A Companion to Multiconfessionalism

in the Early Modern World

 Brill’s Companions
to the
Christian Tradition

A series of handbooks and reference works

on the intellectual and religious life of Europe,
500–1800

Editor-in-Chief
Christopher M. Bellitto
(Kean University)

VOLUME 28
A Companion to Multiconfessionalism
in the Early Modern World

Edited by
Thomas Max Safley

LEIDEN • BOSTON
2011
On the cover: Gerard ter Borch’s monumental oil painting “The Swearing of the Oath
of Ratification of the Treaty of Münster, 1648”, National Gallery, London (Art Media /
Heritage-Images / Imagestate)

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A companion to multiconfessionalism in the early modern world / edited by Thomas

Max Safley.
p. cm. — (Brill’s companions to the Christian tradition, ISSN 1871-6377 ; v. 28)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-20697-7 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Church history—Modern
period, 1500– 2. Religious pluralism—Christianity—History. 3. Religious pluralism—
Europe—History. 4. Church and state—Europe—History. 5. Europe—Church
history. I. Safley, Thomas Max.

BR290.C66 2011
274’.06—dc22
2011011505

ISSN 1871-6377
ISBN 978 90 04 20697 7

Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

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 CONTENTS

Notes on Contributors ...................................................................... ix

Multiconfessionalism: A Brief Introduction ................................. 1

Thomas Max Safley

PART ONE

CONFESSIONS

Confessions ......................................................................................... 23
Lee Palmer Wandel

PART TWO

THE NETHERLANDS

Confessional Coexistence in the Early Modern

Low Countries .............................................................................. 47
Jesse Spohnholz

Multiconfessionalism in a Commercial Metropolis: The Case

of 16th-Century Antwerp ............................................................ 75
Guido Marnef

“In Equality and Enjoying the Same Favor”: Biconfessionalism

in the Low Countries .................................................................... 99
Benjamin J. Kaplan

PART THREE

THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

A Multiconfessional Empire ............................................................ 129

David M. Luebke
vi contents

Protestant Imperial Knights, Multiconfessionalism, and

the Counter-Reformation ............................................................ 155
Richard J. Ninness

Multiconfessionalism in the Holy Roman Empire: The Case

of Colmar, 1550–1750 .................................................................. 179
Peter G. Wallace

PART FOUR

FRANCE

France: An Overview ........................................................................ 209

Keith P. Luria

Peace Commissioners at the Beginning of the Wars of Religion:

Toward an Interactionist Interpretation of the Pacification
Process in France ........................................................................... 239
Jérémie Foa

One Town, Two Faiths: Unity and Exclusion during the

French Religious Wars ................................................................. 265
Penny Roberts

PART FIVE

BRITAIN

Multiconfessionalism in Early Modern Britain ............................ 289

Bernard Capp

Early Modern Ireland as Multiconfessional State ........................ 317

Raymond Gillespie

European Multiconfessionalism and the English Toleration

Controversy, 1640–1660 ............................................................... 341
John Coffey
 contents vii

PART SIX

CENTRAL EUROPE

Multiconfessionalism in Central Europe ....................................... 369

Howard Louthan

Multiconfessionalism in Transylvania ........................................... 393

Graeme Murdock

Five Confessions in One City: Multiconfessionalism in

Early Modern Wilno ..................................................................... 417
David Frick

Works Cited ........................................................................................ 445

Index .................................................................................................... 477

 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Bernard Capp is a Fellow of the British Academy, and Emeritus Pro-

fessor of History at the University of Warwick, where he has taught
since 1968. He has published five monographs on early modern Eng-
lish history, and is currently completing a book on “England’s Culture
Wars, 1649–60”.

John Coffey is Professor of Early Modern History at the University

of Leicester. He works on religion, politics, and ideas and is the author
of three books including Persecution and Toleration in Protestant Eng-
land (New York: 2000). Most recently, he has co-edited The Cambridge
Companion to Puritanism (Cambridge, UK: 2008) and Seeing Things
Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion (Notre Dame,
IN: 2009).

Jérémie Foa teaches history at the University Lyon 2. He specialises

in the history of the Wars of Religion and in peace implementation on
this period. His recent publications include “An Unequal Apportion-
ment. The Conflict over Space between Protestants and Catholics at the
Beginning of the Wars of Religion,” French History 20 (2006): 369–386
and Le Bruit des armes. Mises en formes et désinformations au temps des
guerres de Religion (Paris: 2011), edited with Paul-Alexis Mellet.

David Frick is Professor and former Chairman of the Department of

Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berke-
ley. His research focuses on questions of philology and rhetoric, as well
as religion, culture, and society in the Polish-Lithuanian Common-
wealth of the early modern period, especially the seventeenth century.
Among his publications are Polish Sacred Philology in the Reformation
and the Counter-Reformation: Chapters in the History of the Contro-
versies, 1551–1632 (Berkeley: 1989), Rus’ Restored: Selected Writings of
Meletij Smotryc’kyj, 1610–1630 (Cambridge, MA: 2005), and Wilnianie:
Żywoty siedemnastowieczne (Warsaw: 2008).

Raymond Gillespie teaches history at the National University of Ire-

land Maynooth and has written extensively on the social and cultural
history of early modern Ireland, including Devoted People: Belief and
Religion in Early Modern Ireland (Manchester: 1997).
x notes on contributors

Benjamin J. Kaplan holds the Chair in Dutch History at University

College London. In addition to the Low Countries, he specializes in
the Reformation and the history of religious conflict and toleration.
His recent publications include Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and
the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA:
2007).

Howard Louthan is Professor of History at the University of Florida.

His previous publications include The Quest for Compromise: Peace-
makers in Counter-Reformation Vienna (Cambridge, UK: 1997) and
Converting Bohemia: Force and Persuasion in the Catholic Reformation
(Cambridge, UK: 2009).

David M. Luebke is Associate Professor of History at the University

of Oregon. His publications include His Majesty’s Rebels: Communities,
Factions, and Rural Revolt in the Black Forest, 1725–1745 (Ithaca, NY:
1997), The Counter-Reformation: Essential Readings (Oxford: 1999),
and articles on the religious and political cultures of ordinary people in
the German-speaking lands. He is currently at work on a monograph,
“Hometown Religion: Conflict and Coexistence among the Christian
Religions of Germany, 1553–1650”.

Keith P. Luria is Professor of History at North Carolina State Uni-

versity and the author of Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and
Conflict in Early-Modern France (Washington, DC: 2005). He is work-
ing on the history of early-modern relations between Europe and the
non-European world through religious missions.

Guido Marnef is Professor of Early Modern History at the University

of Antwerp. He specializes in the political, religious, and cultural his-
tory of the 16th- and 17th-century Low Countries. His many publica-
tions include Antwerp in the Age of Reformation (Baltimore: 1996).

Graeme Murdock is Lecturer in European History at Trinity College

Dublin. His research interests include the history of religion in early
modern Hungary and France, and his publications include Calvinism
on the Frontier. International Calvinism and the Reformed Church of
Hungary and Transylvania, c. 1600–1660 (Oxford: 2000); Confessional
Identity in East-Central Europe (Aldershot: 2002) and Beyond Calvin.
The Intellectual, Political and Cultural World of Europe’s Reformed
Churches, c. 1540–1620 (New York: 2004).
 notes on contributors xi

Richard J. Ninness is an Assistant Professor at Touro College. His

book, Between Opposition and Collaboration: Nobles, Bishops, and the
German Reformations in the Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg (1555–1619),
is forthcoming in 2011 with Brill Academic Publishers.

Penny Roberts is Associate Professor (Reader) in History at the Uni-

versity of Warwick. She has written extensively on the social, political,
religious, and cultural history of the French religious wars. Her forth-
coming publications include a book on peacemaking during the wars
and an edited volume on violence in 16th-century France.

Thomas Max Safley is Professor of History at the University of Penn-

sylvania. A specialist in the economic and social history of early modern
Europe, his most recent publications include Children of the Laboring
Poor: Expectation and Experience among the Orphans of Early Modern
Augsburg (Leiden: 2005) and Kinder, Karitas und Kapital (Augsburg:
2009/2020).

Jesse Spohnholz is Assistant Professor of History at Washington State

University. His research focuses on the practices of religious toleration
during the age of religious wars as well as religion, family, and gender
in the Netherlands and northwest Germany. He is the author of The
Tactics of Toleration: A Refugee Community in Age of Religious War
(Newark, DE: 2010).

Peter G. Wallace is Professor of History at Hartwick College in

Oneonta, New York, and specializes in early modern European his-
tory. Published works include Communities and Conflict in Early Mod-
ern Colmar, 1575–1730 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: 1995), and The Long
European Reformation: Religion, Political Conflict, and the Search for
Conformity, 1350–1750 (New York: 2004). His current research focuses
on urban political culture and political identities in the Upper Rhine
Valley from 1580 to 1730.

Lee Palmer Wandel is Professor of History, Religious Studies, and

Visual Culture at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. She has just
completed The Reformation: Towards a New History for Cambridge
University Press and is continuing her work on catechisms.
 MULTICONFESSIONALISM: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

Thomas Max Safley

In the 16th century, Christianity blew apart. In what seemed to con-

temporaries a cataclysm, the speed and scope of which evoked fore-
bodings of doom, the end of days, the unity of the Christian church
and Christian worship came to an end.1
Yet, Christianity had a long history of fragmentation before the Ref-
ormation. Even in the first generation, the Council of Jerusalem or
Apostolic Council, described in the Book of Acts, marked a potential
parting of the ways, a fate avoided only at the last minute through
Paul’s persuasive powers and Peter’s willingness to compromise.2
The East-West Schism, which resulted in the emergence of two great
Christian traditions that would eventually become known as the East-
ern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, involved a
gradual separation over a number of issues that reached its climax in
the mutual excommunications of the 11th century. It has not been
entirely resolved to this day. In the 12th century the Waldensian
movement coalesced around the person and teachings of Peter Waldo,
who advocated lay preaching, voluntary poverty, and strict Biblicism
as the essential elements of Christianity, and broke with Roman, papal
authority only to suffer brutal persecution before retreating into the
high valleys of the Piedmont. Isolated communities still exist. Similarly,
the followers of Jan Hus took up their leader’s call for the strictly literal
interpretation of the Bible, the no less strict limit on the authority of
popes, and, most famously, the celebration of the Eucharist in both
kinds, broke violently with Rome in the late-14th and early 15th cen-
turies. They survive as the Moravian, Bohemian Brethren, and Czech
Hussite churches. The process has accelerated over time. Christianity
today comprises seven major blocks, 156 ecclesiastical traditions, and

1
I wish to thank Lee Palmer Wandel for sharing with me her manuscript, “The Ref-
ormation: Toward a New History,” forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.
2
Acts of the Apostles 15.
2 thomas max safley

over 22,000 denominations in varying degrees of communion or com-

petition with each other.3
For all the tendency of Christians to divide against themselves, how-
ever, something of a consensus existed in the West during the Middle
Ages. The Waldensians, Hussites, and a very few others survived only
by retreating far into the wilderness or enlisting the armed protection
of powerful patrons. Their embattled persistence proves their excep-
tional status. Such schismatics notwithstanding, the dominant Roman
church relied successfully on a combination of coercion and compro-
mise to fold periodic reforming movements back into itself. The Cis-
tercians and the Franciscans, for example, remained orthodox for all
the heterodox potential of their visions of true Christianity. This is
not to say that the Church was itself static, applying fixed notions of
authority or orthodoxy. Quite the contrary, as medievalists since Rich-
ard Southern have argued4, it existed in dynamic relationship to the
political, social, and material circumstances of its day. Though its orga-
nization reached from the Curia romana via archdiocese and diocese
to churches and chapels in nearly every corner of Europe, Christians
perceived its authority variously, depending upon the articulations of
power and the dictates of geography at the local level. Though the
Gospels presented the life of Christ in relatively consistent fashion,
they inspired the widest possible variety of imitations among clergy
and laity. Though “orthodoxy” described the teachings of the Church,
theologians actively discussed and debated its content with the result
that it became less a straight-and-narrow path than a broad, occa-
sionally murky zone. “Heresy” likewise applied less to clear deviations
from the orthodox than to vague, because constantly shifting, attempts
to practice a Christ-like life.5 But, such dynamism in no way prevented
western Christians from reaching general agreement in the Middle
Ages about what Christianity entailed. Allowing for a certain varia-
tion of detail and degree, they acknowledged the same authoritative

3
David Barrett et al. (eds.), World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of
Churches and Religions in the Modern World (Oxford: 1985), 15–18.
4
Richard Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (London:
1970), passim.
5
See, for example, Grundmann’s classic argument in Herbert Grundmann, Religiöse
Bewegungen im Mittelalter; Untersuchungen über die geschichtlichen Zusammenhänge
zwischen der Ketzerei, den Bettelorden und der religiösen Frauenbewegung im 12. und
13. Jahrhundert, und über die geschichtlichen Grundlagen der deutschen Mystik, 2nd
edition (Hildesheim: 1961).
 introduction 3

text, the same clerical hierarchy, the same liturgical calendar, and the
same transcendent relationship.
Despite all earlier movements of reform, of which there were many,
Christians returning constantly to the Gospel well-spring for renewed
perspective and conviction, the Reformation may thus be regarded
as unprecedented. Prior to the 16th century, the range of issues that
caused debate and division remained limited. Questions of papal
authority, clerical discipline, Christian life, or theological interpreta-
tion arose at one point or another but seldom all at the same time.
The Reformation included a cacophony of voices and a multitude
of texts that questioned and addressed the entire range of Christian
teaching and life: God’s nature, God’s relationship to creation, God’s
revelation, Christian comportment, Christian worship, and Christian
truth. It seemed that the entire Christian religion had come suddenly
under assault or, viewed from the perspective of those seeking change,
opened finally to renewal. Nor was the range of debate the only char-
acteristic to set the Reformation apart. The 16th century witnessed a
level of passion and violence that may well have seemed singular to
those who lived through it. Violence marked, of course, the responses
to Waldo and Hus and, so, obtained not only in the 16th century. But
seldom had it reached such a pitch and ubiquity. The Reformation set
neighbor against neighbor and parents against children, turned friends
into foes and adversaries into allies, across the continent. Arguments
gave way to blows, which easily provoked riots. Blood was shed and
lives lost. Martyrs endured torment and death singing, rather than
abjuring. Wars erupted in the Empire, France, and the Low Countries,
when the passions of religion coincided with the interests of politics.
Not only people but also objects fell victim as advocates of reform
defiled consecrated Hosts, destroyed religious images, and desecrated
sacred places, and defenders of tradition burned Bibles and interrupted
sermons. Nor, finally, were those advocates of reform and renewal
themselves unified, as all attempts to capture and describe them as a
single group make them seem. Many, like Erasmus, saw a clear need
for change, for a return to the imitation of Christ as portrayed in the
Gospels, but refused to abandon the traditional, Roman Church that
could claim a direct, unbroken succession from the apostles them-
selves. Those who insisted that a break with a tradition grown sinfully
human in their eyes was inevitable and essential splintered into an
ever-increasing number of sects and churches that often opposed one
another as violently and passionately as they opposed the Church of
Rome. The result was a growing multiplicity of confessions.
4 thomas max safley

The word, “confession,” in the sense both of a “confession” of sin

and of a “profession” of faith, can be found in Hebrew and Christian
scriptures. The early church used it to name statements of fundamental,
Christian doctrine, and several such “confessions” appeared during
the course of the Middle Ages. Yet, as Jaroslav Pelikan and Valerie
Hotchkiss make clear, “it was with the Reformation of the sixteenth
century that ‘confession of faith’ as a theological and literary form dis-
tinct from ‘creed’ came into its own and achieved dominance.”6 The
sheer number and variety of these documents astonishes.7 Those that
were not more personal in nature came to represent statements of
eternal truth on such topics as Christology, theology, ecclesiology, lit-
urgy, and morality for communities of Christians dispersed across a
multiconfessional landscape.
Historians have long recognized the growing number of confessions
that mark the 16th century as early as the 1520s. Ernst Walter Zeeden
wrote of Konfessionsbildung 8 as a process of internal, doctrinal, and
liturgical innovation, the proliferation of statements or documents of
varying form and content that identified churches that shared a given
liturgy and theology. He was, however, less interested in the extraordi-
nary number and variety of churches, a phenomenon hinted at by the
Troeltschian morphology of George H. Williams,9 than in the growth
or revival of what he understood as the central institutions of the Ref-
ormation, the Lutheran Church and the Roman Church.
That such a thing could occur, that confessions could multiply
despite opposition by the Roman church and persecution by secular
magistrates, has to do in part with the nature of politics and in part
with the process of reform in the 16th century. Both were highly frag-
mented.
Political power remained vested in the person of the monarch.
Councilors, advisors, officers, and servants did not command the same
loyalty and obedience. Nor did they share the monarch’s sacral qual-
ity, a crucial consideration when the dispute centered upon religion.
The personal nature of authority assumed even greater significance

6
Jaroslav Pelikan and Varie Hotchkiss (eds.), Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the
Christian Tradition, vol. II: Reformation Era (New Haven: 2003), 4.
7
See Lee Palmer Wandel’s contribution to this volume.
8
Ernst Walter Zeeden, Die Entstehung der Konfessionen: Grundlagen und Formen
der Konfessionsbildung im Zeitalter der Glaubenskämpfe (Munich: 1964).
9
George H, Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: 1962).
 introduction 5

in a political landscape that was extraordinarily varied. Even in states

that boasted relatively centralized governments and relatively profes-
sionalized bureaucracies—France and Britain come to mind—distance
and privilege mitigated every exercise of power. In brief, the more dis-
tant a locality or community was from the person of the sovereign,
the greater were the opportunities for resistance or prevarication.
Moreover, many towns and provinces retained diverse rights of self-
determination that could be used to slow or shape the projects and
policies of central governments. In less centralized states, such as the
Dutch Republic, the Holy Roman Empire, or the princedoms of Cen-
tral Europe, territorial and civic authorities had constitutionally guar-
anteed powers of self-determination that they could exercise against
the relatively under-developed organs of central authority. Complicat-
ing the matter still further, ecclesiastical lords claimed for themselves
and their territories the authority of princes as well as the immunity
of prelates. The consequence of these often far-removed, over-lapping,
conflicting, and competing powers was the existence of interstices, in
which multiple confessions might prosper.
The processes, whereby confessions crystallized, contributed to the
welter, too. The Imperial city of Augsburg, to take up a single example,
experienced an unusually complicated series of reformations, attribut-
able to many different impulses for religious renewal. The city was
extraordinarily prosperous, a center of commerce, manufacturing, and
finance, that not only fostered a local printing industry but also nour-
ished a learned, literate, urban elite, well-versed in the intellectual and
political developments of the day, at the same time that it created an
immiserated, urban proletariat, resentful of wealth and display. Its resi-
dents gave voice to an inchoate yearning for religious renewal, a desire
so widespread that, according to the chronicler, Hektor Mülich, Roman
corruption and greed in the form of papal indulgences caused “a great
murmuring among the people”10 as early as 1451 and, according to the
historian, Friedrich Roth, much discontent, especially among thought-
ful citizens in 1517.11 It was the see of Christoph von Stadion, elected
Bishop of Augsburg in 1517, a cleric of Erasmian temperament, whose
learning and tolerance may have enabled opposition and sectarianism

10
“fast ein groß Murmeln unter dem Volk”, Hektor Mülichs Chronik, 167, as
quoted in Friedrich Roth, Augsburgs Reformationsgeschichte, 4 vols. (Munich: 1974),
1: 47.
11
Friedrich Roth, Augsburgs Reformationsgeschichte, 4 vols. (Munich: 1974), I: 47.
6 thomas max safley

to gain a foothold in the city.12 It was the site of the Reichstag of 1518,
a glittering assembly of Imperial aristocrats, secular and ecclesiastical,
that occasioned such nationalistic gushing from Ulrich von Hutten
and drew Martin Luther barely a year after the posting of his theses
to a meeting with supporters among the local elite as well as with
the papal legate, Giacomo de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan.13 It was home
to some of Luther’s earliest and most steadfast supports, including
Johannes Frosch, the Prior of the Carmelite Convent of St. Anna, who
encouraged the spread of the reformer’s writings in and beyond the
city. It was likewise home, albeit briefly, to Johannes Oecolampadius,
appointed Cathedral Preacher in 1518, whose sermons quickly awak-
ened suspicion among Romanists that he was himself an evangelical,
a suspicion that would be utterly confirmed in Basel during the 1530s.
It was, once again, home to Oecolampadius’ replacement in 1520, the
“Doctor of Theology, imperial orator and poet laureate,”14 Urbanus
Rhegius, who, despite early opposition to reform, would prove to be
Luther’s strongest, most vocal defender in the Cathedral of Our Lady.
And, finally, it was the source for many of words and images, spread in
pamphlets and broadsides that were printed in Augsburg, that peaked
interest in religious renewal, excited attendance at the sermons of
Oecolampadius and Rhegius, and encouraged acts of rebellion, such as
the notorious, public marriage of the priest, Johannes Grießbeutel in
1522.15 Socioeconomic conditions, popular piety, ecclesiastical leader-
ship, elite interests, great men, evangelical preaching, religious dissent,
and civil disobedience all found their place in Augsburg, all contrib-
uted to a desire for reformation, and all led in multiple directions.
No wonder that Luther wrote to Georg Spalatin in horror, “Augsburg
is splintering in six directions!”16 The city was eventually forced to

12
It is at least worthy of note that Stadion recommended to the clergy and laity of
his diocese a simple Christianity, based on Biblical precepts and examples, and the imi-
tation of Christ as an effective response to the problems that beset church and society.
This Erasmian sensibility was announced in 1517, the same year Luther made public
his list of theses. Friedrich Zoepfl, Das Bistum Augsburg und seine Bischöfe im Refor-
mationsjahrhundert (Augsburg: 1969), 12ff. Quoted in Herbert Immenkötter, “Kirche
zwischen Reformation und Parität,” in Gunther Gottlieb et al. (eds.), Geschichte der
Stadt Augsburg von der Römerzeit bis zur Parität (Stuttgart: 1985), 391–413.
13
Roth, Augsburgs Reformationsgeschichte, 1: 50–52.
14
Roth, Augsburgs Reformationsgeschichte, 1: 57.
15
Roth, Augsburgs Reformationsgeschichte, 1: 115–16.
16
“Augusta in sex divisa est sectas,” as quoted in Helmut Zschoch, “Augsburg
zerfällt in sechs Richtungen! Frühkonfessioneller Pluralismus in den Jahren 1524 bis
 introduction 7

adopt two confessions as official, without inevitably expelling any of

the others, but that process would take more than a century-and-a-
half. And, such varying, conflicting, complicating forces were at work
everywhere.
Multiconfessionalism, understood here as the legally recognized and
politically supported coexistence of two or more confessions in a sin-
gle polity, be it a city-state or territorial state, was the rule rather than
the exception for most regions and polities that experienced Reforma-
tion. Dutch historians, of course, have long recognized the truth of this
observation for their own country.17 Though the Reformed Church
became the official church of the new Republic, membership was not
compelled, and it remained a minority church amid a remarkable
array of confessions. For all its accuracy, this relatively straightforward
representation still obscures the varieties of structures and arrange-
ments that existed in towns and estates across the Republic. Similarly,
in the confederated amalgam of the Holy Roman Empire, each ruling
authority obtained in 1555 the constitutional right to choose between
the Augsburg or Roman confessions—a choice expanded in 1648 to
include Calvinism—and make it the official church of their state.18 The
congeries of princes and councils that ruled its several hundred ter-
ritories and cities, in fact, accommodated multiple confessions, recog-
nized religious minorities, or even, as Anton Schilling put it, “provided
a constitutional guarantee of confessional parity.”19 Admittedly, most
preferred and strove to achieve confessional uniformity, but local
conditions often rendered that goal unattainable, if not inadvisable.
The limits of political power and the dictates of local circumstance
had interestingly analogous consequences in France.20 Catholics and
Huguenots struggled ferociously to establish their confession as the
sole, recognized church of the kingdom. Though capable of the greatest
brutality in this endeavor, they were no less capable of limiting violence

1530” in Helmut Gier, R. Schwarz (eds.), Reformation und Reichsstadt—Luther in

Augsburg. Ausstellung der Staats- und Stadtbibliothek Augsburg. Katalog (Augsburg:
1996), 78–95.
17
See Jesse Spohnholz’s contribution to this volume.
18
See David Luebke’s contribution to this volume.
19
Anton Schindling, “Neighbours of a Different Faith: Confessional Coexistence
and Parity in the Territorial States and Towns of the Empire” in Klaus Bussmann
and Heinz Schilling (eds.), 1648: War and Peace in Europe, 3 vols. (Münster: 1999),
1: 465–483, here 465.
20
See Keith Luria’s contribution to this essay.
8 thomas max safley

and coexisting peacefully in given places and at given times. Indeed,

the monarchy attempted at points to fix in law and mediate through
commissions a multiconfessional peace, based on loyalty to the crown.
British sovereigns, too, pursued a multiconfessional state, if only after
the Restoration and for reasons quite their own.21 The monarchical
ambition to escape the trammels of the Anglican Church, to say noth-
ing of Parliament, cannot obscure the fact that here, too, multiconfes-
sionalism existed in difficult circumstances. Sixteenth-century rulers
had attempted to create a confessional state in England, persecuting at
times fiercely Catholics and separatists. During the Civil War, Crom-
wellian authority attempted to reverse this policy, encouraging and
supporting a broader multiconfessionalism. As the state could at no
time simply impose its will, the result was a negotiated compromise
between confessional and multiconfessional extremes. Scotland and
Ireland each reached a divergent settlement, consistent with their local
circumstances. More complex than all of these—and, perhaps, most
surprising to scholars of Western Europe—is the multiconfessionalism
of Central Europe, with its complex political boundaries and its vari-
ous ethnic communities.22 The object of repeated invasion and nego-
tiation, its borders and, with them, its dynasties shifted dramatically
over the course of the late Middle Ages and early modern period. This
fluid condition allowed individuals and groups to move and resettle
easily. Moreover, those people, both rulers and ruled, were politically,
socially, ethnically, and, not incidentally, confessionally diverse. Under
such circumstances, degrees of political decentralization or local self-
determination were commonplace, promoting multiconfessionalism,
whether as an act of policy or a concession to necessity. In consequence,
the regions and polities of Central Europe harbored an astonishing
spectrum of religions and confessions, including not only Catholics,
Lutheran, and Calvinists, but also groups that would have been dis-
missed as every stripe of sectarian or Schwärmer, as well as varieties of
Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others. Hence, early modern
multiconfessionalism could be de jure or de facto or both, negotiated
or imposed, permanent or temporary, local or regional, a conscious
policy or an unwilling compromise, depending on local circumstances.
Similar patterns applied to the territories of the Swiss Confederation,

21
See Bernard Capp’s contribution to this essay.
22
See Howard Louthan’s contribution to this volume.
 introduction 9

might be discovered in the regions of Scandinavia, and could con-

ceivably have survived even in the interstices of authority within the
Catholic confessional states of Southern Europe.
A commonplace for much of Europe in the 16th and 17th centu-
ries, multiconfessionalism has nonetheless appeared to historians, if
at all, only as a transient phase of religious and social life. They have
generally assumed it to be a temporary accommodation that in time
resolved itself in the creation of confessional states. This assumption
owes much to the scholarship of Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schil-
ling, who coined the term “confessionalization.”23 In 1977, Reinhard
argued for “the age of confessions,” so that “the schematic of chrono-
logical antithesis can be replaced by an image of parallel development
and the concept of confessio, as understood in the sources, achieves
both a church-historical as well as a social-historical interpretation.”24
He understood that the creation of confessions was far more than an
internal matter for the church, affected far more than ecclesiastical
structure, liturgical practice, or theological principle. It altered the
bases of social interaction. In turn, Schilling developed the model of
“confessionalization,” applied initially to German cities and states as
“an internally consistent process resulting in the theological, ideologi-
cal, and political formation of the three large confessional churches
as well as their corresponding power blocs.”25 With that the notion
moved into the political arena with the instrumentalization of confes-
sion for disciplinary purposes by confessional states.
The sense of “an internally consistent process,” in which elites
imposed an ideological and disciplinary regime seamlessly on a subject
population, making confession the servant of policy and the state the
protector and arbiter of religion, has not borne scrutiny. Recent schol-
arship on cultural exchange and transmission has raised the problem
of reception, which, briefly put, posits that readers and listeners—the
recipients, so to speak—do not passively absorb content, but rather

23
The literature on confessionalization is vast. For a lively and informative discussion,
see http://www.h-net.org/~german/discuss/Confessionalization/Confess_index.htm.
24
Wolfgang Reinhard, “Gegenreformation als Modernisierung? Prolegomena zu
einer Theorie des konfessionellen Zeitalters,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 68
(1977): 251.
25
Heinz Schilling, “Confessionalization in the Empire: Religious and Societal
Change in Germany between 1555 and 1620” in idem, Religion, Political Culture, and
the Emergence of Early Modern Society: Essays in German and Dutch History (Leiden:
1992), 216–7.
10 thomas max safley

see or hear it through the filters of their own experience, aspirations,

and assumptions.26 In similar fashion, the scholarship on statecraft and
state-building in the early modern period has demonstrated that the
modern state did not emerge in a direct, top-down process, whereby
the center imposed its authority and ideology on the provinces and
the periphery, but rather grew out of an uneven process of negotiation
and compromise, in which subject territories and peoples managed to
defend their particular interests and, thus, deflect political structures
and practices.
The ubiquity of multiconfessionalism has also broadened the origi-
nal scope of Konfessionsbildung, taking it well beyond the ecclesiastical
and political to the social and cultural. Confessional affiliation was not
only a matter of police action, political calculation, or ethnic affilia-
tion, but also a matter of daily experience. With whom did one have
contact as neighbor, colleague, friend, or relative? What were one’s
social station, occupational group, and political connection? Did one
reside among multiple confessional groups, and, if so, what was the
nature of one’s interaction with them? The answers to these questions
influenced confessional choice. And, confessional choice influenced,
even altered, the answers to these question, implications that neither
Zeeden nor Reinhard and Schilling considered.
One of the first to do so was Etienne François in his path-breaking
book, Die unsichtbare Grenze: Protestanten und Katholiken in Augs-
burg, 1648–1806.27 It offers, by way of example, a sense of the range
of scholarly possibilities and questions, when one replaces mechanical
theories of coercion and reaction with complex models of contingency
and interaction. Francois focused on the so-called “invisible bound-
ary” that existed in the city of Augsburg, one of the Imperial cities
of the Holy Roman Empire in which parity had been established by
the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. A Catholic minority received the
legal guarantee of equal access to public offices and resources with
the Evangelical majority, a fascinating early exercise in separate-but-
equal. Each also retained the right to undisturbed public worship. He
proceeded to examine these two communities, comparing them to one
another and observing how they influenced one another in a variety of

26
See Lee Wandel’s contribution to this volume.
27
Etienne François, Die unsichtbare Grenze: Protestanten und Katholiken in Augs-
burg, 1648–1806 (Sigmaringen: 1991).
 introduction 11

ways. He demonstrated that migration patterns affected the structure

of each confessional community. Catholics moved to Augsburg from
the neighboring countryside, whereas Evangelicals migrated from
more distant cities. Marriage patterns tended to reinforce this rural-
urban divide, but the difference tended to recede, as each community
influenced the demographic structures and behaviors of the other, an
instance of confessional dialectic. Likewise the social and occupational
divergences between Catholics and Evangelicals converged over time.
He concludes, “Catholics and Lutherans constituted ‘two different
societies . . . that which bound was stronger than that which divided.”28
Confessional relations left their strongest mark, however, in the world
of culture, specifically, in the shaping of mentalité. Francois called the
confessional polemics of the age a ritualized “theater of confrontation”
that strengthened internal cohesion and stabilized exterior relations.
In a truly innovative step, he turned to naming practices and showed
how they tended to become endogenous, Catholics increasingly giving
their children Catholic names, that is, the names of saints, and Luther-
ans giving their children Lutheran names, names from Scripture. He
thus demonstrated that confessional identification became internal-
ized even as the external markers of confessional difference tended to
disappear. As social and legal structures that differentiated dissolved,
a consciousness of difference remained, a truly invisible boundary.
The presence of multiple confessions became itself an essential spur
to confessional identification.
The process of confessional identification—what one might call the
individual or micro-mechanics of Konfessionsbildung has received
considerable attention from scholars since the publication of Fran-
çois’s book. Frauke Volkland, to take up another example in some-
what greater detail, shows some of the new insights that can result
from this research.29 Early modern Bischofszell was a small city in the
Swiss Canton of Thurgau. It was biconfessional, harboring Reformed
and Catholic communities, and its political structures and authori-
ties did not intervene too massively in confessional relations, making
it an excellent contrast to the confessionalization paradigm. Volk-
land offers detailed analyses of three incidents. First, in its festival of

28
François, Die unsichtbare Grenze, 140.
29
Frauke Volkland, Konfession und Selbstverständnis: Reformierte Rituale in der
gemischtkonfessionellen Kleinstadt Bischofszell im 17. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: 2005).
12 thomas max safley

“Hohlensteigtag” the town commemorated its communal salvation in

1407, but each confession celebrated separately.30 Second, in 1677, a
gang of Reformed youths disturbed the Corpus Christi procession but
escaped legal sanction because their disturbance took a cleverly indi-
rect, musical form and because their excuses were supported by clev-
erly manipulated, witness testimony. Third, in a series of conversions,
events were shaped not only by civic policies but also and equally by
social contexts, familial tensions, and economic ambitions. Though
the study offers evidence of fixed, accepted confessional boundaries
that separated the two communities, it borrows from the work of Clif-
ford Geertz to suggest as well the existence of a “common religio-
cultural system” that was recognized and shared by both communities
and largely independent of the state.31 Volkland rejects the notion of
confessional identity, which she believes has been oversimplified as a
top-down consequence of confessionalization, in favor of a dialectical
relationship between “confession and self-image,” which she interprets
as a consequence of daily interaction. She suggests by way of conse-
quence that confessional states, when and where they emerged, may
have been the consequence not of state policy alone but of the daily
discourse of multiple confessions.
Current scholarship has established the fact that multiconfessional-
ism was far more common in the 16th and 17th centuries than the
traditional historical narrative, be it of the Age of Reformation or
the Age of Confession, would have its disciples believe. That multi-
confessionalism could be sustained from below as a necessary con-
sequence of co-residence and coexistence in a single community. It
could also be imposed from above as a conscious political policy. That
most authorities in the 16th and 17th centuries assumed that religious
unity—confessional uniformity—was essential to political stability. As
the essays of this volume make clear, however, many nations rejected
persecution in favor of some form of coexistence. Indeed, even some
persecuting states embraced multiconfessionalism. This realization is
relatively young, but its influence is noticeable.

30
Frauke Volkland, Konfession und Selbstverständnis, 49.
31
“Religiöse Konversionen werden dann nicht primär unter dem Vorzeichen eines
konfessionell-antagonistischen Modells, sondern vor dem Hintergrund eines den Kon-
fessionen zumindest teilweise gemeinsamen religiös-kulturellen Systems verstanden.”
Frauke Volkland, Konfession und Selbstverständnis, 181.
 introduction 13

It has forced scholars to reconsider the nature of Konfessionsbildung

and Konfessionalisierung. States did not universally—much less uni-
formly—take up confession as a tool of policy. Moreover, confessional
states often adopted, whether temporarily or permanently, openly or
tacitly, willingly or unwillingly, a latitudinarian posture regarding het-
erodoxy within their borders. Augsburg is a prime example, but by
no means the only one. While confessional unity might have been
thought essential to political stability in principle, multiconfessional
coexistence was often understood as the key to political survival in
practice. Both the articulation of power within and the constellation of
forces without could compel the infant, modern state, so-called, to pay
lip-service to confessional unity while allowing confessional diversity,
a policy more reminiscent of Machiavelli than Botero.
The essays of this volume demonstrate this pattern again and again.
They focus to a very large extent on ecclesio-political relations, what
one might call multiconfessionalism at the vertical macro-level. They
are, at least in their present form, less concerned with the influence of
a plurality of confessions on the perceptions and actions of individu-
als and groups among themselves, than with the interactions between
confessional groups and the governing authorities above them.
In the Dutch Republic, William of Orange maneuvered among the
many confessional groups in each of the estates in an attempt to hold
together an anti-Habsburg, anti-Spanish alliance.32 The city govern-
ment of Antwerp steered similarly among the pushes of various, resi-
dent, confessional groups and the pulls of various, external, superior
authorities.33 The study of multiconfessionalism in the Holy Roman
Empire remains likewise focused on the politics of confession. The
city government of Colmar in Alsace, like those of many other com-
munities, sought to balance the demands of and ease the tensions
between its confessional constituencies while mollifying—and, thus,
prevent intervention by—at turns the Holy Roman Emperor or the
King of France.34 Meanwhile, Imperial knights along the Mosel, Rhine,
and Main rivers as well as in the Prince-Bishoprics struggled to exer-
cise independently the ius reformandi within their own estates and at
the same time to serve loyally their confessional overlords.35 French

32
See Benjamin Kaplan’s contribution to this volume.
33
See Guido Marnef ’s contribution to this volume.
34
See Peter Wallace’s contribution to this volume.
35
See Richard Ninness’ contribution to this volume.
14 thomas max safley

towns and territories offer an even more complex image of confessional

relations. As noted, local authorities strove with surprising frequency—
surprising, because France was not a “loose state structure”36 but rather a
relatively centralized state—and noteworthy success to maintain peace-
ful, neighborly relations between Catholics and Huguenots, sometimes
with and sometimes without the support of the monarch.37 The at times
bewildering pattern of their successes and failures reflected shifting
local circumstances. That pattern also reflected a degree of interac-
tion between local and central authorities and, more surprisingly still,
between local subjects and the representatives of central authority.38
Thus, France, in many ways the most “modern” and confessional of
early modern states, most directly confounds the top-down, pacifica-
tion paradigm of confessionalization. Britain, too, only superficially
fits the model. The crown failed to impose either confessionalism
or multiconfessionalism on its subjects. Many political thinkers and
actors held against the commonplace nostrum that unity meant stabil-
ity the firm conviction that multiconfessionalism would better promote
political vigor and economic prosperity in the nation.39 And in Ire-
land, at first glance another confessional state in its apparently neat
alignment of political and theological power, the non-enforcement of
confessional legislation meant Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and
sectarians could and did live as neighbors throughout the early modern
period.40 Central Europe, by contrast, remained decentralized, espe-
cially in comparison to France or Britain, and thus unable to impose
or enforce consistently any kind of confessional arrangement. That
does not mean, however, that only local politics mattered. In cities
like Wilno (Vilnius), the city government and its policies established
a framework for multiconfessional relations in the day-to-day, within
which the city’s five confessional communities largely arranged them-
selves.41 Again, interaction is a useful concept, as it is in Transylvania,
where rulers came to recognize the political necessity of maintaining
a multiconfessional state and society and enacted this conviction in

36
Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Tol-
eration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge MA: 2007), 232.
37
See Penny Roberts’ contribution to this volume.
38
See Jérémie Foa’s contribution to this volume.
39
See John Coffey’s contribution to this volume.
40
See Raymond Gillispie’s contribution to this volume.
41
See David Frick’s contribution to this volume.
 introduction 15

discourse with their own subjects and neighboring powers.42 Confes-

sionalization strictu sensu simply does not work. Authorities seldom
imposed confessions as religio-political ideologies on their subjects;
where they attempted to do so, they were often forced to negotiate and
compromise. Nor did those subjects simply yield to compulsion and
embrace the state’s confession, but rather they often convinced their
rulers not to prohibit heterodox groups or, perhaps more importantly
still, instrumentalized their rulers’ confessional ambitions for their own
very different purposes. Yet, such studies as are presented in this vol-
ume, with their attention to political discourse and action between capi-
tal and province or locality, confirm that the social and cultural aspects
of confessional relations cannot be understood apart from their political
contexts. These are crucial and original insights, but the potential for
further, original research remains very great, as will become apparent.
For all their attention to ecclesio-political relations, these articles
refine and, in many instances, confound the familiar, accepted tropes
of negotiation, pacification, or confessionalization. They offer withal a
much more complex picture of political, social, and religious relations
in early modern Europe. In nearly every instance, superior authority
negotiated not only formally but also informally with inferior office-
holders and non-official groups of various sorts. This fact alone blurs
and, occasionally, obliterates the already vague dichotomy of public
and private in the early modern period. Negotiation merged into a
continuum of quotidian discussion and accommodation, with initia-
tives coming from below as well as above, not only in localities like
Antwerp, Colmar, Nantes, and Wilno, but also in territorial states like
Gelderland, Bamberg, Ireland, and Transylvania. Pacification likewise
proceeded in a variety of ways, resulting from the pressures exerted
by superior authority, as in the Dutch Republic or French Kingdom,
from the maneuvers of local groups or corporations, as in Ireland or
Transylvania, or the accommodations based on common interests
across confessional lines, as in nearly every polity examined. Confes-
sionalization, perhaps most surprisingly of all, could just as easily yield
“pluriformity” as uniformity of religious practice. And, indeed, this
was as often the intended result, all claims by the ruling authorities
of the political necessity of uniformity notwithstanding, as it was the
unintended but unavoidable outcome. These essays emphasize as well

42
See Graeme Murdock’s contribution to this volume.
16 thomas max safley

the defining nature of locality itself. In every instance, local factors,

such as the distance from and relationship to superior authority, legal
and political privileges and immunities, socio-economic structures
and relations, ethnic and occupational constitution, historical tradi-
tion and identity, to name but a very few, determined the quality of
confessional relations to such an extent that it becomes possible to
speak of multiconfessionalism as a model or paradigm only the broad-
est possible terms.
The local nature of multiconfessionalism, whether as political desid-
erata or lived experience, suggests the rich possibilities for historical
exploration on the horizontal, micro-level. That the contributors have
not to quite the same extent taken up questions of the relations among
and within confessional groups may be a function of the “newness” of
the topic. Attention to macrohistory is at least partially a consequence
of the dominance and discontent of confessionalization. Many schol-
ars have come to recognize multiconfessionalism as a (more) frequent
consequence of Reformation because of their initial engagement with
the older paradigm. It compels a certain attention to large structures
and patterns before turning to finer points of action and interaction.
It may also be a function of the organization of this volume. Even the
best written essays, because of their necessary brevity, do not have
the scope for a discussion of complex, contingent phenomena. They
sketch an outline and hint at consequences.
Many of the contributors to this volume are currently engaged in
work of this sort as, indeed, their essays suggest. One recurrent theme
addresses the function of boundaries and spaces in shaping confes-
sional relations. Whether in the division and distribution of churches
in cities like Colmar or Wilno or in the presence or absence of confes-
sional groups within neighborhoods or districts, clear boundaries and
defined spaces promoted good neighborliness. Moreover, as became
apparent in French cities despite the worst excesses of confessional
violence, the concept of neighborliness could trump notions of pollu-
tion. Many of the essays raise either directly of indirectly questions of
identity. It is broadly assumed that confessional identity superseded all
other forms, dissolving domestic, civic, national, or ethnic unity. Yet,
as close studies of Dutch, German, French, Irish, and Central Euro-
pean communities demonstrate again and again, and as the analysis
of toleration literature likewise confirms, this was by no means always
or automatically the case. In Antwerp, the contributions of a mul-
ticonfessional mercantile community to the prosperity of the entire
 introduction 17

city—the identification of that community with the city—served to

justify coexistence in the eyes of city fathers. In Bamberg, identifica-
tion with a particular family or estate caused confessional dictates to
be set aside, enabling Evangelical office-holders and Catholic prince-
bishops to cooperate in the governance of their realms. In French
cities and Irish towns as well, citizens and councilors argued from a
long history of coexistence and cooperation to deflect confessional
conflict. In Wilno, a long history of residency and the civic identity
that arose from it justified the continued coexistence of confessional
groups, each in its own neighborhood, sometimes in close proximity,
despite confessional tension and agitation within the city’s bounds.
These and other topics suggest that the possibilities for future research
are far from exhausted.
Attention to multiconfessionalism may also have influenced the
very recent attention to toleration. Long regarded as a unique feature
of Western civilization, religious toleration is a topic that has enjoyed
a venerable history. European scholars have traditionally relegated the
topic of toleration to intellectual history, examining it as an exercise
in the linear development and filiation of an idea from its original
source in the religious conflicts of the Reformation to its modern
apotheosis in the Enlightenment.43 So understood, the rise of tolera-
tion reflects the triumph of rationality. More recently, historians have
turned to the quotidian interactions and experiences of people caught
up in multiconfessional situations. Their studies reflect the breadth of
that experience from horrifying violence to muted coexistence,44 an
altogether more complex model that grounds toleration in its con-
temporary context and avoids the anachronistic projection of modern

43
Among the standard treatments of the intellectual history of religious tolera-
tion are W. K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England, 4 vols.
(Cambridge, MA: 1932) and Joseph Lecler, Toleration and the Reformation, trans.
T. L. Westow, 2 vols. (New York: 1960). See also Henry Kamen, The Rise of Religious
Toleration (New York: 1967); Ole Peter Grell and Bob Scribner (eds.), Tolerance and
Intolerance in the European Reformation (Cambridge, UK: 1996); Ole Peter Grell and
Roy Porter (eds.), Toleration in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge, UK: 2000).
44
Some important works include: Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Rites of Violence”
in Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays by Natalie Zemon Davis
(Stanford: 1975), 152–188; R. J. W. Evans, The Making of the Hapsburg Monarchy,
1550–1700 (Oxford: 1979); R. Po-chia Hsia, Society and Religion in Münster, 1535–1618
(New Haven: 1984); Barbara Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots
in Sixteenth-Century Paris (New York: 1991); Gregory Hanlon, Catholic and Protes-
tant Coexistence in Aquitaine (Philadelphia: 1993), 1–16, 262–280.
18 thomas max safley

tropes.45 Much of this scholarship has concentrated, not surprisingly,

on the Dutch Republic, especially the estate of Holland, which con-
temporaries recognized as one of the most openly tolerant societ-
ies in early modern Europe.46 Despite the official recognition of the
Dutch Reformed Church, a confession not famous for its indulgence
of heterodoxy, political elites curbed confessional tendencies in favor
of a public order marked by the coexistence of Protestant confessions
and the marginalization of the Catholic.47 As Charles Parker aptly
put it, “In practice, therefore, toleration is better understood as the
accommodation of dissent in societies organized around the ideal of
religious unity.”48
Under such circumstances, toleration may not be an apt expression.
Burdened as it is with modern notions of religious freedom, accord-
ing to which confessional identification and affiliation are private mat-
ters beyond the purview of the state, some more general notion of
accommodation or coexistence might be preferable. The point is not
to settle terminological debates, but rather to point out a more com-
monplace occurrence. Even in Holland, toleration, so-called, involved
not religious equality or freedom but rather the sufferance of multiple
confessions with some privileged and others disadvantaged. Nor was
this practice limited to the Low Countries. The essays in this volume
demonstrate quite clearly that coexistence, if not toleration, was far

45
Benjamin J. Kaplan, “ ‘Dutch’ Religious Tolerance: Celebration and Revision” in
R. Po-chia Hsia and Henk van Nierop (eds.), Calvinisim and Religious Toleration in
the Golden Age (Cambridge, UK: 2002), 22–26. David Nirenburg argues that tolera-
tion and violence were interdependent. See David Nirenberg, Communities of Vio-
lence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: 1996).
46
Some important recent contributions to this broad literature include C. Berk-
iens-Stevelinck, J. Israel, and G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes (eds.), The Emergence of
Tolerance in the Dutch Republic (Leiden: 1997); J. Israel, “Toleration in Seventeenth-
Century Dutch and English Thought” in S. Groenveld and M. Winde (eds.), Britain
and the Netherlands, vol. 11, (Zutphen: 1994), 25–27; Martin van Gelderen, Political
Thought of the Dutch Revolt (Cambridge, UK: 1992); Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by
Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cam-
bridge, MA: 2007).
47
See the essays in Hsia and van Nierop, Calvinism and Religious Toleration, as
well as C. C. Hibben, Gouda in Revolt: Particularism and Pacificism in the Revolt
of the Netherlands, 1572–1588 (Utrecht: 1983); Benjamin J. Kaplan, Calvinists and
Libertines: Confession and Community in Utrecht, 1578–1620 (Oxford: 1995); Chris-
tine Kooi, Liberty and Religion: Church and State in Leidens Reformation, 1572–1620
(Leiden: 2000).
48
Charles H. Parker, “Paying for the Privilege: The Management of Public Order
and Religious Pluralism in Two Early Modern Societies,” Journal of World History 17
(2006): 267–96, esp. 268.
 introduction 19

more common than historians have generally assumed. In Central

Europe, especially Poland-Lithuania and Transylvania, a legal coex-
istence of multiple confessions obtained that most contemporaries
understood as comparable to the Dutch practice. Taken as a whole,
the Holy Roman Empire was constitutionally a bi- or triconfessional
state, even though most, but not all, of its constituent cities and ter-
ritories were confessional. Multiconfessionalism could persist in the
interstices nonetheless, as close studies are just beginning to show.49
France and Britain sought at various points in time to promote as a
matter of policy a confessional state and society, but neither of them
succeeded entirely. Even the most confessional of states may have had
to accommodate multiple confessions.
The realization that multiconfessionalism was a common and, in
some places, permanent consequence of the Reformation has led to a
reconsideration of many aspects of that historical event. Rather than
contribute to, it complicates the supposedly linear development of the
“modern” state that the paradigm of confessionalization appropriates
from Max Weber. State-building was a discursive process, involving
rulers and subjects, capitals and provinces. It likewise complicates the
triumphalist narratives of confessional histories of the Reformation. As
important as the Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist confessions were, a
host of others accompanied, supported, and challenged them. It con-
tradicts the easy assumption that human history comprises nothing
more than a mechanical working-out of non-human social or cultural
forces. Acting singly or jointly, the members of confessional groups
made choices about their religious lives that were contingent responses
to local circumstances. The process of revision has just begun. The
essays of this volume suggest both the ground that has been won and
the ways yet to be traveled.

49
New, forthcoming research on the territory of Swabia and its Imperial cities,
above all Augsburg, indicate that confessional policies did not necessarily prevent
multiconfessionalism. Prescription is not description.
 PART ONE

CONFESSIONS
 CONFESSIONS

Lee Palmer Wandel

The fragmentation of Christendom in the 16th century engendered an

ocean of words: sermons and songs, treatises and diatribes, testimo-
nies and accusations. People seized words to articulate what they held
to be “true Christianity,” the way “to honor God,” the relationship of
Christ to humankind. And as those words were uttered or printed,
others attacked them—for their imprecision, for their falseness, for the
ways they misled. Lay men and women spoke of Christ’s sacrifice and
atonement for all humankind. Priests spoke of the sacrifice of the altar.
Martin Luther called for every Christian to be able to recite the Ten
Commandments. John Calvin taught a different numbering of the
Commandments. A multitude of texts accelerated that fragmentation,
as sermons, liturgies, catechisms, treatises, satires, dialogues, plays, and
confessions took up words, clauses, sentences, to articulate what their
authors held to be true: about the nature of God; Christ’s two natures,
divine and human; God’s relationship to humankind; the nature of
worship, how one honored God, in the language of the time; how one
should live in the world as a Christian. Hundreds of texts engendered
angry responses. More texts.
In that sea of words, one genre sought to be both durable and com-
prehensive: confessions. Unlike diatribes and hundreds of treatises,
confessions were not intended to be polemical—with its particular
construction of bipolarities and its reduction of opponents to risible
caricatures. They were not framed in relationship to any opponent,
straw or real, against whom they formulated positions. None drew
upon the weapons of satire: irony, exaggeration, caricature. Unlike ser-
mons and dialogues, their function was not proselytizing. Confessions
did not seek to convince: to move through their rhetoric the mind or
heart of their readers. They did not need to: the relationship of author,
text, and reader was singular.
Most broadly defined, confessions were “professions of faith,” the
declaration of what the author or authors held to be true, absolutely
and unconditionally. More than any other kind of text, confessions
arose from the epistemology of revealed truth. For their authors,
24 lee palmer wandel

their truths were self-evident: they needed neither proving nor any
human rhetorical devices to demonstrate their truth. Some, such as
Hans Denck’s, were formulated in the first person singular: “I believe.”
Others spoke in the first person plural: “we believe.” Still others stated
the tenets of their doctrine without reference to any subject. No mat-
ter the voice, however, the truths articulated in the text were not held
to be subjective: while authors of confessions “believed” them or set
them to paper, for them, those truths existed autonomously of any
human being. The author of the text bound himself to those truths by
setting them to paper, but they did not depend upon him. No matter
the size or shape, “confessions” shared the claim to state what was
true absolutely—for the author, for a small group gathered in a single
place in a particular moment, for persons scattered across the face of
the globe, for all persons in all places in all times. For their authors,
their truths held no matter where they were, who was reading them,
under what conditions.
While they varied in length from a few pages to small books, all
sought to be comprehensive. Most encompassed statements of theol-
ogy, christology, anthropology, ecclesiology, liturgy, and ethics. Some,
such as The Belgic Confession, circulated in manuscript before being
printed. Some remained manuscript. As printed objects they did not
all have the same heft or look. They shared no particular order: most,
but not all, began with God. But all sought to encompass those points
of doctrine their authors held essential to “true Christianity.”
The confessions that became supralocal and transregional struck a
singular balance—something different from those personal statements,
such as Denck’s confession or Huldrych Zwingli’s Sixty-Seven Articles
or Fidei ratio, that were influential, but not definitive of the dispersed
“Churches”1 of the 16th century. Frequently written in the rapidly
changing political landscape of Europe, many in direct response to
a particular moment, confessions that came to serve as definitive
of Churches consisted of durable statements that resonated as true
for diverse Christians, for Christians who were splintering from one
another. The authors found the words that Christians in La Rochelle
and Picardy, or Augsburg and Wittenberg, or Amsterdam and Antwerp
found “true,” abidingly, unconditionally.

