II and of Maria Theresa in the later years of her reign. A newly established and generously funded department of religious affairs instructed priests and missionaries to carry out the work of conversion in the spirit of Reform Catholicism as propounded in the writings of Ludovico Antonio Muratori: they would have to be well versed in the Catholic faith, pious and industrious, charitable and friendly (angenehm); they should not provoke antagonism per zelum indiscretum but preach in a spirit of gentleness and modesty. “Nothing will be gained by Kontroverspredigten and insults hurled against Lutherans. On the other hand, if priests preach to their congregation what we have in common with the Lutherans, namely the word of God, they will have a chance of winning their hearts.”8 This statement of what was expected of missionaries, set out in 1733, closely resembles what was demanded from preachers during the reign of Joseph II in almost every issue of the weekly journal of Predigerkritiken. So we can see that the ideas of Muratorian Reform Catholicism, emphasizing the need for sound argument and rational persuasion rather than insulting polemics in the work of conversion, were being promoted and presumably making headway in the Habsburg Monarchy from quite early in the eighteenth century. Legal punishment under the Strafpatente and transmigration of the incorrigibly stubborn heretics, the “seducers and ringleaders,” were seen and intended as supplementary measures, indispensable for the success of the intensified pastoral and missionary effort. I come now to the point in the history of Habsburg religious policy where it began to move away from confessional uniformity in the direction of toleration. In general, this shift reflected the growing influence of Joseph II as co-regent, and of the Chancellor of State Kaunitz, who in his capacity as a member of the Council of State had an important and occasionally decisive say in internal affairs. The particular occasion that gave rise to this shift in religious policy was the “religious troubles” (Religionswirren) in Moravia that broke out in 1777. Once again, it was an attempt by overzealous missionaries—ex-Jesuits in this case, as the Jesuit order had been dissolved in 1773—to reveal the extent of mere outward conformity masking Protestant worship in the privacy of the home. This attempt led thousands of people to demand freedom for Protestant worship openly. Follow-

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ing long-established precedent, the Court Chancellery once again prepared (and Maria Theresa sanctioned) judicial investigation and intensified missionary work, supplemented by punishment for the stubborn ringleaders. Significantly, however, Maria Theresa, to my knowledge for the first time, sent the relevant records to Kaunitz and asked for his opinion and advice on the further steps that should be taken. And Kaunitz’s advice reveals his pent-up, fundamental objections to all punitive measures taken with regard to spiritual religious matters. He did not mince his words: Recognition of the true faith is a gift of God … to which people can be helped only by spiritual argument, never by material coercion. In the light of this irrefutable truth, it is hard to understand, how in former times anyone could have advised the late Emperor Charles VI and Your Majesty to issue the punitive Patents of 1726 and 1754, because they are and always will be in total contradiction to the essence of the Christian faith. Such measures of coercion bring forth nothing but aversion towards religion and the state, and cause them the greatest damage.9

To these considerations of principle, Kaunitz added the practical argument that loss of population always did irreparable damage to the economy and was incompatible with the welfare of the state. He therefore proposed what he called “a more or less limited political toleration.” He proposed, in other words, that tacit toleration, which had long been the normal practice with respect to individuals and single households, should be extended to communities: Subjects who, … while dissenting from the established religion, are otherwise peaceful and law-abiding citizens, should be left to … the inscrutable mercy of God. As to their acts of worship, they should not be allowed to appoint their own ministers or to engage in any public activities. However, when they meet for worship in their own houses individually or collectively, this should be tacitly permitted.10

Joseph endorsed Kaunitz’ recommendations, whereupon Maria Theresa issued the appropriate instructions to the Court Chancellery, and the Court Chancellery in turn instructed the Moravian government, in words taken almost verbatim from Kaunitz’s Vortrag.11 The historian of Josephinian toleration, Reinhold Wolny, has aptly called these documents “precursors of Joseph II’s policy of toleration.”12 As always at such times, pastoral care and missionary activity aimed at achieving genuine conversion were intensified. But this time the task was entrusted not to members of any monastic order but to Jansenist secular priests. A new diocese centered on Brünn was endowed, and its episcopal seminary was staffed mainly by Jansenists committed to achieving conversions by dint of the superior quality of their argument.13 Under the circumstances at that time, these measures did not achieve the results that we may feel they deserved. The nearness of the Prussian army (it was the time of the War of the Bavarian Succession), the prospect of the imminent

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succession to the throne of a ruler known to be in favor of a less half-hearted toleration than Kaunitz had persuaded Maria Theresa to countenance, and the refusal of many opponents of toleration in the bureaucracy to carry out the new instructions effectively, did not give the tolerant Jansenist missionaries much of a chance, at least in the short term. The Moravian Protestants worked themselves into an upbeat mood, in which they defiantly went well beyond the limits of the toleration they had just been granted. Sadly, Maria Theresa, in the last instruction she issued on religious matters before her death, reverted to the old remedies and sanctioned the transmigration of twelve families (forty-three individuals).14 Her additional instruction to the treasury to give one hundred florins to each of these families to help them start on their new lives in exile, shows how much such punitive measures now troubled her conscience.15 Bearing in mind the problems referred to in my opening remarks, I am inclined to stress the elements of continuity that characterized the transition from the reign of Maria Theresa to that of her son Joseph. Certainly Joseph, convinced of the “Schädlichkeit allen Gewissenszwangs” and long since convinced that religious non-conformists were normally obedient and useful citizens, went much further down the road to toleration in his patents of October 1781 than his mother had gone with her concessions to the Moravian Protestants in the instructions of 1777. But we must not forget that, had he been confident that he could rely on the full cooperation of the bureaucracy, Joseph would have greatly preferred to introduce toleration without the publicity of patents. His initial intention was not to introduce toleration through patents but to extend the timehonored practice of tacit toleration and connivance, granting dispensations de casu in casum and letting the punitive legislation quietly lapse.16 Joseph’s outlook throughout was far removed from the religious indifference of which his mother suspected him when he returned from hobnobbing with the philosophes in France in 1777 and bitterly denounced her first punitive measures in Moravia. His toleration, as finally introduced by patents, was a restricted version of civil toleration. The adherents of the three confessions granted toleration in the Habsburg Monarchy in October 1781 had to be content with “einem ihrer Religion gemäße[n] Privat-Exercitium.”17 Public worship remained the exclusive right of the “dominant religion.” In this way, Joseph hoped to limit any damage that might be done to the position of the Catholic Church as the “dominant religion” by the sensation necessarily caused by the publication of a Patent of Toleration in every province. Joseph repeatedly expressed the hope that the conditions created by the toleration patents would enhance the chances that the Catholic clergy, whose education he was determined to improve, could bring the “erring sheep” back into the fold of “the only true Church.” The pamphlets published in justification of the patent were nearly all written from this point of view.18 For Joseph, the Catholic church’s claim to be in sole possession of the “wahre[n] allein seelig machende[n] Religion,” was the very essence of his religion.19 Jo-

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seph was therefore determined to limit civil toleration strictly to the confessions specified in the patents: the Lutherans, the Calvinists and the non-Uniate Greek Orthodox. “Sects,” in other words, would not be tolerated. Joseph’s insistence on this limitation led to the transmigration of the so-called Bohemian Deists in the year after the publication of the Patent of Toleration. This episode, which almost amounted to history repeating itself as farce, severely damaged Joseph’s reputation as an enlightened ruler.20 The affair of the Bohemian Deists brought the adherents of unrestricted freedom of religion into the arena of public debate. The Bavarian ex-Benedictine Peter Adolf Winkopp published a book in which, following Locke’s argument in the Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), he denied that the prince had any right to make a judgment on the truth or falsehood of any religious opinion; he could only make a judgment on whether such an opinion might be a danger to society. On that basis, the Bohemian Deists were clearly entitled to toleration.21 About the time Winkopp published his book, in 1784, the Danish Freemason Friedrich Münter visited Vienna to investigate the masonic scene. In Vienna’s masonic circles, he noted in his diary, religious indifference had become common. Along with the old Catholic religion and baroque piety, many Freemasons had come to reject Christianity altogether. This observation is borne out by what Johann Baptist von Alxinger, Austrian poet and Freemason, wrote in a letter to Friedrich Nicolai in 1785: Can one call people enlightened, who seriously believe that to remedy a bite into an apple, God had to get God the Holy Spirit to produce for him a God son, who he then had to have killed by the Jews, and who accept every other absurdity common to all three [tolerated] religions?22

We do not know just how widespread such religious skepticism was in the Habsburg Monarchy in the years after the publication of the Patents of Toleration; nor is my concern in this essay the extent of religious indifference and skepticism at the time when Enlightenment influences were strong. The point I wish to make—and it is my concluding point— is that this kind of skepticism implied a highly critical attitude with respect to the restricted nature of Josephinian toleration. Religious skepticism logically and necessarily implied the demand for unrestricted freedom of religion. None other than the skeptic Alxinger gave the demand for unrestricted freedom of religion classic expression in his poem Die Duldung,23 which in my opinion deserves to be rescued from oblivion and accorded a prominent place in the history of Austrian political literature. I shall quote a few lines from it, in which Alxinger directly addressed the sovereign rulers; they can therefore be read as a comment on this volume’s theme of managing religious diversity: Habt immerhin ein Recht auf unser Gut und Leben, Auf unsern Glauben habt ihr keins:

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Und weh den Pfaffen, weh den Schranzen, die euch eins Erdichten! Diese böse Lüge War oft schon das Signal zum Bürgerkriege.24

I hardly need to add that Alxinger had to remove this poem from his Collected Poetic Works before this collection, the profits from which were to go to the Institute for the Poor, was allowed to be printed and sold in the Habsburg Monarchy in 1784. It was published, along with some other poems rejected by the Austrian censor, as an appendix to the Leipzig edition of the same year.25 The unrestricted freedom of religion demanded by Alxinger in the year 1784 was only conceded to the subjects of the Habsburg Monarchy in the year 1867 with the enactment of the Grundgesetze as part of a new liberal constitution.

Notes 1. See Geoffrey Adams, The Huguenots and French Opinion, 1685–1787: The Enlightened Debate on Toleration (Waterloo, Ontario, 1991), 9. 2. Mack Walker, The Salzburg Transaction: Expulsion and Redemption in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Ithaca, 1992), 62. 3. Ernst Nowotny, Die Transmigration ober- und innerösterreichischer Protestanten nach Siebenbürgen im 18. Jahrhundert: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der „Landler,” Schriften des Instituts für Grenz- und Auslanddeutschtum an der Universität Marburg 8 (Jena, 1931), 16. 4. Kaiserliche Resolution, 15. Juli 1733, ibid. Readers acquainted with Robert Knight’s “Ich bin dafür, die Sache in die Länge zu ziehen” (Vienna, 2000) may see in this instruction a remarkable historical precedent for the way in which Oskar Helmer got the Austrian Cabinet after 1945 to impede the restoration of “aryanized” property to Austrian Jews after the Anschluss. 5. See the Referat of the Court Chancellery, 1 July 1734, cited by Nowotny, Transmigration, 22f.; see also Matthias Beer, “Die ‘Landler’: Versuch eines geschichtlichen Überblicks,” in Die Siebenbürgischen Landler: eine Spurensicherung, ed. Martin Bottesch (Vienna and Cologne, 2002), 42. 6. Stephan Steiner, Reisen ohne Wiederkehr: Die Deportation von Protestanten aus Kärnten 1734–1736, Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 46 (Vienna, 2007), 21ff., 106ff., and passim. 7. Regina Pörtner, “Propaganda, Conspiracy, Persecution: Prussian Influences on Habsburg Religious Policies from Leopold I to Joseph II,” in Orte des Wissens, ed. Martin Scheutz, Wolfgang Schmale, and Dana Stefanová, Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des Achtzehnten Jahrhunderts 18/19 (Bochum, 2004), 461. 8. Resolution, 18 July 1733, quoted in Nowotny, Transmigration, 15. Pörtner, “Propaganda,” 467, suggests that this side of Charles’s religious policy “reflected his assumption that heresy was not primarily the result of outside interference, but of clerical neglect.” 9. Kaunitz to Maria Theresa, 18 October 1777, in Ferdinand Maaß, ed., Der Josephinismus: Quellen zu seiner Geschichte in Österreich, vol. 2: Entfaltung und Krise des Josephinismus 1770–1790, Fontes Rerum Austriacarum II/72 (Vienna, 1953), 219–225, here 221; Franz A. J. Szabo, Kaunitz and Enlightened Absolutism 1753–1780 (Cambridge, 1994), 253.