1
In this essay, Churches capitalized refers to those transregional communities who
acquired both definition and institutional stability in the Reformation.
 confessions 25

Confessions and Confessionalization

When Ernst Walter Zeeden published Die Entstehung der Konfes-

sionen in 1964,2 he spoke of “konfessionell unterschiedener Kirchen-
typen” [confessionally differentiated types of Churches]. He was using
the term as it came to be understood after the 16th century, as des-
ignating a group or “Church,” who shared a liturgy, a catechism, and
a set of statements of theological, christological, liturgical, and ethical
positions. Zeeden himself was concerned with the process by which
the Lutheran “territorial Church” was formed and Catholicism rebuilt
after the Reformation.
Wolfgang Reinhardt and Heinz Schilling put the term “confession-
alization” into circulation.3 In 1977, Reinhardt argued for “the age of
confessions,” in which
The movement of the “Counter-Reformation” takes part in the mod-
ernization of European society parallel to and often in competition with
the Reformation. Once again, “Confessional Age” is recommended as a
superior periodization, because the scheme of chronological antitheses
can be replaced with a notion of parallel development, and the concept
of “Confessio”, understood in conformity with the sources, achieves not
only a church historical but also a social historical meaning.4
In his work, Schilling developed the model of “confessionalization”: “I
understand the confessionalization of German cities and territories to
be an internally consistent process resulting in the theological, ideo-
logical, and political formation of the three large confessional churches
as well as their corresponding power blocs.”5
That sense of a relatively consistent process, in which elites both
political and clerical inculcate populations, has been eroded through
scholarship, foremost on early modern states and on the problem of

2
Ernst Walter Zeeden, Die Entstehung der Konfessionen: Grundlagen und Formen
der Konfessionsbildung im Zeitalter der Glaubenskämpfe (Munich and Vienna: 1964).
3
For a recent discussion of this “paradigm,” see http://www.h-net.org/~german/
discuss/Confessionalization/Confess_index.htm.
4
Wolfgang Reinhardt, “Gegenreformation als Modernisierung? Prolegomena zu
einer Theorie des konfessionellen Zeitalters,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 68
(1977): 251. Translated by editor.
5
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: Essays in German and Dutch History (Leiden: 1992), 216–7.
26 lee palmer wandel

“reception.” Research on the empire, principalities, free imperial cities,

and kingdoms has revealed they were less efficient and faced far more
effective opposition, resistance, adaptation, and negotiation. Studies of
preaching and printing have differentiated audiences and readerships
in the plural—not simply elite and popular, but emigree and local,
Francophone and Genevois, rural and urban. Texts are, in Thomas
Greene’s wonderful word, “vulnerable,” open to multiple readings, as
studies of biblical exegesis, foremost, have shown. The uniformities
that underlie the model of “confessionalization”—of dissemination
and reception, of coercion and acquiescence—cannot be sustained in
the face of the differentiation of political authorities and administra-
tions, listeners and readers.
Oddly, most studies of “confessionalization” do not look directly at
the texts of confessions themselves, either as a genre or as the printed
object that grounded the Churches of the later-16th century and after-
wards. They do not consider the ways the texts themselves might have
participated, even precipitated the process: through the genre of con-
fessions, through voice, through the process of formulation, through
the notion of “signing,” and through the emergence of confessions as
the document by which persecuting authorities often identified diver-
gent Christians.
The word, “confession,” can be found in both Old and New Tes-
taments.6 In the Book of Daniel, for instance, “I prayed to the LORD
my God and made confession, saying, ‘O Lord, the great and terrible
God, who keepest covenant and steadfast love with those who love
him and keep his commandments’ ” [9:4]. Paul uses the word twice in
the Epistle to Timothy, and three times in the Epistle to the Hebrews,
for instance: “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed
through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confes-
sion” [4:14].7 In the early church it was used to name documents which

6
The same word was used to name the first part of the sacrament of penance, when
the penitent made a public statement—at first to all those gathered, by the end of the
15th century, to a priest—of sins mortal and venial that he or she had committed
since last confessing. This act initiated a process of atonement, in which the penitent
first acknowledged sinning, then the priest assigned specific acts of penitence, upon
completion of which, then, the penitent was absolved. The Council of Trent affirmed
this process in its 14th session in 1551. See Norman P. Tanner, S. J. (ed.), Decrees of
the Ecumenical Councils, vol. II (London: 1990), 703–18.
7
Revised Standard Version: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/r/rsv/ [accessed 14 Decem-
ber 2009].
 confessions 27

stated core tenets of Christian doctrine, such as those of Ulphilas and

Eunomius in 383.
Prior to the 16th century, western and eastern Christians had for-
mulated a number of “confessions,” which shared with creeds the
statement of what those confessing “believed.” According to Jaroslav
Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss
In spite of some precedents in earlier formularies, most notably in such
documents as The Decree for the Armenians of the Council of Florence of
22 November 1439, it was with the Reformation of the sixteenth century
that ‘confession of faith’ as a theological and literary form distinct from
‘creed’ came into its own and achieved dominance.8
Perhaps the greatest difference from earlier centuries is the sheer num-
ber of confessions and confessional texts in the 16th century. In his
anthology, Die Bekenntnisschriften der reformierten Kirche, E. F. Karl
Müller gathered some 43 texts from Zwingli’s Sixty-Seven Articles
to the Canons of the Synod of Dort. In their anthology, Pelikan and
Hotchkiss collect some 24 texts that bear the name “Confession,” in
addition all those, such as Zwingli’s Articles, that do not. At the Diet of
Augsburg in 1530, in addition to the Confession that bears the name of
the Diet, two other confessions, The Tetrapolitan and Zwingli’s Fidei
ratio, were also presented. For Pelikan and Hotchkiss, “the age of con-
fessions” encompasses thousands of pages of texts, from which they
have selected some 800 pages as representative, but not exhaustive.
So, too, “confessions” as printed objects that circulated were new
to the 16th century. Print was a relatively new medium, allowing
divergent voices a form that gave their words wide circulation and a
certain stability. Denck’s Confession, for instance, written at the behest
of the Nuremberg City Council, circulated among Anabaptists, shap-
ing subsequent formulations. As printed object, different confessions
could circulate in new ways: not simply or even primarily through
official channels of promulgation, but hand to hand. As printed
object, confessions could move clandestinely, their content providing
the touchstone for scattered communities under the cross, so that
they saw themselves as connected to a larger “Church,” transregional,
supralocal, bound by faith in the precisely formulated sentences of

8
Jaroslav Pelikan and Varie Hotchkiss (eds.), Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the
Christian Tradition, vol. II: Reformation Era (New Haven: 2003), 4.
28 lee palmer wandel

their confession. As confessions circulated, a number formed com-

munities of dispersed Christians, and communities that might not—in
stark contrast to the imperial intent at Nicaea—have had legal recogni-
tion at all.
Sixteenth-century confessions emerged in a different world from
that of Nicaea. No emperor convened an ecumenical church council
in the 16th century, in which divergent voices might have found ways
of speaking that bridged their differences. The Augsburg, French, and
Belgic Confessions were all formulated by religious minorities facing
sovereigns who sought their eradication.9 The Scots Confession, The
Thirty-Nine Articles, and The Westminster Confession were in some
ways closer to the Nicene Creed: actively supported by, respectively,
the Scots Parliament, Queen Elizabeth I, and the Long Parliament,
these were political documents as well as statements of faith, efforts to
unify subjects as much as to declare truths.10
At Nicaea, there was one acknowledged sovereign, the Roman
Emperor Constantine. In 16th-century Europe, there were kings and
an emperor, princes and magistrates. Even as the Emperor supported
fully the Church that had been defined in important ways at Nicaea,
and even as he longed for the same clarity of imperial power, he did
not possess it: his power could neither unify the Church nor suppress
divergent voices. Thus, in the 16th century, “confessions” were not
the product of an ecumenical council, called to restore unity. Multiple
confessions emerged, around which communities did form, but they
formed around them in ways inseparable from the fragmented politi-
cal landscape of 16th-century Europe.
No one factor explains how some became normative, some not.
The Augsburg, Tetrapolitan, and Second Helvetic Confessions, as well
as The Thirty-Nine Articles were all written in direct response to the
request from sympathetic temporal lords for a statement of doctrine.

9
On the history of the Augsburg Confession, see Wilhelm Maurer, Historischer
Kommentar zur Confessio Augustana, 2 vols. (Gütersloh: 1976, 1978); and Michael
Reu, The Augsburg Confession: A Collection of Sources with An Historical Introduction
(Chicago: 1930). On the history of the French Confession, see Jacques Pannier, Les
origines de la confession de foi et la discipline des Eglises réformées de France (Paris:
1936). On the Belgic Confession, see Nicolaas Gootjes, The Belgic Confession: Its His-
tory and Sources (Grand Rapids: 2007).
10
On The Thirty-Nine Articles, see Green, E. Tyrrell. The Thirty-Nine Articles and
The Age of Reformation: An Historical and Doctrinal Exposition in the Light of Con-
temporary Documents (London: 1896).
 confessions 29

The Tetrapolitan Confession proved transient, despite the support of

the governments of Strasbourg, Memmingen, Constance, and Lindau.
The Augsburg Confession proved durable, despite the minority of its
supporters at the Diet. The Second Helvetic Confession continues to
serve as a core text for the the Bohemian Brethren in the Czech Repub-
lic, the Christian Reformed Church, the Presbyterian Church in the
United States, the Reformed Church in America, and the Reformed
Church of Hungary.11 The Schleitheim, French, and Belgic Confes-
sions were written by persecuted minorities. The Belgic Confession
first circulated underground among a persecuted minority; only two
copies of its original text survived the order to burn them; and yet, it
was adopted in Antwerp (1566), Wessel (1568), Emden (1571), Dort
(1574), and Middelburg (1581), before being revised and adopted at
the Synod of Dort in 1618–19 as one of three defining statements of
faith for the Dutch Reformed Church.
The confessions about which we know anything moved from hand
to hand, place to place, community to community. Like Augustine’s
Confessions, these confessions moved from the “I” or “we,” who held
the statements to be true, outward to unknown, faceless readers.
Unlike many printed texts, most confessions stipulated neither who
their readers should be nor how the texts were to be read. As we know
of The Augsburg and Belgic Confessions, they circulated clandestinely
as well as publicly, the paths of their clandestine circulation largely
unknown to this day.12 They were not, in other words, narrowly official
documents promulgated by governments, but texts, primarily printed,
that circulated with the same freedoms and constraints of other texts:
prohibited in some places, promulgated in others, read clandestinely
in some places, read aloud in public fora in others.
In gathering together personal statements as well as texts that
became normative for regional and transregional communities, and
organizing them into “traditions,” anthologies of “Confessions” or
Bekenntnisschriften, such as Pelikan and Hotchkiss, illumine a number
of the ways 16th-century confessions were intertextual.13 They enable

11
Pelikan and Hotchkiss, Creeds and Confessions, II, 458.
12
See, for example, Gootjes, The Belgic Confessions, Chapter 1.
13
In addition to Pelikan and Hotchkiss, see E. F. Karl Müller (ed.), Die Bekennt-
nisschriften der reformierten Kirche (Leipzig: 1903); J. N. Bakhuizen van den Brink, De
Nederlandsche Belijdenisgeschriften (Amsterdam: 1940).
30 lee palmer wandel

us to see where texts that became collectively normative drew upon

personal statements such as Denck’s Confession or Zwingli’s Sixty-
Seven Articles. The confessions of those who came to be organized in
the Lutheran and Reformed Churches frequently cited both biblical
sources and creeds and confessions of the early Church; anthologies
allow us to see more precisely the contours of those citations.
So, too, anthologies allow us to see how definitive Confessions—
The Augsburg, French, Belgic, Scots, and Second Helvetic Confessions,
The Thirty-Nine Articles of England, and The Tridentine Profession of
Faith—both explicitly and implicitly situated themselves within textual
communities and textual traditions. Each was embedded in textual tra-
ditions. The Augsburg Confession was a revision of the Schwabach
and Torgau Articles. The Thirty-Nine Articles drew upon The Thirteen
Articles of 1538, The Six Articles of 1543, The Forty-Two Articles of
1553, and The Eleven Articles of 1559–60.
All confessions, printed and manuscript, first person and imper-
sonal, circulated within the stunning proliferation of words—state-
ments, declarations, professions, exhortations—of the 16th century.
Their positions sometimes echoed positions first promulgated in ser-
mons or treatises. Liturgies placed in repeated practice the biblical ref-
erences and the gloss on the ritual that confessions stated. Catechisms
and confessions shared particular wordings of doctrine, each expressly
reinforcing the “orthodoxy” of the other. Through catechisms and lit-
urgies, those passages they shared with confessions became familiar,
embedded in the different rhythms of catechesis or worship. Unique
in voice and organization, professing absolute truths, confessions were
linked through sentences, framings of positions, to other kinds of texts,
at once articulating truths independent of the rhythms of daily life and
resonating in sermons or rituals of worship or catechesis.
A number of confessions revised prior formulations to meet con-
temporary demands. In 1566, for example, Frederick III, Elector
Palatinate, who had commissioned the Heidelberg Catechism, was dis-
satisfied with all the confessions then in circulation and called for Hei-
nrich Bullinger to draft a new one, The Second Helvetic Confession.
While Bullinger was the sole author, and seems to have written The
Confession without consulting anyone else, he found formulations that
resonated: Geneva, Bern, Chur, Biel, and Mühlhausen—each of whom
had endorsed an earlier Confession—all agreed to The Second Helvetic
Confession by the end of the year. Some confessions underwent revi-
sions after publication. Philipp Melanchthon, for instance, revised The
 confessions 31

Augsburg Confession again and again; in 1580, the Council of Con-

cord set as canonical the iteration published in 1531.14
As Melanchthon’s revisions or the Elector Frederick’s request sug-
gests, no confession achieved the fixed status of a canonical text, until,
arguably, The Book of Concord stabilized the text of The Augsburg
Confession in 1580. Insofar as authors left any traces of the process
of formulation, those traces suggest that the authors of The Augsburg,
French, and Helvetic Confessions, and The Thirty-Nine Articles sought
to find the way of speaking that could form between splintered groups
a common, shared, and therefore unifying understanding of God,
Christ, humankind, worship, and ethics. Most closely studied is the
process by which Melanchthon arrived at the particular formulations
of The Augsburg Confession, though neither he nor Luther left any
notes on that process—scholars have relied upon close textual analy-
sis.15 The process of building communities of faith, in other words,
began with writing: confessions that succeeded in forming communi-
ties comprised statements that negotiated between differences, finding
the word that both sides could accept, the sentence that rang true for
both. Indeed, their canonicity might be said to reside in their capacity
to be “true” for diverse groups. If they did not ring “true” for many,
they could not function to gather dispersed and divergent Christians
into a “Church.”
In 1555, the Peace of Augsburg legally and formally recognized The
Augsburg Confession. It recognized, for the first time in the west, a
second statement of faith, alongside that promulgated by Rome. In
recognizing The Augsburg Confession, it accorded it a particular legal
status: The Augsburg Confession henceforth constituted a statement of
truth for those who signed it, of validity equal to the statement of faith
endorsed by Rome. In according princes and magistrates the authority
to choose The Augsburg Confession as the legally valid statement of
faith within their domains, the Peace of Augsburg also accorded The
Augsburg Confession a particular kind of normative status. The Augs-
burg Confession and it alone—not the catechism, not the German
Mass, not any other text—would be that which subjects were required

14
For the various editions, see W. H. Neuser, Bibliographie der Confessio Augustana
und Apologie 1530–1580 (Nieuwkoop: 1987).
15
For a recent history of the text, see Maurer, Historischer Kommentar; trans.
George Anderson, Historical Commentary on the Augsburg Confession (Philadelphia:
1986).
32 lee palmer wandel

to confess, sign, publicly affirm; that which would define “the Lutheran
Church,” both its doctrine and the boundaries of its membership.
In 1648, the Peace of Westphalia legally recognized “the Reformed
Church,” but did not accord any of the Reformed Confessions the
same normative and definitive status that the Peace of Augsburg—and
the Peace of Westphalia—accorded The Augsburg Confession. While
specific rulers legally affirmed The Tetrapolitan, Belgic, or Second Hel-
vetic Confessions, and some called for one of those confessions to be
exclusive, none could speak for lands beyond his own jurisdiction.
The authors of confessions expected others to “sign it,” or “confess”
it, state it aloud in public fora, such as churches or courts ecclesi-
astical and civil. That, at the mechanical level, was how confessions
formed groups: those who agreed to those positions became in the
16th century a “Church,” a stable and definable community—by that
agreement. When one accepted the tenets of a confession, one became
a member of a group which was defined precisely by those tenets—
no more, no less. Lutherans, for instance, formulated other texts, but
membership in the nascent Lutheran Church was defined by accep-
tance of The Augsburg Confession.
A sense of “signing” shaped how confessions functioned to define
communities, both inwardly and externally. By the end of the century,
The Augsburg, Belgic, Scots, and Second Helvetic Confessions, and
The Thirty-Nine Articles had become documents to which individu-
als “agreed,” as their sovereigns required—no longer positions simply
articulated by theologians and declared “orthodoxy” by ecclesiastical
authority, these texts were promulgated, catechized, read aloud, and,
in many places, subjects were required to agree formally or publicly to
the sentences they contained.
Confessions also served as public statements for those who did
not sign. They provided the printed and publicized delineation of the
boundaries, doctrinal, liturgical, and ethical, of specific “Churches”: the
Lutheran Church, the French Reformed Church, the Dutch Reformed
Church. In places where members of these churches were in a minority,
persecuting authorities need only ask after one tenet of a confession
to identify a member of that confession’s Church. Unlike catechisms,
which might best be understood to be directed inwardly, toward those
who wished to become members of a community, confessions were
intended to articulate for members in as precise language as possible
the core tenets that defined that community; and to stipulate for oth-
ers, outside the community, the precise definitions of what that com-
munity held to be true.
 confessions 33

By the end of the century, certain confessions of faith had come to

define in these ways communities of faith who were translocal and
transregional. For authorities, their statements served to identify a per-
son with one group or another. For those who “signed,” each confes-
sion constituted a community who shared a public commitment to
the truth of each statement in it—no matter if that community was
dispersed across a hostile landscape. Confessions did not alone consti-
tute what scholars have come to call “communities of faith,” but they
delineated in concise form those positions that both members and
opponents came to hold as definitive of that community. They served
to “identify,” then, in two ways. For those who signed, they provided
the bond from one Christian to the next, the shared text that was itself
a public declaration of “faith.” For outsiders, any one sentence of a
confession served to identify a person with a group whose legal status
varied from place to place.

The Content of Confessions

In 1555, when the Diet of Augsburg formally accorded The Augsburg

Confession legal status, the Catholic Church did not have a compa-
rable statement of faith. It certainly had articulated over its history, in
conciliar and papal decrees, specific doctrines it held to be “orthodox,”
correct, “dogma,” that which was to be taught. But it did not have
anything comparable that it could print and circulate. And The Pro-
fession of Faith that the Council of Trent decreed in its third session,
in 1546 “as that basic principle on which all who profess the faith of
Christ necessarily agree as the firm and sole foundation,” was the same
ancient Nicene Creed that evangelicals claimed for themselves.16
In the history of the western Church, European Christians had dis-
agreed on innumerable points of doctrine, but those differences had
tended to be singular in any one debate, encompassing perhaps two
or three discrete points of doctrine, but not theology, christology,
liturgy, ecclesiology, and ethics all at once. Sixteenth-century confes-
sions, moving from the seven points of faith of the Anabaptist confes-
sion at Schleitheim to the 40 articles of The French Confession or The
Thirty-Nine Articles, gathered together in a single text all those points
on which the authors, and then the signatories, held they differed from

16
Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, II, 662.
34 lee palmer wandel

other European Christians. No 16th-century confession, from the

briefest to the longest, addressed only one or two points of doctrine,
and no 16th-century confession diverged from other confessions on
only one or two points of doctrine. Their differences were as numerous
as the points of doctrine they addressed.
Sixteenth-century confessions document both the depth and the
multitude of divisions among European Christians. They diverge on
essential questions such as Christ’s nature and purpose, human nature
and salvation. They testify to the sheer number of divisions: on God’s
providence and human free will, good works and Christian brotherly
love, Christ’s death and resurrection, worship and its relationship to
salvation, the relationship of conduct both to human nature and to sal-
vation, to name but some of the most consistent points of divergence.
European Christians did not even agree on what was essential to
“true Christianity,” as the differing number of articles of faith in each
confession intimates. The Schleitheim Confession comprised seven
articles of faith; The Dordrecht Confession of Mennonites of 1632, 18.17
The Augsburg Confession comprised 21 articles of belief and seven
articles of dispute; The Tetrapolitan comprised 23 articles, which alter-
nated between positive declarations of faith and express opposition to
medieval practice and doctrine. Even among Reformed confessions,
there was no consensus as to the number of essential points of doc-
trine: The First Confession of Basel in 1534 comprised 12 articles of
belief; The First Helvetic Confession, of 1536, 27 articles; The Second,
30; The Geneva Confession of 1536, 21 articles of faith; The French
Confession of 1559/1571, 40; The Scots Confession of 1560, 25 articles
of faith; The Belgic Confession of 1561, 37 articles. In England, the
number of articles of faith fluctuated, as different documents sought
to encompass divergent Christians: The Thirty-Nine Articles, which
sought to speak to Lutherans, was larger than The Thirteen Articles
of 1538, The Six Articles of 1543, and The Eleven Articles of 1543,
but a reduction of Thomas Cranmer’s The Forty-Two Articles of 1553.
The Westminster Confession of 1647 comprised 35 chapters, each sub-
divided into sections, and concluded with a Declaratory Statement.
Over the course of the century, points of dispute proliferated, and
even as confessions, such as The French and Second Helvetic, sought

17
Irvin B. Horst (ed. and trans.), Mennonite Confession of Faith (Lancaster, PA:
988).
 confessions 35

to address more points of dispute, they did not all take up the same
questions of doctrine.
If the content of individual confessions reflects those points that the
authors and the signatories held to be definitive of “true Christianity,”
we glimpse something of divergent conceptualizations of “Christian-
ity” in the points covered. The Schleitheim Confession comprises only
seven points, but those seven points set Anabaptists apart: baptism
“. . . to all those who wish such an understanding themselves desire
and request it from us”; the use of the ban “with all those who have
given themselves over to the Lord . . . and still somehow slip and fall
into error”; the eucharist as “the breaking of bread” among the faith-
ful; separation, the choice to live quite apart from “the world”; their
pastors, chosen by the congregation; the rejection of “the sword,” as
punishment of crimes, as a symbol of civil power, as an instrument of
correction; and the refusal to take any oath.18
Other confessions comprised far more points of doctrine, which
demarcated with growing precision “communities of faith,” those who
held those points essential. After a brief statement on the nature of
God, The Augsburg Confession turned to original sin, the divine and
human nature of Christ, and justification. Following justification, it
declared “To obtain such faith God instituted the office of preaching,
giving the gospel and the sacraments,” “[t]hrough these, as through
means, He gives the Holy Spirit, who works faith, where and when
he wills, in those who hear the gospel.” Article six, “the New Obedi-
ence,” stated that “such faith should yield good fruit and good works
and that a person must do such good works as God commanded for
God’s sake” but that those works in and of themselves did not “earn
grace before God.” Article seven defined the Church, “the assembly of
all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the holy
sacraments are administered according to the gospel.” Article eight
stated that the sacraments remain efficacious even as “false Christians,
hypocrites, and even public sinners remain among the righteous.”
Article nine affirmed infant baptism, “necessary for salvation, that the
grace of God is offered through baptism.” Article ten affirmed “the
true body and blood of Christ are truly present under the form of
bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper and are distributed and received

18
Pelikan and Hotchkiss, Creeds and Confessions, II, 696–703; Beatrice Jenny (ed.),
Das Schleitheimer Täuferbekenntnis 1527 (Thayngen: 1951), 9–18.
36 lee palmer wandel

there.” Article 11 called for general, not detailed confession. Article

12 offered a sense of repentance not as a single sufficient act, but a
way of entering one’s life as a Christian. Article 13 defined sacraments
“as signs and testimonies of God’s will toward us in order thereby
to awaken and strengthen our faith.” Article 14 restricted preaching,
teaching, and the administration of the sacraments to those who had
been publicly called. Article 15 dismissed “all rules and traditions
made by human beings for the purpose of appeasing God and of earn-
ing grace” as “contrary to the gospel.” Article 16 affirmed government
as God’s ordering of the world and condemned Anabaptist separation.
Article 17 affirmed the last judgment. Article 18 offered Luther’s defi-
nition of the human will’s freedom, as well as its limitation; article 19
stated, “the perverted will causes sin.” Article twenty, by far the longest
of the articles of faith, set forth in detail the relationship between faith
and good works. Article 21 affirmed “the saints are to be remembered
so that we may strengthen our faith when we see how they experi-
enced grace,” and rejected calling on the saints for help of any kind.
The remaining articles addressed directly points of medieval practice
and doctrine that Lutherans rejected: communion in one kind, clerical
celibacy, the sacrifice of the mass, detailed confession, fasting and “the
distinction among foods,” monastic vows, prince-bishops with their
blending of secular and spiritual powers.19
All Reformed Confessions shared certain core principles: the essen-
tial sinfulness of humankind; Christ’s unique sacrifice, in reference
to both human salvation and worship; a providential God; sanctifica-
tion as a lifelong process; two sacraments only, infant baptism and
the Lord’s Supper. But they differed in important ways.20 The order
from one confession to the next differed. The First Helvetic, Geneva,
French, Belgic, and Second Helvetic Confessions affirmed the author-
ity of Scripture before entering into specific points of doctrine. The
Scots Confession also affirmed the authority of Scripture, but only at
Article 19; for John Knox, God, creation, original sin, and revelation
were the points of departure for the doctrine that then followed. So,
too, they differed on core definitions, such as the eucharist:

19
Quotations from “The Augsburg Confession: German Text,” Robert Kolb and
Timothy J. Wengert (eds.), The Book of Concord (Minneapolis: 2000), 27–105.
20
On the relationship of The French Confession to Calvin’s Confession, see Pannier.
 confessions 37

16. The Holy Supper

The supper of our Lord is a sign by which under bread and wine he
represents to us the true spiritual communion which we have in his body
and blood. And we acknowledge that according to his ordinance it ought
to be distributed in the community of the faithful, in order that all those
who wish to have Jesus for their life be partakers of it.
The Geneva Confession, 153621
36. We confess that the Lord’s supper, which is the second sacrament,
is a witness of the union which we have with Christ, inasmuch as he
not only died and rose again for us once, but also feeds and nourishes
us truly in his flesh and blood, so that we may be one in him, and that
our life may be in common. Although he remains in heaven until he
will come to judge all the earth, still we believe that by the secret and
incomprehensible power of his Spirit he feeds and strengthens us with
the substance of his body and of his blood. We hold that this is done
spiritually, not because we put imagination and fancy in the place of fact
and truth, but because the greatness of this mystery exceeds the measure
of our senses and the laws of nature. In short, because it is heavenly, it
can only be apprehended in faith.
The French Confession, 1559/157122
Chapter 21. Of the Holy Supper of the Lord
[1.] The Supper of the Lord. The supper of the Lord (which is called the
Lord’s table, and the eucharist, that is, a thanksgiving) is, therefore,
usually called a supper, because it was instituted by Christ at his
last supper, and still represents it, and because in it the faithful are
spiritually fed and given drink . . . .
[2.] A Memorial of God’s Benefits . . . .
[3.] The Sign and Thing Signified. And this is visibly represented by
this sacrament outwardly through the ministers, and, as it were,
presented to our eyes to be seen, which is invisibly wrought by the
Holy Spirit inwardly in the soul. . . .
[5.] Spiritual eating of the Lord. . . .
The Second Helvetic Confession, 156623
Each of the Reformed confessions sought to define the eucharist: what
it was, how it worked, what “eating” meant, the relationship between
Christ’s body and the faithful. The Scots Confession did not have one
article dedicated specifically to the Supper, but instead contained three
articles, “21. The Sacraments”; “22. The Right Administration of the

21
Pelikan and Hotchkiss, Creeds and Confessions, II, 316.
22
Pelikan and Hotchkiss, Creeds and Confessions, II, 384–5.
23
Pelikan and Hotchkiss, Creeds and Confessions, II, 510–4.
38 lee palmer wandel

Sacraments”; and “23. To Whom the Sacraments Appertain.” It was

concerned foremost to ensure that properly trained ministers admin-
istered the sacraments of baptism and the Supper, and that those who
received the sacrament of the Supper were themselves properly pre-
pared. Both The Scots and Second Helvetic Confessions addressed
explicitly those who should not be permitted to partake, reflecting a
growing concern that, in the words of The Second Helvetic Confes-
sion, “Unbelievers Take the Sacrament to Their Judgment.”
The Thirty-Nine Articles reflects both its process of formulation and
the increasingly ecclectic Christian population of England, which was
home, albeit often uncomfortable and unwelcoming, to all the different
groups on the continent—Anabaptists, French, and Dutch Reformed,
Lutherans, and Catholics—and the soil for a number of churches
indigenous to England, such as the one Cranmer had shaped.24 The
Thirty-Nine Articles, which became a definitive text, was eclectic, not
so much a sequence emanating from a handful of core principles—
as say, The Augsburg, Geneva, or Scots Confessions presented—as an
aggregate of points of dispute. Some of The Thirty-Nine Articles cor-
responded to most evangelical confessions: brief articulations of the
trinity and Christ’s nature; stipulation of the canon of Scripture, and
of the relationship of the Old Testament to the New; recognition of
the scriptural validation of the three creeds, Nicene, Athanasius’s, and
Apostles’ Creeds; affirmation of essential human sinfulness; the rec-
ognition of just two sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper; the
affirmation of the singularity of Christ’s sacrifice upon the cross. Some
echoed more closely Reformed doctrines: original sin “doth remain,
yea, in them that are regenerated”; “Christ in the truth of our nature
was made like unto us in all things, sin only except, from which he
was clearly void, both in his flesh and in his spirit”; predestination
and election; sacraments: “certain sure witnesses and effectual signs
of grace and God’s good will towards us, by the which he doth work
invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and
confirm, our faith in him”; the Lord’s Supper, in which “the body of
Christ is given, taken, and eaten . . . only after an heavenly and spiritual
manner”; the “wicked” did not eat Christ’s body; the excommunicate
are to be shunned by all faithful. It rejected the Anabaptist doctrine of
community of goods and repudiated both “vain and rash swearing,”

24
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven: 1996).
 confessions 39

and the Anabaptist prohibition against all oaths, affirming “a man may
swear when the magistrate requireth in a cause of faith and charity,
so it be done according to the prophet’s teaching in justice, judgment,
and truth.” Some of The Thirty-Nine Articles were addressed to dis-
putes more specific to England: “As Christ died for us, and was bur-
ied, so also is it to be believed that he went down into hell”; the Holy
Ghost, “proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance,
majesty and glory with the Father and the Son, very and eternal God”;
“the Second Book of Homilies . . . doth contain a godly and whole-
some doctrine and necessary for these times.” Some of The Thirty-
Nine Articles broke entirely with all continental confessions, none of
which placed civil authority over their churches. It forbid convening
councils “without the commandment and will of princes” (article 21);
restricted who might preach or minister the sacraments to those “law-
fully called” (article 23); affirmed the Book of Consecration of Arch-
bishops and Bishops that Parliament had authorized under Edward
VI, and the King’s/Queen’s majesty in the realm.25
In session 3 of the Council of Trent, the Council affirmed The
Nicene Creed as the “sole foundation”—it offered no other confession
nor called for any other to be formulated. The canons and decrees of
the Council of Trent were not intended to be encompassed in any
confession, but to set forth, usually in direct response to evangelical
challenge, positions essential to “Catholicism.” Over 18 years, sessions
sought to address those challenges through two different procedures:
the articulation of doctrine through decrees and canons; and the formal
call for reform, also through decrees and canons, of what the Church
recognized as abuses, errors, deviations. In session 4, the Council
stipulated the canon of the Old and New Testaments, and declared
the Vulgate, Jerome’s Latin translation, “the authentic text in public
readings.” It decreed what would henceforth the Church’s doctrines
on original sin (session 5), justification (6), purgatory (25). In session
7, 1547, the Council set forth 13 canons on sacraments in general—
seven in number, instituted by Christ; 14 canons on baptism, with
water, allowed for children; three canons on confirmation. In 1551,
the Council resumed with a decree on the sacrament of the eucharist,
affirming the real presence, the doctrine of transubstantiation, reserva-
tion of the sacrament and taking it to the sick, and promulgating 11

25
Pelikan and Hotchkiss, Creeds and Confessions, II, 526–39.
40 lee palmer wandel

canons. In the following session, 14, the Council decreed the doctrine
on penance and last annointing, both sacraments—the components
of penance (contrition, confession, absolution, and satisfaction)—and
promulgated 15 canons on penance, four on last annointing. In ses-
sion 22, 1562, the Council decreed the doctrine of the sacrifice of the
mass, one of its lengthiest doctrines, and a lengthy enumeration of
abuses and errors to be avoided. In session 23, the Council affirmed
that ordination is a sacrament, articulating four chapters of doctrine
and eight canons of law. In session 24, the Council stated the doctrine
of the sacrament of marriage. In session 25, 1563, the Council affirmed
the cult of saints and the place of images in worship.26
The specific ordering of any one confession may reflect the exi-
gencies of its formulation: the sequence of a synod’s or the Council’s
deliberations, a single author’s conceptualization of the interdepen-
dencies of specific points of doctrine, points of harmony, points of
divergence. The lack of a single sequence, however, points toward the
absence of a template, a single text that might serve as a model. There
was no single statement of comparable comprehensiveness prior to
the 16th century. The Nicene Creed, which many invoked, did not
address the full range of issues at play in the 16th century. Formu-
lated in response to christological divisions, it explicated both the
relationship between God and Christ and the nature of Christ’s birth
and person. Conciliar and papal decrees, formulated in response to
specific issues, were neither intended nor sought to be comprehen-
sive in that way—to encompass all that their formulators held to be
essential to “true Christianity.” Christianity was lived and practiced
prior to the 16th century, but no one had sought—or been faced with
the need—to define what Christianity encompassed, its doctrine, its
practices, its ethics.
Reformation confessions sought to do just that. What they under-
stood to define “true Christianity” might be as few as seven points, but
usually comprised far more: the authority of Scripture and the content
of the canon of Scripture; definitions of God’s, Christ’s and human
natures, of sin, and of “the Church”; delineations of the relationship
among Christ, human nature, and salvation; definitions of what a sac-
rament is, as well as the determination how many sacraments; infant

26
Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, II, 657–799.
 confessions 41

or adult baptism; the relationship between Christ’s person and the ele-
ments of bread and wine in the eucharist. On each of these points, any
two confessions could differ. It was not, in other words, that Lutherans
and Catholics divided solely on the question of justification—though
The Augsburg Confession did comprise an article of faith on justi-
fication. European Christians divided on dozens of discrete points
of doctrine and practice, theology and ethics. Each confession, as it
“professed,” set forth points which other Christians then repudiated in
their own confessions. The Schleitheim Confession engendered repu-
diations in The Augsburg Confession, which in turn itself engendered
both repudiations at the Council of Trent and differentiations in other
evangelical confessions. Confessions distinguished from each other
groups who shared neither core theological definitions, nor under-
standings of human nature, nor conceptualizations of worship—what
“worship” encompassed, what the relationship between human action
and salvation was, what the relationship between “faith” and worship
was, what the cognitive function of the rituals of worship was. Con-
fessions grounded far more than divergent theologies. They grounded
different ways of imagining the relationship between God and human-
kind, of entering the world, of defining what it meant to be Christian,
and of conceptualizing what it meant to be human.

A Dialectic of Definition

For 16th-century Christians, confessions, as texts, mattered very much.

As those who gathered to forge them recognized—Michael Sattler at
Schleitheim, Melanchthon and Luther at Augsburg, French Reformed
at La Rochelle, Bullinger in Zurich—the precise points covered in a
confession defined “the true Church.” For Christians across Europe,
those texts, their contents, determined membership: those who agreed
tacitly or publicly to the aggregate of statements a confession contained,
no matter where they lived. For minority Churches—the French and
Dutch Reformed, Mennonite, Anabaptist, Lutheran in some places—
confessions defined a community scattered, whose members were not
face-to-face, but bound together, frequently in the face of persecution,
by those very sentences.
Since the Reformation, over time, a handful of confessions have
come to exist in a singular relationship with living communities of
Christians: The Schleitheim Confession, The Augsburg Confession,
42 lee palmer wandel

The Belgic Confession, The Second Helvetic Confession, The Dor-

drecht Mennonite Confession of 1632, and The Westminster Confes-
sion. These confessions ground an ongoing dialectic of definition both
theological and historical. The Thirty-Nine Articles exists in different
relationships to the modern Anglican Church, but it remains a “core
document,” a text that articulates tenets, principles, that the living
community of Christians continues to hold as abidingly true.27 The
Tridentine Profession of Faith was the affirmation of an ancient Creed
as normative; the Tridentine canons and decrees functioned analo-
gously to that handful of confessions until the Second Vatican Council
revisited them, and even now, some Catholics still hold the Tridentine
decrees as definitive.
These Confessions continue to define “Churches” to this day—long
after the conditions and context of their formulation. They do so along
two lines. The first is theological. Theologians continue to interrogate
their Church’s Confession or the Tridentine decrees for guidance on
questions that arise in contemporary life, at once affirming the dura-
bility of that Reformation text’s truths and bringing it into the imme-
diacy of living Christianity.28 In this way, these texts continue to serve
as a touchstones for orthodoxy among living communities.
The second dialectic of definition is historical. At one level, the con-
tinued publication of Reformation Confessions in modern translations
testifies to their position as “foundational” texts, those texts to which
modern Churches look for their “origins.”29 At another, generation
after generation of children receive education in these texts, linking
their sense of identification with a living Church to Reformation docu-
ments, which in turn inform the living community and its sense of
itself. Not only The Book of Concord, which contains it, but the Augs-
burg Confession itself, as well as the Westminster Confession are the

27
See E. Harold Browne, An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles Historical and
Doctrinal (London: 1858).
28
See, for example, Jenny, Das Schleitheimer Täuferbekenntnis, Part B; Ernst Koch,
Die Theologie der Confessio Helvetica Posterior (Neukirchen: 1968); Bernhard Lohse
and Otto Hermann Pesch (eds.), Das Augsburger Bekenntnis von 1530: Damals und
Heute (Mainz: 1980), Part III; Joachim Staedtke, (ed.), Glauben und Bekennen: Vier-
hundert Jahre Confessio Helvetica Posterior (Zurich: 1966); Vilmos Vajta and Hans
Weissgerber, The Church and the Confessions: The Role of the Confessions in the Life
and Doctrine of the Lutheran Churches (Philadelphia: 1963).
29
The articles collected in Ligon Duncan (ed.), The Westminster Confession into the
21st Century, 4 vols. (Fearn, Tain, UK: 2003) argue for both the homogeneity of the
Reformed tradition and its continuity in time.
 confessions 43

subject of study guides written for Sunday school as well as seminaries.30

At yet another level, each Church identifies certain texts as constitu-
tive of its textual “tradition,” others as perhaps “influential”—as, for
instance, Zwingli’s Sixty-Seven Articles—but not normative. Modern
anthologies contribute to that articulation of “tradition,” as they delin-
eate textual lineages of influence. In the selecting of some texts and not
others—for publication, for anthologizing, for translation—Churches
continue a dialectic of definition: which texts properly belong to the
history of that Church, which not. Collections, typically, do not incor-
porate laws or other “secular” documents, or, for that matter, texts
construed as more “transient” or contingent, such as satires or ser-
mons, when they gather texts for Sunday school or seminaries—but
they contain that Church’s Confession.
In the twinned dialectics of historical “origins” and the ground-
ing of theological orthodoxy, those Confessions anchor “traditions.”31
Their unique voice and content—neither polemical nor proselytizing,
comprehensive—set them apart in that early modern sea of words.
Voice and content continue to invite their readers to view these texts
as something neither contingent nor contextual, but as a printed thing
to which living Christians can look again and again to determine, in
the day-to-day, how one lives, what one believes, what one does, if
one is a member of the Church that the Confession defined. A hand-
ful of Confessions abide, themselves the proof text for the validity, the
truthfulness, the orthodoxy not simply of other texts, but of the living
of Christianity in the life of each person of faith.

30
See, for example, Robert Shaw, The Reformed Faith: Exposition of the Westmin-
ster Confession of Faith (Christian Heritage, 2008); Gunther Wenz, Theologie der Bek-
enntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche: Eine historische und systematische
Einführung in das Konkordienbuch (Berlin: 1996), Part III; G. I. Williamson, Westmin-
ster Confession of Faith: For Study Classes (Philipsburg, NJ: 2003).
31
See, for example, Timothy George and Denise George (eds.), Baptist Confessions,
Covenants, and Catechisms (Nashville: 1996); Karl Koop, Anabaptist-Mennonite Con-
fessions of Faith: The Development of a Tradition (Kitchener: 2004); Vajta and Weiss-
gerber, eds. The Church and the Confessions.
 PART TWO

THE NETHERLANDS
 CONFESSIONAL COEXISTENCE IN THE EARLY MODERN
LOW COUNTRIES

Jesse Spohnholz

Something of a paradigm shift is taking place in early modern Euro-

pean history. Historians studying the post-Reformation world once
spent far more of their time tracing the construction of new confes-
sional states. In contrast, Dutch historians have been quick to point
out that, for people living in the Republic, this narrative did not match
reality. Though the Reformed Church did become the official church of
the new government, membership was not compelled, and Calvinists
remained a minority though the early modern era.1 Instead, the Repub-
lic was characterized by a remarkable degree of religious diversity. As
a consequence, historians studying these lands have paid considerable
attention to understanding the exceptional nature of pluralism. One
consequence of this focus, however, is that it reinforced the idea that
the Dutch were “tolerant” as an inherent character trait.2
Recently though, historians who study other locations in Europe
have come to recognize that, because religious homogeneity remained
an elusive goal in most places, scholars need to devote greater attention
to understanding how coexistence functioned.3 Further, if pluralism
constituted a reality for residents of the Republic, it was no more their
goal than it was that of Europeans elsewhere. It was, rather, the result
of the complicated interaction of social, cultural, intellectual, political,
and economic forces that put people into often unappealing situations.

1
J. J. Woltjer, “De plaats van de calvinisten in the Nederlandse samenleving,” De
zeventiende eeuw 10 (1994): 3–23; Olaf Mörke, “Konfessionalisierung als politisch-
soziales Strukturprinzip? Das Verhältnis von Religion und Staatsbildung in der
Republik der Vereinigten Niederlande im 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts,” Tijdschrift voor
Sociale Geschiedenis 16 (1990): 31–60.
2
Benjamin J. Kaplan, “ ‘Dutch’ religious tolerance: celebration and revision” in
R. Po-Chia Hsia and Henk van Nierop (eds.), Calvinism and Religious Toleration in
the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge, UK: 2002), 8–26.
3
E.g. Alexandra Walsham, Charitable hatred: Tolerance and intolerance in England,
1500–1700 (Manchester: 2006); Keith Luria, Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence
and Conflict in Early-Modern France (Washington, DC: 2005); Jesse Spohnholz, The
Tactics of Toleration: A Refugee Community in the Age of Religious Wars (Newark,
DE: 2011).
48 jesse spohnholz

Some scholars have even urged that we abandon the term ‘toleration’
altogether, because it presents too rosy of a picture, and instead adopt
the more neutral ‘coexistence’ to describe a condition of pluralism that
emerged not by design, but as the result of relationships, structures,
and actions that were rooted in their immediate contexts.4 In sum, the
reality of Dutch religious diversity is beginning to look much more
like conditions in cities and towns across early modern Europe.5 In
this light, this overview has three aims. The first is to provide an intro-
duction to the landscape of confessional coexistence in the Low Coun-
tries. The second is to look beyond the boundaries of the Republic, to
present a picture that is less nationalistically-oriented than scholarship
often admits. The third is to present one interpretative framework—
the language of boundaries—that may be fruitful in understanding
religious pluralism in the Low Countries and elsewhere.