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10. Maaß, Josephinismus, vol. 2, 222. The words in the original German are: “wann sie in ihren eigenen Häusern jeder für sich oder auch mehrere zusammen ihre Andachts-Übungen pflegen.” 11. Reinhold Wolny, Die josephinische Toleranz mit besonderer Berücksichtigung ihres geistigen Wegbereiters Johann Leopold Hay (Munich, 1973), Document 1, 115–117; Szabo, Kaunitz, 255. 12. Wolny, Die josephinische Toleranz, 57. 13. Peter Hersche, Der Spätjansenismus in Österreich, Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für die Geschichte Österreichs 7 (Vienna, 1977), 292–297. 14. Szabo, Kaunitz, 257. 15. Alfred von Arneth, Geschichte Maria Theresias, vol. 10. (Vienna, 1879), 762, footnote 124. 16. Joseph Karniel, Die Toleranzpolitik Kaiser Josephs II (Gerlingen, 1986), 329–339 and appendix 3, 550f. 17. In this respect, the French Edict of Toleration of 1787 followed the Austrian precedent: see Adams, The Huguenots and French Opinion, 302. 18. Ernst Wangermann, Die Waffen der Publizität: Zum Funktionswandel der politischen Literatur unter Joseph II (Vienna, 2004), 108. 19. Vortrag Kaunitz, 2 November 1781, and Joseph’s resolution, in Maaß, vol. 2, 283. 20. Wangermann, Waffen, 104–107. 21. [Peter Adolf Winkopp], Geschichte der böhmischen Deisten, nebst freimüthigen Bemerkungen über die Grundsätze der Duldung der Deisten (Leipzig, 1785). 22. Alxinger to Nicolai, 29 July 1785, quoted by Wangermann, Waffen, 108. 23. Most recently published in Edith Rosenstrauch-Königsberg, ed., Literatur der Aufklärung 1765–1790, Österreichische Bibliothek 8 (Vienna, 1988), 122–134; excerpts quoted in Wangermann, Waffen, 110. 24. “Nevertheless have a right to our goods and life/But not to our beliefs/And beware of the priests, beware of the acolytes/That want to fool you/This evil lie often has been the sign of civil wars.” Rosenstrauch-Königsberg, Literatur der Aufklärung, 123f. 25. Ibid., 325.

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INDEX

d A Aachen, 101 Abray, Lorna Jane, 145, 147–48 Absolutism, 209 territorial, 75, 82 Adolph, Gustav, 167–68, 168i Ahlen, 55 Albigensianism, 174 Albigensians, 155 Albrecht V, Duke of Bavaria, 154 Alexander the Jagiellonian, King, 38 Alexandria, 130 Alps, 20, 157, 181, 186 Alsace, 140, 142 Alsatia, 76, 95 Altenstetter, David, 102 Althusius, Johannes, 82–83, 85–86 Altötting, 154; Virgin of, 154 Alvensleben, House of, 77 Alxinger, Johann Baptist von, 216–17 Amberg, 160, 166; Mariahilfberg, 160 Ambrose, 167 Anabaptism, 3, 56, 59 historiography of, 100 Anabaptists, 5, 13, 20, 32, 55, 60 and confessionalization, 137–39 expulsion from Bocholt, 57–58 as heretics, 94, 99–102, 107–09 as “Spiritualists,” 99 in Strasbourg, 141–42 Ancona, 157 Angevin. See Anjou, House of Anglicanism, 137, 200–01 Anholt, Johann Jakob, Count of, 58

Anjou, House of, 30–31, 37, 49n51 Anne, Queen of England, 201 anti-Trinitarians, 32, 41 Antwerp, 104 ‘Arab’ah Turim, 138 Aretin, Karl Otmar von, 75 Aristotle, 81 Armenian Christianity, 2–3, 8, 31 Arndt, Johann, 84–85 Arnisaeus, Henning, 82 Asmann, Johann, 62, 65 Augsburg, 5, 101–02 Catholic cults in, 156–60, 163, 166–67 Heilig-Kreuz Kirche, 158 Lechfeld, 158 Augsburg Confession, 14, 35, 54, 58, 79, 102, 140, 160 Augsburg, Diet of (1530), 96 Augsburg, Peace of (1555), 4–5, 54–55, 69n35, 74, 84 and confessional unity, 193 and non-Christians, 93–94, 101, 107 and territoriality, 75, 79, 86 as interpreted in Westphalia, 57–59, 62, 66 Augustine, 130, 167 Austria, 20–21, 73, 86, 153, 156, 159, 211, 213, 216–17 policies toward Anabaptists, 100 Protestant communities, 175–78, 180–87 Slovene region, 185 and witches, 104

Index

B Bacon, Francis, 92–93 Baden, 73 Bainton, Roland, 74 Balaban, Gedeon, Bishop of L’viv, 117, 125 Baltic region, 94 Bamberg, 103, 105 Basel, Council of (1433), 11 Bavaria, 73, 76, 80, 88n23, 187, 211, 216 and Anabaptists, 100 and Catholic cults, 154–55, 157–58, 160, 167 and Jews, 97 War of the Bavarian Succession, 214 and witches, 104 Bayern, Ferdinand von, Bishop, 160 Beckum, 55 Beghards, 179 Beguines, 179 Behringer, Wolfgang, 103–04 Belarus, 115, 119, 122–124, 126, 128 Bell, Dean, 98 Bentheim, 64 Berka, Jindřich (Henry), 22 Berka, Zbyněk, Archbishop, 3, 21–22 Berlin, 73, 180, 200, 202 Bern, 100 Besold, Christoph, 74, 79–80, 82–86 Law of Majesty, 85 Praecognita poitices (1626), 85 Public Treasure (1619), 84 religious background, 84 Betuleius, Goswin, 61 Bocholt, 55, 57–60, 62–65, 72n76 Bodin, Jean, 78, 83–84 Bohemia, 3, 6, 10–20, 23, 25, 26n1, 32, 34, 86, 176, 216 and Jews, 95 Protestants, 176–77, 179–81, 183, 185, 187 Bohemians, 41 Bologna, 2 Bongiovanni, Berardo, 34 Borken, 55, 68n10 Bowman, William, 153 Brabant, 76, 104 Brady, Thomas, 75 Brandenburg, 64, 73, 80 anti-witch violence, 104 confessional unity in, 193, 197–98

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electors of, 77 host-desecration (1510), 94 Brandenburg-Prussia, 194, 196, 198–99, 201–02, 212 Bray, Thomas, 201 Bremen, 62 Brest, Council of, 119, 129 Brest, Union of (1596/97), 5–7, 36 and religious tension in Poland, 114–31 Briggs, Robin, 103 Brückner, Aleksander, 32 Bruni, Leonardi, 81 Bruning, Heinrich, 82 Brünn, 214 Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, 97, 202 Bruyn the Elder, Bartholomäus, 163–64, 164i Bucer, Martin, 96–97 Bullinger, Heinrich, 64 Büren, Arnold von, 57–59, 63, 69n25 Burgau, 141 Burgundy, 76 Bylina, Stanisław, 30

C Calenberg, 75 Calixt, Georg, 197–99, 203 Calixtines, 17, 25 Calvin, John, 56, 64 Calvinism, 3, 7, 13–14, 32, 40–41, 64, 101 197 anti-Calvinism, 183 in Bohemia, 179 and coexistence, 210, 216 confessional identity, 137, 157 and confessional unity, 194–201 in Strasbourg, 141–42, 145, 148 in Westphalia, 55–56, 58, 61–62, 64–66 Candid, Peter, 158 Canisius, Peter, 155, 157–58 Canon law on heretics, 99 Canterbury, 33 archbishop of, 198 Carinthia, 177–78, 182, 184, 212 Upper Carinthia, 176 Caroline Law (1532), 103 Casimir the Great, King, 31, 37