* * *
Across the early modern Low Countries there were, generally speak-
ing, three kinds of confessional arrangements that emerged, largely
as a result of the war between the Dutch Republic and the Spanish
Netherlands. Between 1572, when the rebels first secured territory in
Holland and Zeeland, and the Treaty of Münster in 1648, the politi-
cal boundaries between an officially Catholic state and an officially
Reformed state were largely determined on the battlefield. In those
places where the Habsburgs gained the upper hand, strong state sup-
port of the Catholic Church pushed religious dissenters largely under-
ground. In places where the Dutch Republic solidified its authority,
the Reformed controlled the official church, though dissenters retained
a much stronger presence than they did in the Spanish-controlled
south. Finally, in those lands where the States General of the Repub-
lic managed only weak, contested, or partial authority, Catholics, at
least, secured limited freedoms to worship alongside members of the

4
Willem Frijhoff, Embodied belief: Ten essays on religious culture in Dutch history
(Hilversum: 2002), 48. Marijke Goswijt-Hofstra prefers verdraagzaamheid, which con-
notes that the condition was grudging. “Een schijn van verdraagzaamheid: Proeven
uit vijf eeuwen Nederlands verleden” in Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra (ed.), Een schijn
van verdraagzaamheid: Afwijking en tolerantie in Nederland van de zestiende eeuw tot
heden (Hilversum: 1989), 9–40.
5
Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Tol-
eration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: 2007).
 confessional coexistence 49

Dutch Reformed Church. Within these three general patterns political

structures, demographics, geography, connections to powerful domes-
tic and foreign powers, personalities of officials, and economic profiles
could be so dramatically different that, as we shall see, there was tre-
mendous variation at the local level.6
Across most of the Republic, the Reformed Church benefited from
state sponsorship, while dissenting churches were outlawed. Despite
this support, four factors contributed to a situation in which Calvinism
remained a minority church and, consequently, multiconfessionalism
generally prevailed. First, membership in the official church was volun-
tary, and there were relatively high demands put on those who wanted
to join. Second, individuals were afforded freedom of conscience, even
if they were not granted freedom of worship.7 Third, local magistrates
adopted a pattern of strategies whose aim was to preserve social order
and their own political authority, often by emphasizing common civic
or Christian values instead of promoting confessionalization.8 Finally,
religious dissenters themselves adopted a variety of strategies that
aimed to reduce the threats their presence posed to their neighbors.9
Within this framework, and in large part as a result of its infor-
mal nature, there was great variation at the local level. In those places
where the rebels quickly consolidated their authority, the Reformed

6
On political structures, see Maarten Prak, “The politics of intolerance: citizenship
and religion in the Dutch Republic (17th to 18th centuries)” in Hsia and Nierop (eds.),
Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age, 159–75; H. Enno van
Gelder, Getemperde vrijheid (Groningen: 1972), 20–25. On demographics, see Hans
Knippenberg, De religieuze kaart van Nederland: omvang en geografische spreiding van
de godsdienstige gezindten vanaf de Reformatie tot heden (Assen: 1992), 9–62. On per-
sonalities, particularly of bailiffs, see Xander van Eck, Kunst, twist en devotie: Goudse
katholieke schuilkerken, 1572–1795 (Delft: 1994), 123–25; Christine Kooi, “Paying
off the sheriff: strategies of Catholic toleration in Golden Age Holland” in Hsia and
Nierop (eds.), Calvinism and Religious Toleration, 87–101.
7
On the Union of Utrecht, which leaders of the rebel provinces signed in 1579,
and the application of its provision protecting freedom of conscience, see A. Th. van
Deursen, “Between Unity and Independence: The application of the Union as a fun-
damental law,” Low Countries History Yearbook 14 (1981): 50–64.
8
See especially Joke Spaans, Haarlem na de Reformatie: stedelijke cultuur en
kerkelijk leven, 1577–1620 (The Hague: 1989).
9
For these strategies as they apply to Mennonites, Catholics, and Lutherans, see:
Troy Osborne, “Worthy of the Tolerance They’d been Given: Dutch Mennonites,
Reputation, and Political Persuasion in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,”
Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 99 (2008): 256–79; Charles H. Parker, Faith on the
Margins: Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge, MA: 2008);
Joke Spaans, “De lutherse lobby voor vrijheid van godsdienstoefening in Friesland,”
De zeventiende eeuw 20, no. 1 (2004): 38–52.
50 jesse spohnholz

Church established its supremacy by the early-17th century and mem-

bership on the city council often overlapped considerably with that
of the consistory. This scenario applies to the strongly Calvinist cities
in Zeeland, Groningen, Gelderland, and Overijssel, where magistrates
adopted anti-Catholic legislation, and initial impressions suggest that
these laws could be strictly enforced.10 Yet, though scholarship once
emphasized the success of “Calvinization” in these areas, historians now
put greater emphasis on the continued presence of religious minori-
ties.11 Nijmegen experienced serious challenges to Calvinist domi-
nance, including a strong Remonstrant government (until the purges
of 1619), energetic Jesuits missionaries, and a garrison that brought
German Lutheran soldiers.12 By the late-17th century, Catholics still
constituted 10 percent of the population in Kampen, for example, even
after a century of harassment, heavy recognition fees, dissimulation,
and worshipping in the shadows. Members of the Remonstrant Broth-
erhood also survived the unusually strong campaign against them in
that city, while the profile of local Mennonites even expanded through
the 17th century.13 In the city of Groningen, Catholics and Menno-
nites not only survived well into the 17th century, but even worked
as schoolmasters and churchwardens, to the constant frustration of
Calvinist ministers.14

10
On the demographic regions that characterized the Republic, see Peter van
Rooden, Religieuze regimes: over godsdienst en maatschappij in Nederland 1570–1990
(Amsterdam: 1996) and Knippenberg, Religieuze kaart; Prak, “Politics of Intolerance,”
162–68.
11
For instance, compare Frank van der Pol, De Reformatie te Kampen in de zestiende
eeuw (Kampen: 1990) and the same author’s more recent “Religious Diversity and
Everyday Ethics in the Seventeenth-Century City Kampen,” Church History 71 (2002):
16–62. For an older narrative of Protestantization, see Pieter Geyl, “De Protestanti-
sering van Noord-Nederland” in his Noord en Zuid: Eenheid en Tweeheid in de Lage
Landen (Utrecht: 1960), 150–62; Louis J. Rogier, Geschiedenis van het Katholicisme in
Noord-Nederland in de 16e en 17e eeuw (Amsterdam: 1947).
12
Hubert Nusteling, Binnen de vesting Nijmegen: confessionele en demografische
verhoudingen ten tijde van de Republiek (Zutphen: 1979); Paul Begheyn, De Jezuïeten
in Nijmegen (Nijmegen: 1991).
13
G. Hoenderdaal, Staat in de vrijheid: de geschiedenis van de remonstranten (Zut-
phen: 1982), 62–63; Pol, “Religious Diversity,” 30–36, 41–44.
14
Wiebe Bergsma, “Gereformeerde en doopsgezinden in Groningen,” Doopsgez-
inde Bijdragen 20 (1994): 129–56. A. Th. van Deursen, Bavianen en Slijkgeuzen: kerk
en kerkvolk ten tijde van Maurits en Oldenbarnevelt (Franeker: 1998), 22, 107, 113–14.
This stands in contrast to conclusions made by Heinz Schilling, “Reform and Supervi-
sion of Family Life in Germany and the Netherlands” in Raymond Mentzer (ed.), Sin
and the Calvinists (Kirksville, MO: 1994), 15–62.
 confessional coexistence 51

The survival of dissenters was a result of the fact that the campaigns
against them were, despite the apparent alliance between magistrates
and Calvinist ministers, remarkably uneven in practice. When the
frustrated Calvinist ministers in Deventer complained to the States of
Overijssel that strict laws against Mennonites were not being followed,
the politicians tactfully replied that “they should tolerate the conniv-
ance in the private services that have long since happened, but [the
Mennonites] should hold [those services] with all quietness.”15 While
the Kampen priest Niclaes Peterz was imprisoned, fined heavily, and
expelled in 1612 for holding clandestine services, his coworker The-
odorus Slachman worked largely undisturbed, though magistrates
knew quite well about his activities.16 Perhaps the ministers and elders
did not maintain quite as harmonious a relationship with secular
authorities in these lands as they presented in the consistory minutes.17
Though more research needs to be done to understand the contours
of coexistence in the Calvinist east, what was going on was clearly not
a straightforward process of Calvinization.
Much more attention to understanding the patterns of confessional
coexistence has been given to Holland, Utrecht, and Friesland, which
experienced vibrant religious diversity and an unmistakably lax enforce-
ment of laws prohibiting dissent. These places were characterized by
the same tension between the official church and religious minorities,
though in practice multiconfessionalism became deeply engrained in
the realities of daily life. A proliferation of local studies has critically
highlighted the great degree of variation, not only in the confessional
balance within communities, but also in the strategies that residents
developed to manage the conflicts that emerged. Scholars have tended
to focus on the late-16th and early-17th centuries, while the late-17th
and early-18th centuries have received less attention. 18 Still, it is clear

15
Quoted in Gelder, Getemperde vrijheid, 95.
16
Pol, “Religious Diversity,” 38.
17
As Judith Pollmann has found was the case in Utrecht. Pollmann, “Off the
Record: Problems in the Quantification of Calvinist Church Discipline,” Sixteenth
Century Journal 33 (2002): 423–38.
18
Joke Spaans, “Stad van vele geloven 1578–1795” in Willem Frijhoff and Maarten
Prak (eds.), Geschiedenis van Amsterdam (Amsterdam: 2004), 385–467; Rudolf Even-
huis, Ook dat was Amsterdam: De kerk de hervorming in de gouden eeuw, vol. 2
(Amsterdam: 1971); A. Wouters and P. H. A. M. Abels, Nieuw en ongezien: kerk en
samenleving in de classis Delft en Delfland 1572–1621 (Delft: 1994); Christine Kooi,
Liberty and Religion: Church and State in Leiden’s Reformation, 1572–1620 (Leiden:
2000); H. ten Boom, De Reformatie in Rotterdam, 1530–1585 (Amsterdam: 1987).
52 jesse spohnholz

that in religiously-mixed communities of the Republic, particularly

in the trade cities of Holland, coexistence could be quite intimate. In
the area immediately surrounding Het Spui, in Amsterdam, lay the
clandestine Catholic churches De Lilie, de Franse kapel, and de Krijt-
berg, the Lutheran Old Church, the Mennonite church Het Lam, and
the Begijnhof, which until 1635 was shared by English Puritans and
Catholic Beguines.19 Similarly, in the same city, the Jesuit Henricus van
Alckemade, who operated a missionary station on the Kaisergracht,
had as many as seven Reformed pastors as neighbors.20
In cities across Holland, Calvinists remained a minority, though
local variations were considerable. In Haarlem, the Reformed church
made up roughly one-fifth of the population circa 1620. The rest were
Mennonites (14 percent), Catholics, (12.5 percent), and Lutherans
(1 percent), while the rest—still a majority of residents—did not belong
to any church.21 In Rotterdam too, enthusiasm for the Reformed
Church remained limited. A strong non-confessional strain there, sug-
gests H. ten Boom, encouraged as much as 15 percent of the popula-
tion to join the Remonstrant Brotherhood.22 The Catholic population
amounted to a mere 5 percent in 1622.23 In contrast, nearby Gouda
had a significant Remonstrant church, but also a Catholic popula-
tion of roughly one-third of the population.24 Just to the northeast,
Woerden was home to, proportionally speaking, the largest Lutheran
population in the Republic and a strong Remonstrant church, but had
virtually no Catholic presence.25 Alkmaar, in Holland’s North Quarter,

Spaans, Haarlem na de Reformatie; Benjamin J. Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines:

Confession and Community in Utrecht, 1578–1620 (Oxford: 1995).
19
Judith Pollmann, “Burying the dead; reliving the past: ritual, resentment and
sacred space in the Dutch Republic” in Benjamin J. Kaplan et al. (eds.), Catholic Com-
munities in Protestant States: Britain and the Netherlands, c. 1570–1720 (Manchester:
2009), 95.
20
Christine Kooi, “Katholieken en tolerantie in de Gouden Eeuw,” Tijdschrift voor
Nederlands Kerkgeschiedenis 2 (1999): 114.
21
Spaans, Haarlem na de Reformatie, 104.
22
Boom, Reformatie in Rotterdam; Hoenderdaal, Staat in de vrijheid.
23
Jonathan Israel, Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806 (Oxford:
1995), 380.
24
Eck, Kunst, twist en devotie; Knippenburg, Religieuze kaart, 39–40.
25
Between 1572 and 1602 Woerden was indeed the only locale in the Republic that
legally permitted Lutheran worship. There is no complete study of Woerden, but it
has been studied by Willem Frijhoff. See his Fulfilling God’s Mission: The Two Worlds
of Dominie Everardus Bogardus, 1607–1647, trans. Myra Heerspink Scholz (Leiden:
2007).
 confessional coexistence 53

was nearly half Catholic, and only about 10 percent Reformed, while
nearby Enkhuizen had only a small Catholic community, but devel-
oped an assertive Calvinist majority.26 Some places, like Dordrecht and
Delft, saw greater cooperation between the magistrates and the Calvin-
ist consistory, while other places, like Leiden, saw a deep mistrust that
engendered decades of conflicts.
Recent studies on Friesland and Utrecht have provided a glimpse
of confessional coexistence beyond Holland. Friesland was home to
substantial Anabaptist and Catholic populations. In Sneek, Catho-
lics constituted the majority of the population even after 60 years of
Calvinist dominance.27 Though both church and state cooperated on
a wide range of issues, including issuing laws restricting Mennonite
and Catholic worship, we do not see the same unity of purpose when
it came to enforcing those laws. As a result of this inaction, Wiebe
Bergsma has argued that religious freedoms were rather wide, even
if dissenters remained second-class citizens.28 In Utrecht, the former
Catholic episcopal seat for most of the northern provinces, Catholics
amounted to roughly 30–40 percent of the population in the early-
17th century. Further, the city had a high population of Lutherans,
driven largely by immigration from Germany in the 17th century. 29
Far less work has been done on the countryside. What is known
suggests that there were dramatic differences there as well. In many
places, Calvinists were slow to establish a strong presence. In Weesp,
a village of south Holland, Catholics held all the administrative offices
in 1622, ensuring relative freedom for their coreligionists, official bans
notwithstanding. As late as 1650, Reformed in the north Holland vil-
lage of Wijk aan Zee made up only 5 percent of the population.30 In
the village of Graft, one of the few rural communities to receive close

26
Willem Frijhoff and Marijke Spies, 1650: hard-won unity, trans. Myra Heerspink
Scholz (Assen: 2004), 352; Deursen, Bavianen en Slijkgeuzen, 132–33.
27
Wiebe Bergsma, “Calvinismus in Friesland um 1600 am Beispiel der Stadt Sneek,”
Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 80 (1989): 258.
28
Wiebe Bergsma, Tussen Gideonsbende en publieke kerk: een studie over het gere-
formeerd protestantisme in Friesland, 1580–1650 (Leeuwarden: 1999); idem, “ ‘Uyt
Christelijcken yver en ter eeren Godes’: Wederdopers en verdraagzaamheid” in
Gijswijt-Hofstra (ed.), Een schijn van verdraagzaamheid, 69–84.
29
Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines, 274–78; Ronald Rommes, Oost, west, Utrecht
best?: driehonderd jaar migratie en migranten in de stad Utrecht (begin 16e-begin 19e
eeuw) (Amsterdam: 1998).
30
A. Th. van Deursen, Plain Lives in a Golden Age, trans. Maarten Ultee (Cam-
bridge, UK: 1991), 286, 293.
54 jesse spohnholz

study, the Reformed were the majority, but Mennonites maintained

not only a substantial presence, but held seats on the city council. In
neighboring De Rijp, the balance was reversed and, until 1638, Men-
nonites dominated among local councilmen.31 In both towns, Catho-
lics were politically and socially marginalized. In contrast, Catholics
made up the vast majority in the small isolated villages of the Land of
Maas and Waal, in western Gelderland, where they crowded into the
castles of local nobles for worship, while parish churches stood largely
empty.32 Although systematic research has not been done, the eastern
area of Achterhoek in Gelderland remained a confessional patchwork
through the 17th century. Even in nearly homogeneously Calvin-
ist Zeeland, Catholics continued to move into the villages of South
Beveland.33 Though rural areas have not received nearly the attention
that the Republic’s cities have earned, confessional coexistence in these
communities of only several hundred inhabitants each surely could
have been just as intimate as it was in the cities.
The question of coexistence in the Spanish Netherlands has com-
manded far less attention than it has in the Republic. Rather, histo-
rians who have focused on the southern provinces have tended to
emphasize the success of the Catholic Reformation in the century after
the Habsburgs solidified their authority. In contrast to the work on
the Republic, rural studies have dominated.34 In general, these works
have emphasized the dreadful state of church life at the start of the

31
In that year, the States of Holland removed them from office; from that point
on, membership on the city council overlapped considerably with that of the Calvinist
consistory. A. Th. van Deursen, Een dorp in de polder: Graft in de zeventiende eeuw
(Amsterdam: 1995); Pieter Visser, Dat Rijp is moet eens door eygen Rijpheydt vallen:
Doopsgezinden en de gouden eeuw van De Rijp (Wormerveer: 1992), 58–77.
32
Most members of the Reformed church were city or parish officials, whose posts
required that they join. H. ten Boom, “De vestiging van de gereformeerde kerk in het
land van Maas en Waal,” Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis 50 (1970): 225.
33
Knippenburg, Religieuze kaart, 27; Israel, Dutch Republic, 379, 642.
34
Michel Cloet, Het kerkelijk leven in een landelijke dekenij van Vlaanderen tijdens
de XVIIe eeuw: Tielt van 1609 tot 1700 (Leuven: 1968); Kristin Raeymaecker, Het gods-
dienstig leven in de landdekenij Antwerpen (1610–1650) (Leuven: 1977); Marc Therry,
De religieuze beleving bij de leken in het 17de-eeuwse bisdom Brugge (1609–1706) (Brus-
sel: 1988); Leo Braeken, De dekenij Herentals 1603–1669 (Leuven: 1982); T. B. W. Kok,
Dekenaat in de steigers kerkelijk opbouwwerk in het Gentse dekenaat Hulst 1596–1648
(Tilburg: 1971). Marie Juliette Marinus’s study of Antwerp offers a notable counterex-
ample. Marie Juliette Marinus, Contrareformatie te Antwerpen (1585–1676): kerkelijk
leven in een grootstad (Brussels: 1995). Craig Harline and Eddy Put have also studied
the archbishop of Mechelen. Craig Harline and Eddy Put, A Bishop’s Tale: Mathias
Hovius among his Flock in Seventeenth-Century Flanders (New Haven: 2000).
 confessional coexistence 55

17th century. Many church buildings had been badly damaged or sim-
ply destroyed over the course of the war. Of the 22 parishes studied by
Michel Cloet in the deanery of Tielt, only five were in a usable state
in 1609.35 A massive building campaign began across the war-ravaged
parishes in the first half of the 17th century: fences were restored, walls
rebuilt, baptismal fonts replaced, confessional stools installed, pews
built, and altar lamps replaced. The campaign demanded huge invest-
ments from church officials, state coffers, and local notables.
The 17th-century campaign to eradicate the religious diversity
that had prevailed during the previous century across the southern
provinces demanded that state-sponsored Catholic parishes not only
rebuilt churches, but also retrained priests. The Mechelen Provincial
Council (1607) adopted the objectives of the Council of Trent, and the
17th century saw the gradual implementation of those norms. New
seminaries were established to train young priests, who were later
joined by assistant pastors, churchwardens, and religious orders.36 By
the end of the century the laity gained good access to sermons and cat-
echetical instruction, and the Catholic hierarchy could be much more
confident that what they heard accorded to Tridentine norms. Albert
and Isabella were critically important in the revitalization of Catholi-
cism, though research on subsequent Governors General remains to
be done.37 But these changes were not just a top-down imposition; lay
Catholics founded devotional confraternities, celebrated processions,
and intensely celebrated both the cult of the Eucharist and of the Vir-
gin Mary. The Catholicism of the Spanish Netherlands also developed
an explicitly international character, not only in the sense that it bore
a Tridentine stamp, but also because of the deep concern for exporting
it to Protestant lands.38

35
Cloet, Kerkelijk leven, 360–65. For Herental, see Braecken, Dekenij Heren-
tal, 84–90. For the parishes around Antwerp, see Raeymaecker, Godsdienstig leven,
41–44.
36
Cloet, Kerkelijk leven, 168–75, 245–67; Braeken, Dekenij Herental, 77–128; Mari-
nus, Contrareformatie, 17–38, 72–81, 155–94; Raeymaecker, Godsdienstig leven, 41–50,
90–98.
37
Paul Arblaster, “The Archdukes and the Northern Counter-Reformation” in Wer-
ner Thomas and Luc Duerloo (eds.), Albert & Isabella, 1598–1621: catalogus (Leuven:
1998), 87–91; H. J. Elias, Kerk en staat in de zuidelijke Nederlanden onder de regeering
der aartshertogen Albrecht en Isabella (1598–1621) (Antwerp: 1931).
38
Paul Arblaster, “The Southern Netherlands Connection: Networks of Support
and Patronage” in Kaplan, et al. (eds.), Catholic Communities in Protestant States,
56 jesse spohnholz

This narrative of Catholic Reformation, however, has downplayed

the continued existence of religious minorities in the Spanish Nether-
lands. As the work of Guido Marnef, Johan Decavelle, and A. L. E. Ver-
heyden has shown, the southern provinces were home to a variety of
dissenting churches in the 16th century.39 The history of religious dis-
senters after the 1580s, though, mostly remains to be written. This is
in large part because there were few of them—a consequence of wide-
spread conversion, emigration, and the successes of the Catholic Ref-
ormation mentioned above. Yet Marie Marinus and Michel Cloet find
pockets of Calvinists and Mennonites until well into the 17th century.
These religious minorities were able to survive principally because of
the moderate nature of the campaign against them. The fact that in
January 1609 the archdukes lowered the maximum penalty for heresy
from death to expulsion reduced the threat for dissenters who decided
to stick it out in the Spanish Netherlands. In addition, Guido Marnef
has demonstrated that many of these conversions to Catholicism in the
1580s were insincere, coming as they did at the eleventh hour before
penalties for refusing to convert would be enforced. This suggests that
many men and women may have only conformed outwardly to the
state church though some surely secured private avenues for religious
dissent.40 The bishop of Antwerp in the 1650s, Gaspar Nemius, had a
strong suspicion that this was exactly what was happening. There is
evidence that he was right in the Flemish city of Tielt, where local mag-
istrates and deans actively abetted in hiding Protestants from prying
episcopal authorities.41 More research on this topic is certainly needed.
It is possible that, despite quite distinct historiographical traditions,
the difference in religious coexistence in the southern and northern

123–38; Claire Walker, Gender and Politics in Early Modern Europe: English Convents
in France and the Low Countries (New York: 2003).
39
Guido Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation: Underground Protestantism
in a Commercial Metropolis, 1550–1577 (Baltimore: 1996); idem, Het Calvinistisch
bewind te Mechelen, 1580–1585 (Kortrijk-Heule: 1987); Johann Decavele, Het eind
van een rebelse droom: Opstellen over het Calvinistisch bewind te Gent (1577–1584)
(Gent: 1984); A. L. E. Verheyden, Anabaptism in Flanders, 1530–1650 (Scottdale, PA:
1961).
40
Guido Marnef, “Protestant conversions in an age of Catholic Reformation: The
case of Antwerp” in Arie-Jan Gelderblom et al. (eds.), The Low Countries as a Cross-
roads of Religious Beliefs (Leiden: 2004), 33–48. On this phenomenon in England,
see Alexandra Walsham, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity, and Confessional
Polemic in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, UK: 1999).
41
Marinus, Contrareformatie te Antwerpen, 238; Cloet, Kerkelijk leven, 443–44,
450–56.
 confessional coexistence 57

provinces is more a matter of magnitude than of kind. Certainly when

a Dutchman from the Republic visited Antwerp in 1654, he described
the situation as one of “quiet connivance” (stille oochluyckinge)—the
same term that residents in the north used to describe the uncomfort-
able pluralism there.42
The third kind of confessional arrangement in the early modern
Low Countries prevailed in those lands that fell under the political
jurisdiction of the Republic, but provided Catholics limited privileges
to worship. These were mostly places that had been captured from the
Spanish after the Twelve-Years Truce (1609–1621) and that retained
a much stronger Catholic presence. In these areas, political authority
functioned much like colonial domination. Unsurprisingly, tensions
could result. At the same time, the tenuous political authority of a
fledgling state, as well as its officials’ prudent wariness about antag-
onizing foreign Catholic powers, often forced the Republic to make
concessions when faced with Catholic resistance.
One example of this can be found in the Generality Lands—those
territories that the States General had conquered from the southern
provinces and governed directly. States Flanders and States Brabant,
which constituted the most populous regions of these lands, included
the cities of Tilburg, Bergen op Zoom, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Breda, Eind-
hoven, Sluis, Terneuzen, and Hulst. With few exceptions, priests and
monks in these cities had been expelled and Catholic worship sup-
pressed.43 Curiously, nuns were allowed to retain their religious houses,
though little is known about their role in local Catholic communities.
Meanwhile, the churches were taken over by Reformed ministers, who
were mostly imported from elsewhere in the Republic. Yet, in the rural
areas of the Generality Lands, where the States General’s authority was
precarious, Catholic observance continued, a concession that in prac-
tice allowed urban Catholics to travel to neighboring towns for wor-
ship. Until rural Catholicism was also banned after 1648, Catholics in
Bergen op Zoom, for instance, attended services in nearby Halsteren,
Heerle, and Wouw.44
Even when the States General forbade all Catholic practice in the
Generality Lands, after the Treaty of Münster in 1648, its ability to

42
Marinus, Contrareformatie te Antwerpen, 243.
43
Charles de Mooij, Geloof kan Bergen verzetten: Reformatie en katholieke herleving
te Bergen op Zoom, 1577–1795 (Hilversum: 1998), 151–81.
44
Mooij, Geloof van Bergen verzetten, 292–300.
58 jesse spohnholz

enforce this ban remained tenuous. Reformed ministers faced deeply

suspicious and openly hostile populations. Catholic crowds sometimes
interrupted Reformed services or seized churches.45 In other places,
Catholics engaged in open worship in spite of repeated prohibitions
against it and often continued to serve as schoolmasters, city officials,
and poor relief officers. How well and upon what conditions coex-
istence in this tense environment worked deserves further research.
Charles de Mooij’s study of Bergen op Zoom provides an excellent
start, though more research on confessional relations in the Generality
Lands and the cautious strategies for managing conflicts under these
conditions is needed.
Meanwhile, when the States General conquered Maastricht in 1632,
it also inherited a peculiar form of government that protected Catholic
worship. The city had been ruled jointly by the duke of Brabant and
the prince-bishop of Liège since the Middle Ages, a situation called
condominium. Largely to avoid agitating the mostly Catholic popula-
tion, the prince-bishop of Liège, or his Catholic allies elsewhere, the
States agreed to a system of biconfessional parity similar to that which
had developed in the Holy Roman Empire.46 Calvinists, who made up
only 20 percent of the population, were granted two church buildings,
while the majority Catholics retained the use of the rest. In addition,
the two confessions shared subsidies for poor relief and education
equally. In his study of this condition, P. J. H. Ubachs argues that the
Reformed were not significantly privileged by this situation, though
we still have little sense yet of the relationships between confessional
communities in Maastricht, or how Lutherans and Mennonites fared
in this condition.
To the north and east of Maastricht, in the Overmaas, which con-
sisted of the Lands of Dalhem, ‘s-Hertogenrade, and Valkenburg,
another situation obtained altogether. Beginning in 1632, when the

45
E.g. Judith Pollmann, “Burying the dead; reliving the past: ritual, resentment and
sacred space in the Dutch Republic” in Kaplan, et al. (eds.), Catholic communities in
Protestant states, 84–86.
46
On this system of parity and other forms of biconfessionalism in the Dutch
Republic, see Benjamin J. Kaplan’s essay in this volume. On the situation in Maas-
tricht P. J. H. Ubachs, Twee heren, twee confessies: De verhouding van staat en kerk
te Maastricht, 1632–1673 (Assen: 1975). On biconfessionalism and parity in the Holy
Roman Empire, see David M. Luebke’s essay in this volume. Also, Paul Warmbrunn,
Zwei Konfessionen in einer Stadt: Das Zusammenleben von Katholiken und Protes-
tanten in den paritätischen Reichstädten Augsburg, Biberach, Ravensburg und Dinkels-
bühl von 1548 bis 1648 (Wiesbaden: 1983).
 confessional coexistence 59

States captured these lands, a system of simultaneum emerged, in

which Catholics and Reformed shared church buildings. The practice
was used across the border in the county of Berg and elsewhere in the
Holy Roman Empire. Research on the German examples has dem-
onstrated that negotiations about how to share the church buildings
could be quite complicated and that the close proximity simultaneum
required could sometimes breed local conflicts.47 W. A. J. Munier’s
study of simultaneum in the Overmaas lands suggests that the same
was true there.48 The towns of Overmaas were divided largely between
a small Reformed population and a larger Catholic population; there
were few Mennonites or Lutherans, to say nothing of smaller churches.49
In the 18th century, after the Republic captured the neighboring area
of Upper Gelderland, the government adopted a less formal bicon-
fessional arrangement based on a model that it had briefly instituted
there during the Eighty Years’ War.50
Some scholars have suggested that the confessional arrangements
described in this overview thus far, which were mostly hammered out
in the late-16th and early-17th centuries, finally stabilized by the mid-
17th century. Indeed, the Treaty of Münster established an agreed-
upon political boundary between the competing states. In the Hapsburg
lands, religious minorities mostly departed or converted after decades
of state-supported harassment. Some historians of the Republic have

47
E.g. Warmbrunn, Zwei Konfessionen in einer Stadt; Stefan Ehrenpreis, ‘Wir sind
mit blutigen Köpfen davongelaufen’: Lokale Konfessionskonflikte im Herzogtum Berg
1550–1700 (Bochum: 1993), 114–24, 153–54; Emily Fisher Gray, “Good Neighbors:
Architecture and Confession in Augsburg’s Lutheran Church of Holy Cross, 1525–
1661,” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2004).
48
Wilhelmus Munier, Het Simultaneum in de landen van Overmaas: Een uniek
instituut in de nederlandse kerkgeschiedenis (1632–1878) (Leeuwarden: 1998). For the
complicated diplomatic negotiations between Spain and the Dutch Republic over con-
flicting claims of sovereignty in these lands, see J. A. K. Haas, De verdeling van de
landen van Overmaas, 1644–1662: Territoriale disintegratie van een betwist grensgebied
(Assen: 1978).
49
An exception is the town of Vaals, which lay just across the German border from
the imperial city of Aachen. From 1649, the small Reformed population originally
shared city churches with Catholics in a simultaneum arrangement. Governmental
support gave increasing visibility to that church into the 18th century. A Lutheran
church was established relatively late, in 1737. Meanwhile, a small Mennonite church
also existed in the 18th century, though very few records reveal even its existence. In
any case, many, perhaps even most, non-Catholics who worshiped in Vaals actually
lived in or around Aachen. W. A. J. Munier, “Kerken en kerkgangers in Vaals van de
Staatse tijd tot op heden,” Publications de la société historique et archéologique dans le
Limbourg 136–37 (2000–01): 85–262, especially 151–53, 190.
50
On this, see Benjamin J. Kaplan’s essay in this volume.
60 jesse spohnholz

described the gradual alignment of the once large non-confessional,

undecided, or un-churched population with one of the confessional
churches.51 Some have suggested that, by the mid-17th century, the
Republic was marked by a clearer solidification of confessional bound-
aries, even going so far as to describe that society as ‘arranged in col-
umns’ (verzuild), that is, separated into confessional camps of people
who lived next to each other, but rarely interacted.52 In the earlier sce-
nario, people ensured coexistence because the lines between confes-
sions were remarkably blurry. In the later arrangement, they managed
to achieve coexistence because the lines were extremely rigid.
There is reason to think that this chronological shift was not so
straightforward. First, Wiebe Bergsma has shown that a full quarter
of the population in Friesland in 1660 still belonged to no church.53
Second, active critics of confessionalism never disappeared, like Bal-
thasar Bekker, who used the increasingly popular Cartesianism to
criticize dogma and church structure.54 It does seem, however, that
by the end of the 17th century more people were aligning themselves
with a particular church. This trend may not have been because they
were beginning to adopt confessional attitudes though. Joke Spaans
has suggested, rather, that it may have been the result of a policy shift
taken by governmental officials to stop offering poor relief to everyone
and demand instead that each congregation take responsibility for it
is own poor. This encouraged individuals to align themselves with a
particular church. The default affiliation was Reformed, meaning that
many people now counted as Reformed, though we have no evidence
to indicate that they changed their religious views.55

51
On these groups, see: Deursen, Bavianen en Slijkgeuzen, 128–34; Kaplan, Cal-
vinists and Libertines, 68–110; Wiebe Bergsma, “Calvinisten en libertijnen: Enkele
opmerkingen n.a.v. Benjamin Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines,” Doopsgezinde Bijdra-
gen 22 (1996): 209–27.
52
J. de Kok, Nederland op de breuklijn Rome-Reformatie (Assen: 1964); Simon
Groenveld, Huisgenoten des geloofs: was de samenleving in de Republiek der Verenigde
Nederlanden verzuild? (Hilversum: 1995).
53
Bergsma, Tussen Gideonsbende, 96–150. Gabrielle Dorren’s study of Haarlem
suggests similarly that people’s attitudes toward confessions remained quite fluid
through the late 17th century. Dorren, Eenheid en verscheidenheid: de burgers van
Haarlem in de Gouden Eeuw (Amsterdam: 2001), 131–68.
54
Andrew Fix, Fallen Angels: Balthasar Bekker, Spirit Belief, and Confessionalism in
the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic (Boston: 1999).
55
Joke Spaans, Armenzorg in Friesland 1500–1800 (Hilversum: 1997). This pattern
is corroborated by Mooij, Geloof kan Bergen verzetten, 614–24.
 confessional coexistence 61

It may be that imagining a dichotomy between non-confessional

and confessional mindsets still presents too simple of a picture. At the
level of an individual, Judith Pollmann’s study of Arnoldus Buchelius
suggests people could accommodate two different understandings of
Christianity—one that was confessional and one that was supracon-
fessional—at the same time and that their ability to do so might help
explain coexistence.56 At the level of a city, Gabrielle Dorren’s study
of Haarlem offers a similar perspective.57 Social institutions that were
confessionally-mixed provided individuals of conflicting faiths with
social space for collaboration, even in times of confessional tensions.
Recent attention to neighborhood associations ( gebuurten), organiza-
tions that were responsible for public safely but were also critical in
funeral celebrations and public festivities, suggests a deep degree of
interaction between people of competing faiths.58 Similar attention
might well be given to militias, guilds, chambers of rhetoric, fraternities,
schools, universities, and orphanages, all of which had memberships
or staffs that were multiconfessional. If historians are to understand
better confessional coexistence in the early and late Republic, they will
have to pay considerable attention to tracing those avenues of life in
which people segregated themselves according to confession and those
avenues of life in which they found common cause around a shared
civic, Christian, or national value system.

* * *
At this point, it is clear that historians can clearly no longer explain
toleration as an inherently “Dutch” attribute. In fact, even in the most
religiously diverse communities, most early modern Netherlanders
never accepted toleration as a positive moral value. Rather, they saw

56
Judith Pollmann, Religious Choice in the Dutch Republic: The Reformation of
Arnoldus Buchelius, 1565–1641 (Manchester: 1999).
57
Dooren, Eeenheid en verscheidenheid. For nearby Wesel, see Spohnholz, Tactics
of Toleration.
58
Llewellyn Bogaerts, “Geleund over de onderdeur: Doorkijkjes in het Utrechtse
buurtleven van de vroege middeleeuwen tot in de zeventiende eeuw,” Bijdragen en
Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 112 (1997): 336–63; Her-
mann Roodenburg, “ ‘Freundschaft’, ‘Brüderlichkeit’, und ‘Einigkeit’: Städtische
Nachbarschaften im Westen der Republik” in T. Dekker, et al. (eds.), Ausbreitung
bürgerlicher Kultur in den Niederlanden und Nordwestdeutschland (Münster: 1991),
10–24; Carl A. Hoffmann, “Social Control and the Neighborhood in European Cities”
in Herman Roodenburg and Pieter Spierenburg (eds.), Social Control in Europe, vol. 1
(Columbus, OH: 2004), 309–27.
62 jesse spohnholz

religious unity as a critical prerequisite for both social stability and

political order. The grim truth that this ideal never matched lived real-
ity presented them with a grave problem. In order to understand how
people coped, it is useful to investigate the ways that early modern
Netherlanders imagined and constructed boundaries that could help
them manage the reality of confessional difference. Critical in this
effort was securing boundaries that defined both political jurisdictions
and public spaces, only outside of which deviations from religious
unity would be tolerable.59 Just as important was the fact that people
could cross those boundaries and challenge them in ways that secured
unthreatening but substantive avenues for religious dissent.
The most critical political boundary in the Low Countries was that
between the nascent Dutch Republic and the Spanish Netherlands.
But people crossed that boundary all the time. First, a steady stream
of Catholic pastors and missionaries headed northward to aid core-
ligionists. Franciscans and Jesuits from the southern provinces regu-
larly crossed the border to serve Dutch Catholics.60 Secular priests who
served in the Generality Lands were usually trained at the University
of Leuven and supervised by ecclesiastical officials in the south. The
bishops of Antwerp, for instance, retained ecclesiastical authority over
Catholics living in lands of the marquisate of Bergen op Zoom; the
bishops even periodically made visitations of missionary stations in
the Republic.61 This was true for the bishoprics of ‘s-Hertogenbosch
and Roermond as well, and all three of these were supervised by the
archbishop of Mechelen. Secular priests serving the Holland Mission,
which supervised Catholics across the rest of the Republic, usually
hailed from northern families, but also often studied at Leuven.62 In
each case, priests carried the message of the global Catholic mission
to residents of the Republic by offering sermons, sacraments, and pas-
toral care. Catholic women also crossed northward across the border,
though in smaller numbers. Marc Wingens tells the story of Maria
Margaretha van Valkenisse, the Discalced Carmelite from Antwerp,

59
For boundaries understood as imagined and historically constructed geographi-
cal definitions, see Peter Sahlins, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the
Pyrenees (Berkeley: 1989).
60
J. Andriessen, De Jezuieten en het samenhorigheidsbesef (Antwerp: 1957).
61
Mooij, Geloof kan Bergen verzetten, 467–71.
62
Gian Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen: bisschoppen en priesters in de Republiek
(1663–1705) (Amsterdam: 2003), 67–120. On the Holland Mission, see Parker, Faith
on the Margins.
 confessional coexistence 63

who in 1644 founded a new convent in Oirschot, in States Brabant.

The streams of pilgrims visiting the convent after her death suggest
that the impact of Valkenisse’s nuns went far beyond their numbers.63
Lay people also sustained Catholics in the Republic by crossing the
border. Catholic printing presses in the Spanish Netherlands produced
books for export northward. Southern artists were commissioned to
produce paintings, altars, and other ornamentation for the elaborate
Catholic secret churches in the Republic.64 Northern parents who
wanted to ensure that their children received a Catholic education
sent them to study in Jesuit schools in towns held by the Spanish.65
Pious Catholics also travelled south across the border to pilgrimage
sites such as the Marian shrines at Berendrecht and Scherpenheuvel.66
Chapels and churches on the borders were built with the financial sup-
port of southern bishops and secular princes, such as the Archdukes
Albert and Isabella. If Dutch Catholics had a dramatic revival after
1650, as Charles H. Parker and others have argued, then it was in part
because the political borders were so permeable, and because Catholics
took advantage of this fact.
It was not only Catholics who made use of these porous boundaries.
Thousands of Protestants crossed the border permanently, establishing
new homes for themselves in the Dutch Republic.67 At the same time,
hundreds of underground Calvinists, Lutherans, and Anabaptists in
the Spanish Netherlands made the short trip to the nearby Dutch bor-
der towns of Lillo, Bergen op Zoom, Ossendrecht, and Aardenburg for

63
Marc Wingens, “A ‘Holy Nun’ in a Protestant Country: Maria Margaretha van
Valckenisse (1605–1658)” in Jürgen Beyer et al. (eds.), Confessional Sanctity (c. 1500–
c. 1800) (Mainz: 2003), 291–302.
64
Arblaster, “The Southern Netherlands,” 123–238; Xander van Eck, Clandestine
Splendor: Paintings for the Catholic Church in the Dutch Republic (Zwolle: 2008).
65
Begheyn, Jezuïeten in Nijmegen, 21; Marc Wingens, Over de grens: de bedevaart
van katholieke Nederlanders in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw (Nijmegen: 1994),
173.
66
Mooij, Geloof kan Bergen verzetten, 561–68; Winghens, Over de grens; L. Duer-
loo and Marc Winghens, Scherpenheuvel: het Jeruzalem van de Lage Landen (Leuven:
2002).
67
J. Briels, Zuid-Nederlandse immigratie 1572–1630 (Haarlem: 1978). For the debate
on their impact see A. A. van Schelven, Omvang en invloed der zuid-nederlandsche
immigratie van het laatste kwaart der 16e eeuw (The Hague: 1919) and Louis J. Rogier,
“Over karakter en omvang van de nederlandse emigratie in de zestiende eeuw,” His-
torisch Tijdschrift 17 (1938): 5–27.
64 jesse spohnholz

worship.68 The Arminian ministers expelled from the Dutch Reformed

Church at the Synod of Dort in 1619 crossed southward to ensure their
survival. Happy to frustrate the Republic, Albert and Isabella gave safe
haven to these refugees. Forty expelled ministers held a synod that
year in Antwerp, at which they drew up a framework for the new
Remonstrant Brotherhood. Remonstrant leaders quickly amassed con-
siderable finances and started establishing underground churches in
the Republic.69
Between the Republic and the Holy Roman Empire lay another set of
political boundaries whose very existence both defined and challenged
political and religious authority. The cities of Emden and Wesel, located
in the county of East Friesland and the duchy of Cleves respectively,
played key roles in protecting and securing Calvinists and Mennonites
during the 16th century. These cities provided refugees with a space
to organize resistance to Catholic rule, publish devotional literature
that was banned back home, and worship in relative peace.70 In the
17th century, this dynamic was reversed: German exile centers now
took on important roles for Dutch Catholics. Though no substantive
study has yet been done on Cologne’s role for Dutch Catholics, Geert
Janssen is currently working to fill this void. What we already know,
though, is telling. The bishop of Roermond fled there in 1578, as did
the apostolic vicar of the Holland Mission, Sasbout Vosmeer, in 1604
and the dean of the Haarlem chapter in 1605. Cologne’s St. Barbara
monastery became a meeting place for Dutch exiles. Vosmeer founded
a seminary for future Dutch priests in Cologne.71 Cologne’s printers
produced propaganda and devotional material for clandestine import
into the Republic. Cologne, it seems, served much the same function
for Dutch Catholics of the 17th century that Emden and Wesel had
once served for Dutch Calvinists and Mennonites.
The duchy of Cleves also took on central importance for Dutch
Catholics. In the late-17th century, under the patronage of the local
Oratorian order, the chapel devoted to Our Lady of Kevelaer became

68
Marinus Contrareformatie te Antwerpen, 62, 237–38; Elias, Kerk en staat, 16;
Cloet, Kerkelijk leven, 453, 457–61; Raeymaecker, Godsdienstig leven, 172–84.
69
Hoenderdaal, Staat in vrijheid, 9–55. Catholic Church officials were more wary
then the archdukes about the Remonstrants’ presence. Marinus, Countrareformatie te
Antwerpen, 65–66; Elias, Kerk en staat, 28–30.
70
Andrew Pettegree, Emden and the Dutch Revolt: Exile and the Development of
Reformed Protestantism (Oxford: 1992); Spohnholz, Tactics of Toleration.
71
Parker, Faith on the Margins, 28–29.
 confessional coexistence 65

the most popular pilgrimage site in the region. Marc Wingens has
recreated the travel routes that men and women took from all across
the Republic.72 On the way, they visited less prominent pilgrimage
sites, including the Marian statue at Oostrum in Gelderland and Our
Lady of Handel in the independent enclave of Gemert. People traveled
in groups, such that the journey itself became a sacred procession, the
climax of which was crossing the border into Cleves, at which point,
people took out their cross, banners, and staffs crowned with silver
engravings of Our Lady of Kevelaer. In the 18th century such trips
were orchestrated by Catholic brotherhoods whose primary purpose
was these annual processions. Such brotherhoods were established in
Amsterdam, Leiden, Utrecht, Amersfoort, and elsewhere, including
major cities in the Generality Lands.
The imaginary boundaries that defined the political jurisdictions in
the Low Countries did not simply run east and west, north and south.
One of the most remarkable features of political authority in the early
modern era was the survival of any number of feudal enclaves within
the territorial borders of the emergent state. In the Dutch Republic,
these feudal enclaves played an important role in the system of reli-
gious pluralism that developed. Historians often associate the rise
of religious toleration with the emergence of modern states, though
there is good reason to think this perspective needs to be refined. After
all, advocates of strong secular states could support religious policies
that were deeply intolerant, as Richard Tuck has shown for instance
with the jurist Justus Lipsius.73 Conversely, feudal enclaves within the
Republic—historical relics of a political order whose relevance was
fading—served as a critical bulwark for religious minorities by offering
them a legally defensible opportunity for worship within confessional
states. Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra has emphasized the role of these free

72
Wingen, Over de grens, especially 249–54. Though the duchy was ruled by the
Reformed Elector of Brandenburg from 1612, a compromise reached with his neigh-
boring Catholic political rival allowed Catholic worship in many Cleves towns. Doro-
thea Coenen, Die Katholische Kirche am Niederrhein von der Reformation bis zum
Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts (Münster: 1967), 77–90.
73
Richard Tuck, “Scepticism and toleration in the seventeenth century” in Susan
Mendus (ed.), Justifying Toleration: Conceptual and Historical Perspectives (Cam-
bridge, UK: 1988), 21–36. On the relationship between Lipsius and state building, see
Gerhard Oestreich, Neostoicism and the Early Modern State, trans. David McLintock
(Cambridge, UK: 1982).
66 jesse spohnholz

seignories as asylums for people fleeing the law for secular reasons.74
These enclaves offer potential as a source for understanding the sur-
vival of religious dissenters as well. During the Reformation, they
played a role in protecting Calvinist and Lutheran minorities.75 They
played a much more important role for Catholics in the Republic, who
travelled to autonomous enclaves to baptize their children, to celebrate
the Mass, to attend school, and to worship at local pilgrimage shrines
that popped up within their borders. In addition, religious houses that
had been expelled from the Republic crowded into these tiny territo-
ries, often using them as staging areas for missionary work.
Catholic feudal enclaves were particularly prominent in States Bra-
bant. Within the enclave of Gemert, the Order of Teutonic Knights
oversaw a shrine devoted to a relic of the Holy Cross in Handel. The
Land of Ravenstein, another island within States Brabant, was ruled
from 1630 by the Catholic German elector of Palatine-Neuburg, and
fell under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the bishop of Liège.76 The
chapel devoted to the Virgin Mary in the Ravenstein town of Uden
was run by the Canons Regular of the Order of the Holy Cross. It
attracted Catholics in nearby Brabant and the Land of Maas and Waal
in the 16th and 17th centuries, and even gained national notoriety
in the 18th century.77 A host of other small feudal enclaves littered
States Brabant, including the County of Megen and the free lordships
of Luyksgestel, Boxmeer, and Bokhoven. Curiously, several of the feu-
dal holdings of the house of Orange, which often associated itself with

74
Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, Wijkplaatsen voor vervolgden: asielverlening in Culem-
borg, Vianen, Buren, Leerdam en IJsselstein van de 16de tot eind 18de eeuw (Dieren:
1984).
75
Calvinists were protected within the enclaves of Culemborg and Vianen during
the Dutch Reformation. For the role of these noblemen in the Revolt, see Geoffrey
Parker, The Dutch Revolt (London: 1977). In 1590, some Calvinists, unhappy with
the nature of the Libertine church in Utrecht, travelled to the Land of IJsselstein. See
Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines, 202–203. The freedom of worship for Lutherans in
Woerden seems to have been a result, intended or not, of the fact that the German
prince Erik of Brunswick was granted the Grand Seignory of Woerden in exchange
for his military service to Philip II. See J. Pont, Geschiedenis van het Lutheranisme in
de Nederlanden tot 1618 (Haarlem: 1911), 185–86.
76
Wingens, Over de grens 78–85, 175–206. For information on these and other
sites, see Databank Bedevaart en Bedevaartplaatsen in Nederland, available online at
http://www.meertens.knaw.nl/bedevaart/.
77
The Reformed classis in the Land of Maas and Waal complained about Catholics
visiting Uden in 1620. See Boom, “Vestiging,” 225. Because the States built a Reformed
garrison church in Ravenstein in 1641, both religions remained effectively legal in the
enclave through the end of the ancièn regime.
 confessional coexistence 67

orthodox Calvinism, allowed freedom of worship to Dutch Catho-

lics. After the States captured Breda in 1590, the princes of Orange
allowed Catholic services in the neighboring feudal inheritance of
Hage (or Prinsenhage).78 The Lands of Baarle-Hertog, feudal holdings
of the lords of Turnhout, retained Catholic worship even after 1648,
when Catholics elsewhere in Generality Lands lost that privilege. A
compromise reached in the Treaty of Münster determined that these
lands would become part of the Spanish Netherlands, even though
they amounted to a series of jurisdictional islands within the Republic.
Even today, Baarle-Hertog remains a set of Belgian enclaves within the
Kingdom of the Netherlands.
In fact, feudal privileges offered cover for dissenting worshippers
all across the Republic. In Gelderland, autonomous enclaves became
centers of Catholic worship. Huissen, for example, fell under the juris-
diction of the duke of Cleves and probably served Catholics in nearby
Arnhem.79 Nobles’ castles served a similar function. Den Ham Cas-
tle, owned by the Catholic nobles Johan van Wanroy Utenham and
his wife Margaretha de Brouxelles, offered protection for Catholics
from nearby Vleuten and Utrecht.80 So did the Hernen, Doddendaal,
Wijchen, and Leeuwen Castles in the Land of Maas and Waal. In those
places, the Reformed churches stood largely empty, while most people
worshipped in the new castle churches that developed.81 In fact, though
no substantial study has yet to be done on castle churches, they dot-
ted the countryside of Gelderland, Friesland, Utrecht, and Holland.82
Understanding the political relationships these noble castellans main-
tained at the national, provincial, and local levels may reveal much
about the way that Catholics sustained themselves in the Republic.83
The roles of noble patrons also offers historians an important ave-
nue to understand better the roles of women in maintaining systems

78
Israel, Dutch Republic, 299–300, 387–88. Gelder, Getemperde vrijheid, 144–45.
79
Israel, Dutch Republic, 652. For other enclaves on the eastern frontier, see idem,
385.
80
Eck, Clandestine Splendor, 25.
81
Boom, “Vestiging.”
82
Wingens, Over de grens, 55. Israel, Dutch Republic, 383. Knippenburg, Religieuze
kaart, 29–30. Charles H. Parker calls Catholic nobles with feudal privileges “brokers
of interconfessional relations.” See Parker, Faith on the Margins, 159–60.
83
Catholic nobles also often retained their patronage rights over Reformed churches
after the Reformation. In 1594, Gerrit van Poelgest even demanded the right to have a
role in examining a new minister of Hoogmade, Pieter de Zuttere (aka Petrus Hyper-
phragmus). See Deursen, Bavianen en Slijkgeuzen, 10–11.
68 jesse spohnholz

of coexistence. Not only did women’s roles in these systems differ

from men’s, but the nature of women’s political and religious author-
ity may have opened to them crucial opportunities to protect religious
dissenters. Although excluded from holding offices in the new state
system, feudal privileges offered women a range of political authority
that, even if it was on the decline, remained significant through the
ancièn regime.84 In the Republic, the significant political contacts of
Hendrika van Duivenvoorde, a noblewoman from Utrecht, allowed
her to host Catholic conventicles at her residence in the Nieuwegracht,
where she also housed the apostolic vicar of the Holland Mission from
1621.85 The marchioness Maria Elisabeth II van den Bergh played a
similar role in Bergen op Zoom, as did the noblewoman Andriana
Veygh at Dreumel.86 Similarly, Louise de Coligny acted as patron for
the Remonstrant Brotherhood.87 Though considerable study needs
to be done to make more substantive claims, the fact that state laws
could not wholly erase feudal privileges seems to have allowed noble-
women an importance beyond their numbers in protecting religious
minorities.88

* * *
Boundaries need not be on a map to be real. One form of boundary
drawing in the early modern world that has earned attention from
historians in the northern areas of the Low Countries, that is to say
the Dutch Republic, is that between public and private space.89 Utiliz-

84
The classic study of women’s political power in the transition from feudal to state
systems is Joan Kelly, “Did Women have a Renaissance” reprinted in Lorna Hutson
(ed.), Feminism and Renaissance Studies (Oxford: 1999), 21–47. For a more recent
approach, Frances E. Dolan, “Gender and the ‘Lost Spaces of Catholicism,” Journal of
Interdisciplinary Study 34 (2002): 641–65.
85
Robert Fruin, Verspreide geschriften, part 3 (The Hague: 1901), 300. Israel, Dutch
Republic, 378.
86
Mooij, Geloof van bergen verzetten, 399–437; Boom, “Vestiging” 225.
87
Gelder, Getemperde vrijheid, 84–85.
88
For a recent treatment of the religious history of women in the Republic: Judith
Pollmann, “Women and Religion in the Dutch Golden Age,” Dutch Crossing 24 (2000):
162–82. A gendered history of confessional coexistence is very much needed. Though
the history of women is often presented as an auxiliary to narratives that treat the male
experience as normative, it may be that because much of their authority was informal
and unofficial, examining women’s experience will transform our understanding of
forms of religious coexistence that were also informal and unofficial.
89
For instance, Herman Roodenburg, “On ‘Swelling the Hips and Crossing the Legs:
Distinguishing Public and Private in Paintings and Prints from the Dutch Golden Age”
 confessional coexistence 69

ing this distinction, historians have gained valuable insights into how
religious pluralism operated in the Dutch Republic. Most noticeably,
Dutch magistrates usually refused to acknowledge publically the pres-
ence of dissenting traditions. In practice, this meant that non-Reformed
churches were tolerated as long as expressions of religious difference
stayed outside of public spaces. This arrangement did not amount to
a nascent separation of church and state, or the emergence of a secu-
lar public sphere, however. Public spaces in the Dutch Republic were
quite often distinctly religious, particularly in places marked by the
presence of the Reformed Church, which retained a near monopoly
on public expressions of religion. If people of other faiths wanted to
express religious ideas openly, they were usually expected to do so in
ways that conformed to the values of the public church.90 Otherwise,
most dissenters worshipped in private, though even when they did
they remained subject to harassment. Where possible, magistrates pro-
moted a confessionally-neutral Christian culture in public.91 Indeed,
many recent historians have agreed that unofficially distinguishing
between what was allowed in public and what was relegated to private
spaces was at the core of Dutch pluralism.92
In this understanding, the distinction between public and private
offered a provisional solution to the deep tension within Dutch society
between the ideal of religious uniformity and the reality of religious
pluralism. The result, a collaboration between the policy decisions of
magistrates and the self-conscious strategies adopted by dissenters,
was that most non-Reformed worship took place in private, early on
mostly in houses and back rooms. Sometimes people also worshipped
in ambassadorial chapels, though through the 17th century dissent-
ers increasingly worshipped in schuilkerken, clandestine churches that
looked like ordinary houses or other non-offending, secular struc-
tures on the outside.93 There were Lutheran, Remonstrant, Catholic,

in Arthur K. Wheelock and Adele Seeff (eds.), The Public and Private in Dutch Culture
of the Golden Age (Newark, DE: 2000), 64–84.
90
This was the case with national days of prayer. See Peter van Rooden, “Dissenters
en bededagen: Civil religion ten tijde van de Republiek,” Bijdragen en Mededelingen
Betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 107 (1992): 703–712.
91
On this point, see Spaans, Haarlem na de Reformatie. On the related concept of
omgangsoecumene, see Frijhoff, Embodied Belief.
92
Kooi, Liberty and Religion, 162–96; Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines, 261–96;
Frijhoff, Embodied Belief, 39–65.
93
Benjamin J. Kaplan, “Fictions of Privacy: House Chapels and the Spatial Accom-
modation of Religious Dissent in Early Modern Europe,” American Historical Review
70 jesse spohnholz

and Mennonite schuilkerken all over the Republic. Secret passage-

ways, through which people entered and exited these structures—and
sometimes escaped from them—were often located in back alleys.
In other cases, passageways provided access to neighboring build-
ings, from which illegal worshippers, fearing discovery, could exit
surreptitiously.
In general, this practice of removing religious dissent into the pri-
vate sphere proved remarkably successful at easing the inherent ten-
sion of religious pluralism in a confessional state. Their façade as a
legitimate and non-threatening alternative allowed many of those who
disapproved of dissenters’ presence to tolerate their existence. Political
rhetoric decried the dangers posed by religious dissent, but political
action never matched that fervor. This was not a matter of ignorance
or naiveté; evidence suggests that awareness of the existence of schu-
ilkerken was widespread—they even became tourist attractions. When
the councilor of the Court of Holland visited Gouda in 1643, Calvin-
ist ministers knew their locations well enough to give him directions
and describe the approximate sizes of their congregations.94 Ministers
frequently urged burgomasters and town councils to crack down on
them, though their supplications were often met with little more than
lip service. In fact, magistrates sometimes negotiated the terms of their
construction. In 1691, Gouda’s regents bargained with a Franciscan
on the conditions under which a new schuilkerk might be built.95 In
Amsterdam in 1665, magistrates helped resolve conflicts within a local
Mennonite congregation over control of the clandestine church.96 As
the schuilkerk phenomenon shows, residents of the Republic made a
distinction between seeing dissent and knowing that dissent was taking
place, between tolerating the presence of those with different ideas and
tolerating acts that demonstrated those ideas. It also suggests the criti-
cal importance that people placed on maintaining a public space that
was confessionally uniform.
There is room to believe, however, that these boundaries were as
ambiguous and porous as the political boundaries of the era. First,

107 (2002): 1031–64. On the elaborate Catholic schuilkerken, see Eck, Kunst, twist en
devotie and idem, Clandestine Splendor.
94
Eck, Kunst, twist en devotie, 129–30.
95
Kaplan, “Fictions of Privacy,” 1047. For a case in Breda, see Charles de Mooij,
“Second-class yet self-confident: Catholics in the Dutch Generality Lands” in Kaplan
et al. (eds.), Catholic Communities in Protestant States, 163.
96
Gelder, Getemperde vrijheid, 93.
 confessional coexistence 71

in places where dissenting congregations formed the majority of the

population, as Catholics did in States Brabant or the Land of Maas and
Waal, the public-private distinction is hardly adequate. When less than
5 percent of the population worshipped within the ‘public’ church,
while 95 percent worshiped in a ‘private’ church, the categories appear
insufficient at the very least.97 Crowded castle churches in places with
such decisive Catholic majorities may have amounted to private spaces
architecturally but socially speaking the situation was reversed; it was
the few isolated Calvinists in the supposedly ‘public’ churches who
were really isolated. Second, religious dissenters themselves sometimes
self-consciously challenged the expectations that they remain in pri-
vate. In the North Holland town of Limmen in 1635, for example, a
priest organized a public exorcism that drew a substantial crowd.98 Only
four kilometers to the north, at Heiloo, unashamed pilgrims visited the
site of Our Lady at Peril, even after authorities tore down the chapel.
Similar conditions developed in Eikenduinen (near The Hague), Nib-
biwoud (near Hoorn), and elsewhere.99 In ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Catholics
continued to commemorate their dead in confessionally-identifiable
ways, despite the Reformed government’s efforts to quash these
expressions.100 The distinctive habit worn by the nearly 5,000 Spiritual
Virgins in the Republic surely distinguished them from their neigh-
bors and acted as a public demonstration of religious difference.101 On
his 1687 visit to Amsterdam, Thomas Penson certainly noticed that
the Beguines too wore their habits openly.102 At Amersfoort, Catholics
held processions in the streets. In Gouda, crucifixes were sold openly.
Indeed, as Christine Kooi has suggested, Catholics self-consciously

97
Boom, “Vestiging,” 223; Israel, Dutch Republic, 659.
98
Deursen, Plain Lives, 249.
99
For information about all these pilgrimage sites within the Republic’s borders,
see Databank Bedevaart en Bedevaartplaatsen in Nederland; Pollmann, “Burying the
dead,” 88.
100
Pollman, “Burying the dead,” 96–97.
101
Dorren, Eenheid en verscheidenheid, 160. On the Spiritual Virgins, see Marit
Monteiro, Geestelijke maagden: leven tussen klooster en wereld in Noord-Nederland
gedurende de zeventiende eeuw (Hilversum: 1996).
102
Thomas Penson, “Penson’s Short Progress into Holland, Flanders and France”
in Kees van Strien (ed.), Touring the Low Countries: Accounts of British Travellors,
1660–1720 (Amsterdam: 1998), 40.
72 jesse spohnholz

and repeatedly challenged the expectation that they restrict religious

expression to the private sphere.103
Other dissenting churches retained publicly-identifiable expressions
of faith as well. The most dramatic example is Amsterdam’s Lutheran
community, which opened an immense church in 1633 on Het Spui
in the city center, only a short walk away from a Mennonite schuilkerk
(Het Lam) and the Catholic Begijnhof. In 1662, they were permitted
to build another church, the so-called Round Lutheran church, about
1.3 kilometers to the north.104 More research on the variety of ways
that people expressed their religious identity, through rituals as well
as other material and aural expressions, will be useful in the com-
ing years to understand the nature of confessional arrangements with
more precision. My own research in nearby Wesel has suggested that
finding limited and non-threatening expressions of confessional dif-
ference in public was, in fact, critical to the function of religious plu-
ralism.105 It may be that public spaces were not nearly as confessionally
homogenous as many historians have suggested, and as magistrates
and ministers had hoped.

* * *
While once treated as a national characteristic, religious toleration in
the Dutch Republic was more complicated. This essay has even sug-
gested that looking beyond the borders of the Republic itself offers
critical insights into the nature of Dutch pluralism. First, if the north-
ern provinces in the Low Countries experienced greater religious diver-
sity than many places in early modern Europe, including the Spanish
Netherlands, many of the ways this functioned may not have been
so different. Second, by casting our eyes beyond the borders of the
Republic, we can appreciate the limitations that historians have placed
on their own research when they confine themselves to the geographi-
cal borders of states. Doing so privileges to a degree the aspirations of
political officials, whose very authority was defined by their ability to

103
Kooi, “Sub jugo Haereticorum: Minority Catholicism in Early Modern Europe”
in Kathleen M. Comerford and Hilmar M. Pabel (eds.), Early Modern Catholicism:
Essays in Honour of John W. O’Malley, S.J. (Toronto: 2001), 158.
104
Elsewhere, Lutherans faced conditions much like other dissenting churches.
Spaans, Haarlem na de Reformatie, 103–4; Kooi, Liberty and Religion, 175–6; Kaplan,
Calvinists and Libertines, 273–74.
105
Spohnholz, Tactics of Toleration, 179–220.
 confessional coexistence 73

regulate those borders. Last, the very nature of spatial boundaries offers
insights into the function of religious pluralism. On the one hand, bor-
ders provided a sense of social and religious order; in a physical sense
political boundaries defined the authority of both church and state.
The boundaries distinguishing the domestic sphere from public space
similarly distinguished the authority of householders. On the other
hand, because both kinds of borders were only invisible lines invented
by humans, they were not only historically contingent, but they were
also remarkably fluid. In the early modern era, borders between states
were constantly changing, legal jurisdictions were uncertain and con-
tested, and the boundary between public and private space remained
remarkably unclear. These facts left room for many people to find an
arrangement that could satisfy their own conscience, without troubling
their neighbors or threatening their religious and political leaders.
MULTICONFESSIONALISM IN A COMMERCIAL METROPOLIS:
THE CASE OF 16TH-CENTURY ANTWERP

Guido Marnef

From the 1520’s onward, Antwerp developed into one of the biggest cen-
ters of Protestantism in the Low Countries. The cosmopolitan, trading
metropolis was, in fact, open to outside influences and quickly absorbed
Protestant ideas and movements of different natures.1 Charles V
and his central government in Brussels urged a strict repression of
every form of religious dissent, expecting from the local authorities
a loyal application of the heresy placards. The Antwerp city fathers
realized that such a harsh policy posed a serious threat to the welfare
of their booming city. They were well aware that the early Lutheran
movement recruited merchants and other well-to-do people. They
especially feared that foreign merchants affected by Lutheran ideas
might leave the city. Later on, the Antwerp city government would
take the same attitude towards Portuguese conversos and Calvinists.2
In general, the city fathers succeeded in maintaining Antwerp’s privi-
leges and autonomy and in reconciling the prosecution of heresy with
the city’s economic interests. They focused their heresy repression on
the more modest Anabaptists who did not significantly contribute
to the Antwerp economy. In theory, Antwerp remained a religiously
homogeneous city, in which the Catholic Church enjoyed a monopoly
position. In practice, however, this position was more and more affected
by several religious reform movements, especially Lutheranism, Ana-
baptism, and Calvinism, and by the existence of large religious middle
groups—people who stood between the orthodox Catholic Church and
one of the Protestant confessions. These “fluctuantes in fide” could no
longer reconcile themselves to a number of practices or articles of faith
of the Catholic Church and found some points in common with the

1
Guido Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation: Underground Protestantism in
a Commercial Metropolis, 1550–1577 (Baltimore: 1996).
2
See Guido Marnef, “Charles V’s religious policy and the Antwerp market: A con-
frontation of different interests?” in Marc Boone and Marysa Demoor (eds.), Charles
V in Context: the Making of a European Identity (Ghent: 2003), 21–33.
76 guido marnef

Protestant reformers.3 As a result, the accustomed equation of civic

and sacral community increasingly came under pressure.
Things became even more complicated when the drive for religious
and political change intertwined. This happened during the Wonder-
year or annus mirabilis (Spring 1566–Spring 1567) and during the
so-called “Calvinist Republic” (1577–1585), when the Calvinist and
Lutheran churches came into the open and experienced an undis-
putable, though short-lived period of expansion. In this essay, I shall
focus on these two episodes, showing how the Antwerp city govern-
ment tried to supersede religious division, and how it tried to organize
a well-ordered society in which there was room for more than one
religion.

The Wonderyear and the First Experiment of Multiconfessionalism

The Wonderyear, the year of the petition, the mass open-air preach-
ing, and the wave of iconoclasm, profoundly changed the political and
religious situation in the Low Countries.4 The petition presented to the
Regent, Margaret of Parma, on 5 April 1566, in which the confederate
nobility demanded that the Inquisition be abolished and the heresy
placards suspended, found an immediate echo among and fostered the
self-confidence of Calvinists and Lutherans. Calvinist exiles, includ-
ing a substantial number of preachers, returned to the Netherlands
and joined the existing congregations. In June 1566, a Calvinist synod,
held in Antwerp, decided it was time to come out into the open. In
Antwerp, the so-called hedge-preaching, held outside the city walls,
attracted crowds numbering hundreds and even thousands. In August,
tensions increased as Calvinist leaders demanded the right to preach
within the city walls. On 20 August the image-breaking started. It was
a planned and well-organized enterprise, endorsed by the Calvinist
consistory. The iconoclasm was not only ideologically determined, but

3
Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation, 56–58.
4
For the general context, see Andrew Pettegree, Emden and the Dutch Revolt. Exile
and the Development of Reformed Protestantism (Oxford: 1992), ch. 5 and Guido Mar-
nef, “The dynamics of Reformed militancy in the Low Countries: the Wonderyear”
in N. Scott Amos, Andrew Pettegree, and Henk van Nierop (eds.), The Education of
a Christian Society. Humanism and the Reformation in Britain and the Netherlands
(Aldershot: 1999), 193–210.
 the case of 16th-century antwerp 77

it also constituted an acte de presence, by which the Calvinist leaders

wanted to emphasize their rights within the city.5
On 23 August, a perplexed Regent conceded that preaching would
be allowed where it was already taking place. The noble grandees were
expected to restore order in their provinces and to stop the iconoclasm.
Under strong pressure, Margaret of Parma gave in, though she told
Philip II that she preferred to be torn to pieces rather than being the
first to allow several religions.6 William of Orange was sent to turbulent
Antwerp. He realized that an agreement on religious matters with the
adherents of the new religion was necessary in order to appease the sit-
uation. He invited the Dutch and French Calvinist Church to appoint
deputies who could negotiate a settlement. These negotiations led to
the accord of 2 September 1566, which was extended the same day to
the Lutherans, who had also organized public activities since July.7
The central idea behind the 2 September accord was that tensions in
urban society caused by religious division should be ceased, something
we also see in the pacification edicts proclaimed in France. The begin-
ning of the text of the accord was very clear:
In order that all unrest and discord in matters of religion arisen in this
city cease and all citizens and inhabitants henceforth might live in all
quietness, peace, love and friendship; furthermore that trade might
come in the old train and this city might be liberated from all further
inconveniences . . .8
The accord granted the Calvinists and Lutherans three vacant lots
within the city walls, where they could preach on Sundays and holy
days—and on Wednesdays in weeks without a holy day. All preachers
were obliged to take an oath of loyalty to William of Orange, and the
city government, and they had to be obedient in all political affairs.

5
For developments in Antwerp, see Robert Van Roosbroeck, Het Wonderjaar te
Antwerpen, 1566–1567. Inleiding tot de studie van de godsdiensttroebelen te Antwerpen
van 1566 tot 1585 (Antwerp: 1930) and Marnef, Antwerp in the Age of Reformation,
ch. 6.
6
Juliaan J. Woltjer, Tussen vrijheidsstrijd en burgeroorlog. Over de Nederlandse
Opstand 1555–1580 (Amsterdam: 1994), 34–35; Violet Soen, “Par la voye de paci-
fication et negotiation. Verzet, verzoening en ‘vredehandel’ tijdens de Nederlandse
Opstand (1564–1598)”( Ph.D. diss, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2008), 208–210.
7
The text of the accord is in Pieter Génard (ed.), “Personen te Antwerpen in de
XVIe eeuw, voor het feit van religie gerechtelijk vervolgd: Lijst en ambtelijke stukken”
Antwerpsch Archievenblad 11 (s.d.): 48–51, 63–65.
8
Ibid., 48.
78 guido marnef

Catholics, Calvinists, and Lutherans were forbidden to use injurious

or seditious language towards the civil authorities or towards those
belonging to another religion. Orange and the city government prom-
ised to protect all inhabitants living in obedience, peace, and unity,
regardless the religion to which they belonged. The agreement was
provisional; the king, after taking the advice of the States General,
might decide otherwise.
The 2 September accord was a milestone in the development of Cal-
vinism and Lutheranism in Antwerp. It created, in fact, a multiconfes-
sional urban society within which Catholics, Calvinists, and Lutherans
could live, work, and worship, protected by a legal framework. The
Anabaptists who had built up a well-organized, underground commu-
nity in Antwerp also tried to profit from the changed situation. They
emphasized their obedience to the civil authorities and asked William
of Orange to be brought within the scope of the 2 September accord.
Orange and the Antwerp city fathers declined this request.9 The Ana-
baptists’ radical ideas, including the rejection of infant baptism, public
oaths, and military service undoubtedly made them religiously and
socially unacceptable.
The Calvinists and Lutherans experienced a significant expansion
after their official recognition. Characteristic for the strength of the
Calvinist Church was the speed with which they built new churches
on their assigned places. Already on 25 September the Calvinists had
started construction of a church at the ‘Mollekensraam’, a church des-
tined for the Dutch-speaking congregation with room for 10,000 peo-
ple. Men, women, and even children took a hand in the building. Rich
Calvinist citizens supplied considerable amounts of money, and some
well-to-do women donated their gold and jewels.10 That the Calvin-
ists succeeded in building two new churches—one for the Dutch- and
another for the French-speaking community—within a relatively short
timespan once again underscores the social strength of the Calvinist
congregation.11 The intense building process and the appearance of
new temples in the city landscape undoubtedly impressed friend and

9
W. Balke, “De invloed van de Anabaptisten te Antwerpen,” Bijdragen tot de
Geschiedenis 70 (1987): 52–53; Marnef, Antwerp, 91.
10
Robert Van Roosbroeck (ed.), De kroniek van Godevaert van Haecht over de troe-
belen van 1565 tot 1574 te Antwerpen en elders, vol. 1 (Antwerp: 1928), 121–122.
11
For the changed social profile of the Antwerp Calvinists during the Wonderyear,
see Marnef, Antwerp, ch. 6.
 the case of 16th-century antwerp 79

foe. In passing, it should be noted that the arrangements negotiated

by William of Orange with the representatives of the Calvinists and
Lutherans went far beyond the instructions given by the Regent to the
grandees. Margaret of Parma only wanted to allow preaching where it
had already taken place, meaning Antwerp, outside and not inside the
city walls. The building of churches was clearly not intended. Further-
more, though Margaret only envisaged preaching, the Calvinists and
Lutherans also celebrated the Lord’s Supper and performed baptisms
and marriages.
On paper, the September accord offered Catholics, Calvinists, and
Lutherans the prospect of a peaceful communal life under the auspices
of the civil authorities. Yet, everyday reality was completely different.
The politico-religious turmoil of the Wonderyear created a climate of
increasing tension and confrontation. In the days and weeks follow-
ing the iconoclasm, the degree of devastation in churches and con-
vents made worship in several places impossible. At the same time,
many priests were hiding inside or outside the city, while others were
mocked and insulted in the streets. There were, however, Catholic
clergy men who tried to stop the Calvinist and Lutheran expansion.
A few Franciscans and Jesuits preached against their religious adver-
saries, which was a violation of the September accord. In November
1566, a number of Catholics, including some leading Antwerp priests
and agents of the Spanish king, started a political opposition move-
ment. When the plans leaked out at the end of December, the climate
became even more tense than before.12
There was also growing tension between Calvinists and Lutherans.
The discord had religious and political grounds. The Lutheran doctrine
of the Lord’s Supper differed radically from the Calvinist. The contro-
versy came even more to the fore because the leaders of the Antwerp
Lutheran community called in German preachers and theologians,
who were almost all violent, anti-Calvinist followers of the gnesio-
Lutheran line of Matthias Flacius. Two Antwerp church leaders admit-
ted that they differed from the Calvinists “as the sky does from the
earth”. Another element of friction was the attitude taken towards the
secular authorities. During the Calvinist riots, the Lutherans refused to

12
Van Roosbroeck, Het Wonderjaar, 189–208; Marnef, Antwerp, 103–104; B. A.
Vermaseren, “The life of Antonio del Corro (1527–1591). Before his stay in England.
II. Minister in Antwerp (Nov. 1566–April 1567),” Archief en Bibliotheekwezen in Bel-
gië 61 (1990): 183–186.
80 guido marnef

join the Calvinists in attacking the town hall, arguing that they had no
permission from the city government and that they rejected violence.
In March 1567, after the defeat of the rebel army at nearby Ooster-
weel, the Calvinists tried to seize power in Antwerp. The Lutherans
remained loyal to the civic authorities and joined the Catholics in
resisting. The Calvinist leaders perceived this as a betrayal of the Prot-
estant cause and continued to consider the Antwerp’s Lutherans as
politically unreliable.13 The Antwerp chronicler Godevaert van Haecht,
who had moderate Lutheran leanings, summarized things quite well
when he wrote:
There was an immense discord among people, between friends, sisters,
and brothers. The one praised this and the other that, and they slan-
dered each other . . . The one said: “You are eaters of flesh and drinkers of
blood”, while others said: “You are Schwärmer and iconoclasts”, etc.14
It is clear that the antagonism between Catholics and Protestants and
between Calvinists and Lutherans impeded the development of a stable
multiconfessional society. The radicalization of the political situation
added fuel to the fire. In the autumn and winter of 1566, the Calvin-
ist leaders openly chose political resistance, and the Antwerp Calvin-
ist Church acted as the headquarters of the rebel movement. At the
same time, the regent and her central government gained confidence
and took up the struggle with the rebels. In March–April 1567, royal
troops defeated the rebel armies and quelled the rebellious towns. The
Antwerp Calvinists and Lutherans realized they had lost the battle.
The last Calvinist and Lutheran preaching took place on 9 April, and
two days later William of Orange and many Calvinists and Lutherans
left the city. 15 Margaret of Parma conducted a program of pacification
and chastisement that took into account the existing privileges and
jurisdictions. The duke of Alva, who reached the Low Countries with
his Spanish army in August 1567, went much further. He set up a spe-
cial court, the Council of Troubles, and launched a harsh repression,
focusing on the culprits of the troubles during the Wonderyear. The
Protestant communities of Antwerp were driven underground again.16

13
Marnef, Antwerp, 102–103.
14
Van Roosbroeck, Kroniek van Godevaert van Haecht, I, 122.
15
Marnef, Antwerp, 105; idem., “Dynamics of Reformed militancy,” 205–208.
16
Marnef, Antwerp, ch. 7.
 the case of 16th-century antwerp 81

Toward the “Provisional” Religious Peace of 1578

The conditions of the Antwerp Protestants changed after the procla-

mation of the Pacification of Ghent (8 November 1576). This agree-
ment between the rebellious provinces of Holland and Zeeland and
the provinces loyal to the king declared the heresy placards sus-
pended and aimed at the withdrawal of the Spanish troops. From
then onward, things changed quickly in Flanders and Brabant. Cal-
vinist exiles returned and developed new activities—it was a scenario
that resembled the situation after the presentation of the petition of
1566.17 At the same time, a process of political radicalization started in
the southern provinces, especially in Flanders and Brabant. The Span-
ish governor, Don Juan of Austria, lost much support, while William
of Orange gained influence. The Antwerp city fathers were nonethe-
less forced to conduct a moderate policy, because the Spanish citadel,
built by the duke of Alva, still harbored a Spanish garrison. In August
1577, soldiers in the service of the States succeeded in reconquering
it. Free from Spanish soldiers, the city government chose to rely on
their own military forces, which consisted of six shooting companies
and the civic militia. The city fathers more and more followed the
political line of William of Orange and the rebellious States-General.
The precocious renewal of the town magistracy by representatives of
the States-General heralded the beginning of a new political order.
This did not mean that the Antwerp city government would be domi-
nated by convinced Calvinist. The Calvinist take-over was a gradual
process, although the renewal of the town magistracy in November
1579 was an important milestone. In any case, the Calvinist henceforth
profited from the political situation. They were staunch supporters of
the revolt, while many perceived the Catholics—the Catholic clergy
and especially the Jesuits—as allies of the Spaniards. Furthermore,
William of Orange and his court, including two Calvinist ministers,
had resided in the Antwerp citadel since the beginning of 1578. Their

17
Johan Decavele, “Het herstel van het Calvinisme in Vlaanderen in de eerste jaren
na de pacificatie van Gent (1577–1578)” in Dirk van der Bauwhede and Marc Goet-
inck (eds.), Brugge in de Geuzentijd. Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van de hervorming
te Brugge en in het Brugse Vrije tijdens de 16de eeuw (Bruges: 1982), 11–12; Woltjer,
Tussen vrijheidsstrijd, 71–74.
82 guido marnef

presence undoubtedly provided an element of support for the Antwerp

Calvinist Church.18
William of Orange realized that the rapidly changing religious situa-
tion needed an adequate solution. He was, in a certain way, confronted
with a dilemma: the permission for the public exercise of the Calvinist
religion could cause serious discord, while a prohibition could incite
the common people to seize arms, attack the clergy, and despoil their
churches. Initially, Orange tried to prevent the public exercise of the
Calvinist religion in Flanders and Brabant and proposed freedom of
conscience, so that the Reformed “might fall no more under that tyr-
annous and intolerable persecution, which they have heretofore suf-
fered and endured”. Yet, the Calvinists in Ghent, Antwerp, and other
towns pressed for freedom of worship, including the right to conduct
public services.19 It was in this complex situation that proposals for
a religious peace or “Religionsfried” were launched. Orange and his
advisors undoubtedly played a significant role in this initiative. It is
less easy to evaluate the position of Matthias of Austria, the new regent
appointed by the States-General. From a formal perspective, he was
closely involved, but it is far from clear whether he really played an
active role. It is not impossible that he was influenced by the strongly
irenic tendency that existed at the Viennesse court of his father and
uncle, Emperor Maximilian II (1564–1576) and Rudolf II (1576–1612)
respectively.20
As early as the beginning of June 1578, ideas and proposals for a
religious peace appeared on the agenda of the rebel government. On
6 June the States-General appointed a committee to work out pro-
posals for the appeasement of the religious situation.21 One of the
committee’s solutions was to proclaim a religious peace in order “to

18
For the changing political context, see Guido Marnef, “Brabants calvinisme in
opmars: de weg naar de calvinistische republieken te Antwerpen, Brussel en Mechelen,
1577–1580,” Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis 70 (1987): 7–21; idem, “The process of
political change under the Calvinist Republic in Antwerp (1577–1585)” in Monique
Weiss (ed.), Des villes en révolte. Les ‘Républiques urbaines’ aux Pays-Bas et en France
pendant la deuxième moitié du XVIe siècle (Turnhout: 2010), 25–33.
19
See the letters of William Davison to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 12 April
1578, and of Lord Cobham to William Cecil, 5 July 1578, in Joseph Kervyn de Letten-
hove (ed.), Relations politiques des Pays-Bas et de l’Angleterre sous le règne de Philippe
II, vol. 10 (Brussels: 1899), 410–411, 569.
20
Howard Louthan, The Quest for Compromise. Peacemakers in Counter-Reforma-
tion Vienna (Cambridge, UK: 1997), ch. 9.
21
N. Japikse (ed.), Resolutiën der Staten-Generaal, vol. 2 (The Hague: 1917), 436.
 the case of 16th-century antwerp 83

impede the dissidence and the partiality which were augmenting in

several towns day by day to the benefit of the common enemy”.22 On
9 June William of Orange and the members of the Council of State
proposed a religious peace23 like that of the Holy Roman Empire and
other places. Orange asked the States-General to deliberate about such
an accord, as was provided in the Pacification of Ghent.24 Article 5
of the Pacification treaty stipulated that the heresy placards “shall be
suspended and shall not be put into operation until the States-General
shall ordain otherwise”.25 Several Catholic representatives immediately
replied that they could not agree with such an interpretation. They
wanted to respect the Pacification, but at the same time they consid-
ered the Ghent treaty as a vehicle for the maintenance of the Catho-
lic religion. Under no condition were they prepared to allow changes
in the religious situation.26 William of Orange tried to convince the
States-General by referring to the salutary effects of the free exercise
of religion in the Holy Empire, Poland, and Denmark, but it was all
in vain. The representatives of Artois, Hainaut, and other places did
not yield, and the religious peace proposal was rejected by majority
vote.27 The States of Brabant, to which the city of Antwerp belonged,
was divided on the issue. The prelates and nobles were against, while
the towns, which formed the third estate, were in favor.28

22
Letter of Jacques Mastaert and Jacques Yman to the town magistracy of Bruges,
8 June 1578, in A.-C. de Schrevel (ed.), Recueil de documents relatifs aux troubles
religieux en Flandre 1577–1584, vol. 1 (Bruges 1921), 396–397.
23
In contemporary sources, the religious peace was mostly labeled with the Ger-
man expression ‘Religionsfried’. See for instance the letter of Anoine de Caulers,
representative of Artois in the States-General, 15 June 1578: “la Religionsfrit (qu’ilz
appellant), c’est à dire la liberté de religions avecq leurs exercises”, quoted in C. H.
T. Bussemaker, De Afscheiding der Waalsche gewesten van de Generale Unie, vol. 2
(Haarlem: 1896), 342.
24
Bussemaker, Afscheiding, II, 324.
25
E. H. Kossmann and A. F. Mellink (eds.), Texts concerning the Revolt of the Neth-
erlands (Cambridge, UK: 1974), 128.
26
Article 4 of the Pacification stipulated that it “should not be allowed to disturb
the common peace and quiet outside the provinces Holland, Zeeland, and associated
places, or in particular to attack the Roman Catholic religion and practice”. Ibid.,
128.
27
Ingelram de Cherf to the magistracy of Ypres, 9–10 June 1578, in De Schrevel,
Recueil, I, 398–399, and the letter of Antoine de Caulers, 15 June 1578 in Busse-
maker, Afscheiding, II, 343–345. Compare the letter of Jan van der Warck, Antwerp
city pensionary, 15 June 1578, in Rijksarchief Zeeland, Archief Jan van den Warck, 2,
n° 78–C1.
28
Aviso from Antwerp, 15 June 1578, in: Archivo General de Simancas, Estado
Alemán, leg. 685.
84 guido marnef

Still, in June 1578, there came a new attempt from another angle.
The national synod of Calvinist churches, assembled at Dordrecht
(3–18 June), also worked out a religious peace proposal. On 22 June
deputies of the synod presented the request to the States-General.29 It
was addressed to the Regent, Matthias of Austria, and the Council
of State and contained an ample plea for freedom of religion.30 The
authors referred to the persecutions by the Spaniards, which had not
stopped the growth of the Reformed religion, and to the sly ruses
of Don Juan to divide Catholics and Protestants in the Low Coun-
tries. They denied that several religions could not peacefully co-exist
in one society by mentioning historical and contemporary examples.
They especially highlighted the positive contribution of the Peace of
Augsburg (1555) and the pacification edicts proclaimed in France.
Even the Jews—farther from Christianity than the Protestants—had
received permission from the pope to build synagogues in Rome. The
express reference to the Peace of Augsburg might surprise at first sight,
given the “cuius regio, eius religio” principle. Yet, Article 27 of the
peace made an exception for some of the free imperial cities of the
Empire. In these places, Catholics and Lutherans could enjoy freedom
of religion and worship on an equal basis.31 The authors of the request
explicitly mentioned the legislated biconfessionality.32 The representa-
tives of the Dordrecht synod concluded their plea with the request that
the States-General allowed the free exercise of their religion, relying on
the Pacification of Ghent. For the Calvinist leaders this freedom was
an essential prerequisite for the expansion of their church in those
provinces where it was not yet officially allowed, particularly in Flan-
ders and Brabant.
The arguments developed by the Calvinist deputies largely coin-
cided with those presented by William of Orange to the States-General
earlier that month. Their request for a religious peace received an
immediate reply: on the same day, the Council of State and the States-

29
Philip of Marnix to the States of Holland and Zeeland, 25 June 1578, in: Aloïs
Gerlo and Rudolf de Smet (eds.), Marnixi epistulae. De briefwisseling van Marnix van
Sint-Aldegonde. Een kritische uitgave (Brussels: 1992), II, 252.
30
The text is in De Schrevel, Recueil, I, 460–471.
31
Olivier Christin, La paix de religion. L’autonomisation de la raison politique au
XVIe siècle (Paris: 1997), 299–300.
32
De Schrevel, Recueil, I, 468. Also Catholic Netherlandish authors knew about this
specific arrangement in the Empire. See e.g. P. A. M. Geurts, De Nederlandse Opstand
in pamfletten 1566–1584 (Utrecht: 1983), 246.
 the case of 16th-century antwerp 85

General drew up a concept for a religious peace that dealt with the
problem in a concrete way.33 The concept guaranteed that henceforth
everyone would be free in the exercise of his religion and would have
the right to appropriate church services until a national or general
assembly decided otherwise. In Holland and Zeeland, the exercise of
the Catholic religion would be allowed again, if at least 100 families in
a town or big village, or a majority in smaller places, asked for it. The
same principle applied to the Calvinists outside Holland and Zeeland.
The local magistracies were expected to assign the necessary places for
worship, if possible in such a way that the two religions did not hinder
each other. Several measures provided a framework for the peaceful
coexistence of the adherents of both religions. This implied that pub-
lic offices, education, and poor relief were open to both. All civil and
ecclesiastical servants had to promise loyalty (by oath) to the religious
peace and the Council of State, and the States-General controlled the
proclamation and maintenance of the peace.
Yet, this proposal met immediate resistance in the States-General.
Several representatives were completely opposed to it, while oth-
ers thought they were not sufficiently authorized to decide such an
important matter.34 A new request, submitted by the Antwerp Calvin-
ists and the Antwerp colonels, pressed for a new settlement but did not
change the essence of the matter.35 On 12 July 1578 Matthias of Austria
and the Council of State decided to forward a new concept for a reli-
gious peace to the Netherlandish provinces.36 It was already late July
when the concept was sent to the States of Brabant.37 In the meanwhile,
the Antwerp colonels and the captains of the civic militia continued

33
The concept of ‘Religionsfried’ in De Schrevel, Recueil, I, 448–459.
34
See Charles van de Rhyne to the magistracy of Ypres, 9 Jule 1578 and a letter of
the States of Hainaut to several towns, 18 July 1578, in De Schrevel, Recueil, I, 486–
487, and Antonios de Traos to Count William of Hesse, 17 July 1578, in Hessisches
Staatsarchiv Marburg, Bestand 4, Abteilung F, Niederlande, 263.
35
The committee of eight colonels was appointed by the magistracy in February
1578. The colonels not only played a crucial role in the defense of the city, they also
exercised a considerable influence in political and religious matters. See Floris Prims,
De kolonellen van de ‘burgersche wacht’ te Antwerpen (December 1577–Augustus 1585)
(Antwerp: 1942).
36
Japikse, Resolutiën, II, 436–437; the letter of Charles van de Rhyne, mentioned
in the previous note, and Marnix to the city government of Ghent, 28 July 1578, in
Gerlo and De Smet, Marnixi epistulae, II, 260–261. For the text of this new concept,
see De Schrevel, Recueil, I, 492–503. This concept slightly differs from the one of 22
June 1578.
37
Japikse, Resolutiën, II, 437.
86 guido marnef

to agitate for the introduction of a religious peace. They presented a

new request to Regent Matthias, and the colonels even appeared in
the assembly of the States-General to articulate their demands.38 They
also pressed the prelates and nobles of Brabant to accept the religious
peace. Yet, the first and second estate of the States of Brabant declined,
arguing that the matter should be treated in the States-General.39
In the Antwerp Broad Council40 the problem of the religious peace
first appeared on the agenda 23 August 1578. That day, Burgomaster
Jan van Stralen explained on behalf of the magistracy “the matter and
perplexity which is in this city caused by the requested exercise of the
Religion called the Reformed”. He referred to the concept of religious
peace, sent on behalf of the Council of State and the States-General
to the provinces, and he asked the members of the Council to formu-
late their opinion.41 The magistracy did not await the decision-making
process in the Broad Council. The Antwerp city fathers undoubtedly
took into account the pressure by the colonels, the captains of the civic
militia, and the deans of the shooting companies. Furthermore, the
quick expansion of the Calvinists induced action. Their public preach-
ing attracted more and more people—in one case even as many as
2,000 to 3,000.42 After consultation with the States of Brabant, Mat-
thias of Austria and the Council of State, and a number of Calvinist
ministers and consistory members, the magistracy decided to proclaim
the religious peace on 29 August. At the request of the city fathers it

38
Ibid., 437, and Hubert Languet to Count August of Saxony, 16 August 1578,
in Hubert Languet, Arcano seculi decimi sexti. Huberti Langueti epistolae secretae
ad principem suum Augustum Sax. ducem et S.R.I. septem virum, ed. J. P. Ludovicus
(Halle: 1699), 750. See also the letter of the captains of the civic militia to the colonels,
s.d. [1578], in Stadsarchief Antwerp [henceforth: SAA], Privilegekamer, 2364, n° 106.
39
Opinion of 12 August 1578, in: L. P. Gachard (ed.), Actes des États Généraux des
Pays-Bas, 1576–1585, vol. 1 (Brussels: 1861), 412–413.
40
The Broad Council [Brede Raad] comprised four types of members: the magis-
tracy [magistraat] as first members, the ancient or former aldermen [oudschepenen]
as second members, four headmen [hoofdmannen] and 26 wardmasters [wijkmeesters]
as third members, and the deans of the craft guilds as fourth members. Before 1577,
the Broad Council assembled sporadically. During the “Calvinist Republic” this body
developed into a quasi-permanent assembly, deliberating not only about fiscal but also
about political and religious issues. See Marnef, Antwerp, 17–18, and Idem, “Process
of political change”.
41
SAA, Privilegekamer, 1951, fol. 74r°.
42
See the letters of Hubert Languet to August of Saxony, 19 July and 16 August
1578, in: Languet, Arcano seculi decimi sexti, 743, 750.
 the case of 16th-century antwerp 87

was signed by Matthias of Austria, William of Orange, and the consis-

tory members of the Calvinist Church.43
The preamble of the religious peace emphasized that it was provi-
sional until a final resolution of the States-General decided the matter.
Until that time, the Calvinists had permission to conduct preaching,
the Lord’s Supper, baptism, and other services. The magistracy assigned
them four places of worship: the House of Aken, which had belonged
to the Jesuits, the chapel at the Spanish citadel, and two commercial
buildings. There were also articles that invited mutual understanding
between the adherents of the Catholic and Calvinist Churches. The
Calvinist ministers and consistory members had to be admitted by
the city magistracy, to which they had to promise loyalty and obedi-
ence “in all political matters”. As regarding feast days and the sale and
eating of meat, they had to behave “politically” and to respect the
ordinances of the city government. Violators of the religious peace
would be punished “as rebels and disturbers of the common peace and
welfare”. The colonels, civic militia, and shooting companies and the
ministers and consistory members had to take care of the maintenance
of the religious peace.
On 6 September 1578, the religious peace was extended to the
Lutherans who had petitioned Matthias of Austria and the Council of
State to be included. Henceforth, they were allowed to exercise their
religion on the same conditions as the Calvinists. They got three places
of worship: the barn of the Saint Michael abbey, the chapel of the cloth-
shearers and the attic of the Hessenhouse.44 On 6 October 1578, there
was yet another adjustment of the religious peace, this time in favor
of the Calvinists. They obtained three more places, since the size of
their community continued to increase: the front part of the Francis-
can church, including the Italian chapel; the church of the Dominicans
without the choir; and the Saint Andrew church, one of five Antwerp
parish churches. This extension of the religious peace was signed not
only by Matthias of Austria, William of Orange, the magistracy, and
four ministers of the Dutch-speaking Calvinist Church, but also by six
colonels, confirming once again their strong influence.45 The arrange-
ments relating to the Dominican and Franciscan churches meant that

43
The text of the religious peace of 29 August 1578 is in SAA, Privilegekamer, 82,
fols. 134v°–137r°.
44
Japikse, Resolutiën, II, 437; SAA, Privilegekamer, 82, fols. 137v°–140v°.
45
The text in Ibid., fols. 141r°–142r°.
88 guido marnef

for the first time in Antwerp history two rival confessions shared
the same church building in a legally sanctioned way. This situation
resembled the so-called simultaneum, practiced in a number of Ger-
man towns after the proclamation of the Peace of Augsburg (1555).46
That the religious peace of 29 August 1578 was extended twice
within one month accentuates its provisional character—hence it was
not without reason described as the “provisional religious peace”. The
Antwerp city fathers did not wait until the States-General tackled the
religious problems. Rather, they adapted the proclaimed accord to
meet local needs. The extension of 6 October even mentioned that the
Calvinists should be content with the extra, assigned places, “unless
they needed more on account of the growth of their community”.47
It is equally remarkable that the Broad Council debated the religious
peace post factum. At the beginning of October, the prelates and nobles
of Brabant had resumed discussion of a concept of religious peace
referred to them by the Council of State. For the sake of unity, they
consented to the proclamation of the religious peace in the Duchy of
Brabant.48 It is not clear what exactly caused their change of attitude.
In any case, the Broad Council as a part of the third estate of Bra-
bant started discussions. On 9 October Burgomaster Jan van Stralen
informed the Broad Council that the magistracy joined the decision
of the prelates and nobles. The other members of the Broad Coun-
cil were requested to offer their opinion about the religious peace as
well. The old aldermen, wardmasters, and deans of the guilds did so
on 13 and 15 October.49 In general, they agreed. The most important
remark related to the fact that the Lutherans were not mentioned in
the concept. The wardmasters declared that the word “Reformed” was
not applicable to adherents of the Confession of Augsburg, who had to
be mentioned as such.50 In passing, it should be noticed that the Ana-
baptists, who had built an important community in the past decades,51
were never mentioned in the text of the religious peace. This omission

46
Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith. Religious Conflict and the Practice of Tol-
eration in Early Modern Europe, (Cambridge, MA: 2007), 198–203, 211–217.
47
SAA, Privilegekamer, 82, fol. 141r°.
48
See the opinion of 3 October 1578 in SAA, Privilegekamer, 1568, fols. 295v°–
296v°.
49
SAA, Privilegekamer, 1951, fols. 91v°–93r°, 94v°–99r°.
50
Ibid., fol. 93r°.
51
Marnef, Antwerp, ch. 5 and 9.
 the case of 16th-century antwerp 89

seems to indicate that the city government still considered them not
sufficiently respectable to be included.
This “provisional” religious peace of August 1578 was an important
step for Antwerp’s Calvinists and Lutherans, just as was the Septem-
ber 1566 accord. Henceforth, they could expand their churches in an
officially sanctioned way. No province in the Low Countries accepted
the religious peace proposed by William of Orange in June 1578. The
acceptance and execution of such a peace remained an urban matter.
Besides Antwerp, there were at least 27 other towns that decided to
introduce it. There were, on the contrary, provinces where it found
no ground. In the Walloon provinces, the religious peace was never
proclaimed, and in Holland and Zeeland only the city of Haarlem pro-
claimed it.52 The proclamation and maintenance of the peace was pri-
marily a pragmatic matter. Ubachs rightly observed that the proposed
mutual tolerance was in the first place an escape route in order to join
forces against Spain and to prevent a civil war.53
In Antwerp elements were at work which undoubtedly contributed
to the proclamation of a religious peace, such as the economically-
inspired openness of the city government and the presence of William
of Orange and Matthias of Austria with their courts. Antwerp was,
together with Brussels, also the only city which included the Lutherans
in the religious peace.54 In Antwerp, religious relationships developed
that were more moderate than those in Flanders. There, Ghent became
the citadel of an aggressively expansive Calvinism. There the Calvinist
movement had made such progress by the second half of 1578 that the
Catholic Church was completely under pressure. The religious peace
proclaimed at Ghent in December 1578, after intense lobbying by Wil-
liam of Orange, aimed at the re-allowance and public exercise of the
Catholic faith.55

52
P. J. H. Ubachs, “De Nederlandse religievrede van 1578,” Nederlands Archief voor
Kerkgeschiedenis 77 (1997): 54–56. See also the list p. 55, to which Dendermonde
should be added.
53
Ibid., 51.
54
For Brussels, see Guido Marnef, “Het Protestantisme te Brussel onder de ‘Cal-
vinistische Republiek’, ca. 1577–1585” in: W. P. Blockmans and H. Van Nuffel (eds.),
Staat en Religie in de 15e en 16e eeuw (Brussels: 1986), 231–299, esp. 243–246.
55
See for a comparison between Antwerp and Brussels the letter of William Davi-
son to William Cecil, 1 September 1578, in Kervyn de Lettenhove, Relations politiques,
X, 786, and André Despretz, “De instauratie der Gentse Calvinistische Republiek
(1577–1579),” Handelingen der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te
Gent 17 (1963): 177–179.
90 guido marnef

The “Eternal” Religious Peace of 1579

The religious peace of August 1578 enabled Calvinists and Lutherans

to realize further expansion within a short time span. Yet, the procla-
mation of religious peace agreements could not prevent further politi-
cal polarization. It was especially the Calvinists who profited from this
development. They strengthened their position in the city government
at all levels: in the magistracy, in the craft guilds, in the Broad Coun-
cil, and in the leadership of the civic militia and the shooting compa-
nies. In March 1579, the Broad Council appointed a committee for the
evaluation and—if necessary—adaptation of the religious peace.56 This
adaptation materialized soon and, as often happened, was triggered by
concrete events.
On Ascension Day, 28 May 1579, the chapter of Our Lady organized
a solemn general procession, attended by the Antwerp clergy and many
Catholic citizens. Matthias of Austria and his retinue marched in the
procession. Such processions were a vehicle par excellence to articulate
Catholic presence in an urban space. Hence, it was no surprise that the
Calvinists opposed such initiatives. The Antwerp magistracy thought
it advisable that the procession make only the “small” tour around the
church in stead of the “grand” tour through the city. When the proces-
sion began the grand tour nonetheless, Colonel Adam Verhult inter-
vened with his soldiers. The resulting violence caused two deaths and
many injuries. The participants in the procession, including Matthias
of Austria, were forced to seek shelter in the church of Our Lady. Wil-
liam of Orange tried to pacify the explosive situation; he negotiated
with the colonels and the captains of the civic militia and reached an
agreement that Matthias and his councilors could leave the sanctuary
of the church. Talks with the city magistracy led to the expulsion of
some 150 Catholic clergymen.57
The next day, William of Orange convened the city government,
including the representatives of the Broad Council as well as the colo-

56
SAA, Privilegekamer, 1658, fols. 326r°, 330r°–331r°, and Rijksarchief Antwerpen,
Fonds Stad Antwerpen, 3, fols. 4–5 (deliberations in Broad Council, 20 and 22 March
1579).
57
For a detailed description of the incident, see J. P. Blaes and A. Henne (eds.),
Mémoires anonymes sur les troubles des Pays-Bas 1565–1580, vol. 4 (Brussels: 1864),
126–129. See also an aviso from Antwerp, 3 June 1579, in: Hessisches Staatsarchiv
Marburg, Bestand 4, Abteilung f, Niederlande, 297, and Algemeen Rijksarchief Brus-
sels, Papiers L.-P. Gachard, 698, fols. 210r°–211r°.
 the case of 16th-century antwerp 91

nels and deans of the shooting companies. He greatly deplored what

had happened and feared that it could cause altercations and violence
in other towns. He therefore asked the members of the Broad Council
to seek remedies that could alter the climate of strife and division.58
The arguments put forward in the Broad Council during the next few
days reveal how things had changed since the proclamation of the pro-
visional religious peace of August 1578. All members of the Broad
Council agreed that a new religious peace was necessary, but their atti-
tude towards the Catholic clergy had changed. The old aldermen were
the most moderate. They emphasized that matters of religion could
not be settled by violence. They mentioned the Latin expression “Con-
cordia res parvae crescent”, “small things flourish thanks to unity”,
which would become the motto of the young Dutch Republic.59 They
added that now disorder and discord threatened to ruin the city and
to bring back the slavery and tyranny of the Spaniards. A strict main-
tenance of the religious peace was the only remedy against all these
threatening evils.60
The majority of the wardmasters (14 of 26) was more radical. They
agreed that liberty should be guaranteed for all Christian religions,
but they added that the Catholics should be content with 10 or 12
priests who could preach the Word of God and perform the ceremo-
nies of their church. They believed that it was not necessary to suf-
fer all the mendicant friars and the canons, who were nothing more
than a burden for the common man.61 The deans of the craft guilds
declared that the troubles of Ascension Day were unjust, since the war
was conducted for the sake of liberty and freedom of conscience. The
Catholics, Calvinists, and Lutherans should enjoy free exercise of their
confession, according to the religious peace, but the Catholics should
not be allowed to organize public processions or perform other public
acts that could offend the Calvinists or Lutherans.62

58
Pieter Génard, “Verzameling getiteld: collegiale actenboeken 1577–83,” Antwerp-
sch Archievenblad 15 (no date): 399–401; SAA, Privilegekamer, 1658, fols. 397r°–
399v°.
59
The motto had its origins in the literature of the antiquity—it was, in fact, a quote
from Sallust’s Jugurthine War. See Anton van der Lem, Verbeeldingen van vrijheid.
Partijtekens en nationale symboliek in de eerste decennia van de Tachtigjarige Oorlog
1564–1584 (Utrecht: 2006).
60
SAA, Privilegekamer, 1658, fols. 402v°–406r° (29 May 1579).
61
Ibid., fols. 406v°–407v° (29 May 1579).
62
Ibid., fol. 410r° (29 May 1579).
92 guido marnef

The decision-making process in the Broad Council led to a new reli-

gious peace, the so-called “eternal” peace of 12 June 1579, granted by
the Antwerp city government and endorsed by William of Orange.
The text contained an extensive introduction, which explained the
central ideas behind the peace, and a set of concrete arrangements.63
The basic principle was that all Christians, whatever their confession,
should live in peace and concord, complying with the ordinances of
their civil authorities. Therefore, Catholics, Calvinists, and Lutherans—
but not the Anabaptists—were allowed to organize public churches.
The main ideas of the religious peace of 1578 were repeated, such as
church buildings for all three religions, mutual respect, interdiction
of malicious writings, songs, etc., and maintenance of traditional holy
days. It also specified that all citizens were equal in civic matters. Pub-
lic offices—such as posts in the city government—were open to all
citizens, regardless their religion. The same applied to schooling and
health care.
When we look at the concrete points of the eternal peace of 1579
and compare it with the previous peace settlement, we see that the
position of the Catholic Church was less favorable. The Catholics
kept only three parish churches, including the main parish church of
Our Lady. Furthermore, the eternal peace stipulated that the Calvin-
ists and Lutherans could claim more space for worship if necessary.
Secular priests were allowed to return to the city, but the majority of
male regular religious received no such permission. Henceforth, all
ecclesiastical persons were subject to taxes, and all public processions
were forbidden. The peace established a committee, consisting of three
persons of each religion, for the maintenance of the religious peace.64
Finally, the eternal peace announced a purely political arrangement:
the entry of the city of Antwerp into the Union of Utrecht.65 The aim of
the new peace settlement was, in fact, twofold: 1) To guarantee urban

63
See the text in SAA, Privilegekamer, 82, fols. 143r°–147r°, and Floris Prims (ed.),
Register der Commissie tot onderhoud van de Religionsvrede te Antwerpen (1579–1581)
(Brussels: 1954) 31–43.
64
For the activities of this committee, see Prims, Register der Commissie.
65
This entry was much debated in the Broad Council and particularly pushed by
the committee of colonels. The formal signing of the treaty of the Union of Utrecht
by the representatives of the Antwerp city government happened on 29 July 1579.
S. Groenveld and H. L. Ph. Leeuwenberg, “Die originale unie metten acten daernaer
gevolcht” in S. Groenveld and H. L. Ph. Leeuwenberg (eds.), De Unie van Utrecht.
Wording en werking van een verbond en een verbondsacte (The Hague: 1979) 45.
 the case of 16th-century antwerp 93

peace and order, which was a necessary precondition for the welfare
of the Antwerp metropolis; 2) To unite forces in order to win the war
against Spanish tyranny. Yet, it soon became clear that there was a gap
between principles and reality. The process of political polarization
continued—1579 was a crucial year in this process. The formation of
two separate unions—the Catholic Union of Arras and the dominantly
Calvinist Union of Utrecht—confirmed the growing division in the
Low Countries. Furthermore, the peace conference at Cologne, which
was an attempt to reconcile the rebellious provinces with the king of
Spain, failed in 1579, mainly because the parties could not agree upon
a religious settlement. As a consequence, Catholics were increasingly
alienated from the Dutch Revolt, with many Catholic politicians shift-
ing their support from the revolt to the king. As a result, the rebel
party perceived the Catholics as unreliable. In the rebel towns, where
a religious peace had been proclaimed, more and more pressure was
put upon the Catholic Church.66
This is exactly what happened in Antwerp. The Catholics lost church
buildings to the Calvinists and Lutherans, their clergy was put under
stricter control, and more priests were expelled.67 In August 1579, the
Broad Council appointed a committee for the disposal of Catholic eccle-
siastical property. It consisted of six members—two from each confes-
sion recognized by the eternal religious peace. Initially, this committee
focused on the property of the expelled mendicant orders, but later
the property of other ecclesiastical institutions was also inventoried
and confiscated. The revenue was used for the payment of Calvinist
and Lutheran ministers and for the alimentation of apostate Catholic
clergy.68 That a peaceful and stable coexistence of several religions was
difficult to achieve in a period of increasing political and religious ten-
sions also became clear on Sundays and holy days. The committee for

66
For the politico-religious polarization in 1579, see Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch
Revolt (London: 1990), 194–197; Leon Van der Essen, “De Unies, 1578–1579” in
J. A. Van Houtte et al. (eds.), Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, vol. 5 (Utrecht:
1952), 116–139; idem, “De scheuring in de Nederlanden 1579–1585” in J. A. Van
Houtte et al., Algemene Geschiedenis, vol. 5, 140–152.
67
Prims, Register der Commissie, passim; Génard, “Verzameling getiteld,” Antwerp-
sch Archievenblad, 15 (s.d.): 15 and 16 (s.d.), passim; SAA, Privilegekamer, 657 (regis-
ter with requests presented to the city magistracy 1579–1580, passim).
68
Prims, Register der Commissie, passim; SAA, Privilegekamer, 1656, fol. 58r°
(proposition magistracy, 20 August 1579); SAA, Privilegekamer, 1657, fols. 29v°–30r°,
32v°, 34v°, 3r°, 435v°–44r° (opinion wardmasters and deans of the guilds, 13–23 April
1580); SAA, Privilegekamer, 1792, request and opinion colonels 13 April 1580.
94 guido marnef

the maintenance of the religious peace asked priests and ministers to

admonish their congregations not to work publicly or to open shops
on these days. Infringements on this prescription caused public scan-
dal and frictions between Catholics and Protestants.69 The Calvinist
ministers responded that it was not appropriate to forbid work on
other days than Sundays, because God commanded in Holy Scripture
only to observe the seventh day of the week as a day of rest.70
The situation of the Catholic Church deteriorated from month to
month, while, at the same time, the Calvinists consolidated their posi-
tion in the city government. On 1 July 1581, the Antwerp city govern-
ment finally prohibited the public exercise of the Catholic religion.
The immediate motive for this proclamation was the capture of nearby
Breda by Spanish troops,71 but it was, of course, also the result of a lon-
ger process of deterioration and exclusion. The city fathers granted the
Catholics only two chapels, where they could celebrate their baptisms
and marriages. For these rites, they were allowed to hire six priests
who should take an oath of loyalty to the city government.72 These
were small concessions to a religious community that still constituted
the majority of the population.
The so-called ‘eternal’ religious peace had lasted just two years. Yet,
the ordinance of 1 July 1581 did not create a monopoly position for
the Calvinist Church. The Lutherans retained their right of public wor-
ship and church-building. Nor did the antagonism between Calvinists
and Lutherans disappear. The stain of political unreliability had never
gone, and the rivalry between the confessions was still alive. The Cal-
vinist Church leaders would have preferred, in fact, to exclude the
Lutherans from the religious peaces proclaimed in 1578 and 1579,73
but this was a step too far for the Antwerp city fathers, who took into
account the economic importance of the Lutheran community.