230

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Index

Casimir the Jagiellonian, King, 38 Catharism, 174 Catholic League, 58–59, 66 and religious violence, 92 Catholicism, 1–4, 7–8, 15–16, 18, 21, 30–31, 60, 73, 79, 84, 140, 177, 179, 202, 210 and Anabaptists, 100–02, 107 in Bohemia, 11–25 and coexistence, 210–11 confessional identity, 137, 157 and confessional unity, 193–94, 201–03, 215–16 devotional literature, 178–86 historians, 74 and Jews, 96 as missionaries, 177–87, 213–15 and Orthodoxy, 116, 118–19, 121–31 in Poland, 31–36, 40, 114 Reform Catholicism, 213 and religious violence, 93 in Strasbourg, 141–42, 145–46, 148 and territoriality, 77 use of religious symbolism, 153–69 in Westphalia, 53–67 and witchcraft, 103–106, 108 See also Eucharist, Marian cult Chamberlayne, John, 201 Charles V, Emperor, 83–84, 97 imperial police law (1548), 95 Jewish policy, 95 and Marian cult, 153 Charles VI, Emperor, 156, 169, 176, 178, 181–83, 211–12, 214 Chodynicki, K., 117, 120 Clergy, 124 in Poland-Lithuania, 39–40 Český Krumlov, 24 Clark, Stuart, 104 Clement VII, Pope, 126 Clement VIII, Pope, 118, 128 Cleves, Duchy of, 57 Cleves-Jülich, 104 Coesfeld, 55 Colmar, 101 Cologne, 5, 88n23 and Anabaptists, 100 and Catholic cults, 156, 160–61, 163–67

Drolshagen alter, 165i Ratskapelle, 163 St. Laurenz church, 165–166 St. Maria im Kapitol, 163–64, 166 anti-witch violence, 103–04 Cologne War (1583–1589), 160 Comenius, John Amos, 201 Commendone, Giovanni Francesco, Cardinal, 1–2, 8 Communism, 35 Compactata, 11, 13–14, 21 Condit, Reinhold, 83 Confessio Bohemica, 13–14, 17 confession, 22, 26, 80, 102 in Bohemia, 13 and burial practices, 61–62, 64–65 confessional identity in Westphalia, 56–59, 65–67 confessional unity, 193–204, 209–10 multiconfessionalism, 4 and politics, 55, 64 and witch-hunting, 104–105 confessionalization, 42, 54, 67, 109, 137–41, 145, 147–48 and religious symbolism, 156, 160 conservatism, 34 Constance, 156, 159–60, 163 Kreuzlingen Gate, 160 Münsterhof, 159 Constantinople, 116, 118, 121, 125 patriarch of, 115 Contarini, Gasparo, Cardinal, 2 Coreth, Anna, 153–55 Corpus Christi, feast of, 155, 159, 167 Corpus Evangelicorum, 211–12 Cortes, 38 Corvinus, Mathias, King, 17–18 Cossacks, 116, 122–24 Counter-Reformation, 4, 10, 12–13, 17–18, 21, 86, 129, 210, 213 and heresy, 176, 179, 182 and religious coercion, 101 and religious symbolism, 155, 157–59, 161, 163, 166–67 Cracow, 2, 35, 38, 117, 121 University of, 35, 42 Croendonck, Johann, 184–85 crypto-Protestants, 5, 177–83, 186–87, 190n14, 210

Index

Cuno, Mathias, 83 Czerwińsk, 37

D Danaeus, 85 Danube River, 94 Danzig, (Gdańsk), 34 Daugava River, 115 Davie, Norman, 30 Declaratio Ferdinandea, 54, 56–57, 62 Deism, 194, 201, 216 Derksen, John, 147 Diet of 1575, 13 Dillingen an der Donau, 155 Dixon, C. Scott, 54 Dominican order, 174 Donauwörth, 154 Dort, Synod of (1618–19), 198 Dortmund, 64, 101 Dreitzel, Horst, 82 Driedger, Michael, 138–39 Dubá, 3, 21 Duchhardt, Heinz, 75 Dülmen, 55 Dutch Republic. See Netherlands Dyboski, Roman, 32 Dylagowa, H., 116

E Ebbeling, Hermann, 62, 65 Echter von Messpelbrunn, Julius, Bishop, 160 Eck, Johann, 3 as a promoter of the blood libel, 96 Eder, Georg, 21 Edict of Nantes, 197 Edict of Restitution (1629), 84 Elbing (Elbląg), 34 England, 1, 33, 36, 74, 175, 201–02 Church of, 201 Great Reform Bill (1832), 40 Enlightenment, 6, 194–95, 203, 212, 216 Episcopalian church, 22, 201 Erasmus, Desiderius, 2,184 and Polish Reformation, 33–34 Erle, 60 Ernst I, Bishop, 70n50 Estates’ Uprising (1618–1620), 14 Eucharist, 184, 196–99 cult of, 154–57, 159–60, 167 Four Hour Prayer, 167

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231

F Fabricius, Jacob, 83, 202 Farnese, Allesandro, Cardinal Ferdinand I, Bishop of Münster, 53, 58 Ferdinand I, Emperor, 13, 20, 25 and Marian cult, 153 Ferdinand II, Emperor, 84 and Corpus Christi, 155 and Marian cult, 153–55 and religious persecution, 176–77, 181 Ferdinand III, Emperor, 181, 210 and Marian cult, 153, 155 Ferdinand, King, 95 and Anabaptists, 100 Fettmilch, Vinzenz, 98–99 feudalism, 81 Firmian, Leopold Anton, Archbishop, 7, 210 Edict of Emigration, 211 Florence, 81 Floria, B. N., 123 Forer, Lorenz, 183 Forster, Marc, 140, 160 Forster, Valentin, 82 France, 32, 36, 42, 73–74, 163, 202 and religious violence, 93, 197 Francis, St. of Paola, 20 Franconia, 103–04 Frankfurt am Main, 96, 138 and Jews, 98–99, 139 Frankfurt an der Oder, 196, 200 University of, 201 Frederick II, King of Prussia, 176 Frederick William I, King of Prussia, 198, 212 Freemasonry, 216 Fugger, House of, 157–59, 163, 165 Anton Fugger, 157 Markus Fugger, 159 Octavian Secundus Fugger, 158 Ottheinrich Fugger, 158 Fürth, 141

G Gaetani, Cardinal, Ceccano 121 Gałka, Andrzej, 35 Gastein, 211 Geldern, Duchy of, 57, 76 Geneva, 3, 198

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Index

George of Denmark, 201 George of Poděbrady, King of Bohemia, 24 Gerhard, Johann, 74, 83, 85 German, G., 129 German Peasants’ War (1524–1526), 174 Germans, 32 Germany, 73–74, 212 and heresy, 99–102 historiography, 77 and Jews, 94, 98–99, 107 and religious violence, 93 and territorial state building, 76–81, 86 witchcraft trials, 102–03 witch hunting, 103–06, 109 Ghinucci, Girolamo, Cardinal, 2 Giessen, 95 Gniezno, 33, 41 Goethe, Johann von, 99 Gogol, 129 Graz, 177, 182–83 Great Britain, 33, 194, 200–02 High Church, 201 Greco-Catholicism. See Uniate Church Greifswald, 197 Grekovich, A., 122 Grell, Ole Peter, 34 Greyerz, Kaspar von, 101 Grunwald, Battle of (1410), 32 Grushevs’kij, M., 116, 122 Gummpenberg, Wilhelm von, 157

H Habsburg, House of, 5, 14–15, 25, 37, 86 use of Catholic symbolism, 153–60 and confessional unity, 193, 202, 210–13 and Protestants, 176, 181 Habsburg Monarchy, 175, 212–13, 215–17 Court Chancellery, 211, 214 Hagenau, 101 Halicz, 125 Halle, 180, 198 Haltern, 55, 60 Hamacher, Clemens, 65 Hanover, 197, 200–01 Hanoverian kings, 201–02 Harrach, House of, 20 Haymerle, Anton, 187 Heinrich V, Bishop of Knöringen, 159

Helen, Elhanan ben Abraham, 99 Helmstedt, University of, 197, 202 heresy, 35, 80, 128, 166, 185 prosecution of, 99–102, 107, 109 in Westphalia, 53, 59 heretics, 21, 33–34, 36, 177 in Holy Roman Empire, 92–94, 99–101, 106–09 and literacy, 173–76, 179–82, 186–87 religious identity of; 179 in Westphalia, 57, 60, 72n76 Herzig, Arno, 101 Hesse, 75–76, 78, 80 and Jews, 97 and witches, 104 Hesse-Darmstadt, 97–9 George I, Landgrave of, 97 Hirsch, Samson Raphael, 138 Holbein, Hans, 157 Holland, 76 See also Netherlands Holstein, Andreas, 62 Holy League, 158 Holy Roman Empire, 3 and confessional unity, 193–94, 202 and non-Christians, 92–94, 108–09, 139–40 Jewish ordinances, 97–98 prosecution of witches, 103–05 religious violence, 92–3 Horodło, decree of (1413), 37 Hosius (Hozjusz), Stanisław, 33 Hoyer, Johann, 61–62, 70n50 Hubmaier, Balthasar, 20 Hugenots, 32, 196–97 Humanism, 2 Renaissance humanism, 33 Hungary, 17, 18, 37, 49n51, 73, 202 Protestants in, 176–79, 181, 186 Hunnius, Nikolaus, 198 Hus, Jan, 179 Hussites, 3, 11–13, 15–18, 21–22, 24–25, 175, 179 in Poland, 35

I Iberia, 7 Ignatius, 24 Imhof, Regina, 158

Index

Imperial Chamber Court, 62, 75, 77 Imperial Diet, 85, 202 on Anabaptists, 99, 101 and Jews, 96 Innocent III, Pope, 130 Innsbruck, 100 Inquisition, 35, 211 and Anabaptists, 99, 101 and literacy, 174, 181 and witchcraft, 102–03, 106 Ireland, 93 Israel, Jonathan, 94 Italy, 74, 76, 115, 157, 166, 186 and Jews 139–40 prosecution of witchcraft, 104 Ivan (IV) the Terrible, Tsar of Muscovy, 130

J Jablonski, Daniel Ernst, 196–203 Jacobites, 201 Jagiełło, Grand Prince of Lithuania, Grand Duke of Lithuania, King of Poland, 31, 37–38 Jagiellonian dynasty, 15, 19, 25, 30–32, 34, 37–38, 41–42 Jansenists, 214–15 Jedlno, 38 Jeremy, Patriarch, 130 Jerusalem, 122 Jesuits, 16, 24, 119, 176, 210–11 and Catholic cults, 154–61, 166 as missionaries, 177–78, 183, 186–87, 213 and witchcraft, 103–05 Jesus Christ, 75, 85, 93, 96–97 Apostles, 75, 85 Jews, 3, 5, 31, 75,, 94, 122, 179 anti-Jewish violence, 94–95 and confessionalization, 137–140 as converts to Christianity, 96, 177 in Holy Roman Empire, 92–99, 106–09 Jewish-Christian relations, 141–46 legal codes of, 138 in literature, 96 in Poland, 11 as Roman citizens, 95 in Westphalia, 55 Jindřichův Hradec (Neuhaus), 16, 18

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Joachim II, Elector of Brandenburg, 96–97 Jobert, Ambroise, 32–33, 42 Jogalia. See Jagiełło Johnson, Trevor, 156, 160 Josel of Rosenheim, 95, 97–98 Joseph I, Emperor, 181 Joseph II, Emperor, 5–6, 176, 213–16 Judenburg, 177 Julius II, Pope, 2 Jurieu, Pierre, 196–97

K Kabbalah, 95 Lurianic Kabbalah, 139 Kalisz, 121 Kaplan, Benjamin, 34, 42 Karo, Joseph, 138 Kaunitz, Chancellor of State, 213–15 Keith, Robert Murray, Sir, 178 Kepler, Johannes, 84 Khmelnytsky, Bohdan, 122 Khmelnytsky Uprising (1648), 116, 122 Kiev, 6, 122, 125 Kievan church, 11 Kievan Metropolitanate, 115, 123 and religious violence, 116 Kirchner, Hermann, 83 Klersch, Joseph, 167 Kłlczowski, Jerzy, 30–31 Knichen, Andreas, 78 Kobryń, 124 Koenig, Reinhard, 83 Koialovich, M. O., 116 Konopczyński, Władysław, 32 Konstanz, Theobald von, 159 Kopystenski, Mikhail, Bishop of Premyśl, 117 Kornis, Sigismund, Count, 168 Košice (Kassa), 37 Krajek, 19 Krajiř, Kunrát/Conrad, 19–20 Kras, Paweł, 35 Kremsmünster, 177 Kressel, Franz Karl von, Baron, 176 Krieger, Leonard, 74, 86 Krumper, Hans, 154 Kuncewicz, Jozafat, 115, 123 Kunštát, House of, 17–18 Kurukove agreement, 123