69
Prims, Register der Commissie, 108–109.
70
Blaes and Henne, Mémoires anonymes, V, 144–145.
71
See the instructions for representatives of the Antwerp city government, 8 July
1581, in Rijksarchief Zeeland, Archief Jan van de Warck, 6.
72
The text of the prohibition in Jos Van den Nieuwenhuizen, Het beleg en de over-
gave van Antwerpen in 1585 (Antwerp: 1985), 17.
73
See, for instance, Jeremias Bastingius, Calvinist Minister at Antwerp, to the Con-
sistory of Delft, 22 August 1578, in H. Q. Janssen (ed.), Bescheiden aangaande de
kerkhervorming in Vlaanderen (Utrecht: 1877), 10, and Bernardino de Mendoza to
Philip II, 8 September 1578, in Martin A. S. Hume (ed.), Calendar of Letters and State
Papers Relating to English Affair, Preserved Principally in the Archives of Simancas,
vol. 2 (London: 1849), 613.
 the case of 16th-century antwerp 95

The Catholic Monopoly Restored

The Catholic community more than once protested its position, but
no significant change occurred in the period of the Calvinist Republic.
During the siege of Antwerp by Alexander Farnese and his Spanish
army (August 1584–August 1585), the Antwerp Catholics found new
courage. Yet, real change only materialized after the capitulation of
the city.
When in May 1585 attempts to break Farnese’s blockade failed,
the city fathers realized that they would have to negotiate a capitula-
tion with Farnese. Official discussion, endorsed by the Broad Council,
started at the beginning of July.74 The Antwerp deputies, headed by
Burgomaster Marnix of St Aldegonde, preferred a general peace treaty
that would include the provinces of Holland and Zeeland. They hoped
that such an accord might bring more generous conditions, particularly
in religious issues. Farnese, however, was not prepared to consider a
general peace agreement. He wanted to deal with the rebellious towns
on an individual basis—a strategy that had already proven successful.
In a memorandum, containing no less than 40 articles, the Antwerp
negotiators asked that the king grant Calvinists and Lutherans some
churches for the exercise of their religion and that he permit the burial
of their deceased in public cemeteries (article 6).75 Yet, Farnese was
not prepared to offer substantial concessions in matters of religion.
The exclusive exercise of the Catholic religion, without the toleration
of any other confession, was his starting point. He would grant Cal-
vinists and Lutherans a term of three years only, during which they
were allowed to live in the city without being troubled, provided that
they caused no scandal. Within that three-year period, they had the
choice of converting to Catholicism or emigrating from the city. The
Antwerp negotiators tried in vain to push Farnese toward a more lib-
eral agreement. The Spanish governor refused proposals for rights to
carry out publicly baptisms, marriages, and burials. The final capitu-
lation treaty, signed on 17 August 1585, granted the Calvinists and

74
See Guido Marnef, “Burgemeester in moeilijke tijden. Marnix en het beleg van
Antwerpen” in Henk Duits and Ton van Strien (eds.), Een intellectuele activist. Stu-
dies over leven en werk van Philips van Marnix van Sint-Aldegonde (Hilversum: 2001),
28–36.
75
Articles of 23 July 1585 in L.-P. Gachard (ed.), “Documents concernant le siège
d’ Anvers par le prince de Parme et la reconciliation de cette ville avec Philippe II,”
Bulletin de la Commission royale d’Histoire 12 (1871), 241–254.
96 guido marnef

Lutherans a period of tolerance of four in stead of three years. This

was significantly more than Farnese had allowed in Ghent (two years),
Brussels (two years), and Mechelen (seven months). For Marnix and
the many Calvinists and Lutherans within Antwerp’s city walls it was
undoubtedly little consolation.76
The treaty of 17 August ended Antwerp’s “Calvinist Republic”. Ten
days later, Farnese made his triumphal entry in the city. For the next four
years, the Calvinists and Lutherans enjoyed a de facto freedom of con-
science. Farnese supervised the establishment of a new political regime,
including a purge of the shooting companies and the civic militia.
Strongly believing in the intrinsic power of the Counter-Reformation,
he also took measures for the restoration of the Catholic Church. One
of his aims was to convert as many Calvinists and Lutherans as pos-
sible during the four-year period of tolerance. By the time the rec-
onciliation term expired in 1589, more than 1600 had converted to
Catholicism. Some Calvinists had hoped to obtain an extension of the
four-year period. They even collected money in order to “buy” such
a concession from the central government, but the enterprise failed,
partly due to the opposition of the Antwerp bishop. Many Calvinists
and Lutherans decided to leave the city. Within four years, the popula-
tion of Antwerp declined by nearly half, going from ca. 82,000 in 1585
to ca. 42,000 in 1589. The emigrants included some Catholics who left
for economic reasons, but the majority were undoubtedly Calvinists
and Lutherans who left to preserve their faiths.77

Conclusion

The case of 16th-century Antwerp makes clear how difficult it was to

build a multiconfessional society in an era of political and religious
strife. The city fathers realized that increasing religious divisions jeop-
ardized the interests of their “community of commerce”.78 Matthias

76
The reconciliation treaty of 17 August in ibid., 286–298; Marnef, “Burgemeester,”
34–35.
77
Guido Marnef, “Reconquering a rebellious city: Alessandro Farnese and the Siege
and Recatholicization of Antwerp” in Hans Cools and Krista de Jonge (eds.), Alexan-
der Farnese and the Low Countries (Turnhout: 2010); idem, “Protestant Conversions
in an Age of Catholic Reformation: The Case of Sixteenth-Century Antwerp” in Arie-
Jan Gelderblom et al. (eds.), The Low Countries as a Crossroads of Religious Beliefs
(Leiden: 2004), 37–42.
78
An M. Kint, “The Community of Commerce. Social Relationships in Sixteenth-
Century Antwerp” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1996), passim.
 the case of 16th-century antwerp 97

of Austria agreed. When he addressed the Antwerp Broad Council

after the incident on Ascension Day 1579, he argued that “the inhabit-
ants ought to consider how beautiful, famous and prosperous the city
of Antwerp is, and that its tranquility and prosperity depended on
the freedom of all nations and that everyone should enjoy freedom
of conscience without being suppressed in matters of religion”. The
maintenance of the religious peace was a necessity.79
The accord of 2 September 1566 and the religious peaces of 1578
and 1579 were, in fact, attempts to find a solution for the changing
religious environment. They created a legal framework that sanctioned
the public exercise of the Catholic, Calvinist, and Lutheran confes-
sions. Clergy and laity had to avoid any action that might cause dis-
cord, and they all had to submit to the civil authorities. The “eternal’
peace of 1579 even institutionalized the arrangement of multiconfes-
sionalism. The committee for the maintenance of the religious peace
included three members of each confession recognized by the peace. It
followed the principle of “equality and equal number of office” among
the three recognized confessions. Yet, this principle did not apply to
the main political bodies that determined the decision-making pro-
cess, such as the magistracy and the Broad Council. Furthermore,
stable and enduring peace settlements were thwarted by the rapidly
changing political context. The Spanish king or his loyal representa-
tives in the Netherlands could revoke an arrangement allowing multi-
or biconfessionalism once they had regained power, as happened in
1567 and 1585. On the other hand, the religious peace settlements
could be adapted to the rapid Calvinist expansion, as happened in
1578 and 1579. In these years of politico-religious polarization, the
Calvinist leaders considered the religious peaces as springboards for
Calvinist dominance. They emphasized their claims by portraying the
Catholics, especially the Catholic clergy, as supporters of the Spanish
enemy. After the capitulation of the city in 1585, the champions of a
triumphant Counter-Reformation policy started a similar process, this
time casting the Calvinists as enemies. The Jesuit propaganda cam-
paign fostered a Tridentine faith colored by the rejection and even
diabolization of a heretical and rebellious “other”.80 In such a climate,
experiments of multiconfessionalism belonged to a distant past.

79
Address of 1 June 1579, in: Rijksarchief Antwerp, Fonds Stad Antwerpen, 3, fol.
28.
80
Marnef, “Protestant conversions,” 42–45.
 “IN EQUALITY AND ENJOYING THE SAME FAVOR”:
BICONFESSIONALISM IN THE LOW COUNTRIES

Benjamin J. Kaplan

Such is the nature of our government that even the Papists, who on
account of the common cause have embraced our side, are faithful to
us by virtue of solemn promises. For that reason we ought also to have
permitted the public exercise of Papist Religion, were it not that the
priests and monks, our sworn enemies, had endeavoured to incite them
to sedition. Indeed we even tolerate the Anabaptists themselves, being
convinced that [knowledge of] the true religion is a gift of God. . . .
Ecclesiastical Ordinances Drafted by Order of the States of Holland, 15761
In the wake of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, when Europe’s
Christians struggled with the consequences of their new religious divi-
sions, those who ruled over religiously mixed populations discovered
that there were two ways to accommodate multiple churches in a sin-
gle state. One was for them to acknowledge publicly and officially that
their subjects—and perhaps they themselves, as a governing elite—
were divided by faith into rival ecclesiastical establishments. But in
an age when separation of church and state was almost inconceivable,
that meant that rulers who viewed themselves as “Christian magis-
trates,” responsible for promoting piety and the “true faith,” had to
authorize, protect, and possibly give governmental support to forms
of Christianity which they deemed erroneous, pernicious, or even
satanic. They also had to find mechanisms for containing the religious
enmities that would set some of their subjects inevitably against one
another, and possibly against them. The other approach was for rulers
to establish a single official church but unofficially to tolerate dissent
so long as it stayed discreetly out of sight, out of the public sphere. In
that case, rulers could maintain a pretense, or fiction, that they and
their subjects remained religiously united. They could avoid strife and
secure the material benefits that often came from accepting religious
diversity, even while salving their consciences and preserving the

1
Alastair Duke, “Select documents for the Reformation and the Revolt of the Low
Countries, 1555–1609,” http://dutchrevolt.leidenuniv.nl/English/default.htm [accessed
24 Sept 2009], #34, “Justification.”
100 benjamin j. kaplan

sacred foundation of their state. So stated, it is no wonder that rulers

usually found the second approach more palatable than the first. Of
course, both approaches had variants, and aspects of the two could
be combined with one another. But basically the alternatives were de
jure official toleration, which historians call “bi-” or “multiconfession-
alism,” depending on the number of churches sanctioned; or de facto
toleration by connivance.2
The Dutch Republic was the supreme example in early modern
Europe of the latter. Founded during the revolt against Spain, it was
officially a Reformed (Calvinist) polity and by its laws, most impor-
tantly the Union of Utrecht (1579), it granted non-Calvinists only the
limited right of freedom of conscience.3 That meant that people did
not have to belong to the Reformed Church or attend its services,
and that in the privacy of their homes they and their families could
believe as they pleased and engage in any sort of domestic devotions.
On this basis, Catholics, Mennonites, and a variety of other native
religious dissenters were able in practice, with the tacit complicity of
magistrates and fellow citizens, to form congregations and operate the
quasi-clandestine churches known today as schuilkerken—hundreds of
them. These churches, which looked from the outside like ordinary
houses, barns, or warehouses, were the most important mechanism by
which religious diversity was accommodated in Dutch society.4
Historians tend to forget, however, that the schuilkerk was by no
means the only such mechanism, and that the Republic’s reputation
for toleration did not rest on them alone. Perhaps most remarkably,
in the southeastern enclaves of Maastricht, the Lands of Overmaas,
and Upper Gelderland, cut off from the rest of the Republic by foreign
territory (Map 1), Catholics as well as Calvinists worshiped completely
openly. In these three areas, conquered by stadholder Frederick Hen-
drik in 1632, Dutch authorities granted de jure official toleration to
Roman Catholicism. But if Frederik Hendrik or his father William
of Orange had had their way, these would not have been the only
biconfessional parts of the Dutch Republic. Beginning in the 16th cen-

2
Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Tol-
eration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: 2007), chs. 6–8.
3
S. Groenveld and H. L. Ph. Leeuwenberg (eds.), De Unie van Utrecht. Wording en
werking van een verbond en een verbondsacte (The Hague: 1979), article 13, 34–5.
4
Benjamin J. Kaplan, “Fictions of Privacy: House Chapels and the Spatial Accom-
modation of Religious Dissent in Early Modern Europe,” American Historical Review
107 (2002): 1031–64.
 biconfessionalism in the low countries 101

tury, it was repeatedly proposed, suggested, or feared that the Dutch

might adopt a biconfessional arrangement for Calvinists and Catho-
lics, their two largest religious groups, and the two that were most
at odds. Models were not far to seek: both to the south and east, the
Low Countries were flanked by biconfessional neighbours. Arguments
were made that biconfessionalism had advantages over granting dis-
senters mere freedom of conscience. Yet in practice, only parts of the
Low Countries ever adopted such an arrangement, and only for brief
periods, with the sole exception of those small southeastern enclaves,
where biconfessionalism lasted, with just one notable interruption, to
the very end of the Republic. What follows, then, is a story less of what
was than of what might have been—of a possibility people were keenly
aware of, but that time and again failed or was rejected.
* * *
At the beginning of the Revolt, when the Habsburg Philip II still
ruled all 17 provinces of the northern and southern Netherlands, it
was the spread of Calvinism that posed most urgently the question
whether more than one religion could be tolerated, and if so, how.
Severe placards issued by Philip and his father Charles V made any
form of Protestant belief or worship punishable by death. And yet,
after years of fermentation underground, in 1566 tens of thousands
of Netherlanders evinced publicly their sympathy for the new faith by
attending outdoor “hedge sermons” by Protestant preachers. A great
wave of iconoclasm, perpetrated by far smaller groups, followed. In its
wake, to avoid further unrest, officials struck local accords with Prot-
estants which, in some cases, granted the latter provisionally the right
not only to continue their hedge sermons on the same sites they had
previously used, as Philip’s regent Margaret of Parma had reluctantly
conceded, but to conduct their services within city walls. In some cit-
ies, such as Utrecht and Nijmegen, Protestants were permitted to use
one of the church buildings they had attacked and “purified” during
their iconoclastic riots. In the metropolis of Antwerp, economic hub
of the Low Countries, William of Orange negotiated an accord with
Calvinist and Lutheran leaders, organizing a special militia to enforce
the agreement and keep the peace.5

5
Pieter Bor, Oorsprongk, begin, en vervolgh der Nederlandsche oorlogen, beroerten,
en borgerlyke oneenigheden, vol. 1 (Amsterdam: 1679–84), 96–112, quotation on 99;
102 benjamin j. kaplan

Margaret quickly voided those accords that overstepped the bounds

she had set, but several months passed before it became clear that her
half-brother repudiated all of them. In that interval, in November
1566, William of Orange distilled his views into a Memorandum on
the critical state of the Low Countries and the means to cure them. In
it, he urged that the Netherlands learn from the tragic experience of
its neighbors France and the Holy Roman Empire. Holding out as a
negative example the religious wars that had afflicted both lands, he
pleaded for the Netherlands to avoid futile suffering and devastation
by adopting promptly and willingly the same remedy that the French
and Germans had eventually been forced to accept under duress:
. . . seeing our poor country so ill and on the brink of destruction, it seems
to me that we must look around us and see what remedy our neighbors,
who have been struck by the same evil, have employed; for, having tried
all the means in the world to avoid the exercise of another religion, they
have in the end been compelled by force . . . to permit it . . . .
In a list of possible solutions, Orange threw his weight behind two:
either permit non-Catholic worship and “prescribe in each province
certain places for it,” or “leave it to the choice of each city, lord, or
gentleman holding powers of high justice.” Himself a German prince
with a network of allies and clients in the Empire, Orange felt it would
be especially fitting if the Netherlands, until recently a part of the
Empire, “conformed” in this regard “to its institutions.” 6
One possible solution Orange notably rejected: granting Protes-
tants mere freedom of conscience. This, he thought, would leave them
unsatisfied and so was a recipe for disloyalty and unrest—an argu-
ment which, mutatis mutandis, would be made decades later concern-
ing Catholics. Moreover,
it would be the true way . . . to nourish in these lands all the sects and
heresies of the world, [and to] cast the rest into an atheism that could

P. J. H. Ubachs, “De Nederlandse religievrede van 1578,” Nederlands Archief voor

Kerkgeschiedenis 77 (1997): 44.
6
William of Orange, “Mémoire sur l’état critique des Pays-Bas et les moyens d’y
porter remède,” http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/groe009arch02_01/groe009arch02_01_0124
.htm [accessed 6 Aug 2009]; Elisabeth Marieke Geevers, “Gevallen vazallen: de inte-
gratie van Oranje, Egmont en Horn in de Spaans-Habsburgse monarchie (1559–1567)”
(Ph.D. diss., University of Amsterdam, 2008). In an alternate version of the Mémoire
(same reference), Orange also subscribed to permitting only the Augsburg Confession
(as in the Empire), or only the Augsburg Confession and that of Calvin, in addition
to the Catholic religion.
 biconfessionalism in the low countries 103

only cause disobedience without any respect, for one knows that those
who think badly of the Catholic religion would never want to have any-
thing to do with our churches, and all those people would die like brute
beasts. . . .
Freedom of conscience, in other words, had two grave disadvantages.
First, to grant it to everyone was to open the door to an unlimited vari-
ety of faiths, some of them far more noxious than Calvinism. Negative
judgment aside, this was an astute prediction, for in the 17th century
the Republic would have no equal in Europe in the number and diver-
sity of its religious groups. Second, Orange argued, faith alone was not
enough: without worship and a church, people were as good as with-
out religion altogether.7 Earlier in the same year, Franciscus Junius,
minister to Antwerp’s Calvinists, had made precisely the same points
in A brief discourse sent to King Philip. Without the public worship,
ceremonies, and moral lessons provided by a church, people would fall
into atheism and libertinism: “people must be kept under the outward
discipline of some religion, whatever it may be, whether good or bad,”
and so the best course was for Philip to countenance the Reformed
Church, with its robust system of ecclesiastical discipline, alongside
the Catholic and to require everyone to belong to one or the other.
In effect, Junius was proposing an alliance of Catholics and Calvinists
against the licentiousness he associated with spiritualist sects such as
the Family of Love. The magistrates of Leiden, when in January 1567
they struck an accord with local Calvinists, justified themselves in sim-
ilar terms, claiming their purpose was to hinder “all other reprobated
sects and heresies,” including the Anabaptists.8
These arguments had no purchase on Philip II, who sent the Duke
of Alva to extirpate everything he regarded as heresy, which most
definitely included Calvinism. Only in 1572, after some cities in Hol-
land and Zeeland renewed the revolt by admitting the Sea Beggars
and proclaiming William of Orange their leader, did the issue of tol-
eration arise again. Orange once again favored full rights of worship
for both Calvinists and Catholics. At the first “free” assembly of the
States of Holland in July, his representative Philip van Marnix, Lord of
St. Aldegonde, declared that his master’s intention was “that freedom

7
Orange, “Mémoire.”
8
Franciscus Junius, “A brief discourse sent to King Philip, our prince and sov-
ereign lord . . . ,” http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/koss002text01_01/koss002text01_01_0004
.htm [accessed 6 August 2009]; Bor, Nederlandsche oorlogen, 1:107.
104 benjamin j. kaplan

of religion would be maintained, both for the Reformed and the Roman
[Catholics], and that everyone in his own, in public and in churches
or chapels, however the authorities find it most suitable to ordain,
would have free exercise of the same.”9 Orange instructed his com-
manders accordingly; local agreements were struck similar to those in
1566; and on several occasions, Orange leapt to the defense of Catholic
worship, standing up to the most militant of his own supporters. His
efforts were to no avail. Beggar troops attacked Catholic churches in
Haarlem, Leiden, Gouda, and Dordrecht, among other cities. Further
disturbances were forestalled only by closing Catholic churches. The
desperate situation in which the rebels found themselves made them
prone to war hysteria, ready to accept as true any rumor of sedition.
Catholics as a group could not escape the suspicion that they supported
Philip II, champion of their faith, against a rebel coalition dominated
by Protestants. Though the dating is uncertain, around April 1573 the
States of Holland bowed to pressure and banned Catholic worship.10
Five years later, Orange tried again, making the most serious and
ambitious effort in the history of the Low Countries to introduce
biconfessionalism: the official, de jure authorizing of Calvinism and
Catholicism, with both faiths to be exercised publicly and equal “civil”
rights for their adherents. Why Orange strived so hard to this end has
been a subject of much commentary and judgment by historians, who
tend to posit that he was motivated either by a principled belief in
religious freedom or by a pragmatic, political need to keep Catholics
and Calvinists fighting together against Spain, not against one another.
The debate is a sterile one because the two alternatives were anything
but mutually exclusive; Orange’s values and interests wholly coin-
cided.11 One can say, though, that the driving motivation behind his
effort was, as in 1572, the urgent need to maintain the rebel coalition
of Calvinists and Catholics. This time, though, the coalition he was
desperately trying to hold together extended across all 17 Netherland-

9
Bor, Nederlandsche oorlogen, 1:389.
10
Bor, Nederlandsche oorlogen, 1:380–93; Duke, “Select documents,” #26; Alastair
C. Duke, Reformation and revolt in the Low Countries (London: 1990), 203–9; H. A.
Enno van Gelder, Revolutionnaire reformatie. De vestiging van de Gereformeerde Kerk
in de Nederlandse gewesten, gedurende de eerste jaren van de Opstand tegen Filips II,
1575–1585 (Amsterdam: 1943), 17–33; James D. Tracy, The Founding of the Dutch
Republic: War, Finance, and Politics in Holland, 1572–1588 (Oxford: 2008), 81, 118.
11
For an overview of the debate, see Ubachs, “Nederlandse religievrede,” 42–3, who
denies that the religievrede was an expression of religious tolerance.
 biconfessionalism in the low countries 105

ish provinces, which by the Pacification of Ghent (1576) had agreed

to fight together to force “the Spanish” to depart. Thus it included, at
one end of the spectrum, Holland and Zeeland, where Calvinism was
now the official, public faith; at the other end, the Walloon provinces,
chiefly Artois and Hainaut, where Protestantism had never gained a
firm foothold and elites, especially the nobility, were determined to
thwart its spread; while in the middle, internally divided, stood most
of the other provinces, foremost among them Flanders and Brabant,
from which thousands of Protestants had fled into exile. Under the
terms of the Pacification, all the provinces had agreed to a suspension
of the heresy edicts, but nothing more. This was utterly insufficient to
satisfy either the refugees who now flooded back to their homes, or the
other members of the Reformed congregations that quickly formed.
The events that ensued in 1577–79 were complex and varied greatly
by locale. Overall, though, a general dynamic can be observed in those
middle provinces, as well as in Amsterdam and Haarlem, which like
the former had previously been occupied by Spanish troops and only
joined the Revolt with the Pacification. Where the urgings of Orange
did not suffice, popular agitation, including violent attacks on Catholic
clergy and institutions, forced city governments, still dominated by
Catholics, to grant Calvinists some limited freedom of worship. Calvin-
ists took this as merely a stepping stone toward the eventual triumph
of their faith and suppression of Catholicism. Alarmed Catholics took
it as precisely the same. Every success the Calvinists booked encour-
aged further their militancy, and in a whole string of cities, including
Antwerp, they seized control of the government, either legally or by
force. In Ghent, where a tradition of guild militancy added an edge
of social radicalism to their movement, Calvinists established a theo-
cratic regime that set about exporting Calvinist revolution far and
wide across Flanders. Alienated and angry, the Walloons abandoned
the rebel coalition, making peace with Spain.12
The “religious peace” proposed by Orange in the summer of 1578
was intended to arrest this dynamic at its midpoint by establishing a
stable balance between Calvinist and Catholic parties. The term itself,
“religious peace” (Religion-frid in the original, translated usually as

12
General accounts in English include Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt (Ithaca:
1977), 187–98; Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall
1477–1806 (Oxford: 1995), 184–205; K. W. Swart, William of Orange and the Revolt
of the Netherlands, 1572–84 (Abingdon: 2003), chs. 2–3.
106 benjamin j. kaplan

religievrede) was a German import, and in proposing it to the States

General, Orange explained that by it he meant “the freedom of reli-
gions with their exercise, as in Germany and other kingdoms.”13 The
most extensive argument on its behalf was made by the Reformed
Synod of South Holland, which Orange, through his court chaplain
Villiers, mobilized after the States General gave his proposal a cool
reception. In requesting full freedom of worship for the Reformed,
the synod marshalled an impressively long list of precedents to prove
that it was not true, as some claimed, “that two religions cannot exist
together in one land.” They noted Roman emperors who had permit-
ted both pagan and Christian worship. In discussing the standard
examples of France and Germany, the synod pointed out (not entirely
accurately) that in cities such as Frankfurt, Worms, Ulm, and Augs-
burg, Protestant and Catholic religions were both practiced “without
disunity or tumult . . . Indeed, in some cities, even in one church.” The
synod went on to cite the further contemporary examples of Hungary,
Bohemia, and Poland; the Ottoman Empire and Morocco; and, like a
trump card, the Papal States, where the pope himself allowed Jews to
have “their public synagogues or schools.” Surely Protestants, as fellow
Christians who “desire only a reformation and correction” of God’s
church, deserved at least as much. All in all, the synod argued, expe-
rience suggests that “one could much rather and more certainly say
that all who have wished to suppress one of the two religions have put
their state or government in great peril and danger.” To which con-
sideration the synod added also the threat, cited in 1566, that without
a proper church would-be Protestants might fall into “an epicurean,
godless existence.”14
Drafted in the Council of State, published in the name of the Arch-
duke Matthias, Governor-General of the Low Countries, and sent
by the States General to the individual provinces for their consider-
ation, the religious peace of 1578 was intended for implementation
across the Low Countries. For the sake of “the common Fatherland,”
the peace was to remain in force until it “shall please God . . . by

13
R. H. Bremmer, “De nationale betekenis van de Synode van Dordrecht (1578)”
in D. Nauta and J. P. van Dooren (eds.), De nationale synode van Dordrecht 1578:
gerformeerden uit de Noordelijke en Zuidelijke Nederlanden bijeen (Amsterdam: 1978),
112.
14
A. C. de Schrevel (ed.), Recueil de documents relatifs aux troubles religieux en
Flandre, 1577–1584 (Bruges: 1921), 1:460–71; see also Bor, Nederlandsche oorlogen,
1:968–71.
 biconfessionalism in the low countries 107

means of a good, holy and free, general, or at least national, coun-

cil, to resolve the conflicting opinions which we see in these lands
concerning the matter of religion.” When such a council might be
convened or how it might resolve the differences, except perhaps by
an agreement similar to the religievrede itself, was never clear. But in
the interim, for an indefinite period, Calvinists were to be allowed to
worship publicly in any large community where they (excluding those
resident for less than a year) numbered over 100 households and in
smaller communities wherever they (with the same exclusion) formed
a majority of the population. In Holland and Zeeland, where the shoe
was on the other foot, the same provisions were to apply to Catholics,
whose religion was to be “reestablished.” Universities, schools, hos-
pitals, charitable foundations, and similar institutions were to make
no distinction between members of the two groups, who were to be
equally eligible for government offices and public posts. Protestants
were to observe some of “the laws and customs of the Catholic church
regarding marriage.” Outside Holland and Zeeland, they were also to
observe Catholic holy days and prohibitions on the sale and eating
of meat. Numerous clauses were designed to avoid future conflicts.
Sites of Catholic and Reformed worship were to be located as far apart
from one another as possible. Preachers were to avoid saying anything
“tending toward riot or sedition”; soldiers were to wear no contentious
“marks or signs on the body”; people were not to compose, sell, or
sing “any scornful or injurious songs, ballads, refrains or other libels
or defamatory writings.” In each city, a commission composed of two
Protestant and two Catholic members was to be established to investi-
gate infractions of the peace and report them to the magistrates.15
The proposal met with a very mixed reception in the provinces. It
was rejected out of hand by the States of Artois and Hainaut as con-
trary to the Pacification. In the States of Holland it was defeated by a
majority of votes, though a local peace instituted by Orange in Haarlem
in 1577 continued until 1581.16 On the provincial level, only the States
of Friesland and the Ommelanden of Groningen formally accepted
the proposal. But in Antwerp, the civic militia succeeded in pressing
magistrates to agree to a provisional accord modelled on the wider

15
Schrevel, Recueil, 448–59, 492–503.
16
Joke Spaans, Haarlem na de Reformatie. Stedelijke cultuur en kerkelijk leven,
1577–1620 (’s-Gravenhage: 1989), ch. 2.
108 benjamin j. kaplan

one. Other cities followed suit, adopting local versions of Orange’s

religious peace.17 Floris Thin, Advocate of the States of Utrecht and an
ally of Orange’s, penned in the summer of 1578 a first draft of what
became the Union of Utrecht, in which he proposed that all members
adopt the religious peace. But the final version, signed in January 1579,
left Holland and Zeeland as officially Reformed provinces and gave
other member-provinces carte blanche either to adopt the religious
peace or to regulate religious affairs as they pleased, so long as they
respected individual freedom of conscience. Catholics in Holland and
Zeeland, then, would not get freedom of worship as a quid pro quo in
exchange for the expansion of Protestantism elsewhere. Many people
regarded the Union, accordingly, as anti-Catholic. Orange declared it
“worthless” and continued for several months to hope that the States
General might approve another union based on his religious peace. In
May he gave up and signed the existing document.18
All in all, some 27 cities adopted some version of Orange’s religious
peace for a shorter or longer period between 1578 and 1581.19 Nei-
ther in Haarlem, Antwerp, Utrecht, nor elsewhere, though, did such
local accords check Protestant militancy or halt the accelerating trend
toward polarization along religious lines. Even while the accords lasted
the terms of some of them had to be renegotiated after violent clashes.
Most of the accords still functioning as of March 1580 fell victim to
the anti-Catholic backlash that followed the decision of the Catholic
George de Lalaing, Count of Rennenberg to abandon the revolt and
return, with the provinces of which he was stadholder (Friesland, Gro-
ningen, Overijssel, and Drenthe), to Spanish obedience. Across large
parts of the Low Countries, Catholic churches suffered iconoclasm,
Catholic clergy were expelled, and placards were issued outlawing the

17
Bor, Nederlandsche oorlogen, 1:974–5, 990–96; Geeraert Brandt, The History
of the Reformation and Other Ecclesiasticalal Transactions in, and about, the Low-
Countries . . . , trans. John Chamberlayne, vol. 1 (London: 1720–23), 344–49; Swart,
William of Orange, 153–60; Israel, Dutch Republic, 194–5, 203; Tracy, Founding of the
Dutch Republic, 157, 164; R. H. Bremmer, Reformatie en rebellie: Willem van Oranje,
de calvinisten en het recht van opstand. Tien onstuimige jaren: 1572–1581 (Franeker:
1984), 166–8.
18
J. J. Woltjer, “De wisselende gestalten van de Unie” in S. Groenveld and H. L. Ph.
Leeuwenberg (eds.), De Unie van Utrecht. Wording en werking van een verbond en
een verbondsacte (The Hague: 1979), 88–100; Bremmer, Reformatie en rebellie, 150;
Swart, William of Orange, 159–60; Jan den Tex, Oldenbarnevelt, trans. R. B. Powell
(Cambridge: 1973), 17–19; Tracy, Founding of the Dutch Republic, 143.
19
Ubachs, “Nederlandse religievrede,” 55.
 biconfessionalism in the low countries 109

mass. By 1581, Catholicism was banned in all those provinces and

cities still in revolt.20
However complete, the defeat of Orange’s religievrede did not con-
stitute, any more than the similar turn of events in Holland earlier, a
decisive “rejection of toleration,” as Jonathan Israel has claimed.21 It
did mean, though, that one form of toleration, de jure biconfessional-
ism, had been rejected in favor of another, de facto connivance. From
the moment of its constitutional birth, with the abjuration of Philip’s
sovereignty in 1581, the Dutch Republic was a Reformed polity. Until
the Synod of Dort in 1618–19, the character of that Reformed reli-
gion may have been disputed, and full confirmation may not have
come until the end of the Eighty-Years’ War, at the Great Assembly
of 1651. From as early as the 1580s, though, there was little ambiguity
about the identification of the Dutch state as Reformed. In 1647, pious
Zeelanders would even call the Reformed faith “the fundament upon
which this flourishing republic is based, and the principal, indeed only
bond by which the various provinces remain united with one another
in any common state government.”22
The edge of anxiety that can be heard in the Zeelanders’ declaration
is as telling, however, as the declaration itself. Issued in the context
of peace negotiations with Spain, the declaration formed part of an
extended argument why the Republic should not “permit anywhere,
wherever and under whatever pretext it may be, the public exercise of
the Roman superstitions.”23 In 1608, Philip III had made freedom of
worship for Dutch Catholics one of the conditions for making peace
and recognizing the United Provinces as a sovereign, independent
land. The Dutch had rejected such a concession out of hand, and the
two parties had ended up concluding only a 12-years’ truce. Like a
ghost that could not be laid to rest peacefully, though, the possibil-
ity that the Republic might yet grant formal freedom of worship to
Catholics, at least in some regions, continued 40 years later to haunt
pious Calvinists.

20
See note 12; for details see Bor, Nederlandsche oorlogen, vol. 2.
21
Israel, Dutch Republic, 372.
22
Lieuwe van Aitzema, Verhael, van de Nederlandtsche vreedehandeling, vol. 2 (The
Hague: 1650), 263–4.
23
Aitzema, Vreedehandeling, 2:265.
110 benjamin j. kaplan

* * *
Despite the defection of the Walloon provinces in 1579, the military
victories of the Duke of Parma in the 1580s, and the return of all
the southern provinces to Spanish obedience, northern Netherland-
ers continued for many decades to hope that the south might still be
won over to the anti-Spanish cause and rejoin the north in revolt.
They dreamed of a Low Countries reunited under a revived Pacifi-
cation of Ghent. Given, however, that the south had in the interim
been effectively recatholicized, it was clear to the political leaders of
the Republic that any hope of realizing these dreams depended on
their willingness to accommodate the southerners’ Catholic faith. They
understood too that southerners would offer no sympathy or support
for military campaigns launched in their direction if they viewed the
Dutch not as political liberators but as religious oppressors. Thus, in
1602, before ordering their army on an offensive, the States General
issued an open letter to the “prelates, princes, counts, lords, nobles and
cities of Brabant, Flanders, Artois” and the other southern provinces.
Urging them, for the sake of their freedoms, to support the Dutch
war effort, the States General assured them that if they did, they could
so order their religious affairs as they found best, and that “nothing
shall be done or undertaken by us” against their religion. Such gen-
erosity, though, was conditional on the southerners’ forsaking the
Spanish voluntarily. After the Dutch army reduced the city of Grave,
its commander Prince Maurits felt no obligation to make any spe-
cial concession to the city’s Catholics, who would be treated “without
investigation, in all fairness in this matter just like other inhabitants of
these United Netherlands.”24
In 1629, Den Bosch, one of the four “capital cities” of Brabant, was
taken by siege, one of the greatest Dutch victories in the Eighty-Years’
War. In negotiating the terms of its eventual surrender, its magis-
trates tried to obtain guarantees for Catholic clergy, institutions, and
worship. Stadholder Frederik Hendrik, youngest son of William of
Orange, may have been inclined to grant their request, but was not

24
Cornelis Cau et al. (eds.), Groot placaet-boeck, Inhoudende de placaten ende
ordonnantiën ende edicten van de Doorluchtige Hooghmogende Heeren Staten Generael
der Vereenighde Nederlanden, ende vande Edele Groot Mogende Heeren Staten van
Hollandt ende West-Vrieslandt, mitsgaders van de Edel Mogende Heeren Staten van
Zeelandt, vol. 2 (The Hague: 1658–1797), 9–14, 601–6 (quotes on 9, 12, 602).
 biconfessionalism in the low countries 111

in a strong enough position politically to buck Calvinist opposition.25

Den Bosch, until then the seat of a Catholic bishop (Ophovius) with
whom Frederik Hendrik had friendly relations, was Protestantized, at
least in the official, institutional sense: a majority of its inhabitants
always remained Catholic. The surrounding bailiwick (Meierij) of Den
Bosch remained for almost 20 years in extreme turmoil, religiously as
well as politically, as Dutch and Spanish forces continued to contest
it. During this “time of reprisals,” each side attempted to suppress the
other’s religion and expel its clergy, but neither side had the means to
do so entirely. The stadholder and the bishop would have preferred to
tolerate both pastors and dominees rather than see, as they did, both
persecuted. This miserable spectacle did no good for the reputation of
the Dutch in the south.26
1632 saw Frederik Hendrik lead the Dutch army on another offen-
sive campaign, this time up the river Maas, and this time the States
General decided in advance, though initially they kept their decision
secret, “to proceed on the model of 1602.” The first cities to fall were
Venlo and Roermond, in Upper Gelderland. Neither offered great
resistance to Frederik Hendrik’s overwhelming force, and though nei-
ther surrendered voluntarily, the stadholder treated them as if they
had. Under the terms of their capitulations, Catholic institutions
and clergy were protected and Catholic worship continued as before,
with the requirement only that one church be vacated for use by the
Reformed. Even the bishop of Roermond could remain and continue
in function. Penetrating further, the Dutch army took Sittard, Straelen,
the major strategic prize of Maastricht, and then the city and duchy
of Limburg. In all these places, it was declared, public Reformed wor-
ship would be introduced, but Catholicism would otherwise be left
intact. At this juncture, the States General published an open call for
the southerners to rise up, guaranteeing explicitly that whoever did
so would retain not only their “privileges, freedoms and rights” but
also “the public exercise of the Roman Catholic religion.”27 The door

25
J. J. Poelhekke, Frederik Hendrik, Prins van Oranje: een biografisch drieluik (Zut-
phen: 1978), 291–4; W. A. J. Munier, Het simultaneum in de landen van Overmaas. Een
uniek instituut in de Nederlandse kerkgeschiedenis (1632–1878), (Leeuwarden: 1998), 9.
26
V. A. M. Beermann, Stad en Meierij van ’s-Hertogenbosch van 1629 tot 1648.
Een episode uit het laatste stadium van den Tachtigjarigen Oorlog (Nijmegen: 1940),
127–51; Poelhekke, Frederik Hendrik, 284, 295, 303–5.
27
Poelhekke, Frederik Hendrik, 375–89 (quotation on 376); Cau, Groot placaet-
boeck, 2:13–18, 621–4, 647–53 (quotation on 16).
112 benjamin j. kaplan

to Brabant, Flanders, and other provinces seemed open. In the event,

the Dutch offensive got no further, and within a few years the Dutch
had yielded back to the Spanish some of their recent conquests. In the
territories they retained, though, Dutch authorities kept their word,
making no attempt to suppress Catholicism.
A quest for allies and supporters, then, had induced the Dutch to
promise far-reaching concessions to Catholics in southern territories.
These concessions, which Catholics in the seven northern provinces
could only envy, won them few friends among their fellow Nether-
landers. By making similar promises, though, the Dutch also hoped
to secure the friendship and appease the sensibilities of another, more
powerful ally: France.
French diplomats served as mediators, along with English ones, in
the truce negotiations of 1608–09, and, as representatives of a Catholic
monarch (the convert Henry IV), they had instructions to do what
they could to improve the situation of Dutch Catholics. Obviously, if
they pushed too hard on this point, they would lose their neutrality
and with it their ability to mediate between the Dutch and the Spanish.
They did, though, manage to extract from the former one concession.
Not to the Spanish and not in writing, but in a verbal pledge the States
General and Prince Maurits promised “on their honor . . . that no reli-
gious innovation would be introduced” in the villages of Brabant that,
in the course of the war, had fallen under their sway. In the country-
side around Breda, Bergen-op-Zoom, and Grave, then, Catholicism
would continue “on the same footing” as always, as the sole permit-
ted religion.28 Perceiving that the Dutch would yield no further, the

28
Emanuel van Meteren, Historie van de oorlogen en geschiedenissen der Neder-
landeren en der zelver naburen, vol. 10 (Gorinchem: 1748–63), quotation on 114–15;
W. J. M. van Eysinga, De wording van het twaalfjarig bestand van 9 april 1609 (Amster-
dam: 1959), 114–26, 148–53. The Dutch honored this agreement through the period of
the truce, and even after 1621 Catholicism was scarcely hindered in the region. In the
negotiations that led to the Peace of Westphalia, the Spanish demanded that Catholics
in the region, and throughout States-Brabant, be allowed to retain permanently their
churches, clergy, and ecclesiastical property. The arguments of the States of Zeeland
cited earlier aimed to forestall any such concession, which Calvinists feared would
have a domino-effect, opening the door to freedom of worship for Catholics in other
parts of the Republic. The Dutch rejected the demand, and after the region was defini-
tively ceded to the Republic in 1648, Catholicism there was made illegal. Peter Toebak,
“Het kerkelijk-godsdienstige en cultuerele leven binnen het noordwestelijke deel van
het hertogdom Brabant (1587–1609): een typering,” Trajecta 1 (1992): 124–43; Charles
de Mooij, Geloof kan Bergen verzetten. Reformatie en katholieke herleving te Bergen op
Zoom 1577–1795 (Hilversum: 1998), 283–6; Cau, Groot placaet-boeck, 2:267–70.
 biconfessionalism in the low countries 113

French diplomats, led by the jurist Pierre Jeannin, decided to plead

the case of their co-religionists more broadly only after the negotia-
tions finished. Then, in a spirited address to the States General, Jean-
nin argued that Dutch Catholics had proven their loyalty to the Dutch
state in wartime, had contributed to its victory, and now deserved to
share in the fruits of peace. State security may previously have jus-
tified severe measures restricting Catholic worship, but in a time of
peace there was no need for such. Jeannin’s own king had granted
legal toleration (in 1598) to those who shared the same faith as the
Dutch; the latter should do the same reciprocally for Catholics. The
experience of France proved that toleration was conducive to peace,
and indeed that it was rather intolerance that undermined the loy-
alty of subjects, fomented factions, and threatened the unity of a state.
In the Netherlands themselves the Catholic faith had been “received
and authorized” in the early years of the revolt. As a gift of the Holy
Spirit, faith could not be coerced, and those people who found their
religion suppressed would either maintain it all the more stubbornly
or “fall little by little into contempt for God and impiety.” For all these
reasons and more, Jeannin concluded, Dutch authorities should grant
Catholics “the free and public exercise of their religion.” Knowing,
though, how little inclined the States General were to such a step, and
knowing how much resistance and divisions the latter would give rise
to, Jeannin, on behalf of his king, asked only that Dutch Catholics be
allowed to worship in their homes “without being investigated there,
and without the rigor of the placards previously issued . . . being exer-
cised any longer against them.”29
Jeannin’s pleas fell mostly on deaf ears. Many Dutch authorities
even made a point in 1609 of renewing the placards against Catho-
lic worship, to ensure that Catholics understood that the truce had
not expanded their freedoms. Not surprisingly, many Catholics felt
betrayed by the Spanish as well as Dutch. In one pamphlet presenting
a fictive dialogue, a Catholic lauds the truce as a good thing generally—
defends it even against a Calvinist’s suspicions—but complains of one
point that “greatly displeases him, yea gnaws him to the bone, [and]
makes his flesh and blood wither . . . . that we have been granted, alas,
neither church nor chapel nor even a wretched little cell to consecrate

29
J. A. C. Buchon, Choix de chroniques et mémoires sur l’Histoire de France avec
notices littéraires. Négociations du Président Jeannin (Paris: 1838), 692–5.
114 benjamin j. kaplan

the holy mass . . .” When his interlocutor points out that a Calvinist
would be executed for treason if he proclaimed the “Word of God”
publicly in the lands of the king or archdukes, the Catholic grants
that he and his co-religionists have “no complaints” as long as they
are left in peace to worship in their homes; then they can be counted
on as loyal, “good patriots.”30 In practice, Catholics found that many
local authorities did grow more relaxed, and that, during the period
of the truce, they could worship in private with less fear of raids and
prosecution than before.
Ironically, it was the French friend not the Spanish foe who con-
tinued in subsequent years to exert religious pressure on the Dutch.31
French clout was demonstrated in 1635 when the Republic and France
concluded a treaty of alliance. Its object in the first instance was the
southern provinces, which, if France went to war with Spain, it was
agreed the French and Dutch would jointly invade. The southerners
would be invited once again to rebel, which if they did, the treaty
envisioned their becoming “a league of independent cantons, on the
model of Switzerland”; if they did not, their lands would be partitioned
between France and the Republic. A key provision of the treaty held
that the Roman Catholic religion would be preserved “in its entirety”
in the territories incorporated into the Dutch state, with Catholic
clergy enjoying “the same liberty, authority, and prerogative” as they
enjoyed currently.32 Richelieu assured the Dutch negotiators it was not
his intention to exclude the Reformed faith entirely from the territories
in question, suggesting that France would not object if Reformed per-
sons worshipped privately, but in the text of the treaty the Reformed
received no rights at all. Voicing the vehement opposition of many
Calvinists, a minister declared flatly to Frederik Hendrik “that it would
be better not to have the city of Antwerp than to win and hold it with
admittance of the Roman [Catholic] religion.” But Frederik Hendrik

30
Willem Jansz Yselveer, Dialogvs ofte tvve-spraec in rym ghestelt tusschen twee
personagien ghenaemt ghereformeert patriot ende roomsch catholijck. Vervatende in’t
corte den handel vande tvvaelf-jarighen treves, Knuttel/TEMPO no. 1625 (N.p., 1609),
B iii v(o).
31
In 1629, for example, Louis XIII wrote the States of Holland on behalf of the
Catholics of Den Bosch, requesting freedom of worship for them and for Catholics
throughout the Republic. A. M. Frenken, “De Bossche Bisschop Michaël Ophovius
O.P. 1570–1637,” Bossche Bijdragen 14 (1936): 84, 154–5.
32
Israel, Dutch Republic, 527; Poelhekke, Frederik Hendrik, 431.
 biconfessionalism in the low countries 115

did not share this view, nor did he see the terms of the treaty as a
departure from precedent:
He had seen a similar basis adopted in the year 1602; it was merely a
granting of permission [toelatinghe] for the Roman [Catholic] religion,
without which the king of France could never be induced to [conclude]
the treaty . . . . In the East Indies we permitted the heathen idolatry and
icons of the Chinese and of others living in places under our authority;
the popish ceremonies weren’t as bad as them. We did right to promote
our religion and its introduction; we could promote it, and ought to do
so, where we are master, which would enable us to appoint the magis-
tracy as we see fit. It would be better to introduce the [Reformed] religion
where it is not, with permission for the Roman [Catholic], than simply
to remain outside the places of our enemy. Alone we could not drive off
the Spaniard; it was a great thing that the king of France offered us his
hand in aid, and opened the door [for us] to introduce our religion . . . 33
In other words, an incremental expansion of the Reformed faith was
better than none. Given the conditions set by the French, Frederik
Hendrik—and, when it came down to it, a majority in the States
General—were prepared to make even broader religious concessions
than they had made three years earlier. With the help of France, they
hoped to make good the disappointments of the Maas campaign.
Naturally, France’s Most Christian King could not “without offend-
ing his conscience give the aid of his own forces for a conquest whereby
the exercise of the Catholic religion would be destroyed.” So his ambas-
sador declared in 1646 when once again the French and the Dutch
were planning a joint military campaign. This time, Dutch negotiators
promised only that if Antwerp fell to their army, the exercise of the
Catholic religion would remain “free and public” in the city, adding in
a secret article that Catholics would retain the use of a maximum of
four churches. The plan, in other words, was for Antwerp to become
biconfessional. Calvinists quickly disavowed it.34
From a Calvinist perspective, it was a mixed blessing that these ter-
ritorial ambitions were never realized. On the one hand, it robbed
them of the opportunity to attempt more widely in the south what they
undertook first in the cities, and eventually throughout the States-held

33
Poelhekke, Frederik Hendrik, 434–5; Pieter Johan Blok, Frederik Hendrik, Prins
van Oranje (Amsterdam: 1924), 164–7; Henri Lonchay, La rivalité de la France et de
l’Espagne aux Pays-Bas, 1635–1700. Étude d’histoire diplomatique et militaire (Brus-
sels: 1896), 68–9.
34
Aitzema, Vreedehandeling, 2:94–9 (quotations on 95, 98).
116 benjamin j. kaplan

parts of Brabant and Flanders: a political and ecclesiastical Reforma-

tion intended to replicate, in these overwhelmingly Catholic areas,
the religious settlement that prevailed elsewhere in the Republic, with
Catholicism reduced to an illegal faith tolerated only by connivance
and practiced only privately. On the other hand, the conditions under
which the Dutch were likely to gain control of the territories, in par-
ticular the terms set by the French, were likely to protect Catholicism
and establish it as a lawful, or even monopoly, faith. In the process, the
Republic would lose its character as a Calvinist state, not only by virtue
of incorporating officially Catholic provinces but perhaps also, it was
feared, through the undermining of Calvinist dominance in the north.
One pamphleteer articulated this fear in a much-printed dialogue of
1646, in which a Catholic interlocutor challenges the conventional
wisdom that peace with Spain was in the interest of Dutch Catho-
lics. Agreeing rather with a Calvinist in demanding that war continue,
the Catholic foresees that within a few years, France and the Republic
would succeed in partitioning the southern provinces. Then
France shall become the next door neighbor of these provinces, [and]
then shall we Roman Catholics make our presence felt more. The number
[of people] of our faith in these provinces is great and considerable, not
at all to be compared to the small number of Huguenots in France. The
king [of France] shall with good cause be able to say: “I grant the Hugue-
nots freedom of worship in my kingdom; it’s only fair then that you in
the United Provinces grant freedom of worship to the Catholics.” The
Spaniard, until now our neighbor, has never had the courage to recom-
mend freedom for us Catholics, not even with a letter. For he was our
enemy, he gave no freedom to any of the Reformed, and he had no
power to give force to his recommendation. None of these points hold
for France. It is a friend, and powerful, and it shall hereby win the hearts
of all the Catholics in this land. It shall also be able to produce certain
treaties, compacts, and promises by which freedom of worship, at least
in certain places, has been promised.35
Calvinists had reason to fear the expanding power of France, and to
agree with those Dutch politicians who found wisdom in the maxim
“Gallus amicus non vicinus”: France could be a useful friend but would
make a dangerous neighbor.36 When in the 1660s Louis XIV developed

35
Anon., Munsters vredes-praetje. Vol alderhande opinien, off d’al-ghemeene wel-
vaert deser landen in oorlogh off vrede bestaet, Van Alphen/TEMPO no. 185 (n.p.,
1646) (= Knuttel 5290–5295), Bv–B2r.
36
Poelhekke, Frederik Hendrik, 429.
 biconfessionalism in the low countries 117

an overweening ambition to annex the southern Netherlands, it spelled

religious as well as political danger for the Republic.
Louis’ invasion of the Republic in 1672 had of course religious con-
sequences for the areas occupied by his armies and those of his allies,
the Prince-Bishops of Münster and Cologne.37 As expected, French
commanders quickly began the process of liberating Dutch Catholics
from the shackles of a limited toleration which the latter had always
viewed rather as a form of limited persecution.38 In its place, the French
introduced a new “religious peace.” In Arnhem, Nijmegen, Zutphen,
Deventer, Zwolle and several other cities they allocated one of the exist-
ing church buildings, usually the grandest of them, for Catholic use,
while leaving the Reformed use of the others. The most symbolic of all
church buildings in the Republic, Utrecht’s cathedral, was ceremoni-
ously reconsecrated and likewise appropriated for Catholic worship.39
In Nijmegen and Utrecht, Catholics were numerous and confident
enough to behave aggressively, manifesting their faith publicly in pro-
cessions, funerals, and outdoor decorations. The biconfessionalism
introduced by the French had the effect in these two cities of generat-
ing more conflict between Catholics and Calvinists than had existed
previously, or at least of pushing into the public arena conflict that
had remained largely latent and obscured as long as Catholicism had
been restricted to the private sphere.40 In the meantime, Catholic regu-
lar clergy began to stream into the occupied territories from abroad,
reclaiming the former monasteries and convents of their orders. Jesuits
founded schools in several occupied towns. Apostolic Vicar Johannes

37
For the following, see Israel, Dutch Republic, 643–4, 796–825, esp. 798–800;
M. G. Spiertz, L’Eglise catholique des provinces-unies et le Saint-Siege pendant la deuxi-
eme moitié du XVIIe siecle (Louvain: 1975), 115–25, 160–2; Willem Frijhoff, “Religious
toleration in the United Provinces: from ‘case’ to ‘model’ ” in R. Po-chia Hsia and
H.F.K. Van Nierop (eds.), Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden
Age (Cambridge, UK: 2002), 35; Willem Frijhoff, Embodied Belief: Ten Essays on Reli-
gious Culture in Dutch History (Hilversum: 2002), 171–2; Bertrand Forclaz, “ ‘Rather
French than Subject to the Prince of Orange.’ The Conflicting Loyalties of the Utrecht
Catholics during the French Occupation (1672–73),” Church History and Religious
Culture 87 (2007): 509–33; I.B., Le conseil d’extorsion Ou la volerie des François . . . (s.l.,
s.a. [1673?]); Abraham van Wicquefort, De Fransche Tyrannie . . . (Amsterdam: 1674),
passim.
38
Charles H. Parker, Faith on the Margins: Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch
Golden Age (Cambridge, MA: 2008), 12–13.
39
See also A. Vanhaelen, “Utrecht’s Transformations: Claiming the Dom through
Representation, Iconoclasm and Ritual,” De zeventiende eeuw 21 (2005): 361–2.
40
Forclaz, “Rather French.”
118 benjamin j. kaplan

van Neercassel lobbied at the French court to achieve his and his pre-
decessors’ most cherished goal, the restoration of the archbishopric of
Utrecht. Neercassel envisioned a biconfessional arrangement similar
to that in France, whereby the Catholic Church would have restored
to it at least some of its former benefices, buildings, and other proper-
ties. Crucially, Catholics would also become eligible for public office,
so that they would share political power with their Calvinist fellow
burghers.
But the Catholics who in 1672 greeted Louis almost as a messiah
were quickly disillusioned. Louis’ strategic goal had never been to take
Amsterdam, but rather Brussels, and from the beginning the French
had not intended their occupation of Dutch territory to be permanent.41
To be sure, they did propose better conditions for Dutch Catholics. In
July 1672 they offered the Dutch a peace treaty under whose terms
Catholics would have been allowed the “public exercise” of their reli-
gion “throughout the entire United Provinces”; in communities with
multiple church buildings, they would have been allocated one, while
elsewhere they would have had permission to build a church of their
own; provincial authorities would have paid the salaries of Catholic
curés as they did those of Calvinist dominees.42 While some members
of the States General were ready to sign, their defeatism infuriated
the “common people.” The proposal ended up only stiffening Dutch
resistance to the French forces, who after several military and diplo-
matic reverses were obliged by November 1673 to begin withdrawing
their forces from the Republic. No sooner did they leave an area than
Catholics found themselves forced once again to live their faith under
the old restrictions. The eventual peace treaty, concluded in Nijmegen
in 1678, did not improve their legal position.
The French occupation turned out to be the last time Catholics
worshipped entirely publicly in any of the Republic’s seven provinces.
Precisely to prevent a repeat of 1672, the Dutch secured in 1697, by
the Treaty of Rijswijk, the right to install garrisons in Namur, Ypres,
and other fortified towns in the southern Netherlands. These garrisons

41
Paul Sonnino, “Plus royaliste que le pape: Louis XIV’s Religious Policy and his
Guerre de Hollande” in David Onnekink (ed.), War and Religion after Westphalia,
1648–1713 (Farnham, UK: 2009), 17–24; Sonnino, Louis XIV and the origins of the
Dutch War (Cambridge, UK: 1988).
42
Les conditions sous lesquelles le roy tres-chrestien & sa majesté de la Grande
Bretagne consentiroient de faire la paix avec les Etats Generaux, Knuttel/TEMPO
no. 10070 (N.p., 1672).
 biconfessionalism in the low countries 119

were expanded in 1715 under the so-called Barrier Treaty. The Dutch
soldiers who manned them were allowed to hold Calvinist services,
but only “in private places . . . to which one may not give any exter-
nal mark of a church.” Some of these “private places” actually had
a semi-public character: in Tournai, for example, suitable places for
worship were set up inside the bourse and the arsenal. Nor did soldiers
attend all of these services alone: some native burghers, descendants of
16th-century Calvinists, joined them, manifesting a Protestant identity
their families had kept secret for generations. But this was contrary to
treaty.43 Biconfessionalism proper was never introduced to any terri-
tories except those conquered in 1632.
In the latter, however—Maastricht, the Lands of Overmaas, and
Upper Gelderland—biconfessionalism proved to be no temporary
expedient, but a long-term arrangement that endured, with one inter-
ruption in the Lands of Overmaas, for as long as these territories were
part of the Republic. These outlying enclaves, surrounded by foreign
territory, were the great exception to what is usually described as “the”
Dutch religious settlement.
* * *
When Frederik Hendrik had taken Maastricht, not only had the States
General approved a capitulation treaty that guaranteed Catholics free-
dom of worship, they had also accepted the status of the city as a
“condominium,” a territory ruled jointly by the dukes of Brabant and
prince-bishops of Liège.44 Legally, the States General had taken over
the dukes’ role. So now the city had a Calvinist and a Catholic master,
whose two faiths were recognized as enjoying equal status. In eccle-
siastical affairs, as in municipal government, the principle of parity
formed the basis of life in Maastricht, much as it did in Augsburg and
the other German “parity cities” under the Peace of Westphalia. Each

43
Israel, Dutch Republic, 978–9; Eugène Hubert, Les garnisons de la barriere dans
les pays-bas autrichiens (1715–1782): etude d’histoire politique et diplomatique (Brux-
elles: 1902), 35–113 (quotation on 36–37); Tractaet van barriere, tusschen sijne Key-
serlijcke en Catholijcke Majesteyt Karel de VI, sijne Majesteyt van Groot-Brittannien,
en de Staten Generael. Gemaeckt en gesloten te Antwerpen den 15. November 1715,
(The Hague: 1715).
44
On Maastricht, see P. J. H. Ubachs, Twee heren, twee confessies. De verhouding
van Staat en Kerk te Maastricht, 1632–1673 (Assen: 1975); [Rinse van Noordt and
M. Tyderman], Tegenwoordige staat der Vereenigde Nederlanden. dl. 2. Vervattende
eene beschryving der Generaliteits Landen, Staats Brabant, Staats Land van Overmaaze,
Staats Vlaanderen en Staats Opper-Gelderland . . . (Amsterdam: 1751), 343–86.
120 benjamin j. kaplan

confession had a right to half the city’s communal resources, includ-

ing two of its four parish churches. This right was held by the two
confessions as groups, not by their members as individuals, so that the
division remained even despite the roughly five-to-one ratio by which
Catholics outnumbered Calvinists in the population. Unsurprisingly,
Catholics perceived Calvinists as being unfairly favored, while Cal-
vinists for their part pressed the authorities to suppress Catholicism
and remove its adherents from power. They did so in vain, for despite
having far greater military and political clout than the prince-bishop,
Dutch authorities were punctilious in keeping to the letter of the law.
Catholics continued to constitute the Liègeois half of the city govern-
ment, retaining precisely as many offices of each kind as Calvinists
held; the mighty Chapter of St. Servaas and its companion, the Chap-
ter of Our Lady continued to function as before, as did monasteries
and convents; Catholic charities and schools labored on, funded partly
by their medieval endowments, partly by municipal subsidies. Even
the Franciscans and Jesuits, banished in 1638 for treason, were allowed
to remain in the city after the French (who occupied the city from
1673 to 1678) readmitted them. Catholic worship was restricted only
in that processions were not allowed to venture beyond the precincts
of St. Servaas, and priests could not carry the viaticum openly to the
sick and dying.45
In the three Lands of Overmaas—Dalhem, Valkenburg, and
’s-Hertogenrade—the situation was different. These lands were never
condominia, and the rights of Catholics in them had their legal basis
only in the capitulation treaty for the city of Limburg, which the Dutch
had soon yielded back to the Spanish. Nevertheless, Dutch authorities
applied the terms of the treaty also to these lands, which as parts of
the duchy were treated as dependencies of the city. In fact, only parts
of the three lands fell under Dutch sovereignty, for in 1648 Spain and
the Republic agreed to partition them, and under the Partition Treaty
of 1661 each side retained portions of all three. The result was to turn
the lands into a complex patchwork, with some districts, such as that
of Holseth, Vaals, and Vijlen, forming isolated islands.46

45
During the French occupation of 1673–78, Calvinists in Maastricht were allowed
to worship publicly, but only in one small church. Munier, Simultaneum, 201–5.
46
J. A. K. Haas, De verdeling van de Landen van Overmaas 1644–1662. Territoriale
desintegratie van een betwist grensgebied (Assen: 1978); W. A. J. Munier, “Kerken en
 biconfessionalism in the low countries 121

Unlike Maastricht, which attracted immigrants and had a large gar-

rison, the Lands of Overmaas never became home to a substantial Cal-
vinist population.47 Even more than their co-religionists in Maastricht,
Catholics in these rural lands resented bitterly the intrusion of Calvin-
ists from outside, and the privileging of a tiny Calvinist minority. Nor
was a system of parity ever introduced, leaving relations between the
confessions uncertain and changeable, subject to a host of pressures.
There was much to play for and the contest was fairly overt, so it is no
wonder tensions ran high and sporadic violence continued to erupt as
late as the 1780s. In Vaals, the only place where Calvinist churchgoers
matched Catholics in numbers, such violence was endemic.
Part of the contest was for control of church buildings: in the Lands
of Overmaas, unlike anywhere else in the Republic, Catholics and Cal-
vinists shared their use. This arrangement, known as simultaneum,
existed in some other parts of Europe, including several German cit-
ies; as a possibility for the Low Countries it had been cited as early as
1578 but never introduced. The Limburg capitulation treaty suggested
its introduction in locales that had only one church, and in the 1630s
it was instituted everywhere Calvinist ministers were posted. It lasted
until the 1661 partition treaty, which granted full sovereignty to the
Spanish and Dutch over their respective territories. At that juncture,
“the public exercise of religion” being regarded as “a point of sover-
eignty,” the Dutch felt practically obliged to terminate Catholic use
of the churches and replace Catholic officials with Calvinist ones.48 It
was the turn of Calvinists to suffer similar repression between 1673
and 1678, during the French occupation. But afterward, once Dutch
sovereignty was reestablished, the authorities opted not to return to
the status quo ante in every respect. Once again they purged Catholics
from local government and imposed Calvinist laws regarding marriage
and education. They did not, though, hand the churches back to the
Calvinists. Instead, while denying any legal obligation to do so (as the
French asserted they had), they reinstated the terms of the 1632 treaty.
They never declared this intent explicitly, ordering only that Protes-
tants not be hindered in their use of the churches. Yet in practice,

kerkgangers in Vaals van de Staatse tijd tot op heden,” Jaarboek van het Limburgs
Geschied- en Oudheidkundig Genootschap 136–137 (2000–01): 85–262.
47
On Overmaas, see Munier, Simultaneum; [Noordt and Tyderman], Tegenwoor-
dige staat, 387–418.
48
Munier, Simultaneum, 130.
122 benjamin j. kaplan

their actions and words amounted to a revival of simultaneum. In

a majority of villages, where they constituted the entire population,
Catholics were left to enjoy exclusive, undisturbed use of the old par-
ish churches. In Vaals, Catholics and Calvinists had connected but
separate places of worship. In the 13 other locales where Calvinists had
regular congregations, Catholics and Calvinists shared use of the local
church. In a few other locales, Calvinists held occasional services in
churches which they otherwise left to their Catholic neighbors. These
arrangements did not change significantly for over a century.
In one respect, then, the Lands of Overmaas did not conform after
1678 to the model of biconfessionalism with which this essay began:
Catholics in them did not enjoy, as they had done until 1661, de jure
official toleration. What had started as a legal right was revived and
continued with the connivance of authorities. Yet, once again, Catho-
lics worshiped entirely publicly, and no one pretended that the people
of the Lands of Overmaas were of one faith.
Upper Gelderland was different again. Though originally one of the
four quarters of the province of Gelderland, its status as conquered
territory made it, like Maastricht and the Lands of Overmaas, a “Gen-
erality Land” governed directly from The Hague. In 1632, the Dutch
took one church in each city for use by the Reformed, leaving Catholi-
cism otherwise untouched. Five years later, the Dutch lost these con-
quests back to the Spanish. With the help of allies, they retook parts
of Upper Gelderland in 1702–03 during the War of the Spanish Suc-
cession. At this juncture, they reintroduced the earlier arrangement in
Venlo and planned to make Roermond a parity city, with Catholic and
Reformed faiths exercised “pareillement,” but this aroused such oppo-
sition that here too they fell back on the 1632 provisions.49 The future
of the region, for the remainder of the 18th century, was settled at
the end of the war by a series of treaties in 1713–15, under which the
Dutch ceded Roermond back to the Austrians, retaining only Venlo,
Stevensweert, and most of the district of Montfort. In these places they
pledged to leave Catholicism in its pre-1702 state “without any change
or innovation.” But while in Montfort they kept their word, in Venlo
and Stevensweert the Dutch retained a church for Reformed worship.
In tiny Stevensweert, with its 30-odd houses, it was the only church. In

49
Clive Parry (ed.), The Consolidated Treaty Series, vol. 24 (Dobbs Ferry, NY:
1969–1986), 243–9, 259–67 (quotation on 261); Munier, Simultaneum, 339.
 biconfessionalism in the low countries 123

Venlo, it was a modest chapel which the Reformed enlarged and refur-
bished, to the consternation of local Catholics, with whom there ini-
tially were clashes, especially when Dutch authorities tried to prevent
eucharistic processions. Things settled down after a parlay in 1718, and
Venlo, which served as the new capital of States-Upper-Gelderland
with a mixed Protestant-Catholic appeals court, emerged as a peaceful
biconfessional—but not parity—city.50
* * *
Viewed from, say, Amsterdam or The Hague, the biconfessionalism
instituted in Maastricht, the Lands of Overmaas, and Upper Gelder-
land appears anomalous, a singular exception to the Dutch norm.51
Yet, as we have seen, biconfessionalism had a history elsewhere in the
Republic as well: as temporary expedient, failed experiment, foreign
imposition, proposal, fear. Its study offers valuable perspectives on
the Dutch religious scene. First, it highlights how remarkable it was
that even a superficial, public pretence of religious unity was main-
tained throughout most of the Republic for most of its history. After
all, when the Reformed became the official church of the rebel prov-
inces in the 1570s–80s, its adherents were far outnumbered by those
of other churches, principally Catholics. In the Republic’s largest and
most tone-setting cities, Catholics and other dissenters continued
always to form substantial minorities—as much as 40 percent of the
Christian population in Amsterdam—while in rural pockets of Hol-
land, Utrecht, Gelderland, and Overijssel, they constituted a majority.52
In States-Brabant and States-Flanders, the overwhelming majority of
inhabitants, in both town and country, belonged to a faith whose clergy,
churches, and services were illegal. In these Generality Lands a situa-
tion prevailed with few parallels elsewhere in Europe, the closest one
perhaps being Ireland. The monopoly of the Reformed Church over

50
Tractaet van barriere, art. 18 (quotation p. 19); J. Habets, Geschiedenis van het
bisdom Roermond, vol. 2 (Roermond: 1875), 259–82; [Noordt and Tyderman], Tegen-
woordige staat, 552–72; P. Polman, Katholiek Nederland in de achttiende eeuw, vol. 3
(Hilversum: 1968), 131–3, 213–16. Polman’s use of the label “parity” for 18th-century
arrangements in Venlo does not accord with present accepted usage of the term.
51
Thus represented by Munier and Ubachs; see references above.
52
Israel, Dutch Republic, 372–89, 637–45. See also H. Knippenberg, De religieuze
kaart van Nederland. Omvang en geografische spreiding van de godsdienstige gezindten
vanaf de Reformatie tot heden (Assen: 1992), 15–62; J. A. de Kok, Nederland op de
breuklijn Rome-Reformatie. Numerieke aspecten van protestantisering en katholieke
herleving in de noordelijke Nederlanden, 1580–1880 (Assen: 1964).
124 benjamin j. kaplan

public religious life was established despite repeated efforts by William

of Orange to give Calvinists and Catholics equal rights, obvious and
nearby foreign models for such an arrangement, and arguments that
the latter was superior to freedom of conscience in both practice and
principle. It was maintained subsequently despite diplomatic interven-
tions by Spain and France, the inclinations of Frederik Hendrik, at
least with regard to the Generality Lands, and lingering pangs of con-
science, occasionally expressed, that Dutch Catholics might in justice
be owed equal rights for their proven loyalty to the Republic.
The experience of more than two dozen cities in the 1570s, however,
seemed to demonstrate that biconfessionalism did not work: it did not
prevent communities from polarizing along religious lines or Calvin-
ists and Catholics from attacking one another. In other words, it did
not promote civic harmony and order, which is what Dutch regents,
in their capacity as regents, most wanted from a religious settlement.
Biconfessionalism proved in those years to be not a static point of bal-
ance, but a labile point along a seemingly inexorable path leading from
Catholic to Calvinist dominance. Moreover, while some argued that
Catholics would be all the more loyal to a state that did not ban their
faith, that state in its formative years defined itself in opposition to an
enemy who posed as the champion of Catholicism. By the dominant
logic of the confessional age, Dutch Catholics had to choose whether
to support the triumph of their church over its enemies, or the tri-
umph of their state over its. Inevitably, the thinking went, they had
conflicting loyalties that made them unreliable, if not seditious. Most
Dutch Catholics did not in fact treat these two desiderata as absolute,
irreconcilable alternatives; in the long run, even most Catholic clergy
in the Republic did not maintain so uncompromising a stance. Those
who grappled with murky realities, however, conceded the clear air of
the moral high ground to the ideological warriors of their day.
Why then was biconfessionalism acceptable in Maastricht, the
Lands of Overmaas, and Upper Gelderland? Why did it sink roots
there, and there alone? Above all, because of the marginality of these
small, outlying territories. Biconfessionalism in them set no potent
precedent on the national level; it did not threaten the uniquely privi-
leged position of the Reformed Church elsewhere in the Republic. By
the same token, it did not achieve one of its intended purposes, to set
an example that would encourage the rest of the southern Netherlands
to join the Republic. Biconfessionalism was a religious bargain made
 biconfessionalism in the low countries 125

by Frederik Hendrik and the States General in exchange for territo-

rial expansion, and they were prepared to extend it further—indeed,
some were willing even to accept officially Catholic provinces into the
Republic—in order to realize their greater ambition of reuniting the
17 provinces of the northern and southern Netherlands. In the mean-
time, the arrangements established in 1632 proved workable enough,
and they did set local precedents. Though Dutch authorities felt no
legal obligation to maintain them in perpetuity, it is striking how, after
various experiments, they eventually settled on reinstating the provi-
sions of the 1632 capitulation treaties, even after later treaties seemed
to supersede them—in 1678 in the Lands of Overmaas, 1715 in Upper
Gelderland. In these two areas, biconfessionalism was reintroduced, or
continued, even after it had lost its original legal basis.
Studying biconfessionalism in the Netherlands reminds us also that
religious arrangements in the Dutch Republic were more varied than
sometimes portrayed. To be sure, native religious dissenters worshipped
for the most part in schuilkerken. But along the periphery of the Repub-
lic, especially the long border with the southern Netherlands, Catho-
lics also travelled regularly to attend mass in neighboring communities
where their faith was the established one. Catholics from the interior
of the Republic made these treks too on an occasional basis, especially
to pilgrimage sites such as Handel, Uden, and Kevelaar. Lutherans,
who for the most part were foreign immigrants or the not-too-distant
descendants of such, were allowed to have highly visible places of wor-
ship, easily recognizable as such, though still without tower or bells.
A different dispensation altogether applied to Jews, who could build
imposing synagogues but suffered civil disabilities to which no Chris-
tian was subject. Superimposed on these general patterns were count-
less variations between provinces, towns, and villages, and significant
(but still understudied) change over time. Even a single polity needed
a variety of forms of toleration to accommodate different groups and
circumstances, and that was especially true of a polity as diverse and
decentralized as the Dutch Republic.
126 benjamin j. kaplan

Appingedam Emden
Dokkum STAD EN LANDE
Groningen
Harlingen Leeuwarden
FRIESLAND
Sneek
Rolde

DRENTHE
Stavoren
Medemblik
Enkhuizen Coevorden

Zwolle
Haarlem Almelo
OVERIJSSEL
Amsterdam
Deventer Enschede
Zutphen
‘s-Gravenhage Utrecht
(The Hague) GELDERLAND Borculo
HOLLAND UTRECHT Arnhem
Delft

Nijmegen
Dordrecht
Culjk Kleve
Wesel
‘s-Hertogenbosch
ZEELAND Breda
Middleburg STAATS-BRABANT Gelder
Essen
UPPER
GELDERLAND Moers
Venlo Werden
STAATS-VLAANDEREN
Brugge Antwerpen
Nieuwpoort
Gent
Duinkerken BRABANT LUIK GERMAN EMPIRE
VLAANDEREN Mechelen Cologne
(FLANDERS) Leuven LANDS OF OVERMAAS Jülich
Maastricht
Kortrijk Brussel Aachen
LIMBURG Bonn
Luik Limburg
Rijsel Doornik
DOORNIK
EN HET Namen
DOORNIKSE Bergen NAMEN STAVELOT- Stavelot
ARTOIS
MALMEDY
Atrecht (Arras) HAINAUT

Kamerijk
LUIK
(LIÈGE)

BOUILLON
LUXEMBURG
Bouilion Trier
FRANCE Luxemburg

Map 1: The Dutch Republic in 1648.

 PART THREE

THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

 A MULTICONFESSIONAL EMPIRE

David M. Luebke

“On Sundays and feast days,” reported a priest in the village of Berge,
“my Lutherans worship in our church and take part in the service
with the Catholic parishioners.” Why? Perhaps because the nearest
Lutheran parish church was simply too far away to attend regularly.
Perhaps it was because the Lutheran families owned a pew in the par-
ish church—a potent symbol of social standing that no family sur-
rendered lightly. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that in Berge,
confessional differences did not always stand in the way of common
religious experience. To be sure, confessional identities were firmly in
place: parishioners described themselves as “Lutherans” or “Catholics”
and held profoundly divergent beliefs about the nature of sin and the
true path to salvation. And of course the Lutherans could not receive
sacraments from the priest. But they attended Mass and heard his ser-
mons; they stood as godparents at Catholic baptisms; the dead of both
faiths were buried in a common parish churchyard.1
By the standard of late-17th century Germany, this was an unusually
amicable state of affairs. To some extent, it reflected the peculiarities of
place: Berge was situated in the Prince-Bishopric of Osnabrück, one of
several German territories in which two or more confessions were prac-
ticed legally and openly. After 1648, even the office of prince-bishop
alternated between Catholic and Lutheran occupants.2 At the opposite
extreme was the diocese of Münster, Osnabrück’s neighbor to the south.
There, Prince-Bishop Ferdinand I (1612–1650) and his successors waged
a campaign of force and persuasion that, by the mid-18th century,

1
Hermann Hoberg, Die Gemeinschaft der Bekenntnisse in kirchlichen Dingen:
Rechtszustände im Fürstentum Osnabrück vom Westfälischen Frieden bis zum Anfang
des 19. Jahrhunderts (Osnabrück: 1939), 31–44.
2
On Osnabrück’s peculiar system of confessional rotation, see Michael F. Feld-
kamp, “Zur Bedeutung der successio alternativa im Hochstift Osnabrück während des
17. und 18. Jahrhunderts,” Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte 130 (1994): 75–110.
130 david m. luebke

had produced a thoroughly Catholic religious culture in which the sort

of conviviality found in Berge could not arise.3
Most of the several hundred territories and city-states that consti-
tuted the Holy Roman Empire could be found somewhere on a con-
tinuum between these poles. Most strove to match the near-seamless
homogeneity that Münster’s prince-bishops apparently achieved.
Nevertheless, what stands out about the Empire is the large number
of polities that accommodated confessionally diverse populations,
granted official status to religious minorities, or even “provided a
constitutional guarantee of confessional parity.”4 Equally distinctive
is the durability of these concessions, many of which persisted after
the Empire’s dissolution in 1806. The forces that shaped these struc-
tures operated at many levels. Some were bound up with the Empire’s
unique deliberative and judicial institutions; others reflected local or
regional peculiarities, such as the social configuration of power within
a territory. There were cultural forces at play as well, not the least of
which was the sheer inertia of religion: as Luther learned to his grief,
conversion on a mass scale was the work of decades, even generations.

3
Werner Freitag, Volks- und Elitenfrömmigkeit in der frühen Neuzeit: Marienwall-
fahrten im Fürstbistum Münster (Paderborn: 1991); Andreas Holzem, Religion und
Lebensformen: Katholische Konfessionalisierung im Sendgericht des Fürtsbistums Mün-
ster, 1570–1800 (Paderborn: 2000).
4
Anton Schindling, “Neighbours of a Different Faith: Confessional Coexistence
and Parity in the Territorial States and Towns of the Empire” in Klaus Bussmann and
Heinz Schilling (eds.), 1648: War and Peace in Europe, 3 vols. (Münster: 1999), vol. 1,
465–483, here 465.
A word on terminology: in what follows, the terms “biconfessional” and “triconfes-
sional” refer to a broad spectrum of arrangements in which more than one confession
were exercised within a single jurisdiction, whether or not all enjoyed full legal recog-
nition. The terms therefore describe communities that were bi- or triconfessional as a
matter of practice, if not in point of law. The terms “equal” or “coequal” describe bi- or
triconfessional arrangements in which relations between the two (or three) faiths were
predicated on the assumption of equal status. “Parity” refers specifically to biconfes-
sional communities in which resources were shared, and to deliberative procedures
that were conducted, on the basis of “exact and mutual equality” (exacta et mutuaque
aequalitas) under the terms of the Peace of Westphalia, specifically Article V, § 1
of the portion signed in Osnabrück, the Instrumentum Pacis Osnabrugensis (hereaf-
ter IPO). The full text of the German version can be found at the Internet-Portal
“Westfälische Geschichte,” http://www.westfaelische-geschichte.de/que740, which is
based on the edition of Arno Buschmann in idem (ed.), Kaiser und Reich: Klassische
Texte zur Verfassungsgeschichte des Heiligen Römischen Reiches Deutscher Nation vom
Beginn des 12. Jh. bis zum Jahre 1806 (Munich: 1984). On the legal principle of con-
fessional parity, see Martin Heckel, “Parität,” Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanon-
istische Abteilung 49 (1963): 261–420.
 a multiconfessional empire 131

Any attempt to impose orthodoxy was bound to generate dissent, and

with it the pluralization of belief and religious practice.
The following essay examines each of these layers in turn. The first
segment inquires after the imperial framework and confronts the par-
adoxical fact that the Empire developed a durable multiconfessional
regime in the absence of norms that endorsed plurality. Indeed, all but
a few regarded plurality as a sign of disorder and decay. The Empire’s
multiconfessional regime therefore emerged in a vacuum between
hope for the restoration of unity and the hard realities of power poli-
tics. It evolved in fits and starts, amid outbreaks of armed confronta-
tion, until a lasting settlement was achieved in 1555. To be sure, the
Religious Peace did not so much end conflicts as reorganize them; and
the system eventually came apart in the decades after 1600. Still, the
salient point remains that the Empire’s deliberative bodies and judi-
cial tribunals provided a framework for the mediation of confessional
differences, which blunted the violent edge of religious conflicts by
transforming them into objects of diplomatic negotiation and legal
wrangling. At the imperial level, the result was a decidedly rule-bound
mode of dealing with religious plurality, a mode that would revive
with new vigor after the Thirty Years’ War.
A second segment sketches the wide variety of multiconfessional
regimes that took shape at the local level. In principle, the Religious
Peace conferred on the Empire’s princes the right to establish religion
(ius reformandi). But this did not halt the progress of pluralization.
From the 1570s onward, confessional relations were shaped by the
determination of secular authorities to impose their will; by domestic
constraints on the exercise of state power; and by the responses of
parishioners and curates to external pressure. Where plurality was not
extinguished, the results typically fell into one of several broad pat-
terns of coexistence, not always peaceful, ranging from the unofficial,
pragmatic toleration of religious minorities to full, legal parity between
two or more confessional groups.
The third section charts the transformation of confessional bound-
aries during the period after the Peace of Westphalia, which ended
the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. Broadly speaking, confessional com-
munities became more exclusive and barriers between them grew
more rigid. By the late-17th and 18th centuries, enclosed confes-
sional communities had finally supplanted earlier and more expan-
sive structures. But the ossification of confessional boundaries did
not necessarily make for hostile relations. On the contrary, the
132 david m. luebke

mediation of confessional difference was often more effective at

smothering religious violence under the rigid, post-1648 regime of
confessional sequestration. In contrast to the 16th century, similarly,
the effect of state action was to increase confessional heterogeneity, not
diminish it.

Imperial Contexts

The Reformation occurred at a time when the Empire was undergoing

political reforms that transformed its deliberative body, consolidating
its legislative powers and formalizing its procedures and solemnities.5
Out of these reforms, the assembly—which started calling itself a
Reichstag (“Imperial Diet”) in 1495—acquired considerable autonomy.
Although the Emperor summoned each meeting and set its order of
business, the Diet did not require his physical presence and exhibited
increasing independence as a law-making and tax-granting body. The
most prominent expression of this autonomy was the creation, also
in 1495, of a supreme judicial tribunal, the Imperial Chamber Court
(Reichskammergericht), with power to enforce the peace of the Empire.
The Emperor named its presiding judge and chamber presidents, but
the “assessors”—the justices who actually decided each case—were the
Diet’s appointees. As a whole, the Empire was becoming a system of
shared or “complimentary” governance.6
For all this innovation, however, the Diet remained a corpus
mysticum—the ceremonial incarnation of the body politic and of the
whole Empire as a “sacral community.”7 The schism between Prot-
estants and Catholics disrupted this system profoundly.8 Few events

5
Winfried Schulze, “Der deutsche Reichstag des 16. Jahrhunderts zwischen tradi-
tioneller Konsensbildung und Paritätisierung der Reichspolitik” in Heinz Duchhardt
and Gert Melville (eds.), Im Spannungsfeld von Recht und Ritual: Soziale Kommunika-
tion in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Cologne: 1997), 447–461.
6
Georg Schmidt, Geschichte des Alten Reiches: Staat und Nation in der Frühen
Neuzeit, 1495–1806 (Munich: 1999), 44–55.
7
Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, Des Kaisers alte Kleider: Verfassungsgeschichte und
Symbolsprache des Alten Reiches (Munich: 2009), 89–96.
8
In what follows, I use the term “Protestant” if the matter under discussion goes
to the fundamental division between old church and new in a manner that transcends
differences between Lutheran and Reformed. I also use the term “Protestant” if it
is not possible to assign the person or group in question to a more precise confes-
sional grouping, or if doing so would impose greater theological precision on the
self-understanding of that person or group than the historical record warrants. Where
 a multiconfessional empire 133

dramatized its effects as vividly as a Diet held in Augsburg during

in the summer and autumn of 1530. For the first time in more than
a decade, the Emperor, Charles V (1519–1556), attended in person,
determined to restore unity to the church. No fewer than 42 princes,
counts, and lords showed up for the deliberations; another 58 sent
delegates; 30 imperial free cities were represented as well. It was, in
short, one of the best-attended diets of the 16th century.9 But the rift
over religion played havoc with the assembly’s usual rites and cer-
emonies. The Protestant princes could not participate in the inaugural
Mass without seeming to endorse the doctrine of transubstantiation.
Theological controversy also intruded on the Diet’s secular solemni-
ties. Lest anyone suspect that his participation in the Emperor’s fes-
tive entry into Augsburg signified a softening of his theological stance,
the Landgrave Philipp of Hessen and his entourage wore armbands
bearing the Protestant legend V.D.M.I.E.—verbum Domini manet in
eternum, “The word of the Lord endures in eternity.”10
The Diet of 1530 is best known for the Augsburg Confession—the
statement of core beliefs, compiled by Philipp Melanchthon, on behalf
of the princes and city-states that had aligned themselves with Martin
Luther. It was also a moment when Christian unity seemed lost for
good and with it the very capacity of imperial bodies to deal peace-
ably with the schism.11 The Diet’s resolution of 19 November—passed
by the Catholic majority after most of the Protestant members had
slipped out of town—condemned any further “innovation” in religion
as a breach of the imperial peace, which amounted to a declaration
of legal warfare against adherents of the Augsburg Confession.12 The
Diet of 1530 was therefore an important milestone in the progress

it makes no difference and it is possible to describe the person or group accurately as

“Lutheran” or “Calvinist” or “Mennonite,” I have done so.
9
Figures based on Rosemarie Aulinger, Das Bild des Reichstages im 16. Jahrhun-
dert (Göttingen: 1980), appendix VII, 358–374.
10
On the ceremonial aspects of the Diet of 1530, see Stollberg-Rilinger, Des Kaisers
alte Kleider, 93–136; and Aulinger, Bild des Reichstages, 328–346.
11
Albrecht Pius Luttenberger, Glaubenseinheit und Reichsfriede: Konzeptionen und
Wege konfessionsneutraler Reichspolitik (1530–1552) (Gottingen: 1982), 26–29, 33–37;
Armin Kohnle, Reichstag und Reformation: Kaiserliche und ständische Religionspolitik
von den Anfängen der Causa Lutheri bis zum Nürnberger Religionsfrieden (Gütersloh:
2001).
12
Martin Heckel, “Die Religionsprozesse des Reichskammergerichts im konfessio-
nell gespaltenen Reichskirchenrecht,” Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische
Abteilung 77 (1991): 130–162, here 289–290; Axel Gotthard, Der Augsburger Religions-
frieden (Münster: 2004), 180–181.
134 david m. luebke

of confessionalization—the codification of doctrines and liturgies that

flowed from a close and increasingly militant alliance between secular
rulers, theologians, and ecclesiastical authorities on both sides of the
religious divide.
But the Diet also exposed structures and practices that weathered
the storm of religious controversy. First, the schism did not hobble
the Diet’s legislative functions: behind the scenes, committees quietly
worked through important matters of law, finance, and the common
defense, unhindered by the controversy swirling around them. Com-
mittees tasked with working out a religious settlement were staffed
with equal numbers of Protestants and Catholics—an arrangement that
tacitly recognized Protestants collectively as an equal party to negotia-
tion in matters of religion. Subsequent assemblies, finally, resolved the
ceremonial problems raised in 1530 by allowing Protestant princes to
attend the inaugural Mass, but without obliging them to join in the
Catholic communion rite. This solution was predicated on a novel
distinction between religion and political order that acknowledged
the schism symbolically without allowing it to bring down the entire
liturgical edifice.13 From there, it was a short step to the realization
that a subject could remain loyal without adhering to his overlord’s
religion.14
A quarter century would elapse before a durable religious settlement
was in place. But its elements had begun to take shape already in 1532,
when a set of agreements called the “Nürnberg Standstill” suspended
all suits before the Imperial Chamber Court concerning “faith and
religion.” This effectively legalized the seizures of church property by
Protestant princes and the violence that had attended them. Two brief
wars and a failed attempt to impose a temporary ecclesio-political
unity—the “Interim” of 1548—cancelled out alternatives to a political
solution that simply ruled out all questions of theological truth.15
In 1555, finally, the Diet gave its blessing to an idea that the ius
reformandi should belong to the individual estates of the Empire. This
was the essence of the Religious Peace of 1555, which was summed up

13
Stollberg-Rilinger, Des Kaisers alte Kleider, 135.
14
Hans R. Guggisberg, “The Defence of Religious Toleration and Religious Liberty
in Early Modern Europe: Arguments, Pressures, and Some Consequences,” History of
European Ideas 4 (1982): 35–50.
15
Armin Kohnle, “Nürnberg—Passau—Augsburg: Der lange Weg zum Religions-
frieden” in Heinz Schilling and Heribert Smolinsky (eds.), Der Augsburger Religions-
frieden 1555 (Münster: 2007), 5–16.
 a multiconfessional empire 135

by the legal formula cuius regio, eius religio—“he who rules determines
the religion.” The meaning of that dictum, however, only gradually
acquired the clarity attributed to it from the 17th century on. For one
thing, the phrase first appeared in 1587, in connection with a decision
to make princely territories, as opposed to lineages, the basic units
of representation.16 The Religious Peace also imposed limits on the
right of princes. The Diet allowed only two lawful options, Catholicism
and the Augsburg Confession.17 Another limitation was the so-called
“ecclesiastical reservation,” which stipulated that any prince-bishop or
imperial prelate who wished to convert to the Augsburg Confession
must surrender his office with “all [its] fruits and incomes.”18 And
there was an exception to the exception: the Declaratio Ferdinandea,
a royal codicil that granted religious toleration to corporations within
ecclesiastical territories, which had practiced the Augsburg Confession
“for many years” (lange zeit und jar). Forcible conversion was forbid-
den categorically; non-conformists were given the right to emigrate in
an orderly manner.19 Imperial cities in which both confessions were
already practiced became officially biconfessional.20 Finally, the Diet
required the Imperial Chamber Court to adopt a confessionally neu-
tral stance.21 From 1555 on, therefore, the Empire was a biconfessional
realm; as a practical matter, it became triconfessional in 1566, when
the Lutheran princes refused to condemn Friedrich III, the Palatine
Elector, for his adherence to the “Calvinist sect.”22 The Empire was no
longer, strictly speaking, a sacral community.
It is easy to dismiss the Religious Peace of 1555 as a jumble of
inconsistent half-measures that failed to place confessional relations

16
Bernd Christian Schneider, Ius reformandi: Die Entwicklung eines Staatskirchen-
rechts von seinen Anfängen bis zum Ende des Alten Reiches (Tübingen: 2001), especially
218–228, 256–268, 316–320; and Robert von Friedeburg, “Cuius regio, eius religio: The
Ambivalent Meanings of State-Building in Protestant Germany, 1555–1655” forth-
coming in Howard P. Louthan et al. (eds.), Diversity and Dissent: Negotiating Religious
Difference in Central Europe, 1500–1800 (New York: 2011).
17
Augsburger Reichstagsabschied 1555 (hereafter ARA) § 15. The full text of the
German version can be found at the Internet-Portal “Westfälische Geschichte,” http://
www.westfaelische-geschichte.de/que739, which is based on the edition of Buschmann,
Kaiser und Reich.
18
ARA § 21.
19
ARA §§ 23–24.
20
ARA § 27.
21
ARA §§ 32–33.
22
Maximilian Lanzinner and Dietmar Heil “Der Augsburger Reichstag 1566:
Ergebnisse einer Edition,” Historische Zeitschrift 274 (2002): 603–632.
136 david m. luebke

on a secure footing. In the interest of reaching an agreement, its fram-

ers used legal wording that already had sharply divergent meanings
for Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed jurists.23 Who, for example,
counted as “adherents” (Verwandte) of the Augsburg Confession?24
Reformed Protestants included themselves in that category, but most
Catholic and Lutheran jurists excluded them. Such dissimulation, so
the argument goes, exacerbated misunderstanding and uncertainty
over the long term. Even worse, Protestants and Catholics disputed
the legal status of key provisions: the former rejected the ecclesiastical
reservation on the grounds that it compromised the princes’ freedom
of conscience, for example, while the latter never accepted the Decla-
ratio Ferdinandea as legally binding. Thus a crisis of legitimacy was
“preprogrammed”: imperial jurisprudence gained acceptance only to
the extent that litigants could expect consistency. Precisely this was
lacking.25
But this interpretation obscures the fundamental achievement of the
Religious Peace, which was to “judicialize” religious conflict.26 Con-
cretely, judicialization meant that conflicts over religion were trans-
formed into legal battles over the proper interpretation of the 1555
settlement. Its ultimate arbiter was the Imperial Chamber Court,
which from 1560 on was obligated to appoint equal numbers of Prot-
estant and Catholic assessors in cases involving religion—an example
of what might be called procedural coequality. In functional terms,
judicialization neutralized religious conflicts by subjecting them to
the slow, deliberate pace of litigation. Indeed, for many litigants, the
appeal of imperial tribunals lay not in their consistency, but in the fact
that lawsuits could attenuate the status quo for years, even decades.27

23
Martin Heckel, “Die Reformationsprozesse im Spannungsfeld des Reichskirch-
ensystems” in Bernhard Diestelkamp (ed.), Die politische Funktion des Reichskam-
mergerichts (Cologne: 1993), 9–40, here 21.
24
Irene Dingel, “Augsburger Religionsfrieden und ‘Augsburger Konfessionsver-
wandtschaft’: Konfessionelle Lesearten” in Schilling and Smolinsky, Augsburger Reli-
gionsfrieden, 157–176.
25
Martin Heckel, “Autonomia und Pacis Compositio: Der Augsburger Religions-
friede in der Deutung der Gegenreformation,” Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanon-
istische Abteilung 45 (1959): 141–248. The interpretation invoked here is Gotthard’s,
Augsburger Religionsfrieden, 271–280.
26
Horst Rabe, “Der Augsburger Religionsfriede und das Reichskammergericht
1555–1600” in idem et al. (eds.), Festgabe für Ernst Walter Zeeden zum 60. Geburtstag
(Münster: 1976), 260–280.
27
See Bernhard Ruthmann, Die Religionsprozesse am Reichskammergericht (1555–
1648): Eine Analyse anhand ausgewählter Prozesse (Cologne: 1996), 567–580.
 a multiconfessional empire 137

Meanwhile, sessions of the Imperial Diet went about their business as

before, setting aside confessional differences to continue the Empire’s
judicial and administrative reforms and to fund its defense against the
Ottoman Empire.28 The contrast to confessional conflict in war-torn
western Europe could hardly be more striking.
The great weakness of this system was that it lacked grounding in
shared norms that could withstand the centripetal force of religious
loyalties. Only a few theorists attempted to justify confessional plu-
rality as a positive good; most considered it at best a necessary evil.29
Secularizing norms such as concordia, “nation,” or the common good
were barely adequate to the task of legitimating a confessionally plu-
ralistic political order.30 Instead, the Peace depended heavily on trust
that had built up after 1555. By the 1580s, however, consensus had
begun to erode over the basic status of the Religious Peace. Catho-
lic polemicists, revitalized after the Council of Trent, argued that the
free disposition of princes in matters of religion was tantamount to
arbitrary rule and therefore inconsistent with a well-ordered Christian
government. Embedded in this argumentation were the propositions
that the Religious Peace had been a temporary measure all along and
therefore that the confessions could not be regarded as fully equal. For
their part, Protestants continued to regard the Peace as fundamental
to the Empire’s constitutional order and pressed for a thorough-going
extension of legal and procedural coequality into all transactions of
the Diet and the imperial courts, including those matters that did not
pertain directly to religion.31 When these efforts did not bear fruit,

28
Lanzinner and Heil, “Augsburger Reichstag von 1566.” For simplicity’s sake, this
analysis has excluded consideration of an imperial tribunal that was attached to the
office of Emperor, the Imperial Aulic Council (Reichshofrat), established by Ferdinand
I in 1556 as a counterweight to the Imperial Chamber Court. In the late 16th century,
it had the reputation of pro-Catholic bias, but, as Stefan Ehrenpreis’s recent study sug-
gests, this reputation was unwarranted; see his Kaiserliche Gerichsbarkeit und Konfes-
sionskonflikt: Der Reichshofrat unter Rudolf II (1576–1612) (Göttingen: 2006).
29
One anonymous Austrian pamphleteer likened the Empire’s multiconfessional
regime to a body with many limbs, on which the good of the whole depended; see
Ralf-Peter Fuchs, “From Pluralization to True Belief? An Austrian Treatise on Reli-
gious Freedom (1624)” in Andreas Höfele et al. (eds.), Representing Religious Plural-
ization in Early Modern Europe (Berlin: 2007), 113–131.
30
On the use of “nation” as a compensatory norm, see Georg Schmidt, “Die früh-
neuzeitliche Idee ‘deutsche Nation’: Mehrkonfessionalität und säkulare Werte” in
Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Dieter Langewiesche (eds.), Nation und Religion in der
deutschen Geschichte (Frankfurt: 2001), 33–67.
31
Schulze, “Der deutsche Reichstag,” 454.
138 david m. luebke

many lost confidence that imperial tribunals would treat religious

matters neutrally. Meanwhile friction between Lutherans and Calvin-
ists had begun to disable the tactical unity that Protestants usually dis-
played in politics at the imperial level.32
It would be misleading to depict the polarization in the stark tones
of theologians and polemicists. The most recent research, for exam-
ple, situates confessional tension among a wide variety of causes for
the Thirty Years’ War.33 Some Protestant princes, such as the Elector
Johann Georg I of Saxony, found it expedient to ally with the Catholic
Emperor; likewise the imperial court continued to pursue a moder-
ate policy in confessional matters long after 1610; and irenicism never
fully disappeared.34 Nevertheless, the climate of reciprocal demoniza-
tion that prevailed after 1600 interfered with the ability of imperial
courts to diffuse conflicts over religion.35 Even the Empire’s ability
to fund the common defense was impaired.36 Local conflicts that the
imperial system might once have absorbed instead became flashpoints
of general antagonism—such as the Donauwörth Affair (1608), a dis-
pute over Catholic processions in a biconfessional imperial city that
provoked its annexation by Bavaria.37 Legal and procedural coequality

32
See most recently Axel Gotthard, “ ‘Wer sich salviren könd, solts thun’: Warum
der deutsche Protestantismus in der Zeit der konfessionellen Polarisierung zu keiner
gemeinsamen Politik fand,” Historisches Jahrbuch 121 (2001): 65–96.
33
Stefan Ehrenpreis, “Die Rolle des Kaiserhofes in der Reichsverfassungskrise und
im europäischen Mächtesystem vor dem Dreißigjährigen Krieg” in Winfried Schulze
(ed.), Friedliche Intentionen—Kriegerische Effekte: War der Ausbruch des Dreißigjäh-
rigen Krieges unvermeidlich? (St. Katharinen: 2002), 71–106; Winfried Schulze, “Plu-
ralisierung als Bedrohung: Toleranz als Lösung” in Heinz Duchhardt (ed.), Der
Westfälische Friede: Diplomatie—politische Zäsur—kulturelles Umfeld—Rezeptionsge-
schichte (Munich: 1998), 115–140.
34
Howard Hotson, “Irenicism in the Confessional Age: The Holy Roman Empire,
1563–1648” in Howard P. Louthan and Randall C. Zachmann (eds.), Confession and
Conciliation: The Struggle for Unity in the Age of Reform, 1415–1648 (South Bend:
2004), 228–285.
35
Dietrich Kratsch, “Decision oder Interpretation? Der ‘Vierklosterstreit’ vor dem
Reichskammergericht” in Bernhard Diestelkamp (ed.), Die politische Funktion des
Reichskammergerichts (Cologne: 1993), 41–58.
36
Winfried Schulze, “Konfessionsfundamentalismus in Europa um 1600: Zwischen
discordia und compositio” in Heinz Schilling (ed.), Konfessioneller Fundamentalismus
(Munich: 2007), 135–148.
37
Axel Gotthard, “Der deutsche Konfessionskrieg seit 1619: Ein Resultat gestörter
politischer Kommunikation,” Historisches Jahrbuch 122 (2002): 141–172; C. Scott
Dixon, “Urban Order and Religious Coexistence in the German Imperial City: Augs-
burg and Donauwörth, 1548–1608,” Central European History 40 (2007): 1–33.
 a multiconfessional empire 139

between the confessions would be restored, eventually, but not until

the Thirty Years’ War had run its bloody course.

Modes of Coexistence

Many of the forces at play at the imperial level also shaped confes-
sional relations locally—with the crucial difference that, after 1555,
imperial princes and free cities possessed the right to establish reli-
gion in the parishes subject to their secular authority. With few excep-
tions, Protestant and Catholic authorities understood this provision to
endorse their efforts to forge confessionally homogeneous subject pop-
ulations. From their point of view, the devolution of ius reformandi
made obedience to secular authority synonymous with obedience to
existing directives regarding religion. The tools they used to achieve
this—visitations, strict controls over clerical appointments, religious
tests for office-holding or residency, the persecution of heterodoxy,
and so on—generated new and more stringent criteria for social inclu-
sion and exclusion.38
But the formation of confessional subcultures cannot be compre-
hended solely from the standpoint of princes and bishops; still less are
local patterns of multiconfessional accommodation comprehensible
unless they are also viewed from below.39 For one thing, not everyone
shared the assumption that confessional plurality was incompatible
with parochial unity.40 Time and again, ordinary parishioners exhib-
ited an accommodating stance, in some cases indifference, toward
confessional divisions.41 Often curates, too, proved willing to adapt.