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L Labouvie, Eva, 103 Ladislav, King of Bohemia , 17 Lamberg, Joseph Dominicus, 184 Lange, Johann Joachim, 198 Langenmantel, Karl, 157 Langmuir, Gavin, 146 Łaski, Jan, Archbishop of Gniezno and Primate of Poland, 33 Lauer, Gerhard, 138–39 Lecler, Joseph, 32 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 197, 199–202 Leipzig, 180 Leonard, Amy, 140, 147 Leonhard of Liechtenstein, 20 Leopold I, Emperor, 181, 212 Lepanto, Battle of, 158, 161 Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, 92 Letter of Majesty, 3, 14 Letnerin, Maria, 186 Liebenthal, Christian, 83 literacy, 173–75, 179–87 female literacy, 185–86 Lithuania, 30–32, 37–38 and Jews, 94 reaction to Union of Brest, 120 Sejmik, 118, 120 Lochner, Stefan, 163 Locke, John, 6, 86, 211, 216 Lollardy, 175 London, 178, 201–02 Loreto, 166 Holy House of, 153, 157 Litany of, 158 Loreto Chapel, 159 Madonna of, 157 Lorraine, 104 Lotharingia, 76 Louis of Anjou, King, 37 Louthan, Howard P., 33 Lublin, Union of (1569), 4, 32, 37, 49n54 Łuck, 115, 120 Luebke, David, 156 Lukowski, Jerzy, 39 Luria, Keith P., 19, 58 Luria, R. Isaac, 139 Lusatia, 26n1 Luther, Martin, 2–3, 31, 56, 83, 85 and Jews, 74, 97 On the Jews and Their Lies, 96

On Secular Authority, 74 Lutherans, 4, 7–8, 11–12, 16–19, 21, 85, 140, 168, 179, 181, 184 in Bohemia, 13–15, 17–18, 179 and coexistence, 210–11, 213, 216 confessional identity, 137, 145, 157 and confessional unity, 194–201 devotional literature, 174–75, 181, 186 and jurisprudence, 86 legal scholars, 82 in Poland, 32, 34, 41 and territoriality in Germany, 77 in Strasbourg, 141, 145, 148 on tolerance, 7 in Westphalia, 55, 57–58, 60, 64–65 and witch-hunting, 105 L’viv, 115, 117, 119, 125, 128

M Macauley, Thomas Babington, 74 Macek, Josef, 15–16 Machiavelli, 74 Madonna. See Marian cult Magdeburg, 160 Mainz, 97, 103 elector of, 98 Maissen, 76 Makarij, Metropolitan, 116 Malaspina, Nuncio, 119, 126, 128 Malbork Castle, 121 Małłek, Janusz, 42 Marburg, 82 Marburg Colloquy (1529), 193 Margaritha, Anthonius, 96–97 Maria Theresa, 176–79, 181–82, 185, 213–15 Marian cult, 5, 16 feast day of Mary’s Assumption, 159 Madonnas of Altötting and Mariazell, 166 “Maria Hilf,” 166 Maria Himmelfahrt, 160 and religious symbolism, 153–69 “Triumphus SS.mi Rosarii,” 162i Mary Tudor, 1 Master of St. Severin, 161i Matthias, Emperor, 98 Maulius, 83 Maurice, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, 78

Index

Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria, 154, 156, 158, 160, 167–68 Hofkapelle, 154 Maximilian II, Emperor, 14, 25 and Jews, 144 Mayer, Johann Friedrich, 197 Mazovia, 40 Mecklenburg, 75, 77, 80, 86, 104 Melanchthon, Philip, 2, 81, 83, 85 on Jews, 96 Mennonites, 55–57, 59, 66 Mertens, Wilbrand, 60 messianism, 138–39 Middendorf, Johann, 61, 65 Middlie Ages, 30–31, 35–36, 101, 174 Midelfort, H. C. Erik, 102, 108 Mieszko I, Duke, 30 Mikulov (Nikolsburg), 20 Milan, 166 Minims, 19–20 Mladá Boleslav, (Jungbunzlau) 20 Modrzewski (Modrevius), Andrzej Frycz, 33 Moeller, Bernd, 54 Mohács, 73 Molanus, Gerald Wolter, 199, 202–03 Molkho, Schlomo, 139 Moravia, 11–13, 15–21, 176 and religious tolerance, 100, 213–15 Moraw, Peter, 75 More, Thomas, 33 Moscow, 73, 85, 123 Moscow Patriarchate, 116 Moses, 98 Müller, Michael G., 31, 42 Multz, Jakob, 82 Munich, 105, 160, 167 Corpus Christi procession, 155 Residenz, 154 Münster, 53–55, 57, 62, 66 Anabaptist kingdom at, 55, 100, 107 Münsterberg, House of, 17–18 Münter, Friedrich, 216 Muratori, Ludovico Antonio, 213 Muslims, 92; Iranian mullahs, 92 mysticism, 138–39

N Nagel, Georg, 62–63 Napoleon, 73 Nassau

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and witches, 104–05 Netherlands, 32–33, 55, 66, 85 and prosecution of heretics, 99, 101 Neuburg; Hofkirche, 160 Newcastle, 178z Nicolai, Friedrich, 216 Nieszawa, 38 Nihil novi, 38 Nikephoros, 119, 121 nobility, 10, 54, 118 confessional attitudes of in Bohemia, 14–25, 32 in Hesse, 75 and Jews, 96 in Lithuania, 37–38 in Moravia, 21 in Poland, 36–42, 124 as targets of conversion,115 and territoriality in Germany, 77, 80, 82 Northern Ireland, 92 Nová Bystřice, 20 Nuremberg, 96

O Oberpfalz, 160 Oberkirchberg, 158 Oberman, Heiko, A., 92 Ogienko, I., 116 Oldendorp, Johannes, 82 Oleśnicki, Zbigniew, Bishop of Cracow, 35 Olomouc, 21 Opole, Władysław, 49n51 Orthodox Christians; in Poland, 32, 36 and Protestants, 118 religious conflict in Poland-Lithuania 114–31 Orthodoxy, 2–4, 6–8 Greek Orthodoxy, 216 Orzechowski, Stanisław, 1–3, 8 Osiander, Andreas, 96 Osiander, Lucas, 16 Osterwald, Jean-Frédéric, 198 Ostrogski, Konstantyn, 6 conflict with Catholics, 116–20, 130 Öttingen, 79 Ottomans, 108 Oxford, 201 University of, 201