38
Wolfgang Reinhard, “Zwang zur Konfessionalisierung? Prolegomena zu einer
Theorie des konfessionellen Zeitalters,” Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 10 (1983):
257–277. The best overview in English remains R. Po-Chia Hsia, Social Discipline in
the Reformation: Central Europe 1550–1750 (London: 1989).
39
Anton Schindling, “Konfessionalisierung und Grenzen von Konfessionalisier-
barkeit” in Anton Schindling and Walter Ziegler (eds.), Die Territorien des Reichs im
Zeitalter der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung, vol. 7 (Münster: 1995), 9–44; Win-
fried Schulze, “Konfessionalisierung als Paradigma zur Erforschung des konfessionel-
len Zeitalters” in Burkhardt Dietz and Stefan Ehrenpreis (eds.), Drei Konfessionen in
einer Region: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Konfessionalisierung im Herzogtum Berg vom
16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert (Cologne: 1999), 15–30.
40
Thomas Kaufmann, Konfession und Kultur: Lutherischer Protestantismus in der
zweiten Hälfte des Reformationsjahrhunderts (Tübingen: 2006), here 14–16.
41
Nicole Grochowina, “Grenzen der Konfessionalisierung: Dissidententum und
konfessionelle Indifferenz im Ostfriesland des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts” in Kaspar
140 david m. luebke

Similarly, not all assumed that social and political cohesion were
incompatible with religious plurality—especially if communal well-
being or the preservation of autonomy depended on accommodating
it.42 The elasticity of social being underlying these behaviors contra-
dicts the assumption that confessional identity was from the start an
all-encompassing category of belonging.43 Finally, local corporations
and privileged elites often found reason to preserve the ecclesiopoliti-
cal status quo against efforts to purge it of heterodoxy. At the local
level, then, multiconfessional regimes typically emerged at the limits of
state or magisterial power and reproduced the character of constraints
on its exercise—including the constraints of imperial law.
Bearing these qualifications in mind, one can distinguish at least
six general patterns of multiconfessional coexistence at the local level,
which varied by degree of legal formalization; by their relation to secu-
lar and ecclesiastical authority, their structure, coherence and efficacy;
by the nature and degree of confessional pressure brought to bear
against them; by the attitude of parishioners, curates, and local elites
toward religious pluralization; and by the precision with which confes-
sional boundaries were delineated.44
Hybrid: The earliest pattern, and arguably the most widespread, was
also the most idiosyncratic. Parish priests, confronted with diverging
liturgical demands among their parishioners, strove to preserve paro-
chial cohesion by accommodating pluralization ad hoc. The Saxon
visitation of 1526, for example, turned up pastors who distributed the
sacraments in one or both kinds, at different hours but from the same

von Greyerz et al. (eds.), Interkonfessionalität—Transkonfessionalität—binnenkonfes-

sionelle Pluralität: Neue Forschungen zur Konfessionalisierungsthese (Gütersloh: 2003),
16–47.
42
Robert W. Scribner called this the “toleration of practical rationality”. See idem,
“Preconditions of Tolerance and Intolerance in Sixteenth-Century Germany” in Ole
Peter Grell and Robert W. Scribner (eds.), Tolerance and Intolerance in the European
Reformation (Cambridge, UK: 1996), 34–47.
43
Frauke Volkland, Konfession und Selbstverständnis: Reformierte Rituale in der
gemischtkonfessionellen Kleinstadt Bischofszell im 17. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: 2005).
44
These categories are my effort to synthesize the recent outpouring of research,
including my own, on confessional coexistence in the empire and elsewhere in early
modern Europe. I owe a special intellectual debt to Ernst Walter Zeeden, whose clas-
sic overview, Die Entstehung der Konfessionen: Grundlagen und Formen der Konfes-
sionsbildung im Zeitalter der Glaubenskämpfe (Munich: 1965), first drew attention
to the many liturgical adaptations that characterized the first phase of confessional
differentiation.
 a multiconfessional empire 141

altar.45 To some extent, these syncretistic adaptations reproduced the

ragged indeterminacy of belief during the earlier phases of confes-
sional differentiation. The confessional status of the “chalice move-
ment,” for example, long remained murky. For one thing, the Interim
of 1548 had allowed laity to receive the communion chalice in parishes
where the custom was already established. Even in Catholic Bavaria,
Duke Albrecht V in 1553 waived all penalties for communicating sub
utraque within the Catholic Mass, then legalized the practice after
a papal concession arrived in 1564.46 In many regions, demand for
the lay chalice did not become an unambiguous marker of “hereti-
cal” inclinations until well into the 1560s.47 Elsewhere, ad hoc adapta-
tions of confessional difference reflected the solicitude of parish clergy.
How else to account for Adolf Eckrath, who served simultaneously as
a Reformed minister of Solingen and as a Catholic priest in Bensberg?
Or the chameleon-like Gerhard Venraid, a Lutheran convert who took
up a Catholic post in Sonsbeck in 1563, then served as first minister
to the Reformed congregation in Wesel (1571–1578), and ended his
career as a Catholic priest in Königswinter, distributing the Eucharist
sub una specie?48 Elsewhere still, liturgical accommodations of confes-
sional plurality may also have reflected the deliberate choice of a middle
path between Rome and Wittenberg. In 1549, for example, a visitation
in Lippe revealed that most rural clergy had married and professed a
mixture of Lutheran and Catholic doctrines, while preserving the trap-
pings and ceremonies of the old faith.49 In the united duchies of Jülich,

45
Hermann Nottarp, “Zur communicatio cum haereticis: Deutsche Rechtszustände
im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert” in Friedrich Merzbacher (ed.), Hermann Nottarp: Aus
Rechtsgeschichte und Kirchenrecht (Cologne: 1967), 424–446.
46
Albrecht forbade the lay chalice, however, in 1571; Alois Knöpfler, Die Kelchbe-
wegung in Bayern unter Herzog Albrecht V: Ein Beitrag zur Reformationsgeschichte des
16. Jahrhunderts (Munich: 1891), 1–27, 113–116, 142–148, 212–221.
47
Andreas Holzem, “Katholische Konfessionskultur im Westfalen der Frühen
Neuzeit: Glaubenswissen und Glaubenspraxis in agrarischen Lebens- und Erfahrung-
sräumen,” Westfälische Forschungen 56 (2006): 65–87.
48
On Eckrath, see Kurt Wesoly, “Katholisch, lutherisch, reformiert, evangelisch?
Zu den Anfängen der Reformation im Bergischen Land” in Dietz and Ehrenpreis,
Drei Konfessionen, 291–306, here 300; on Venraid, see August Franzen, “Die Heraus-
bildung des Konfessionsbewußtseins am Niederrhein im 16. Jahrhundert,” Annalen
des Historischen Vereins für den Niederrhein 158 (1956): 164–209, here 185–190. My
thanks go to Jesse Spohnholz for the reference to Venraid.
49
Johannes Bauermann, “Die katholische Visitation Lippes im Jahre 1549: Ein
Beitrag zur Geschichte des Interims in Westfalen,” Jahrbuch für Westfälische Kirchen-
geschichte 44 (1951): 113–146, here 135–138.
142 david m. luebke

Kleve, and Berg, famously, the “middle path” remained ducal policy
until 1567. Even after that date, there was no serious effort to impose
confessional orthodoxy.50
Subcutaneous: However they evolved, adaptations of the first type
managed to conserve the ritual unity of parish communities by blurring
lines of distinction between the confessions.51 The second type produced
a similar effect, but in response to radically different circumstances—
repression and the thorough confessionalization of sacred space. To
speak of persecuted religious minorities in these terms may seem per-
verse, but in certain cases, their experiences fit the bill. The Alpine
and Bohemian crypto-Protestants are a case in point: the very size and
persistence of these hidden communities attests to forms of everyday
acceptance on the part of rural Catholics.52 Since the 1620s, they had
been regarded as rebels, against whom the most draconian measures
were warranted, including confinement in “conversion houses” and
expulsion.53 These assaults exposed the undiminished determination
of princes to achieve confessional homogeneity. But they also revealed
the limits of state power. Until the 1730s, local representatives of secu-
lar and ecclesiastical authority were unable to penetrate the networks
of mutual dependence and kinship that tied crypto-Protestant villag-
ers to their Catholic neighbors.54 Protestant parishioners—deprived of
their own ministers since the early-17th century—rendered themselves
liturgically indistinguishable from Catholics, or nearly so: they were
married by Catholic priests, buried their dead in parish churchyards,

50
Stefan Ehrenpreis, “Die Vereinigten Herzogtümer Jülich-Kleve-Berg und der
Augsburger Religionsfrieden” in Schilling and Smolinsky, Augsburger Religionsfrie-
den, 239–267.
51
The characterization of these regimes as “subcutaneous” comes from Martin
Scheutz, “Das Offizielle und das Subkutane: Katholische Frömmigkeit und die Geheim-
protestanten in den österreichischen Erbländern,” paper delivered at the conference
“Liturgisches Handeln und soziale Praxis: Symbolische Kommunikation im Zeitalter
der Konfessionalisierung,” Münster, 1 June 2009. I am grateful to Professor Scheutz
for providing a copy of his paper.
52
See most recently the essays contained in Rudolf Leeb, Martin Scheutz, and Diet-
mar Weikl (eds.), Geheimprotestantismus und evangelische Kirchen in der Habsburger-
monarchie und im Erzstift Salzburg (17./18. Jahrhundert) (Vienna: 2009).
53
Martin Scheutz, “Die ‘fünfte Kolonne’: Geheimprotestanten im 18. Jahrhundert
in der Habsburgermonarchie und deren Inhaftierung in Konversionshäusern (1752–
1775),” Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung 114 (2006):
329–380, here 351–365.
54
Martin Scheutz, “Konfessionalisierung von unten und oben sowie der adminis-
trative Umgang mit Geheimprotestantismus in den österreichischen Erbländern” in
Leeb et al., Geheimprotestantismus, 25–39.
 a multiconfessional empire 143

baptized their offspring in the Catholic rite, and attended processions

“out of love and neighborliness, [not wanting] to aggrieve anyone.”55
The result was a kind of defensive condominium that held well into
the mid-18th century. Until then, the blending of confessions behind
a veneer of uniformity appears to have troubled only the agents of
orthodoxy.
Entrenched: The third type of multiconfessional regime could form
when entrenched, local elites perceived a material interest in upholding
the institutional status quo that outweighed both their own religious
loyalties and the power of princes to impose uniformity. Here too the
result was an informal multiconfessionality under the monoconfes-
sional veneer, albeit for different reasons. In the Empire’s many eccle-
siastical territories, for example, offices and prebends were typically
distributed among a relatively small number of regional aristocratic
families, who therefore had a stake in preserving the existing system of
church governance.56 By the mid-16th century many, perhaps most, of
these families had adopted some form of Protestant belief. But the Reli-
gious Peace of 1555 had fixed the status of these territories as Catholic.
Rather than disrupt the status quo, nobles used their influence over
cathedral chapters, secular administration, and territorial assemblies
both to thwart pressure to conform in doctrine and to secure Protes-
tants a measure of informal toleration.57 Such configurations of power
and faith often had peculiar liturgical consequences. In order to collect
their incomes, Lutheran members of the cathedral chapter in Minden,
for example, took part in Catholic processions and the Mass.58 Occa-
sionally they also won quasi-legal validation. In 1542, for example, an

55
Thus a refugee from Salzburg, explaining his motives in 1680; Rudolf Leeb, “Zwei
Konfessionen in einem Tal: Vom Zusammenleben der Konfessionen im Alpenraum in
der Zeit des ‘Geheimprotestantismus’ und zum Verständnis der Konfessionalisierung”
in Rupert Kleiber and Hermann Hold (eds.), Impulse für eine religiöse Alltagsgeschichte
des Donau-Alpen-Adria-Raumes (Vienna: 2005), 129–250, here 139.
56
Eike Wolgast, Hochstift und Reformation: Studien zur Geschichte der Reichskirche
zwischen 1517 und 1648 (Stuttgart: 1995), 20–26.
57
See Bastian Gillner, “Freie Herren, Freie Religion: Der Adel des Oberstifts Mün-
ster zwischen konfessionellem Konflikt und staatlicher Verdichtung, 1500–1700,”
(unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Westfälische-Wilhelms-Universität Münster, 2009);
the contribution of Richard Ninness to this volume; and idem, Between Opposition
and Collaboration: Nobles, Bishops, and the German Reformations in the Prince-Bish-
opric of Bamberg (1555–1619) (Leiden: forthcoming).
58
Johannes Heckel, Die evangelischen Dom- und Kollegiatstifter Preussens, ins-
besondere Brandenburg, Merseburg, Naumburg, Zeitz: Eine rechtsgeschichtliche Unter-
suchung (Stuttgart: 1924), 111–112.
144 david m. luebke

ecclesiastical ordinance for the Imperial Abbacy of Fulda effectively

legalized Lutheran observance without altering the territory’s confes-
sional standing.59 In Paderborn, the Catholic cathedral chapter in 1590
entered a “territorial pact” with the overwhelmingly Protestant nobility
and towns to establish a regime of de facto religious toleration, which
held until 1603–1604.60 A similar convergence of interest coalesced in
the Duchy of Silesia, a secular dependency of the Bohemian crown,
where the Catholic bishop of Breslau, as president ex officio of the
provincial diet, was dependent on a minimum of cooperation from
the largely Protestant nobles and privileged towns.61 As a result there
were no serious efforts to re-Catholicize the province until after 1600.
A special subset of entrenched multiconfessionality formed in territo-
ries that were subject to two lords of different faiths—such as the Black
Forest lordship of Prechtal, co-ruled by the count of Fürstenberg and
margrave of Baden-Durlach, who appointed a Catholic and Lutheran
minister, respectively, to the valley’s two churches.62 In such cases, the
principle of cuius regio, eius religio often had the paradoxical effect of
conferring de facto freedom of choice.
Liminal: Yet another kind of coexistence took shape willy-nilly, at
the limits of officially monoconfessional jurisdictions. In many parts
of the Empire, the fragmentation of political authority was so extreme
that non-conformists in one jurisdiction could easily worship among
coreligionists in an adjacent territory. A Catholic dissenter living in
the tiny imperial city of Aalen, say, had only to walk a short distance
to attend Mass in Unterkochen, a parish within the imperial provostry
of Ellwangen. Such arrangements were not confined, however, to the
splintered political landscapes of Franconia, Swabia, or the Rhineland.
The imperial counties of Ortenburg and Haag, for example, were Prot-
estant islands in a Bavarian Catholic sea; from 1555 on, such enclaves
were protected under the Religious Peace. “Liminal” plurality could also
emerge without the protection of imperial law. In 1570, for example,

59
Johannes Merz, “Fulda” in Schindling and Ziegler, Territorien des Reiches, 4:128–
145, here 137–139.
60
On the Landesvereinigung of 1590, see Bastian Gillner, Unkatholischer Stiftsadel:
Konfession und Politik des Adels im Fürstbistum Paderborn (1555–1618) (Münster:
2006), 95–111.
61
Alexander Schunka, “Protestanten in Schlesien im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert” in
Rudolf Leeb et al., Geheimprotestantismus, 271–297, here 274–276.
62
Werner Thoma, Die Kirchenpolitik der Grafen von Fürstenberg im Zeitalter der
Glaubenskämpfe (Münster: 1963), 83–95.
 a multiconfessional empire 145

the Emperor Maximilian II granted religious freedom to the nobility

of Lower Austria, which had the effect of creating protected confes-
sional enclaves on the outskirts of Vienna. After Rudolf II forbade
non-Catholic worship in the capital city, Viennese Protestants began
“walking out” (Auslaufen) to worship on the nearby estate of Hernals.63
Similar processions could be found anywhere territorial boundaries
placed a congenial church within reach. In the Empire’s northwest-
ern corner, Calvinist subjects of the prince-bishop of Münster “walked
out” to the Reformed county of Werth.64 The prince-bishop tried to
stop it but without much success. Since 1588, Dutch Calvinists living
in Lutheran Hamburg worshiped across the Elbe in Stade; despite a
1603 ban, resident Catholics marched to Altona, just beyond Ham-
burg’s walls to the east.65 Such boundary-crossings were liminal in the
anthropological sense as well: the ritual act of “walking out” reinforced
group cohesion by involving dissenters in the performance of their
own marginalization. We must not assume, however, that all “walking
out” was defiant. Auslaufen also enacted confessional hierarchies that
every participant ratified by the simple act of marching along. By the
same token, liminal regimes also enabled civic governments to inte-
grate resident-alien immigrants whose religion otherwise made them
“rebels.”66
Coequal: At the pinnacle of formalized coexistence was, of course,
the legal recognition of two or more confessions within a single com-
munity or jurisdiction. In 1555, as we have seen, the Religious Peace
made lawful the public exercise of religion according to the Augsburg
Confession, alongside Roman Catholicism, in imperial cities where
biconfessionality was already an established fact. A kind of coequal-
ity also existed in the Protestant imperial city of Regensburg, which
was also the seat of four Catholic imperial establishments over which

63
Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Tolera-
tion in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: 2007), 144–150.
64
David M. Luebke, “Customs of Confession: Managing Religious Diversity in Late
Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century Westphalia” forthcoming in Louthan et al.,
Diversity and Dissent.
65
Joachim Whaley, Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg, 1529–1819
(Cambridge, UK: 1985), 48–49, 118–119.
66
Mark Häberlein, “Konfessionelle Grenzen, religiöse Minderheiten und Herr-
schaftspraxis in süddeutschen Städten und Territorien in der Frühen Neuzeit” in
Ronald G. Asch and Dagmar Freist (eds.), Staatsbildung als kultureller Prozess: Struk-
turwandel und Legitimation von Herrschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit (Cologne: 2005),
151–190.
146 david m. luebke

civic magistrates had no authority—the prince-bishopric of Regens-

burg, the Benedictine abbey of St. Emmeram, and two imperial con-
vents. This solution usually operated by sequestration, so that each
parish within a community remained a confessionally homogeneous
element within the larger, plural whole. Often it was tied to power-
sharing arrangements, some of them imposed, others arrived at by
negotiation and treaty. Although the Religious Peace set an important
precedent, not all coequal regimes depended on imperial law or were
limited to two faiths. The Treaties of Dortmund (1609) and Xanten
(1614) established triconfessionality in the duchies of Jülich, Kleve,
and Berg. In the margraviate of Upper Lusatia, similarly, a regime of
formal biconfessionality between the Lutheran and Catholic confes-
sions was established in conjunction with the Peace of Prague (1635).67
By the same token, not all coequal regimes were predicated on paro-
chial sequestration. In Augsburg, Lutherans and Catholics in the par-
ish of the Holy Cross shared parochial resources but worshipped in
adjacent buildings, apparently without serious incident, until 1629.68
In the cathedrals of Wetzlar and Bautzen, coequality was handled by
subdividing the church interior: Catholics got the choir, Lutherans
the nave, and were separated by a rood screen.69 Such a sharing of
sacred spaces and parochial goods was called a simultaneum, although
that term did not enter the legal vocabulary until 1651.70 As in the
imperial cities, these cohabitations involved powersharing, often with
confessionally transgressive consequences. Thus the Catholic dean of
the biconfessional cathedral in Halberstadt served ex officio as rector
divinorum of the Lutheran service, while in Minden, a Lutheran dean
supervised the Catholic Mass.71
Concentric: One final form of coexistence represented a capitula-
tion to the inertia of belief. Anton Schindling observes that in any
given region, the first campaign to achieve confessional homogeneity

67
Friedrich H. Baumgärtel, Die kirchlichen Zustände Bautzens im 16. und 17. Jahr-
hundert (Bautzen: 1889), 54–55.
68
Emily Fisher Gray, “Good Neighbors: Architecture and Confession in Augs-
burg’s Lutheran Church of the Holy Cross, 1525–1661” (Ph.D. diss., University of
Pennsylvania, 2004).
69
Nottarp, “Zur communicatio cum haereticis,” 426.
70
Helmut Neumaier, “Simultaneum und Religionsfrieden im Alten Reich. Zu Phäno-
menologie und Typologie eines umkampften Rechtsinstituts,” Historisches Jahrbuch
128 (2008): 137–176, here 140–145.
71
Heckel, Die evangelischen Dom- und Kollegiatstifter, 111.
 a multiconfessional empire 147

typically stood the best chance of success; once in place, confessional-

ized identities proved difficult to budge.72 “Concentric” regimes often
formed when a prince attempted to convert an already-confessionalized
population. The Electorate of Brandenburg is paradigmatic: in 1613,
Elector Johann Sigismund converted to Calvinism and attempted a
second Reformation, but met with such fierce and broad-based oppo-
sition that the Reformed faith remained largely confined to the capital
city of Berlin and the university in Frankfurt an der Oder.73 Reluc-
tantly, Johann Sigismund was compelled to guarantee both churches,
Lutheran and Reformed; pastors were instructed to “eschew and avoid
all berating and abuse of other churches.” The principle of cuius regio,
eius religio had yielded to the force of popular resistance.

Transformations

There is a grave risk in typologies such as this. Necessarily formulaic,

they can obscure local peculiarities that to us may seem trivial, but to
historical communities may have been crucial variations. So it is worth
emphasizing that most of the Empire’s bi- or triconfessional regimes
fell into more than one category; that few were tranquil; and that all of
them changed shape over time. A regime that began as hybrid adapta-
tion, say, might well transform over time into formal coequality, or
it might be extinguished altogether. Not all transformations, more-
over, were merely local. Taken together, these general types describe
a fundamental shift, away from the blurry idiosyncrasy of the hybrid,
subcutaneous and entrenched modes of coexistence and toward the
enclosed confessional identities that characterized the liminal, coequal,
and concentric regimes.
The Peace of Westphalia accelerated this trend by reinforcing con-
fessional boundaries and by rehabilitating institutions that had pro-
moted the peaceful mediation of religious conflict. Both were achieved
through parity. With respect to imperial institutions, the Peace of 1648
stipulated that the Imperial Diet would decide all matters concerning
religion not by majority vote, but by “friendly agreement” between two

72
Schindling, “Konfessionalisierung und Grenzen von Konfessionalisierbarkeit,”
20–23.
73
Bodo Nischan, Prince, People, and Confession: The Second Reformation in Bran-
denburg (Philadelphia: 1994).
148 david m. luebke

confessional blocs, the corpus evangelicorum, composed of Lutheran

and Reformed members, and the remaining Catholic estates, on the
basis of “exact and mutual equality.”74 This was the so-called itio in
partes, a deliberative procedure that completed the transformation of
religious conflicts into questions of law.75 Similarly, all judgeships but
two in the Imperial Chamber Court would be meted out equally to
Protestant and Catholic candidates—a clause that codified the Prot-
estants’ old demand for equality between the confessions in all the
court’s operations.76
Just as important was an agreement to defuse religious conflict by
freezing confessional boundaries in time and place. The Peace of 1648
guaranteed everyone the right to observe any lawful religion in pri-
vate; but it made no such provision for public observance. Instead,
churches and properties were distributed according to the “normative
year” rule, which restored the status quo of 1 January 1624.77 Any law-
ful confession that had been exercised publicly on that date was to be
restored to its former condition, and because the Peace also codified
the de facto status of Reformed Protestantism as the Empire’s third
lawful confession, the clause applied retroactively to them as well. All
this further compromised the right of princes to establish religion:
although the Peace confirmed this principle explicitly, the normative
year rule contradicted it head on.
Arriving at these provisions took years of fierce haggling. Part of the
price was an exemption for the Habsburg lands, where the normative
year would not apply. Nor was it applied to Protestant territories that
Bavaria annexed and catholicized after 1621. But unlike the Peace of
1555, the 1648 treaty placed the Empire’s triconfessional convivium
on a durable footing by establishing “irrefutable physical boundaries,”
endorsed by imperial law, “in which each confession could continue

74
IPO Art. IV, § 1.
75
Martin Heckel, “Itio in partes: Zur Religionsverfassung des Heiligen Römischen
Reiches Deutscher Nation,” Zeitschrift für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung 64
(1978): 180–308.
76
IPO Art. V, §§ 53–54. Additional articles (§§ 55–58) guaranteed parity in person-
nel and procedure at the second supreme judicial tribunal, the Imperial Aulic Council
(Reichshofrat) in Vienna. See Gabriele Haug-Moritz, “Kaisertum und Parität: Reich-
spolitik und Konfession nach dem Westfälischen Frieden,” Zeitschrift für historische
Forschung 19 (1992): 445–482.
77
The authoritative study is Ralf-Peter Fuchs, Ein ‘Medium’ zum Frieden: Die Nor-
maljahrsregel und die Beendigung des Dreißigjährigen Krieges (Munich: 2009).
 a multiconfessional empire 149

to develop.”78 In several instances, this meant undoing confessionaliza-

tions that had occurred during the war. The prince-bishop of Würz-
burg, for example, was compelled to reestablish Protestant worship in
several parishes that had been catholicized after 1624.79
For present purposes, the most important effect of the Peace of
Westphalia was to formalize existing multiconfessional regimes. Thus
the Peace reconfirmed the biconfessional arrangements in the Swabian
imperial cities of Augsburg, Biberach, Dinkelsbühl, and Ravensburg
and decreed that public offices should be distributed equally between
the confessions.80 The peace also recognized a Lutheran congregation
in the Rhenish town of Oppenheim, ratifying an informal multicon-
fessionality that had evolved there and transforming it into a coequal
regime under the protection of imperial law.81 “Liminal” arrange-
ments were normalized, too: for Lutherans in the Silesian towns of
Schweidnitz, Jauer, and Glogau, for example, the treaty created new
“peace churches” (Friedenskirchen) just beyond the city walls.82 The
power-sharing arrangements that had arisen within ecclesiastical
establishments were frozen, too: thus under the terms of a clause that
ceded the prince-bishoprics of Minden, Halberstadt, and Magdeburg
to Brandenburg, the Elector was obliged to preserve the existing con-
fessional regimes in 11 collegiate churches and cathedral chapters.83 In
Minden, the cathedral chapter was composed of 11 Catholic and seven
Lutheran canons. Any canon was free to convert, but at the price of
surrendering his seat and its incomes.84
Because confession now attached to places and things, moreover,
dynastic conversions typically generated “concentric” regimes—and
no more. These proliferated greatly after 1648. In 1786, the jurist

78
Schindling, “Neighbours,” 466.
79
Walter Scherzer, “Die Augsburger Konfessionsverwandten des Hochstifts Würz-
burg nach dem Westfälischen Frieden,” Zeitschrift für bayerische Kirchengeschichte 49
(1980): 21–43.
80
IPO Art. V, §§ 3–8.
81
IPO Art. IV, § 19. See also Peter Zschunke, Konfession und Alltag in Oppen-
heim: Beiträge zur Geschichte von Bevölkerung und Gesellschaft einer gemischtkonfes-
sionellen Kleinstadt in der frühen Neuzeit (Wiesbaden: 1984), 77–78; Laurent Jalabert,
Catholiques et protestants sur la rive gauche du Rhin: Droits, confessions et coexistence
religieuse de 1648 à 1789 (Brussels: 2009), 79–81.
82
IPO Art. V § 40. See also Joachim Bahlcke, “Religion und Politik in Schlesien:
Konfessionspolitische Strukturen unter österreichischer und preußischer Herrschaft
(1650–1800),” Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte 134 (1998): 33–57.
83
IPO Art. XI §§ 4–11.
84
Heckel, Die evangelischen Dom- und Kollegiatstifter, 113–114.
150 david m. luebke

Johann Stephan Pütter toted up 42 imperial princes who had con-

verted to Catholicism since the Peace of Westphalia. In most cases
(Hannover, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Saxony, Württemberg, Hessen-
Kassel, Pfalz-Sulzbach) the converted prince made no serious attempt
to impose the Roman faith.85 Some converts, such as Elector Friedrich
August of Saxony (1694–1733) and Duke Karl Alexander of Würt-
temberg (1733–1737), guaranteed the continuation of Protestant state
churches. The great exception to this pattern proves the rule: in 1685,
the Palatine Electorate fell to Johann Wilhelm von Pfalz-Neuburg, a
Catholic, who promptly began applying pressure on his subjects to
convert. Then in 1698, Johann Wilhelm used a clause in the Treaty of
Rijswijk, which ended the Nine Years’ War (1688–1697), to impose
a simultaneum on 240 parishes in which Catholicism had been rein-
troduced during the period of French military occupation.86 Under
pressure from Protestant princes, the Elector accepted a compromise
that would undo the simultanea and distribute churches between the
Reformed and Catholic faiths on a ratio of 5:2. When the process of
implementation was complete, 130 churches remained simultaneous.87
This story is noteworthy for two reasons. One is simply that the
conflict was diffused without resort to arms. There was plenty of reli-
gious tension after 1648, even outbursts of violence, but in almost
every instance a general conflagration was averted. Public demonstra-
tions of confessional affiliation continued to ignite controversy—as
in 1712, when a Corpus Christi procession provoked a shootout in
the biconfessional streets of Siegen.88 But in this case the result, as
in almost all such clashes, was a paper war.89 Some of the credit for
this goes to the corpus evangelicorum, which called attention to every

85
Johann Stephan Pütter, Historische Entwickelung der heutigen Staatsverfassung
des Teutschen Reichs, vol. 2 (Göttingen: 1786), 336–341.
86
Jalabert, Catholiques et protestants, 209–238, 321–364.
87
Jalabert, Catholiques et protestants, 393–430; Paul Warmbrunn, “Von der Vor-
herrschaft der Reformierten Konfession zum Nebeneinander dreier Bekenntnisse:
Reformierte, Lutheraner und Katholiken in Kurpfalz und Pfalz-Zweibrücken zwischen
dem Westfälischen Frieden und dem Ende des Alten Reiches,” Blätter für deutsche
Landesgeschichte 134 (1998): 95–121.
88
Jürgen Luh, Unheiliges Römisches Reich: Der konfessionelle Gegensatz 1648
bis 1806 (Potsdam: 1995), 40; Andreas Kalipke, “‘Weitläuffigkeiten’ und ‘Bedenck-
lichkeiten’: Die Behandlung konfessioneller Konflikte am Corpus Evangelicorum,”
Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 35 (2008): 405–445, here 413–414.
89
One notable exception is the so-called “Cow War” (1651), a skirmish between Bran-
denburg and the Duchy of Jülich-Berg, sparked by disagreement over the proper imple-
mentation of the normative year rule; Fuchs, Ein ‘Medium’ zum Frieden, 318–326.
 a multiconfessional empire 151

perceived excess on the Catholic side while muffling aggression within

the Protestant camp. No less important was the coequal balance of
confessional power that its very existence symbolized.90 Any prince
who violated the confessional status quo exposed his coreligionists to
reprisals. Thus in 1719, Elector Karl III Philipp revoked his purge of
Calvinist observance from Heidelberg’s simultaneous Church of the
Holy Spirit when the Electors of Brandenburg and Hannover retali-
ated by closing Catholic churches in Celle and Minden.91
Second, the episode shows how state action tended to increase con-
fessional heterogeneity. The cumulative effect of the Elector’s “Coun-
ter-Reformation” was to institutionalize plurality at the expense of
an existing confessional monopoly. After 1648, a growing number
of princes deliberately encouraged pluralization by granting religious
minorities the right to worship publicly. The Margraves of Baden-
Durlach, for example, recruited Mennonite settlers and issued a series
of city charters between 1670 and 1722 that conferred freedom of reli-
gion on Catholics and Calvinists.92 Imperial cities exhibited the same
tendency. In Hamburg, for example, the Senate gradually established
the Reformed church between 1685 and 1744.93 In most cases, these
accommodations reflected the desire of princes and magistrates to
overcome demographic losses suffered during the wars of the 17th
century and to capitalize on the population movements those wars set
in motion.94 Whatever the motivation, such privileges accomplished
the legal and administrative integration of nonconformists within the
larger communities they inhabited.95 These concessions also disrupted
the old alliance between secular and religious authorities: almost every-
where, security for minorities was realized over objections from those
who stood most to lose from any further pluralization, the guardians
of religious orthodoxy.96

90
Kalipke, “Weitläuffigkeiten,” here 426–428.
91
Pütter, Historische Entwickelung, vol. 2, 387–388.
92
Mark Häberlein and Michaela Schmölz-Häberlein, “Eighteenth-Century Menno-
nites in the Margraviate of Baden and Neighboring Territories,” Mennonite Quarterly
Review 75 (2001): 471–492.
93
Whaley, Religious Toleration, 122–141.
94
Schindling, “Konfessionalisierung und Grenzen von Konfessionalisierbarkeit,”
36–39.
95
Häberlein, “Religöse Minderheiten,” 189.
96
Ronald G. Asch, “Religious Toleration, the Peace of Westphalia, and the German
Territorial Estates,” Parliaments, Estates & Representation 20 (2000): 75–89.
152 david m. luebke

By the same token, state power seldom operated to impose mono-

confessional regimes on landscapes that were already plural. Here
again, the exception confirms the trend. In 1731–1732, the Archbishop
of Salzburg, Leopold Anton von Firmian, of expelled some 20,000 rural
Protestants from lands subject to his secular authority. The action set
off a storm of controversy. But it did not ignite military confronta-
tion, as it might well have done a century before. All sides acknowl-
edged that the prince-archbishopric was formally monoconfessional
already and that Firmian had acted within his rights under the Peace
of Westphalia. Indeed, the corpus evangelicorum had pressed the arch-
bishop to allow the emigration. At issue were the circumstances under
which the nonconformists were obliged to depart. A solution emerged
quickly, in February 1732, when King Friedrich Wilhelm invited the
Salzburgers to settle in Prussian Lithuania.97 Once again, a potentially
explosive controversy had been diffused.
The elements of the post-Westphalian order that made it durable—
its sharper confessional boundaries, its ability to smother religious
violence, its more encapsulated denominational identities—all came
at a price. As the fate of Salzburg’s hidden Protestants showed, “subcu-
taneous” regimes were particularly vulnerable to monarchs who were
determined to extinguish them. Another casualty was the liturgical
hybridity that had survived in certain regions well into the 17th cen-
tury. The hybrid regime in Osnabrück, for example, made it impos-
sible to determine after 1648 whether any particular parish had been
Catholic or Lutheran during the normative year, 1624.98 In the end,
an ad hoc imperial commission apportioned parishes on the basis of
rough equality in goods and souls.99 Thus 28 parishes became exclu-
sively Catholic in doctrine and liturgy; 17 became unambiguously

97
Mack Walker, The Salzburg Transaction: Expulsion and Redemption in Eigh-
teenth-Century Germany (Ithaca: 1992); and James Van Horn Melton, “Confessional
Power and the Power of Confession” in Hamish C. Scott and Brendan Simms (eds.),
Cultures of Power in Europe during the Long Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, UK:
2007), 133–157.
98
Fuchs, Ein Medium zum Frieden, 215–220; Theodor Penners, “Zur Konfessions-
bildung im Fürstentum Osnabrück: Die ländliche Bevölkerung im Wechsel der Ref-
ormation des 17. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch für niedersächsische Kirchengeschichte 72
(1974): 51–105.
99
On this commission and its resolution, the so-called “Volmarscher Durchschlag,”
see Fuchs, Medium zum Frieden, 218–219; and Wolfgang Seegrün, “In Münster und
Nürnberg: Die Verteilung der Konfessionen im Fürstentum Osnabrück 1648/50,”
Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte 134 (1998): 59–94.
 a multiconfessional empire 153

Lutheran; and the remaining eight became “biparochial”—that is, two

congregations, Catholic and Lutheran, shared the resources of a single
parish, if not in all cases a single parish church.100 The Peace of West-
phalia, in short, introduced sharp confessional distinctions where none
had existed before. Judicialization exacted its price as well, in the form
of long-winded and costly legal wrangling before imperial tribunals
and at the Diet. In the Palatinate, several disputes sparked by Elector
Johann Wilhelm’s “Counter-Reformation” of the 1680s were still gen-
erating supplications and remonstrances a century later.101 This was to
be expected; part of the reason why judicialization was effective was
that it attenuated religious conflicts. As Ronald G. Asch and others
have argued, it also accentuated confessional differences and perpetu-
ated them, which hindered the process of religion’s transformation
from a status category into a private matter of the heart.102
By the same token, however, enclosed confessional identities did not
rule out peaceable relations in everyday life. Away from the hubbub of
processions and lawsuits, sharper confessional boundaries facilitated
many kinds of peaceable interdependence. Étienne François argues
that faith and occupation were so strongly aligned that each confession
formed an autonomous cultural universe, separated by an “invisible
boundary” from the rest.103 Even names marked confessional identity
so obviously that everyone became a “slave of baptism.” Evidence of
confessional endogamy seems to confirm this view: in triconfessional
Oppenheim, marriages between Catholics and Protestants—which had
been common in the late 16th century—became extremely rare, fewer
than 5 percent in the 18th century.104 But the flip-side of confessional
division was socio-economic symbiosis: in Augsburg, for example, the
(almost exclusively Catholic) gardeners could not get by without the

100
The coinage “biparochial” (doppelpfarrig) comes from Hoberg, who used it to
refer to biconfessional parishes that shared parochial resources, whether or not they
worshipped in the same church; see his Gemeinschaft der Bekenntnisse, 13. Of the
eight biparochial parishes, four contained two churches, one for each confession,
while the other four were simultaneous.
101
[Gottlieb Jakob Planck] “Aktenstücke zu der Geschichte der neuesten Religions-
beschwerden in der Pfalz,” in idem (ed.), Neueste Religionsgeschichte, vol. 2 (Lemgo:
1790), 127–226.
102
Asch, “Religious Toleration,” 88–89.
103
Étienne François, Die unsichtbare Grenze: Protestanten und Katholiken in Augs-
burg 1648–1806 (Sigmaringen: 1991).
104
Zschunke, Konfession und Alltag, 103–104.
154 david m. luebke

(almost exclusively Lutheran) butchers.105 Recognizing that most inter-

action between the confessions was not conflictual, magistrates sought
to minimize those that were. As for interconfessional marriage, secu-
lar governments increasingly accepted the practice as inevitable and
sought to regulate, rather than abolish it.106

Conclusion

“Germany,” wrote Voltaire in his 1763 essay On Toleration, “would

be a desert strewn with the bones of Catholics, Protestants, and Ana-
baptists, slain by each other, if the Peace of Westphalia had not at
length brought freedom of conscience.”107 This was a misperception.
More accurately, he might have quipped that freedom of conscience
was a privilege claimed by princes on behalf of coreligionists subject
to lords of a different faith. Nevertheless, his observation captured a
fundamental difference: the Empire, unlike his native France, institu-
tionalized confessional plurality and judicialized religious conflict to
a degree seldom found anywhere else in western Europe. From 1555
on, the Empire was multiconfessional; until 1618 and after 1648, it also
succeeded, for the most part, at keeping the peace. It was not a tolerant
order, although many German princes would eventually embrace tol-
eration as a principle of governance.108 Even so, the Empire achieved
the ends of toleration, or many of them, without enshrining it as a
guiding norm of social and political order. And this it accomplished
long before 1763.

105
François, Unsichtbare Grenze, 96–99.
106
Dagmar Freist, “Zwischen Glaubensfreiheit und Gewissenszwang: Das Reichs-
recht und der Umgang mit Menschen nach 1648” in Ronald G. Asch (ed.), Frieden
und Krieg in der Frühen Neuzeit: Die europäische Staatenordnung und die außere-
uropäische Welt (Munich: 2001), 293–322.
107
François-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, “On Toleration, in Connection with the
Death of Jean Calas” in Joseph McCabe (ed.), Toleration and Other Essays by Voltaire
(New York: 1912), 1–87, here 26.
108
One of the first was Christian August, Count Palatine of Sulzback, (1622–1708);
Volker Wappmann, Durchbruch zur Toleranz: Die Religionspolitik des Pfalzgrafen
Christian August von Sulzbach (Neustadt a.d. Aisch: 1995).
PROTESTANT IMPERIAL KNIGHTS, MULTICONFESSIONALISM,
AND THE COUNTER-REFORMATION

Richard J. Ninness

The German lower nobility is well-known for its role in the early
Reformation. According to this narrative, in 1522, the knights led by
Franz von Sickingen attacked the Arch Bishopric of Trier in a defi-
ant act, supporting the Reformation.1 After Sickingen’s death in 1523,
ending the Knights’ Revolt, they supposedly retreated from the stage
of the Reformation into irrelevance. Sickingen’s invasion of Trier
only involved a minority of the knights and was definitely not the
last gasp of a quixotic group. True, the 1520s were a tough decade
for these small independent lords found in Franconia, Swabia, and in
the Rhineland of the Holy Roman Empire, and it looked as if territo-
rial princes would absorb their lands and domesticate them into their
subjects. That, however, did not happen.
After the Knights’ Revolt, the knights saved themselves from
becoming the subjects of the princes, not by feuding, but by organiz-
ing themselves collectively and accepting the emperor as their patron:
the knights became imperial knights.2 As imperial knights, they were

1
Examples are William Hitchcock, The Background of the Knights’ Revolt 1522–1523
(Berkeley: 1958) and Euan Cameron, The European Reformation (Oxford: 1991). Vic-
tor Thiessen in his dissertation, “The Nobles’ Reformation: The Reception and Adapta-
tion of Reformation Ideas in the Pamphlets of Noble Writers from 1520–1530” (PhD
diss., Kingston, Queen’s University, 1998) discusses this approach to the knights in
the historiography of the Reformation.
2
The imperial knights have received almost no attention in English language litera-
ture and a few words of explanation are in order. They were lower nobles, recognized
by the emperor as his clients. In the early-16th century, as the ecclesiastical princi-
palities confronted the Reformation, knights in Swabia, Franconia, and the Rhineland
maintained their independence against aggressive princes by organizing themselves
into groups with the support of Charles V and his brother, Ferdinand I. In return, the
imperial knights paid the emperor contributions. Without representation at the impe-
rial diet, the imperial knights depended on the emperor as their advocate. As clients,
they could at best expect occasional privileges and support from the Habsburgs. As
virtually independent suzerains in their own right, albeit on a much smaller scale than
princes, the imperial knights made up for their individual weakness by cooperating as
a group. The imperial knighthood consisted of three circles: Swabia, Franconia, and
the Rhineland. Within each circle they were divided into districts called cantons. Vol-
ker Press, Kaiser Karl V., König Ferdinand und die Entstehung der Reichsritterschaft
156 richard j. ninness

able to play a larger role in the religious struggles beyond the 1520s,
especially for Catholic princes. Through their talent for organization,
they came to dominate many of the most important ecclesiastical
principalities in the imperial church: Trier on the Mosel, Mainz at
the confluence of the Rhine and Main rivers, farther south in Worms
and Speyer, and farther east on the Main in Würzburg and Bamberg.
They were also influential in the Prince-Bishoprics of Augsburg and
Eichstätt. Thus, the imperial knights carved positions of leadership for
themselves in some of the most important centers of the Counter-
Reformation.3
These Catholic ecclesiastical principalities did things that we would
associate with the Counter-Reformation. They fought to protect the
Ecclesiastical Reservation, started to forcibly convert Protestant sub-
jects to Catholicism in the late-16th century, joined the Catholic
League in the early-17th century, and were vociferous proponents
of the measures later proclaimed in the Edict of Restitution in 1629.
But the imperial knights were a heterogeneous group of Lutherans
and Catholics. They saw the imperial church as an important source
of patronage for their members and thus worthy of support, but the
Peace of Augsburg recognized their right to choose either Catholicism
or Lutheranism.
Who were these imperial knights, who could relive the glory of
their family just by visiting a cathedral and be Protestant at the same
time? Their greatest ancestors had served as bishops and were buried
in cathedrals with the family’s heraldic devices on their memorials.
Imperial knights knew how crucial ecclesiastical principalities were for

(Wiesbaden: 1976); idem, “Reichsritterschaften” in Kurt G.A. Jeserich, Hans Pohl, and
Georg-Christoph von Unruh (eds.), Deutsche Verwaltungsgeschichte. Vom Spätmit-
telalter bis zum Ende des Reiches, vol. 1 (Stuttgart: 1983), 679–689.
3
In Trent and All That, O’Malley asks what’s in a name, and then in his conclu-
sion titled “There’s Much in a Name” argues for Early Modern Catholicism. John
O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cam-
bridge, MA: 2000). Many terms exist for the activities of the Catholics in the period
covered in this essay such as Catholic Reform, Catholic Renewal, Catholic Reforma-
tion, Catholic Reform and Counter-Reformation, or Early Modern Catholicism, but I
still favor the use of Counter-Reformation even if, as O’Malley argues, that it conveys
a certain impression that is false. For one reason, the term is the best known. Fur-
thermore, much of this study deals with religious tensions between Catholics and
Protestants. Catholic authorities wanted their subjects to be Catholic, but ecclesiasti-
cal principalities had to deal with Lutheran members from imperial knightly families,
their Lutheran subjects, and Lutheran imperial knightly churches. For a discussion of
the Counter-Reformation see David Luebke (ed.), The Counter-Reformation (Malden,
MA: 1999), 1–16.
 protestant imperial knights 157

them, and some of the staunchest Catholic reformers emerged from

their ranks, yet in the main they chose the Lutheran faith for them-
selves and their lands. Structural arrangements, the bond of family,
and imperial knightly status made Protestant involvement in an eccle-
siastical principality possible. Over the course of the 16th century an
uneasy coexistence existed across confessional boundaries, despite the
fault lines caused by multiconfessionalism, between a prelate’s wish
for confessional conformity and the presence of Protestant imperial
knights in his lands, between episcopal authority and imperial knightly
churches, and between Catholic and Protestant members of the impe-
rial knighthood. Within ecclesiastical principalities, Catholic prelates
and canons could come from Protestant families, but they had to be
Catholic. Protestant imperial knights even served as officials. Along
with family ties, political cooperation helped to bridge confessional
differences. Among its members, the imperial knighthood proclaimed
a policy of religious toleration. In one of the great issues dividing
Protestants and Catholics, the imperial knighthood joined the Catho-
lic side in support of the Ecclesiastical Reservation. Imperial knights
both experienced and managed the growing stress in the relations
between ecclesiastical principalities, attempting to strengthen Catholi-
cism within their realms, and the small independent enclaves of Prot-
estantism on their estates. Leaders in the Catholic League tried to find
a way for the mostly Protestant imperial knighthood to work with the
Catholic camp. Under these circumstances, simple interpretations of
the conflicts between Catholics and Protestants fail to capture the com-
plexity of Catholic ecclesiastical politics. Imperial knights and their
involvement with ecclesiastical principalities have to be understood
in the context of their multiconfessional world where religion, status,
and family intersected in ways that transcended the limits imposed by
any single confession.
An ecclesiastical principality in the Holy Roman Empire was a terri-
torial state ruled by an ecclesiastical prince, be he archbishop, bishop, or
abbot. It was often, but neither always nor necessarily, coextensive with
the prince’s archdiocese, diocese, or foundation. These ecclesiastical
principalities functioned like an aristocratic republic.4 An increasingly

4
Walther used this notion of an Adelsrepublik for Fulda. Gerrit Walther, Abt Bal-
thasars Mission. Politische Mentalitäten, Gegenreformation und eine Adelsverschörung
im Hochstift Fulda (Göttingen: 2002), 130. Jendorff sees this as an accurate way to
describe circumstances in Mainz. Alexander Jendorff, Verwandte, Teilhaber und
158 richard j. ninness

exclusive and autonomous network of noble families that also man-

aged to establish themselves as members of the imperial knighthood
brought these ecclesiastical principalities under their sway by control-
ling the cathedral chapters or foundations. Their influence over the
chapter was not the result of any special religious calling.5 Erasmus’s
observation that Jesus himself would not have been accepted into a
cathedral chapter exactly captured their narrow admittance practices.6
Canons were closely involved in the practice of patronage. The chap-
ters advocated the hiring of important secular officials based on family
connections. They also elected the prince-bishop or archbishop from
among their own members, again based on kinship ties. Being elected
prince-bishop raised a canon to the status of an imperial prince. In the
cases of Trier and Mainz, the archbishop had a vote in the college of
electors, seven princes, responsible for electing the emperor. But the
new leader of an ecclesiastical principality governed with the chap-
ter’s consent, swearing a Wahlkapitulation that set as a requirement
the chapter’s approval for everything from the smallest expenditures
of money to the most significant political decisions. Imperial knights
not only occupied positions within the chapters, but also filled the
most important secular offices of the ecclesiastical principalities, thus
increasing their influence. This system created a group of individuals,
regardless of their confessional affiliation, interested in the preserva-
tion of the imperial church and ready to support it in a time of crisis.
The Reformation complicated this relationship, however.
During the first half of the 16th century, we can note a certain
religious ambivalence among the imperial knights, even though they
remained influential governing partners in many ecclesiastical prin-
cipalities.7 Sympathy for reform existed within their ranks, but their

Dienstleute. Herrschaftliche Funktionsträger im Erzstift Mainz 1514 bis 1647 (Marburg:

2003), 81.
5
For general information on the early modern German cathedral chapter see
Günter Christ, “Selbstverständnis und Rolle der Domkapitel in den geistlichen Ter-
ritorien des alten Deutschen Reiches der Frühneuzeit,” Zeitschrift für historische For-
schung 16 (1989): 257–328.
6
Gerhard Fouquet, Speyerer Domkapitel im späten Mittelatler, vol. 1 (Mainz:
1987), 4.
7
Press and Bauer provide good summaries of the imperial knightly attitude
towards the Reformation. Volker Press, “Adel, Reich und Reformation,” in Wolfgang
J. Mommsen (ed.), Stadtbürgertum und Adel in der Reformation. Studien zur Sozial-
geschichte der Reformation in England und Deutschland (Stuttgart: 1979), 330–383.
Christoph Bauer, “Reichsritterschaft in Franken,” in Anton Schindling and Walter
 protestant imperial knights 159

political situation limited their religious options. They were not the
subjects of any prince, but they were not an imperial estate, and they
supported the imperial church because of its patronage opportuni-
ties. Their religious status was finally addressed in the Peace of Augs-
burg (1555), along with the status of the imperial church which was
so important for them. At Augsburg, King Ferdinand I resisted their
inclusion in the Religious Peace, but their status demanded a reso-
lution.8 Only in the last stage of the negotiations, from September 1
to September 8, 1555, did Ferdinand agree to recognize the imperial
knights in the accord.9 Article 26 of the Peace of Augsburg mandates
that “the free order of knights, who are directly subjected to his impe-
rial majesty and to ourselves, should be included in such a peace, in
such a form that they should not be forced, constrained, nor burdened
by any person in the matter of both aforementioned religions [Cathol-
icism or Lutheranism].”10
The imperial knights found themselves in a variety of situations and
roles that had the potential of being confessionally charged. As lords
in their own lands, they dealt with their subjects and struggled against
powerful princes, were members of the imperial knighthood that
included both Catholics and Protestants, and had a Catholic emperor
as their patron. Because of their ties to the imperial church, they might
serve an official to or receive fiefs from Catholic princes, despite the

Ziegler (eds.), Die Territorien des Reichs im Zeitalter der Reformation und Konfes-
sionalisierung. Land und Konfession 1500–1650, vol. 4 (Münster: 1992), 191–206. For
further information on how the early Reformation message appealed to the lower
nobility across the Holy Roman Empire and specifically to the imperial knights, see
Thiessen, “The Nobles’ Reformation.”
8
Initially the Protestant members of the Council of Princes (Fürstenrat) and the
three Protestant electors wanted to include both the imperial knights and the nobles
who were subjects of princes in the Religious Peace. Haus, Hof- und Staatsarchiv,
Reichskanzlei-Reichstagsakten, Faz. 29b, 50–50’; Haus, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, MEA-
RTA, Faz. 37, vol. 2, fol. 154–154’; Haus, Hof- und Staatsarchiv Wien, MEA-RTA,
Faz. 39, vol. 1.
9
Haus, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Reichskanzlei-Reichstagsakten, Faz. 29b, fol. 44’,
57’. Karl Brandi, Der Augsburger Religionsfrieden vom 25. September 1555 (Göttingen:
1927), 48–49. The nobles who were the subjects of princes were included in the Dec-
laratio Ferdinandea from September 24, 1555.
10
“in solchem Frieden sollen die freyen Ritterschaft, welche ohne Mittel der Kay-
serl. Majest. und Uns unterworffen, auch begriffen seyn, also und dergestalt, daß sie
obbemeldter beedet Religion halben auch von niemand vergewaltigt, beträngt noch
beschwert sollen werden.” Hanns Hubert Hofmann (ed.), Quellen zum Verfassung-
sorganismus des Heiligen Römischen Reiches Deutscher Nation 1495–1815 (Darmstadt,
1976), 105.
160 richard j. ninness

fact that they were Protestant. Recognition in the Peace of Augsburg

allowed the imperial knights to navigate possible confessional pitfalls
arising from these situations. Despite the popularity of Lutheranism
among imperial knights, the Peace allowed them to remain stakehold-
ers in Catholic ecclesiastical principalities. A prelate could not confis-
cate their lands or force them to emigrate because of their confession,
and prelates never challenged the right of imperial knights to choose
between Catholicism or Lutheranism for themselves, not even during
the Thirty Years War.
A conversation between Prince-Bishop of Würzburg Melchior Zobel
von Giebelstadt and the imperial knights at the end of September 1555
provides an instructive example of a prelate’s reaction to the Peace.
The knights admonished the prince-bishop “to do no injury in their
estates because of religion.”11 He responded with the wish that “they
recognized the truth and not allow themselves to be so easily lured
from the right path by people opposed to our right, true religion, but
instead remain in the teachings and tradition of all our ancestors.”12
The prince-bishop declared that he was bound by the decision of the
imperial diet at Augsburg, indicating his respect for imperial law, but
still observed that the issue of religion boded evilly for the German
nation.
Despite Prince-Bishop Melchior Zobel von Giebelstadt’s efforts to
work with the imperial knights, he was killed a few years after the
Peace of Augsburg in 1558, in a feud led by the imperial knight, Wil-
helm von Grumbach. The feud did not result from a challenge to
Grumbach’s Lutheran confession. Rather, his feud against Würzburg
points to longstanding conflicts between knights and a prelate that
could arise over a variety of issues. Bad blood had existed between
the two men before Melchior Zobel’s election. Then, as prince-bishop,
Zobel deprived Grumbach of his office as marshal. Despite the impor-
tance of ecclesiastical states and offices for the imperial knights, com-
petition over available patronage, status, or other issues led to personal
and familial grudges, based on slights both real and imagined. Con-

11
Staatsarchiv Würzburg (StAW), Standbuch 951, fol. 96. “jn jrenn gebiettem der
religion halbenn keinen einntrags zuthunn”.
12
StAW, Standbuch 951, fol. 96. “sie erkannttenn denn grundt der warheit vnd
liessen sich nit so leichtlich vonn leuthenn vnser rechtenn waren relligion zuwider
vonn dem rechtenn wege verfueren vnnd abwendig machenn, sonder pliebenn bey
der leer vnnd tradition vnnserer aller alter voreltern.”
 protestant imperial knights 161

fessional conflicts exacerbated these problems, but did not create or

replace them.
After their recognition in the Peace of Augsburg, the imperial
knights created an intricate world that included Lutheranism for many
of their members alongside their support for the Catholic imperial
church. Historians estimate that Lutheranism became the dominant,
though never exclusive, confession of the imperial knights in Franco-
nia, Rhineland, and in Swabia, with the cantons of Hegau and Donau
in Swabia remaining more Catholic.13 Imperial knightly families also
began to claim the ius reformandi in their domains. In the late-16th
century, this resulted in disputes between the imperial knights and
the very ecclesiastical principalities that provided them office and
advancement. Prince-Bishops claimed that the Peace did not expressly
give the imperial knights this right, because they were not princes or
imperial estates. The ius reformandi provided imperial knights with
greater control of their estates. By choosing Protestantism and thus
freeing their lands from diocesan authority, they could organize the
religious life of their subjects and the resources of their churches as
never before. Thus, the ius reformandi gave their lordship a new sacral
quality.
Despite the variety of tensions—the emperor as overlord, prince-
bishops as neighbors and employers, and the evangelical convictions
that beset them—the imperial knights maintained close ties to local
ecclesiastical principalities. Their control of offices in several of them
cemented their interest and participation. If a particular dynasty had
historically dominated an ecclesiastical principality, then the princi-
pality invariably took on the confession of that dynasty during the

13
Volker Press, “Die Reichsritterschaft im Reich der früheren Neuzeit,” Nassauis-
che Annalen 87 (1976): 111–112. For Swabia see Volker Press, “Die Ritterschaft im
Kraichgau zwischen Reich und Territorium 1500–1623,” Zeitschrift für die Geschichte
des Oberrheins 122 (1974): 44–45; Thomas Schulz, Der Kanton Kocher der Schwä-
bischen Reichsritterschaft 1542–1805. Entstehung, Geschichte, Verfassung und Mitglie-
derstruktur eines korporativen Adelsverbandes im System des alten Reiches (Esslingen
am Neckar: 1986), 185. For Franconia see Helmut Neumaier, “Daß wir kein anderes
Haupt oder von Gott eingesetzte zeitliche Obrigkeit haben.” Ort Odenwald der frän-
kischen Reichsritterschaft von den Anfängen bis zum Dreißigjährigen Krieg (Stuttgart:
2005), 131–133. For the Rhineland, see Alexander Jendorff, Reformatio catholica.
Gesellschaftliche Handlungsspielräume kirchlichen Wandels im Erzstift Mainz: 1514–
1630 (Münster: 2000), 289–298. These estimates do not involve any statistical analy-
sis, which for the imperial knights would be a daunting task because of the fluidity
between confessions and the number of individuals and churches involved. It is also
a problem because of the sources.
162 richard j. ninness

Reformation.14 By 1618, of the 43 ecclesiastical principalities in the

Holy Roman Empire that participated in the imperial diet and paid
taxes, 16 had become Lutheran.15 Whereas Bavaria helped stabilize
Catholicism in the southwestern part of the Empire and later in West-
phalia, the imperial knights stabilized Catholicism in the central part
of the Empire.
Lutheran knights showed no interest in converting or subverting
Catholic prince-bishoprics, but the work of the imperial knights in
maintaining the status quo in an ecclesiastical principality was not
enough for Rome. After the conclusion of the Council of Trent in
1563, the imperial church came under closer scrutiny from the papacy
through nuncios and legates who collected information, reported regu-
larly to Rome, worked as diplomats, and urged the German episcopate
to greater orthodoxy.16 By the 1570s, Rome exerted pressure on eccle-
siastical principalities to improve the care of souls, especially through
the establishment of a seminary in each diocese. Prelates and canons
were likewise expected to adopt the new spirit of reform by taking
their religious vocation seriously. Rome encouraged cathedral chap-
ters to elect reform-minded prelates. Gradually, the imperial knights
involved in ecclesiastical principalities had to negotiate between the
demands of an aggressive Tridentine Catholicism and the dictates of
family, custom, and conscience. They worked to secure their domi-
nance by excluding non-imperial knights from the cathedral chap-
ters and preventing their election as bishops, resulting in complaints
about their controversial patronage practices. In 1575, Westphalian
nobles complained about their exclusion from the cathedral chapter in

14
Of the great dynasties in the Empire, only the Wittelsbachs and Habsburgs
remained Catholic. Those ecclesiastical principalities surrounded by Bavarian territory,
such as Regensburg and Freising, were dominated by Bavarian nobles, and those sur-
rounded by Austrian territory, such as Salzburg and Brixen, were dominated by Aus-
trian nobles. Walter Ziegler, “Die Hochstifte des Reiches im konfessionellen Zeitalter
1520–1618,” Römische Quartalschrift 87 (1992): 259. Conversely, those ecclesiastical
principalities dominated by the Wettins of Saxony such as Merseburg, Naumburg,
and Meißen, and by the Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg such as the Archbishopric of
Magdeburg, became Protestant. Ibid., 273.
15
Ziegler, “Hochstifte,” 255, 262.
16
Krasenbrink devotes a book to this subject. Josef Krasenbrink, Die Congregatio
Germanica und die katholische Reform in Deutschland nach dem Tridentium (Mün-
ster: 1972). That the prince-bishops of the period did not correspond to expectations
set by the Council of Trent was raised by Ziegler, “Hochstifte,” 59.
 protestant imperial knights 163

Mainz.17 Along with the Westphalian nobles, the imperial counts com-
plained about the patronage practices of imperial knights in ecclesias-
tical principalities that were subject to the Ecclesiastical Reservation
which obliged a prelate to resign if he converted to Protestantism.18
In 1576, the imperial knights informed the emperor of their support
for the Catholic position of maintaining the Ecclesiastical Reservation,
because, from their view, it helped keep unwanted competitors from
church office.19
Beginning in the 1570s, young imperial knights, who were enthu-
siastic about reform, began to rise in the ranks of the Church. This
new generation saw itself as taking part in an exciting movement, and
through their activism, they distinguished themselves from their pre-
decessors, who viewed their roles more as administrators. The conclu-
sion of the Council of Trent and the coming of the Jesuits were vital
for this enthusiasm.20 Jesuits at universities such as Cologne, Ingolstadt,
and later Würzburg educated young members of the cathedral chapter
in the spirit of Tridentine Catholicism. A decade before the comple-
tion of the Council of Trent, the foundation of the Collegium German-
icum (1552) in Rome was already educating the elite of the imperial
church in the spirit of Catholic reform.21 This new Catholic reform
culture envisioned the ideal prelate as a strong temporal and spiritual
leader. In the Holy Roman Empire, Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn,
who served as the Prince-Bishop of Würzburg from 1573–1617 and
stemmed from a prominent imperial knightly family, embodied these

17
A. L. Veit, “Geschichte und Recht der Stiftmässigkeit auf die ehemals adeligen
Domstifte von Mainz, Würzburg und Bamberg,” Historisches Jahrbuch 33 (1912):
342–348; Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv Wien, Mainzer Erzkanzlerarchiv, GKS,
Faz. 53a, no. 1.
18
Andreas Edel, Der Kaiser und Kurpfalz. Eine Studie zu den Grundelementen poli-
tischen Handelns bei Maximilian II. (1564–1576) (Göttingen: 1997), 424–427.
19
In 1576, the imperial knights wrote to the emperor that “solche gesuchte freystel-
lung so zu sonderlichen nachteil vnd vndergang der stifft vnnd adels gelangen thuet
genzlich einstellen vnnd alles bey alten herkommen vnd dem vffrechten religionfrie-
den aller gnedigst bleiben zu lassen.” Staatsarchiv Darmstadt, F2, no. 143, fol. 386.
Also see Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv Wien, Reichshofrat RHR—Protokoll 16. Jh./
Bd. 42b, fol. 71–71’.
20
Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal 1540–1770 (Cambridge,
UK: 1998), 77. An illustrative example is in the Archbishopric of Mainz. In 1561
after Elector Daniel von Homburg heard Peter Canisius preach to the imperial diet in
Augsburg, he summoned the Jesuits to teach at the university. Anton Ph. Brück “Das
Erzstift Mainz und das Tridentinum” in Georg Schreiber (ed.), Das Weltkonzil von
Trient, vol. 2 (Freiburg: 1951), 216–217.
21
Hsia, World of Catholic Renewal, 113f.
164 richard j. ninness

ideals. He brought the Jesuits to Würzburg, refounded the university

there, and enforced conversion of his subjects to Catholicism.
Imperial knights combined aggressive Catholicism with their fam-
ily interests, but this combination created tensions within the older
aristocratic culture of ecclesiastical principalities. As with ecclesiastical
offices, many important secular officials were drawn from the ranks of
imperial knights, who saw service in an ecclesiastical principality as a
birthright separate from their zeal for a particular confession. The ter-
ritory of an ecclesiastical principality was divided into administrative
districts (Ämter) run by regional governors (Amtmänner). The regional
governors were often nobles. Furthermore, at court, the prelate had a
group of temporal councilors and palace officials, most of whom were
imperial knights. These positions did not go to clerics, except in the
case of the prince-bishop’s separate church council, which consisted of
non-noble clergymen. The master of the household (Hofmeister) was
the highest court functionary. He supervised a prelate’s council and
the administration of the ecclesiastical principality. Because bishops
and canons filled administrative offices with their relatives, important
secular officials could be Lutheran. Furthermore, given the tendency
of secular and religious officials to appoint relatives to administrative
positions, thus promoting family interests, important secular officials
of Catholic prince-bishoprics were themselves often Lutheran.
In the early-16th century, ecclesiastical princes did not have a prob-
lem employing Lutherans, but by the 1570s, Catholic rulers started
to look for Catholic officials. They often had problems finding them,
because so many of the imperial knights were Lutheran. A prominent
example is Hartmut von Kronberg, the master of the household in
Mainz from 1571 until his death in 1592.22 Hartmut’s father fought
on the side of Sickingen in the Knights’ Revolt, but this support did
not prevent his Lutheran son from pursuing a successful career in the
Electorate and Prince-Archbishopric of Mainz. Hartmut married Elec-
tor Martin Brendel von Homburg’s sister in 1570, and was appointed
master of the household in Mainz the following year. Hartmut’s son,
Johann Schweikard von Kronberg, despite the confession of his father,
entered the cathedral chapter and was educated in the Collegium Ger-

22
Alexander Jendorff, “Der Mainzer Hofmeister Hartmut (XIII.) von Kronberg
(1517–1591)” in Michael Kaiser (ed.), Der zweite Mann im Staat (Berlin: 2003),
39–57.
 protestant imperial knights 165

manicum. His son was elected elector and prince-archbishop of Mainz

in 1604, one of the new generation of reform-minded prelates. All
of his Lutheran brothers served nonetheless as regional governors in
Mainz during his tenure.23
Bamberg and Würzburg also had trouble finding Catholic imperial
knights to be masters of the household. From the 1570s to 1600, Julius
Echter von Mespelbrunn sporadically filled the office with a variety
of figures: a Catholic foreigner, Catholic imperial knights, a Lutheran
imperial knight, a count, and finally a Lutheran baron.24 After 1600,
he left the office vacant. On the election of Ernst von Mengersdorf as
prince-bishop of Bamberg in 1584, the office of master of the house-
hold had been vacant since the death of the Catholic Wolf Dietrich
von Wiesenthau in 1580.25 The cathedral chapter wanted a new mas-
ter of the household, but Ernst demanded that the office be held by a
Catholic. After the cathedral chapter admitted that they did not have
any Catholic candidates, Ernst suggested Hans Christian von Horn-
stein, who was also an official in the neighboring Prince-Bishopric
of Würzburg.26 The cathedral chapter doubted that Bamberg could
get Hornstein, since he could not serve two princes and his salary
would be too high. It suggested that the prince-bishop look for peo-
ple who, “were attached to the prince-bishopric and knew its affairs.
They should be kept in mind whether they were Catholic or not.”27
Despite its agreement in principle to hiring a Catholic master of the
household, the cathedral chapter nominated three Lutheran imperial
knights.28 None of these candidates pleased the prince-bishop, so the
position remained vacant.