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P Padua, 2 pagans, 31, 42, 75 Pagenstecher, Werner, 65 Palatinate, 104, 202 Upper Palatinate, 86, 156, 160, 163, 166 Pareus, David, 83 Parliament, 38 Passau, 184 Passau, Treaty of (1552), 79, 84 Patent of Toleration (1781), 5–6, 176, 215–16 Paul III, Pope, 177 Paul IV, Pope, 1 Paurmeister, Tobias, 82 Pavlovský, Stanislav, 21 Peasants’ War, 99–100 Pegas, Meletios, 119, 130 Pernštejn, House of, 18 Pettegree, Andrew, 66 Pfalz-Neuburg, 160 Pfefferkorn, Johannes, 95 Piast dynasty, 30, 36 Pictet, Benedict, 198 Pietism, 194, 197–98 Pinsk, 117 Piotrków, Diet of (1562/63), 41 Pius IV, Pope, 1 Pius V , Pope, 158 Płock palatinate, 121 Pociej, I., 117–19, 125, 127–30 Poděbrady, House of, 17–18 Poland, 1–4, 6, 8, 49n51, 73, 202 conflict between Catholics and Orthodox Christians, 115–19, 121–25, 128–29 and Jews, 94 Little Poland, 40 partitions of, 73 Prussian Poland, 42, 194, 198 and religious toleration, 30–42, 114–15, 130 Polheim, House of, 20 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 3–4, 31, 33–35, 38–40, 73 Chołm province, 120 Halicz province, 120 Kievan province, 120 religious intolerance, 114, 129–30

Wołyń province, 120 Połock, 115 Pongau, 211 Portugal, 74 Poznań, 121 Prague, 20–21, 180 ghettos, 139 Old Town, 22 Prague Castle, 22 St. Vitus Cathedral, 22, 24 Týn church, 22, 24 University of Prague, 12 Premyśl, 117 Presbyterians, 201 Press, Volker, 75 Protestants, 15–16, 18, 22–25, 34, 42, 155, 157, 167, 169, 177, 199 in Austria, 176, 182, 185, 187 and coexistence, 210–13, 215 and confessional unity, 194–203 and heresy, 100–01, 107 historians, 74 and Jews, 96–97 literacy of, 175, 180–84, 186 and Orthodox Christians, 119, 121 in Poland, 32–33, 36, 41, 114 Reformed Protestants, 57–58, 63–65, 77 and territoriality in Germany, 84 in Westphalia, 53–54, 56–62, 64–65 and witches, 103–04, 106, 108. Pruckmann, Friedrich, 82 Prussia, 32, 42, 74, 176–77, 182, 185, 212, 214 and confessional unity, 196, 198, 202–03 Pufendorf, Samuel von, 196–200, 203 Pürgg, 186–87

R Radom, 38 Raeff, Marc, 74 Raesfeld, Bernhard von, 60 Raesfeld, Gottfried von, 57–58, 63 Ragoza, M., Uniate Metropolitan, 117–19, 125, 128–29 Raiffinger, Abraham, 159 Reformation, 3, 10, 16, 31, 34, 54, 65, 108, 139–40, 182 and anti-Jewish violence, 94, 96

Index

Bohemian Reformation, 11–15, 18–19, 25, 179 English Reformation, 175 and heresy, 107 German Reformation, 11–12, 18 and heresy, 99 Hussite Reformation, 19 and literacy, 174, 181, 187 Polish Reformation, 32–33, 42 religious symbolism during, 155, 157, 159 Slovene Reformation, 175 in Strasbourg, 143, 146–47 Swiss Reformation, 13 Reformed Church. See Calvinism Reformed Universalism, 198 Regensburg, 21, 96 Corpus Evangelicorum, 178, 212 Regensburg ghetto, 94, 99 Reichsdeputationshauptschluss (1803), 73 Reichstag, 38, 211 Reinhard, Wolfgang, 155 Reinkingk, Theodor von, 95 Relics, 163 St. Gereon, 163 St. Ursula, 163 Three Kings, 163 Reuchlin, Johannes, 95 Reuveni, David, 139 Rheda, 64 Rheine, 55, 60 Rhine Palatinate, 97 Rhine River, 5, 57, 76, 94 Rhineland, 160 Rijswijk, treaty of, 202 Rio, Martin Del, 104 Rinteln, 106 Rokita, Jan, 130 Roman Catholicism. See Catholicism Roman Curia, 21 and religious policy in Eastern Europe, 115, 118, 125, 129 Roman Empire, 76 Roman emperor, 81 territoriality of, 81 Roman Law, 81, 85 on provincial authority, 82 Roman See, 115–17, 131 Rome, 2, 7, 11–13, 15, 17–20, 31, 40, 177 Church of Rome, 79, 84

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and Orthodox Christianity, 115–19, 122, 124–30 Roman King, 76 St. Maria Rotunda, 158 Rosenthal, Heinrich, 83 Rosheim, Josel of, 96, 107 Rottenmann, 177, 189n10 Rožmberk (Rosenberg), House of, 16–18, 20, 24 Rubens, Peter Paul, 158 Rubin, Miri, 146 Rudolf II, Emperor, 14, 21, 98 Rus’, 120, 128 Russia, 120, 122–23 and the Union of Brest, 114, 116 Ruthenia, 4, 7, 31, 49n51 conflict between Catholics and Orthodox Christians, 115–17, 120, 123, 125–26, 128–29 Rutski, I., Metropolitan, 124–25

S Sabbatarianism, 3 Safed, 139 Sagajdaczny, P., 122 Saint Andreas, 164 Saint Dominic, 155 Saint Peter, 163 Saint Stephen, 164 Salzburg, 7, 21, 100, 177, 182, 184, 187, 210–12 and witches, 104 Sandomir, Consensus of (1570), 41, 198 Sandys, Edwin, 33 Saragosa, J., 127 Satan, 105 Saurau, Corbinian, Count, 183–84 Savoy, 76, 93 Sax, Ludwig, 159 Saxe-Coburg, 105 Saxony, 12, 76, 80; anti-witch violence, 104 and Jews, 96–97, 107 John Frederick, Elector of, 96–97 Lower Saxony, 106 Schieder, Theodor, 194 Schilling, Heinz, 75, 137, 139, 155 Schismatici, 36 Schmidt, Georg, 75 Schneider, Bernd Christian, 54, 79–80

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Schwartz, Christoph, 158 Schwenkfeldians, 141–42, 147 Scribner, Robert W., 66 Sebeş (Mühlbach), 168, 169i Secularization, 194 Sejm, 38–39, 41, 73, 121–25 Warsaw Sejm (1596), 118, 120 Seven Years’ War, 178 Shannon River, 93 Shulhan ‘Arukh, 138 Siegen, 105 Sigismund (I) the Old, 34, 36 and Jews, 96 Sigismund II Augustus, 1, 30, 34, 36, 41 Sigismund III, 118, 124, 126 on Union of Brest, 117, 119 Silesia, 17, 26n1, 32, 49n51, 176, 202 Austro-Prussian conflict over, 185 Skumin-Tyszkiewicz, F., 117 Slavata, Vilém/William, 16 Šliks/Schlicks, House of, 19 Slovakia, 9n9, 37 Slovenia, 9n9 Smalkaldic League, 96 Smalkaldic War (1547), 97, 140 Socinians, 33, 41 See also anti-Trinitarians Solikowski, D., Archbishop of L’viv, 119, 128 Society of Jesus. See Jesuits Socinianism, 194, 212 Soergel, Philip, 166–67 Soloviev, S. M., 116 Sonnleitner, Martin, 187 Spain, 18, 153, 202 prosecution of witchcraft, 104 Spanish War of Succession, 88n23 Spanheim, Ezechiel von, 202 Speciano, Cesare, 21 Spee, Friedrich, 103, 106, 108 Spicer, Andrew, 64–65 Spiegel, Johannes, 82 Spinola, bishop, 203 St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572), 32, 42, 93 Stadl, 185–87 Strasbourg, 5, 92, 96, 100–02, 137 and Jews, 140–48 Polizeiordnung (1628), 141–43, 145, 147–48

Staupitz, Johann von, 85 Steiner, Stephan, 212 Stephanus, Joachim, 79 Sterky, Jérémias, 198 Sterneberg, Johann, 60 Strimesius, Samuel, 196, 198, 200–01 Stubenberg, Wolf von, Count, 176 Sturm, Jacob, 92, 102 Styria, 156, 176–77, 182–84, 186 shrine of Mariazell, 153 Upper Styria, 176, 178, 185–86 Sulzbach, Hessian, 184 Superioritas territorialis, 80 Suttner, E. Ch., 116 Swabia, 76, 95, 100, 158 and Jews, 141 and witches, 104 Swabian League, 99, 111n36 Sweden, 73–74, 153, 159–60, 167–68 Switzerland, 100, 102, 194, 198, 200 Syncretism, 203

T Tannenberg, David von, 21 Tatars, 122 Tauler, Johannes, 84 Tazbir, Janusz, 32 Telgte, 55, 60 Terlecki, K., 117–19, 127–28 Tetrapolitan Confession, 140 Teutonic Order, Knights of the, 37–38 Teutsch, Andreas, 168 Thalheim, 177 Theophanes, Patriarch of Jerusalem, 122 Thirty Years War, 23, 100–01, 147 impact on Catholic cults,153–54, 157, 168 Thuringia, 76 and Jews, 141 Tilly, Charles, 93 Tilly, Count, 160 Titelmans, Pieter, 101 tituláře, 16 toleration, 6–8, 13, 25, 42–43, 85, 193–94, 196, 200–01, 203, 209–10, 214–16 and non-Christians, 99, 108 in Poland, 30–35, 40, 42 in Westphalia, 57 Tollet, Daniel, 41 Tor, Nikifor, 117

Index

Toruń (Thorn), 7, 34 Transylvania, 3, 168, 176–78, 212 Trent, Council of, 1, 101, 129, 155 Treuer, Samuel, 86 Tridentinism, 159, 165–66 Trier, 77, 80 and witches, 104–05 Truchseß von Waldburg, Otto, 163 Tübingen, 84, 130 University of Tübingen, 75, 84 Turda, Edict of, 3 Turrettini, Jean-Alphonse, 198–99 Turks, 2, 73, 122, 159, 161, 212 Tyrol, 100 and ritual murder affair of Simon of Trent, 94

U Uchański, Jakub, Archbishop of Gniezno, 41 Ukraine, 115–16, 118–19, 122–24, 126, 128–29 Ulm, 101 Ulster revolt (1641), 93 Uniate church, 4 and conflict with Orthodox Christians, 115–17, 120, 122–25, 129 Unitas Fratrum, 201 Unity of Brethren, 12–13, 15–18, 20–22, 24 32, 179 in Poland, 33, 41, 201 Utraquists, 3–4, 11–22, 24 in Westphalia, 60

V Válka, Josef, 19, 25 Valois, Henry, 41–2 Valtellina, 93 Vanozzi, B., 119, 121 Vatican, 118, 122, 124, 126, 128 Victorius, Petrus, 81 Vienna, 2, 32, 73, 159, 177–78, 216 Mariensäule, 153, 155, 168 and toleration, 176 Vigelius, Nicolaus, 82 Vilnius, 115, 117–18, 120 Virgin Mary. See Marian cult Vitebsk, 115, 123 Vlasovskii, I., 116 Vok, Petr, 24

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Volcmarus, Bartholomaeus, 82–83 Voltaire, 211 Vreden, 53–55, 66, 68n10 Vyšší Brod (Hohenfurt), 24

W Walch, Johann Georg, 195 Waldeck, 78 Waldensianism, 174 Waldensians, 93, 175, 179. See also heretics Wallachians, 176 Warendorf, 55, 60–63, 65–66, 71n74 St. Laurentius parish, 61–62, 65, 71n59 St. Marien parish, 60, 62 Warham, William, 33 Warmia (Ermland), 33 Warsaw, 73, 118 Warsaw Confederation (1573), 3–4, 32, 41–42, 120 and multi-confessionalism, 114 and religious toleration, 117–18 Warsaw Diet (1597), 121 Weigel, Valentin, 85 Werne, 55, 60 Werth, 58 Wesel, 57, 64 Wesenbeck, 83 Westphalia, 4–5, 7, 60, 75, 107 religious diversity, 53–56 and witches, 104, 106 Westphalia, Peace of (1648), 75, 99, 111n40, 178, 193 and toleration, 209–11 and transmigration, 212 Wetterau, 76, 78 Weyer, Johann, 104–05 White Mountain, Battle of, 14, 154, 167, 179 Wigelians, 142 Wilbur, Earl Morse, 33 Wilhelm V, Duke of Bavaria, 158 Wilhelm, Wolfgang, Count, 160 Williams, George Huntston, 33 Winkopp, Peter Adolf, 216 witchcraft, 102–05, 109 witches, 5 in Holy Roman Empire, 92–94 persecution of, 102–09

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Wittelsbach, House of, 154, 156–58, 160, 165–66 Wittenberg, 2, 12, 96 Wittenberg Concord (1598), 141, 145 Władysław IV, King, 122, 124 Wojcik, Z., 116 Wolgast, Eike, 75 Wolny, Reinhold, 214 World War II, 32 Worms, 139 Wörschachwald, 186 Württemberg, 73, 75, 84 dukes of, 77, 85 and witches, 104 Würzburg, 103, 160 Wyclyf, John, 35

Z Zamoyski, Jan, 119, 121 Zasius, Ulrich, 81 Zbirujski, D., 129 Zealand, 76 Zedler, 195–96, 203 Zevi, Sabbatai, 139 Zhukovich, P. N., 118, 122 Zittau, 180 Zizani, Stefan, 118 Zurich, 96 Zwingli, Ulrich, 102 on Jews, 96 Zwinglianism, 159