23
Jendorff, Verwandte, Teilhaber und Dienstleute, 236–238: idem, Reformatio Cath-
olica, 252–253; Wolfgang Ronner, Politik und Religion im alten Kronberg (Kronberg:
1983); idem, Die von Kronberg und ihre Frauen. Begegnungen mit einem Ritter-
geschlecht (Neustadt a. d. Aisch: 1992).
24
By using Heinzjürgen Reuschling, Die Regierung des Hochstifts Würzburg 1495–
1642. Zentralbehörden und führende Gruppen eines geistlichen Staates (Würzburg: 1984),
it is possible to determine who the masters of the household were in Würzburg during
this period.
25
Staatsarchiv Bamberg (StAB), B 86, no. 17, fol. 209’.
26
StAB, B 86, no. 16, fol. 80, 81’, 82–82’, 84’, 84, 85, 104–104’. Regarding von Horn-
stein, see Reuschling, Regierung des Hochstifts Würzburg, 310f., 131 fn. 81.
27
StAB, B 86, no. 17, fol. 39’, 40. “so dem stiefft zugewantt vnd dessen gelegenheit
wüsten. Sie weren gleich der catholischen religon oder nit, möchten bedacht sein.”
28
StAB, B 86, no. 17, fol. 40’.
166 richard j. ninness

In Bamberg, Ernst von Mengersdorf wanted to deal with the prob-

lem of a pool of local Protestant talent by hiring foreigners. The cathe-
dral chapter approved of hiring a Catholic master of the household, if
a suitable candidate could be found, but they were frightened by the
prospect of replacing local councilors with foreigners. For the cathe-
dral chapter, Catholic foreigners meant losing the goodwill of the local
nobles: “[I]f, however, instead of other secular councilors who are not
Catholic, foreigners are accepted, and if something should happen in
the prince-bishopric, one would see what the same people would do
and contribute and that in contrast the nobility sitting in the prince-
bishopric, in as far as they are needed, would also withdraw their
support.”29 Moreover, “[the prince-bishop] should not eliminate the
nobles and other councilors who were not Catholic but would want
to act in such a way that he had as many Catholics as Lutherans, so
that when religious matters came up in this case the votes should be
equal; he would also want to see whether he could get a chancellor
from nearby and especially a Catholic.”30 Ernst von Mengersdorf died
in 1591 without appointing a master of the household. His successor,
Neithard von Thüngen, also tried to get a master of the household who
was Catholic, and even compromised in 1594 by offering the office to
a moderate Lutheran, Lorenz von Guttenberg, who refused. The office
was never filled.
Support for the Ecclesiastical Reservation and kinship to high-rank-
ing prelates did not, however, guarantee continued cordial relations
among the Holy See, the imperial church, and the imperial knights.
In the late-16th century, a new generation of reform-minded prel-
ates wanted uniformly Catholic subjects and officials and, on occa-
sion, opposed the local Protestant churches that the imperial knights
established on their own estates according to their ius reformandi. If a

29
StAB, B 86, no. 18, fol. 304. “Do aber anstatt der andern weltlichen räth, so nicht
catholisch, auslendische genomen werdenn, vnd sich im stifft was zutragen sollte,
würde mahnn sehenn, was die selben dabey thun vnd zu setzen, vnd daz hergegen
die im stifft geseßene vom adel, so sowol als sie zu gebrauchen, ihre hülfliche hand
auch abziehen würden.”
30
StAB, B 86, no. 18, fol. 309’f. “das sie die vom adell, oder andere räth, so nicht
catholisch gahr abschaffen, sondern allein dahin handlen wollten, das sie souil catholis-
che als euangelsiche hetten, damit wann in religionssachen was fürfiell, das dannost
die vota paria wehren, wölten auch sehen, ob sies in der nehe hierumb vnd sönder-
lich einen catholischen cantzler bekommen könten.” Gertrud Wurm, “Bischöfe und
Kapitel im Hochstift Bamberg und die Gegenreformation” (Ph.D. diss., University of
Erlangen, 1945), 39.
 protestant imperial knights 167

prince-bishop wanted to carry out Counter-Reformation policies, he

not only had to oppose Protestantism in his own ecclesiastical princi-
pality, but also challenge the imperial knights, who might be friends,
advisers, or even members of his own extended family, by challeng-
ing their role as lords with the right to decide the confession of their
subjects. In pursuing their interests as local lords, the imperial knights
crippled efforts to make an ecclesiastical principality into a contigu-
ous territorial state with uniform religious observance. Their petty
domains formed small independent enclaves of Protestantism in the
midst of a prince-bishopric. Even subjects in Catholic localities could
avoid Catholicism by going to the Protestant church in a neighboring
imperial knightly village. These types of problems could even lead to
coordinated action.
In early 1594, the prince-bishop of Würzburg ordered the Lutheran
pastor of Zell to leave. When the pastor refused, because his church
was under the protection of an imperial knightly family, the Truchseß
von Wetzhausen, who claimed the ius reformandi, the prince-bishop
turned to his colleague in Bamberg for help, since the church lay
on Bamberg’s western border between the two states. Prince-bishop
Neithard von Thüngen agreed, and on March 3, 1594, forces from
Bamberg and Würzburg expelled the pastor.31 In response to the attack
on their church, the Truchseß family contacted the Franconian impe-
rial knighthood, who happened to be meeting in Bamberg, to request
assistance. On March 20, 1594, the knights complained to the cathe-
dral chapter and asked it to intercede on their behalf with the prince-
bishop.32 Demonstrating their connections in the cathedral chapter,
the imperial knights addressed the canons as their cousins, uncles,
and brothers-in-law. They claimed that the Truchseß had the right to
choose their pastor, a right exercised by their forefathers in accordance
with the Peace of Passau and the Peace of Augsburg. They condemned
the prince-bishop’s actions as violating the clear letter of the Religious
Peace. In June 1594, the cathedral chapter reported to Neithard that
the imperial knights wished its mediation to negotiate a solution to

31
StAB, B 49, no. 231, November 16, 1596, March 20, 1594; StAB, Hochstift Bam-
berg Neuverzeichnis Akten, no. 598, March 20, 1594.
32
Georg Zagel, Die Gegenreformation im Bistum Bamberg unter Fürstbischof
Neithard von Thüngen 1591–98 (Bayreuth: 1900), 76–77; Wurm, “Bischöfe,” 51,
Johann Looshorn, Das Bisthum Bamberg von 1556–1622, vol. 5 (Bamberg: 1903), 231,
243; StAB, J 3, 224a.
168 richard j. ninness

these differences with the prince-bishop. Protests and offers of media-

tion aside, the prince-bishop ordered the expulsion of another pastor
in June, leading the Giech family to protest to the cathedral chapter
that it had been appointing the pastor in its village of Buchau “since
time immemorial”. And that was the problem.33 More and more,
Neithard and the imperial knights were talking past each other. The
imperial knights spoke about the old days and tradition. By adopt-
ing the aggressive policies of the Counter-Reformation, Neithard, like
other prelates, created for himself a new role, in which the power of
the prince-bishop limited the influence of the cathedral chapter and
the imperial knights.
Although tension existed because of the clash of aggressive Catholi-
cism with their right to reform, the imperial knights still came
together. In the same month of June, 1594, the Catholic Hans Veit von
Würtzburg resigned from the cathedral chapter in order to marry a
Lutheran. His wedding was a huge celebration, and the prince-bishops
from the area were represented.34 The newly-married couple received
gifts from the prince-bishops of Franconia, Bamberg, Eichstätt, and
Würzburg. This wedding was probably one of the greatest events in
Franconia of that summer. A receipt has come down to us showing
that enough fodder for 334 horses was provided for those who trav-
eled to the festivities.35 The cathedral chapter of Bamberg even failed to
meet from June 14–17 because most of the canons were in attendance
at the wedding. The imperial knights conducted themselves according
to rules of behavior dictated by family, friendship, and association.
That a gift was sent by the prince-bishop of Würzburg to the confes-
sionally mixed pair is especially remarkable, since the prince-bishop at
that time was the arch counter-reformer Julius Echter von Mespelb-
runn. Thus, even in the closing decade of the 16th century, a marriage
celebrating the status and familial ties of imperial knights throughout
the region was not significantly affected by any rift caused by confes-
sional differences.

33
StAB, B 86, no. 20, fol. 381’.
34
StAB, G 58, F II, 10; Wilhelm Hotzelt, Familiengeschichte der Freiherren von
Würtzburg (Freiburg am Breisgau: 1931), 406–410; Klaus Rupprecht, Adelige Fami-
lie in Franken. Zeugnisse für Familien- und Standesbewußtsein aus dem Schloßarchiv
Mitwitz (Bamberg: 1998), 14f.
35
StAB, Schloßarchiv Mitwitz, F 2, no. 10.
 protestant imperial knights 169

The fact that he left the cathedral chapter in order to marry a

Lutheran did not prevent Hans Veit from having a successful career as
an official in the Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg. Later, even as a trusted
official in the prince-bishopric, Hans Veit von Würtzburg did not do
anything to promote Catholicism in his own Lutheran church of Mit-
witz. A statement made in 1636 by his son describes Hans Veit’s atti-
tude: “[A]lthough he was not devoted to the Augsburg Confession, he
always allowed the Lutheran pastor to remain here [Mitwitz] and did
not allow a subject to be molested against his will.”36
The Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg employed Lutheran imperial
knights as regional governors, many of whom were involved in the
forced conversion of their co-religionaries to Catholicism, unlike Hans
Veit. Although dereliction of duty on their part could be punished
with nothing more severe than dismissal, the imperial knights per-
formed their duties as officials. When one found himself involved as
an official in the work of forced conversion, he often faced a thankless
job of confronting unwilling subjects and unhappy Catholic reform-
ers simultaneously. For example, in the year of 1596, the Protestant
regional governor of Teuschnitz, Hieronymus von Würtzburg (the
Lutheran brother of Hans Veit), complained to the prince-bishop of
Bamberg about being solely responsible for removing the Lutheran
minister and supporting the new priest in converting the population to
Catholicism.37 To make matters worse, the new priest criticized Hiero-
nymus for supposedly hindering Catholic reforms.38 He alleged that
the governor had the butcher prepare him meat on fast days, failed to
punish acts of disobedience against the Catholic faith, and dismissed
Catholic subordinates.39 Despite such charges, Hieronymus continued
to serve as a regional governor as did other Lutherans.
A prelate, acting with the cathedral chapter’s advise, employed rela-
tives of the canons from the ranks of imperial knighthood because of

36
StAB, B 67, no. 17, no. 6274, fol. 9’. “unerachtet er der Augsburgischen Konfes-
sion night zugetan gewesen, den evangelischen prädikanten jederzeit allda verbleiben
und keinen untertanen wider sein gewissen molestieren lassen.” Quoted from Hotzelt,
Familiengeschichte, 484–485.
37
For a more detailed analysis of Protestant officials involved in the forced conver-
sion of Protestants to Catholicism see my article, Richard Ninness, “Protestants as
Agents of the Counter-Reformation in the Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg,” Sixteenth
Century Journal 3 (2009): 699–720.
38
StAB, B 49, no. 191, fols. 13 and 19.
39
In Mainz, officials were criticized for similar reasons. Jendorff, Reformatio Cath-
olica, 250.
170 richard j. ninness

their fighting ability, their administrative experience, and their finan-

cial resources.40 Such patronage was advantageous because it created
a pool of loyal officials who came from families with a long history
of service in the ecclesiastical principality. Office-holding provided
income, prestige, and influence. Furthermore, a connection existed
between office holding and entrance to the cathedral chapter. Hart-
mut von Kronberg, the master of the household in Mainz, sent a son
into the cathedral chapter who later became the elector of Mainz.
Hans Heinrich von Würtzburg, a regional governor of Teuschnitz
and the older brother of the above-mentioned Hieronymus, sent sons
Christoph Ulrich and Hieronymus into the cathedral chapter, where
their uncle, Wolf Albrecht von Würtzburg, the provost of the cathe-
dral chapter, looked after them.41 Despite the fact that their father was
Lutheran, Christoph Ulrich and Hieronymus were baptized Catholic.42
In Bamberg, the Lutheran Lorenz von Guttenberg refused the offer to
be master of the household, but he sent one of his sons into the cathe-
dral chapter. His brother, Hans Anthoni von Guttenberg, who was
one of the first Lutheran members of the family,43 was an official in
Eichstätt and also sent a son into the cathedral chapter there.44 Even in
the early-17th century, important prelates could come from Lutheran
families. Prominent examples are Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen,
the prince-bishop of Bamberg and later Würzburg, and Johann Philipp
von Schörnborn, the prince-bishop of Würzburg and later elector of
Mainz.45 Despite aggressive Catholicism, imperial knightly dominance
of powerful ecclesiastical principalities still meant that canons and
prelates could come from Lutheran families.

40
Klaus Rupprecht, Ritterschaftliche Herrschaftswahrung in Franken (Neustadt a.d.
Aisch: 1994), 314; Press, “Reichsritterschaft im Reich,” 105.
41
Christoph Ulrich von Würtzburg, in Friedrich Wachter, General-Personal-
Schematismus der Erzdiözese Bamberg (Bamberg: 1908), 11279. Hieronymus von
Würtzburg, Wachter, General-Personal-Schematismus, 11283. Both also had prebends
in Würzburg.
42
StAB, B 86, 597a. In Hieronymus’s last will and testament from 1648, he stated
that he had been born Catholic.
43
Rupprecht, Ritterschaftliche Herrschaftswahrung, 272.
44
Hugo Braun, Das Domkapitel zu Eichstätt (Stuttgart: 1991), 259–260.
45
For Aschhasuen see Dieter Weiss, Das exemte Bistum Bamberg: Die Bischofsreihe
von 1522 bis 1693 (Berlin: 2000), 351. Even Prince-Bishop of Würzburg and Elec-
tor of Mainz Johann Philipp von Schönborn (1605–1673) had a Lutheran father and
was baptized by the Lutheran pastor of Blessenbach. Friedhelm Jürgensmeier, Johann
Philipp von Schönborn und die römische Kurie (Mainz: 1977), 11f.
 protestant imperial knights 171

After the creation of the Protestant Union and the Catholic League
in 1608 and 1609 respectively, both camps looked to the imperial
knights as possible allies.46 But the Protestant princes did not have
a necessary advantage in negotiations with co-religionist imperial
knights. The imperial knights feared that they were losing lands and
privileges to both Catholic and Protestant princes. In fact, with the
Franconian imperial knights actually losing members to the Lutheran
margrave of Kulmbach, they might have seen the Protestant princes
as more dangerous than Catholic prelates from their own fami-
lies.47 In 1615, the imperial knights of the Voigtland negotiated the
“Submissions-Agnitions-Rezeß” with the margrave of Kulmbach, in
which they relinquished their status as imperial knights and became
his subjects.48 This event both illustrates how volatile the imperial
knightly movement continued to be and demonstrates how dangerous
the princes were for the imperial knights, all confessional similarities
notwithstanding.
Like the imperial knighthood, the prince-bishoprics of Franconia
feared the Protestant estates. In 1616, Duke Maximilian of Bavaria
left the Catholic League. In response, the prince-bishop of Eichstätt
and recently converted Wolfgang Wilhelm, count palatine of Neuburg
and duke of Jülich and Berg, proposed an alliance between the prince-
bishoprics and the imperial knights of Franconia, with the hope of
later securing the support of all imperial knights in the Holy Roman
Empire.49 Even though he was a Tridentine Catholic, Prince-Bishop
of Eichstätt Johann Christoph von Westerstetten endorsed Wolfgang
Wilhelm’s idea of an alliance.50 The prince-bishop of Eichstätt further
believed “that as it is no longer in doubt that the Franconian imperial
knights will gladly join with the ecclesiastical principalities and the two

46
Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe (GLA), 125/3058 and GLA 125/2390, fol. 159.
47
Rudolf Endres, “Die Voigtländische Ritterschaft” in Rudolf Endres (ed.), Adel in
der Frühneuzeit. Ein regionaler Vergleich (Cologne: 1991), 55–72; Marlene LeGates,
“The Knights and the State in the Sixteenth Century” (PhD diss., Yale University,
1970).
48
Endres, “Die Voigtländische Ritterschaft,” 58–59.
49
To my knowledge, this alliance is virtually unknown in scholarly literature except
for a mention in Friedrich Hefele, Der Würzburger Fürstbischof Julius Echter von
Mespelbrunn und die Liga (Würzburg: 1912), 109. Proof of efforts to create such an
alliance can also be found in StAB, B 48, no. 80.
50
For the Tridentine reformer, see Jonathan B. Durrant, Witchcraft, Gender and
Society in Early Modern Germany (Leiden: 2007).
172 richard j. ninness

other circles namely the Swabian and the Rhenish will follow.”51 In
his judgment, an alliance with the imperial knights would do more to
conserve a prince-bishopric than to ruin it, despite the fact that they
were engaged in some of the fiercest disagreements with the prince-
bishoprics over issues such as the administration of fiefs and the ius
reformandi.
The imperial knights especially had problems with the Prince-
Bishoprics of Würzburg and Bamberg over the ius reformandi.52 In
1616, Bamberg even opposed the claim of the ius reformandi by the
Ganerbenschaft of Rothenberg. Forty-six knights had purchased the
castle of Rothenberg, which became a Ganerbenschaft at the end of
the 14th century. Reflecting the confession of its holders, Rothenberg
had a Lutheran church in the village of Neunkirchen am Sand. After
the imperial knights built a new church in the village, Burggrave of
Rothenberg Joachim Christoph von Seckendorff, an imperial knight
who was also a former official in Bamberg, complained to his cousin,
a canon in Bamberg, that the Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg refused
to acknowledge his right of reform over the church.53 Many different
imperial knights owned a share of the castle, making Bamberg’s chal-
lenge more acutely felt by the Franconian imperial knights.
Wolfgang Wilhelm wanted to take advantage of the difficulties that
the imperial knights had with their neighbors, so that “they will have
to finally to enter into an agreement absolutely with the House of Aus-
tria or with the Catholic League or with the Protestants,”54 but he saw
the resolution of these differences as a necessary step in determining,
“whether and how the rest can be pulled into the business at the start so
that the winning of the rest of the imperial knights can continue to be
deliberated.”55 The alliance did not come into being because the prince-
bishops of Bamberg and of Würzburg refused to negotiate with the
imperial knights on issues such as the ius reformandi. Still, the proposal

51
StAB, B 48, no. 80, fol. 443. “daß alß nit mehr zu zweyflen die fränckhisch rit-
terschafft werde sich mit den stiftern gern conjungieren vnd derselben die andere zwö
kreyß nemblich der schwäbisch vnnd rheinlendisch nachuolgen.”
52
StAB, A 200, no. 65.
53
StAB, B 49, no. 131.
54
StAB, B 48, no. 80, fol. 220. “sie sich entweder absolute mit dem Hauß Osterreich
oder mit der Catholische liga oder mit den protestierdenden werden entlich einlassen
müssen.”
55
Ibid., fol. 418’–419. “ob vnd wie die vbrige so anfangs mit zur sachen gezogen so
dan die vbrige ritterschaft . . . zugewinnen weiter deliberirt werden könde.”
 protestant imperial knights 173

of this alliance demonstrates the complicated interplay between militant

Catholicism and imperial knights in the Holy Roman Empire.
By the early phase of the Thirty Years War, politics and confes-
sion began to overwhelm family ties among imperial knights in the
ecclesiastical principalities. In the fall of 1619, just after Frederick V
assumed the crown of Bohemia and with the Battle of White Mountain
only a year away, the knights debated whether they should take sides
in the conflict. Frederick V assured them that the Protestant Union
was not intended for any other purpose than defending the Lutheran
faith.56 Still, when Frederick V invited the Lutheran imperial knights
to a meeting of Protestants in Nuremberg in November 1619, many
hesitated. The Rhenish imperial knights maintained their neutrality.57
Their call not to allow themselves to be divided by religion was echoed
by their Swabian brethren. In response to the invitation from Freder-
ick V, the director of the Swabian imperial knights asserted that they
should remain neutral, since neither the Catholic nor the Protestant
camps wanted to harm their organization and its privileges.58 Only the
Swabian canton Kraichgau accepted the invitation to attend. In the
judgment of the Franconian imperial knights, however, working with
the Protestant camp would defend the liberty of the Lutheran reli-
gion in the German nation and therewith the interests of all imperial
knights. Members reasoned that most of the imperial knights of Fran-
conia were Lutheran anyway, and “it is not advisable to let the estates
of the Union slip out of our hands with silence or a negative answer.”59
They perceived their rights to be threatened to such a point that they
had to attend the meeting of Protestants in November 1619.
Even though the Franconian imperial knights sent a delegation to
the meeting, it would be false to say that they were pleased to ally
with the Protestant camp. Frederick V’s disregard for the emperor’s
authority in his usurpation of the Bohemian crown probably appalled
the imperial knights, who were the emperor’s direct vassals. Even if
most of the Franconian knights shared the confession of the Protestant
estates, they had their doubts about the Protestant camp: Frederick V

56
StAB, A 200, no. 79; Staatsarchiv Nürnberg (StAN), Rep. 210a, Reichsritterschaft
no. 1013, 1744, fol. 341–342.
57
Press, “Reichsritterschaft im Reich,” 116.
58
GLA 125/3058, 21 October 1619.
59
StAB, A 200, no. 79; StAN, Rep. 210a, Reichsritterschaft no. 1013, 1744, fol. 337.
“sich gantz und gar zu entschlagen oder den unirten ständen diß falß mit stillschwei-
gen oder abschlaglicher antwort aus den händen zu gehen nicht zu rathen ist.”
174 richard j. ninness

was a Calvinist outside the pale of the Religious Peace, which they
valued so highly. They had already lost members to the Margraviate of
Kulmbach, and they believed that joining the alliance meant death and
destruction in the Holy Roman Empire. In the fall of 1619, many of
the Franconian imperial knights questioned a war which would “ruin
people and land, and pour innocent Christian blood with the result
that finally the entire Roman Empire could be ruined.”60 But they did
not dare offend Frederick V and the Protestant estates because they
could see with their own eyes “that the electors and estates of the
Union find themselves in a high level of battle readiness.”61 Further-
more, they might have thought that they could take advantage of Prot-
estant power to address their grievances with Bamberg and Würzburg,
which, since the death of Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn in 1617, was
now under the personal union of Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen.
At the November meeting of the Protestants in Nuremberg in 1619,
the Franconian cantons Baunach, Gebürg, Steigerwald, and Rhön-Werra
were ready to support the Protestant Union with a company of riders.62
Two other Franconian cantons, Odenwald and Altmühl, did not want
to offend the emperor and the Catholic League by offering armed sup-
port to the Protestant Union but offered some money instead.63 The
canton Kraichgau, which had the Electorate Palatinate as a neighbor,
did likewise.64 The politics of the Franconian imperial knights effec-
tively divided the imperial knighthood. At their next meeting, in 1620
at Speyer, where Swabia held the directorship, the Franconian delega-
tion consisted of a lone knight from Odenwald, demonstrating the col-
lapse of the governing system of the imperial knighthood.65
The most vocally Protestant imperial knightly cantons, Rhön-
Werra, Baunach, Gebürg, and Steigerwald, were centered around the
prince-bishoprics of Würzburg and Bamberg. The obvious explana-
tion for their activism might be that the aggressive Catholic policies of
these prince-bishoprics drove these imperial knights into the arms of

60
GLA, 125/3058, fol. 408. “land vnd leuth verderben vndt vnschuldiges christen
bluth vergießen sollen darddurch entlich das ganze römische reich köndte ruinirt
werden.”
61
GLA, 125/3058, fol. 153. “daß sich die Vnirten Churfürsten vnndt ständt in
starkher kreigßverfassung befinden.”
62
Press, “Die Ritterschaft im Kraichgau,” 80; StAN, Rep. 210a, Reichsritterschaft
no. 1013, 1744, fol. 338; Staatsarchiv Koblenz, 53 B, no. 696, fol. 702.
63
Staatsarchiv Koblenz, 53 B, no. 696, fol. 702.
64
Staatsarchiv Koblenz, 53 B, no. 696, fol. 702.
65
Staatsarchiv Koblenz, 53 B, no. 698.
 protestant imperial knights 175

the Protestants. Yet, their worst losses actually came at the hands of
Lutheran princes: the Hohenzollerns in Franconia mediatized many
of the Franconian imperial knights in 1615. They were ready to work
with the Protestant camp, but they certainly understood the dangers
of allying with the Protestant princes. Moreover, they still supported
the Ecclesiastical Reservation. In 1619, when the Winter King was at
the zenith of his power, the imperial knights worried about ecclesi-
astical principalities becoming Protestant. Protestant bishops might
father heirs and as a result, “the bishoprics would then be considered
hereditary lands maybe divided between princes or the oldest would
want to be bishop, or the second oldest provost and so in succession.”66
They also further worried “whether such bishops will marry young
ladies which might burden the bishoprics with a wedding, taxes for
the morning gift, baptism, and the same.”67 In fact, the leading knights
of Franconia came from families closely involved with Catholic eccle-
siastical principalities and saw them as centers of imperial knightly
power. For example, the Lutheran Hans Sebastian von Rotenhan was
the director of the Franconian Circle of imperial knights in 1619,
but he had intimate contact with the Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg.
In 1594, his Lutheran mother married Hans Veit von Würtzburg. It
is reasonable to assume that Hans Sebastian had attended that wed-
ding as a boy. Its festivities celebrated imperial knightly power, when
canons from the cathedral chapter left Bamberg to join the celebra-
tion, and the newly-married couple received gifts from the prince-
bishops of Franconia, even including Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn.
As a result of his stepfather, Hans Sebastian had connections to the
imperial knights who served as officeholders in Bamberg. In 1601, a
year after his mother’s death, Hans Sebastian von Rotenhan, probably
with the help of his stepfather, who was the captain of Kronach at the
time, negotiated a marriage with Magdalena Stiebar, the daughter of
an imperial knight who was Schultheiß of Forchheim. It had to be clear
to Hans Sebastian that the prince-bishopric as an aristocratic republic
provided patronage, and a prince-bishop with the assistance of can-
ons governed Bamberg proudly without princely interference. Hans

66
GLA, 125/3058, fol. 411. “dies bistummen allß dann vor Erblandt würden
gehalten villeicht vnder die herrn vertheilt oder der eltiste bischoff der ander tumb-
probst et consequenter zu sein würden begeren.”
67
GLA, 125/3058, fol. 411. “ob nicht was auch solche bishoffen frwlein verhewra-
then die bistumber mit hochzeit, stwer jtem zu der morgengab, kindtauff vndt dergle-
ichen möchten beschwert werden.”
176 richard j. ninness

Sebastian’s own background might help explain imperial knightly

support for the Ecclesiastical Reservation and scepticism of Protestant
princes in 1619.
As long as the Thirty Years War was fought in Bohemia, in northern
Germany, and in the Palatinate, imperial knights defended their ius
reformandi against local ecclesiastical principalities and experienced
few hardships of the war. These conditions changed drastically after
Gustavus Adolphus defeated Tilly and the Catholic forces at Breit-
enfeld on September 17, 1631, bringing the horrors of war to those
regions where the imperial knights and the ecclesiastical principali-
ties flourished. Prelates and canons were helpless to do anything but
flee. The presence of Swedish and Catholic armies overshadowed the
local confessional struggle of Protestants and Catholics and moderated
ecclesiastical policies. In fact, these same prelates who had earlier advo-
cated aggressive Catholic reform were later instrumental in bringing
about the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The Elector of Mainz, Johann
Philip von Schönborn, and others like him, such as Prince-Bishop of
Bamberg Melchior Otto Voit von Salzburg, were leading voices in the
peace movement.68 After the expulsion of the Swedish army from the
Priest Alley in 1634, the returning prelates worked toward preserving
what was left of their territory and authority, realizing that the strength
of ecclesiastical principalities lay not in depending on the pope or the
emperor, but in achieving peace and strengthening their ties with the
imperial knights.69
This essay argues that the dominance of the imperial knights over
some of the most important ecclesiastical principalities in the Empire

68
For Johann Philip von Schönborn’s role in the peace negotiations, see Jürgens-
meier, Johann Philipp von Schönborn. For Bamberg see Heinrich Dietz, “Die Politik
des Hochstifts Bamberg am Ende des Dreißigjährigen Krieges,” Berichte des Histor-
schen Vereins Bamberg, Beiheft 4 (1968): 80f.
69
During the negotiations at Münster and Osnabrück, which led to the Peace
of Westphalia in 1648, the Habsburgs offered Sweden and Brandenburg prince-
bishoprics as territorial compensation. Catholic extremists and the Vatican opposed
religious compromise. A day after his election as Elector of Mainz, Johann Philip von
Schönborn informed a papal nuncio that he would work for the honor of the church
and the salvation of souls. Moreover, he would do everything in his power to bring
about peace. Jürgensmeier, Johann Philipp von Schönborn, 120. After the Thirty Years
War, prelates recognized the ius reformandi of the imperial knights and attempted to
form another alliance with them. We can interpret this proposed alliance as a con-
tinuation of efforts from 1616. Werner Kundert, “Reichsritterschaft und Reichskirche
vornemlich in Schwaben 1555–1803” in Franz Quarthal (ed.), Zwischen Schwarzwald
und Schwäbischer Alb. Das Land am oberen Neckar (Sigmaringen: 1984), 308–309.
 protestant imperial knights 177

allowed the imperial knights to use them as centers of aristocratic

activity for social interaction, business transactions, and career oppor-
tunities. Their concern for these ecclesiastical principalities strongly
influenced their outlook on events and helps explain the strategies
they developed in negotiating the political and religious crises that
confronted them after the fragmentation of European Christianity.
Although prelates and canons endeavored to keep their ecclesiastical
principalities Catholic, they maintained strong relations with Protes-
tant imperial knights based on custom, kinship, and mutual economic
benefits. Only gradually did a militant attitude toward Protestantism
develop in the late-16th century, fueled by a new generation of bish-
ops, inspired by Tridentine Catholicism. Even with a more aggressive
Catholicism threatening their privileges, Protestant imperial knights
realized the importance of the imperial church and the danger of
Protestant princes. Many imperial knights were ready to work with
the Protestant camp by 1619, but they still clung to the familiar, but
increasingly complicated relationship they shared with the imperial
church.
Efforts to reevaluate this era as early modern Catholicism, the
Catholic Reformation, or Catholic confessionalization have made
significant contributions in altering the Counter-Reformation narra-
tive.70 But militant Catholicism, with the help of aggressive princes and
the Jesuits, continues to wage war against Protestantism in textbook
literature and scholarly studies.71 We can not overlook the hardening

70
Early modern Catholicism and the Catholic Reformation emphasize new forms
of devotion and the arts and demonstrate that Catholicism received new strength as an
international movement with missions in the New World and Asia. See O’Malley, Trent
and All That; Hsia, World of Catholic Renewal. Catholic confessionalization sees the
Reformation and Counter-Reformation as structurally parallel, with both Reformation
and Counter-Reformation or Protestant and Catholic movements expressing modern
traits, such as individualism and rationality, taking away the stigma of Catholicism
being merely reactionary. Wolfgang Reinhard, “Gegenreformation als Modernisie-
rung? Prolegomena zu einer Theorie des konfessionellen Zeitalters,” Archiv für Refor-
mationsgeschichte 68 (1977): 232f. We can already observe this approach in Zeeden‘s
work. Ernst W. Zeeden, “Das Zeitalter der Glaubenskämpfe” in Herbert Grundmann
(ed.), Gebhardt. Handbuch der deutschen Geschichte, 8th ed., vol. 2 (Stuttgart: 1955),
105f.
71
One can look in any textbook to find this approach. See for example Mark Kish-
lansky, Patrick Geary, and Patricia O’Brien (eds.), Civilization in the West, 6th ed.
(New York: 2007). In scholarly studies dealing with ecclesiastical principalities in the
Holy Roman Empire, the narrative often centers on a Catholic prelate’s success or
failure in ridding his see of Protestants and reforming it according to the principles
178 richard j. ninness

of confessional fronts in the Empire, but even this component of the

Counter-Reformation narrative needs to be interpreted in a more
nuanced way. Previously overlooked historical actors like the impe-
rial knights will help lead to a new perspective. The search for less
doctrinaire methods of inquiry inspired my work on the imperial
knights, which weighs religious decisions along with many other bind-
ing influences, highlighting contingency and human agency and the
complications of confessional life in the Holy Roman Empire.72 The
ecclesiastical principalities, especially those run by imperial knights,
played a decisive role in the resurgence of Catholicism in the Holy
Roman Empire. By studying them, we can observe that a new, aggres-
sive Catholicism still maintained strong ties of kinship and association
to the imperial knighthood, resulting in a dizzying array of roles and
situations that do not conform to any notion of confessional polariza-
tion. Ecclesiastical principalities took advantage of Catholic success in
the war to seize imperial knightly church property, and a number of
imperial knights allied with the Protestant Union and then with Swe-
den. Yet, by 1635, prelates realized that this religious conflict was too
destructive to maintain. It is no coincidence that a leading voice in
the peace movement which ended the Thirty Years War was Johann
Phillip von Schönborn, the prince-bishop of Würzburg and later the
elector of Mainz, who came from this world of imperial knights, where
Lutherans served as officials in Catholic ecclesiastical principalities,
canons came from Lutheran families, and the imperial knights sup-
ported the toleration mandated in the Peace of Augsburg. Kinship ties,
an aristocratic culture, and imperial law formed the nobility’s outlook
on confession, but these customs and principles did not apply to the
subjects of the imperial knights or those of a prelate. In the ecclesi-
astical principalities dominated by imperial knights, this aristocratic
worldview not only existed within the context of multiconfessional-
ism, but also profoundly shaped the Counter-Reformation.

of the Council of Trent. Jendorff sees this as a problem of Catholic Church history as
it is practiced in Germany. Jendorff, Reformatio Catholica, 7–9.
72
Wandel speaks eloquently about agency during the Reformation in Lee Palmer
Wandel, “Ranke Meets Gadamer: The Question of Agency in the Reformation” in
Christopher Ocker, Michael Printy, Peter Starenko, and Peter Wallace (eds.), Politics
and Reformations: Histories and Reformations. Essays in Honor of Thomas A. Brady Jr.
(Leiden: 2007), 63–78.
 MULTICONFESSIONALISM IN THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE:
THE CASE OF COLMAR, 1550–1750

Peter G. Wallace

Wär Bueb geblieben Knecht

Und Linck geblieben recht
Und Goll geblieben stumm
Wär Colmar nit in Luthertum1
This 19th-century ditty presents the Reformation in the Alsatian impe-
rial city of Colmar in 1575 as the work of two civic magistrates, Michael
Buob and Hans Goll, and an ennobled patrician, Sebastian Wilhelm
Linck von Thurnburg, whose decisions to behave in ways distinct from
their patronymics allowed Colmar to become “Lutheran”. The poem
reflects the collective memory of the 18th-century Lutheran commu-
nity, which traced its roots to the city’s initial reformers. This memory
is false. Colmar never became completely Lutheran, as external protec-
tors and internal resilience sustained Catholic worship in what became
a biconfessional town, where both Evangelicals and Catholics could
worship publicly.
In his overview for this section on multiconfessionalism in the Holy
Roman Empire, David Luebke offers six forms of multiconfessional
relations: hybrid, where pastors accommodated a confessional mix
among parishioners; subcutaneous, where diversity survived beneath
the surface of official conformity; entrenched, where local elites strove
to protect local political interests by tolerating informal multiconfes-
sionality; liminal, where believers could cross over territorial boundar-
ies to worship at a neighboring site; co-equal, where the confessions
observed formal legal parity; and concentric, where the prince’s court
alone remained confessionally exclusive.2 Even prior to its Reformation
Colmar’s civic community was multiconfessional, and from 1575 down
to the French Revolution, Colmar would be officially biconfessional,
except for a brief Habsburg counter-reform interim from 1628 until

1
Johann Adam, Evangelische Kirchengeschichte der elsässischen Territorien bis zur
Französischen Revolution (Strasbourg: 1928), 469.
2
See David Luebke’s essay in this volume.
180 peter g. wallace

1632. Biconfessionality survived French conquest of Colmar in 1673

and a second round of counter-reform initiatives by Louis XIV. By the
18th century, inter-confessional relations in Colmar would resemble
the complex mix of interaction and alienation at play in contempo-
rary Augsburg.3 Were there “invisible borders” separating Colmar’s
18th-century Lutherans and Catholics? If so, were they a product of
French rule or of dynamic forces within the civic community? In an
earlier monograph, I explored structural shifts in socio-economic rela-
tions in biconfessional Colmar between 1575 and 1730.4 This essay will
draw on that work but also show that Colmar’s confessional commu-
nities experienced all six of these forms of multiconfessional relations
between 1550 and 1750.

Prelude to Reformation

Sixteenth-century Colmar was a middle-sized imperial City (Reichs-

stadt), located in the fertile Alsatian plain on the western bank of
the Upper Rhine with a population of 7,000 by 1600.5 Colmar was
a member of the Decapolis, a league of ten Alsatian imperial cities
whose immediacy to the Emperor passed through his Alsatian bailiff,
the Reichslandvogt of Haguenau, an office controlled by the Habsburgs
after 1558.6 Civic territory bordered on the Württemberg county of
Horbourg-Riquewihr and various holdings of Habsburg Outer Aus-
tria (Vorderösterreich) administered for the archdukes by officials at
the Upper Alsatian town of Ensisheim.7 More than half of Colmar’s
16th-century guildsmen were inscribed in the city’s three rural guilds,
while many Colmarians owned or leased fields and vineyards in the
neighboring Württemberg and Habsburg lordships.8 The countryside

3
Etienne François, Die unsichtbare Grenze: Protestanten und Katholiken in Augs-
burg, 1648–1806 (Sigmaringen: 1991), 225–30.
4
Peter G. Wallace, Communities and Conflict in Early Modern Colmar: 1575–1730
(Atlantic Highlands NJ: 1995).
5
Wallace, Communities, 55–8.
6
Lucien Sittler, La Décapole alsacienne, des origines à la fin du Moyen-âge (Stras-
bourg: 1955).
7
Karl Josef Seidel, Das Oberelsaß vor dem Übergang an Frankreich: Landherrschaft,
Landstände und fürstliche Verwaltung in Alt-Vorderösterreich (1602–1638) (Bonn:
1980).
8
Wallace, Communities, 52–55.
 the case of colmar, 1550–1750 181

was an integral part of Colmar’s civic landscape, and regional confes-

sional conflicts would resonate in Colmar’s streets and guildhalls.
As an imperial city, its civic regime (Regiment) negotiated directly
with the emperor and claimed authority over all civic affairs. Since
a constitutional reform in 1521, an inner council of five magistrates
(Meister) headed by an Obristmeister with two professional employees,
the Stadtschreiber (city clerk) and the Gerichtsschreiber (court clerk),
governed the city. Despite an elaborate annual ritual of electoral cau-
cuses, Colmar’s magistrates served for life and replaced deceased col-
leagues by co-optation. A Council (Rat) comprised a second tier of
government. Traditionally, each of Colmar’s ten guilds (Zünfte) pro-
vided three representatives to the Council, but only the ten guildmas-
ters (Zunftmeister) were directly elected by the guilds. Normally, the
magistrates governed without consulting the citizens, but for critical
decisions the Obristmeister might assemble the leading guildsmen as a
Schöffenrat (council of jurors) or consult with individual guilds.9
Despite the regime’s pretensions to full authority within civic walls,
Colmar’s religious communities were privileged corporations under
the jurisdiction and protection of neighboring ecclesiastical and lay
lords and often at odds with the city.10 Medieval Colmar possessed
three parish churches, but by 1550 St. Martin’s, a chapter house with
a handful of canons headed by a dean, was the only functioning par-
ish, as Colmar’s political and sacral communities had become one. The
Benedictine abbey at Munster in the nearby Vosges claimed patronage
rights over St. Martin’s clergy and half of its tithe revenue.11 The civic
regime held administrative rights (Pflegschaft) over St. Martin’s fabric
and during the 16th century gained the right to confirm new deans in
their appointment.12
Late medieval Colmar sheltered several mendicant communities
and other religious houses, but, in 1543, following the death of the last
resident friar, the Franciscans sold their friary, church, and properties
to the city. When the last monk at the Benedictine priory of St. Peter’s

9
Wallace, Communities, 19–22.
10
Dieter Demandt, “Konflikte um geistlichen Standespriviligien im spätmittelalter-
lichen Colmar” in Ingrid Bátori (ed.), Städtische Gesellschaft und Reformation (Stutt-
gart: 1980), 136–54.
11
Kaspar von Greyerz, The Late City Reformation in Germany: The Case of Colmar,
1522–1628 (Wiesbaden: 1980), 27–31.
12
François Auguste Goehlinger, Histoire du chapitre de l’église collégiale St-Martin
de Colmar (Colmar: 1951), 266–76.
182 peter g. wallace

died in 1575, Colmar purchased the priory and its properties from
Bern, which had secularized the motherhouse in 1536. The Knights
Hospitaller of St. John and the Augustinian Friars maintained small
houses in the city as well, but on the eve of Colmar’s Reformation
only the Dominicans remained prominent in civic religious life with
a friary and the city’s only two convents—St. Catharine’s and Unter-
linden.13 Colmar’s religious communities were well-endowed; but as
the Reformation spread throughout the imperial Church, the number
of resident canons, monks, friars, and nuns declined. Moreover, those
who remained were poorly prepared to meet the Colmarians’ spiritual
needs.14
There were two attempts to bring the Reformation to Colmar. The
first in the 1520s drew support from Colmar’s rural guildsmen. This
Reformation “from below” called for the moral regeneration among
civic clergy, evangelical preaching, and an array of social and politi-
cal reforms. The movement failed to achieve its ends, although over
the ensuing decades Colmar’s magistrates used the citizens’ engrained
frustration to pressure Catholic clergy to meet fiscal responsibilities
to the city and spiritual responsibilities to the parish.15 The canons
of St. Martin’s and the Dominicans, however, resisted pleas from the
magistrates to upgrade the curriculum at the civic schools, defended
their legal privileges, and fell in arrears in paying civic taxes.16 In the
1540s, the frustrated magistrates assumed control over the schools
and began recruiting reform-minded, Catholic preachers, who criti-
cized clerical shortcomings from the pulpit of the former Franciscan
church.17
In 1535, the introduction of Evangelical worship in the neighboring
Württemberg villages offered Colmarians the “liminal” opportunity to
attend Reformed Sunday services at neighboring Horbourg.18 Colmar’s
Catholic clergy complained to the magistrates and Habsburg officials at
Ensisheim of declining attendance at Mass. The magistrates reminded

13
Von Greyerz, Reformation, 31–4.
14
Jürgen Bücking refers to a “seelsorgerliche ‘Vakuum’” at Colmar. See idem,
Johann Rasser (c.1535–1594) und die Gegenreformation im Oberelsass (Münster: 1970),
19.
15
Von Greyerz, Reformation, 44–64.
16
The tax disputes were interminable, see Archives Municipales de Colmar [here-
after, AMC], GG 29, a–c.
17
Von Greyerz, Reformation, 80–1.
18
On Horbourg-Riquewihr, see Adam, Kirchengeschichte, 292–348, esp. 295–303.
 the case of colmar, 1550–1750 183

the canons and the Austrian officials that the city remained Catholic
and blamed poor attendance on lax morals and religious indifference
among the canons. Kaspar von Greyerz has shown that prior to 1555
Colmar’s lay leaders still sought religious reform within the Catholic
Church, while the Colmarians, who attended services at Horbourg, did
not yet represent a confessional party within the city.19 Following the
religious Peace of Augsburg in 1555, new councilors with Evangelical
sympathies, headed by Buob, Goll, and Linck, entered civic govern-
ment.20 In 1565, Colmar’s Alsatian ally, the imperial city of Haguenau,
claimed the ius reformandi, which was guaranteed to imperial princes
by the religious peace, and established a Lutheran parish. Colmar’s
magistrates waited to gauge the Habsburgs’ reaction. When an imperial
commission failed to suppress Haguenau’s Reformation and Emperor
Maximilian II appeared reluctant to employ force, Evangelical sympa-
thizers among Colmar’s magistrates saw their opportunity.21

Colmar’s Late City Reformation and Its Aftermath

On 15 May 1575, Colmar’s magistrates invited Johannes Cellarius,

pastor at nearby Jebsheim, to conduct Evangelical services in the Fran-
ciscan church. Deeply-rooted concerns over Archduke Ferdinand’s
reaction, as both Reichslandvogt and ruler of Outer Austria, and respect
for the Catholic majority among Colmarians themselves led civic offi-
cials to consult the guilds individually before acting. Whatever their
religious views, the guildsmen affirmed the regime’s claim to the ius
reformandi, provided that all citizens retained the right to choose their
church. Although the Lutheran superintendent at Riquewihr claimed
that 3,000 Colmarians attended the initial sermon, the Evangelical
communion service later that month (29 May) drew only 100 com-
mitted believers. In fact Johann Rasser, a former dean at St. Martin’s,
claimed that Colmar’s Reformation revived attendance at Mass.22
According to communion registers, Catholic services continued to
attract significantly more communicants than the Lord’s Supper into

19
Von Greyerz, Reformation, 84–93.
20
Wallace, Communities, 26–31.
21
Von Greyerz, Reformation, 94–9.
22
Bücking, Rasser, 29.
184 peter g. wallace

the 17th century.23 By 1610, however, householders, who had mar-

ried or baptized their children in the Evangelical church, comprised
a clear majority (612/1057) of taxpayers, while Catholics accounted
for slightly more than one-quarter (267).24 The difference in confes-
sional balance between householders and communicants may reflect
stronger Catholic allegiance among poorer, resident non-citizens or
attendance by neighboring villagers at St. Martin’s; but clearly, given
the freedom to choose one’s confession demanded by the guildsmen in
1575, the majority of Colmar’s early 17th-century citizens had chosen
Evangelicalism. How had biconfessionalism altered civic life?
Colmar’s Reformation undermined the two pillars of civic political
culture, placing the city at odds with the emperor, who legitimized
power from above, and dividing the city into separate communities of
worship, which fractured the sacral underpinnings of civic authority
from below. In 1575, the canons of St. Martin’s immediately called for
an imperial commission to end Evangelical worship in the city. With
support from Outer Austrian officials and the reform-minded bishop
of Basel, Jacob Christoph Blarer von Wartensee, commissioners vis-
ited Colmar in December 1575 and again in 1579. Each time they
ordered the closure of the Evangelical church. In response the magis-
trates assembled the Schöffenrat, which reaffirmed communal support
of the ius reformandi and the citizens’ right to choose their church.25
Colmar’s biconfessionalism may have been initiated from above, but
it had quickly become a communal norm. Despite repeated requests
from Colmar’s Catholic clergy, there would be no further commis-
sions for the next half century.
The Schöffenrat had confirmed religious biconfessionalism, but the
civic regime was soon dominated by Evangelicals and would sever
connections between Catholic rituals and public life. Following a fire
in 1572, the city had rebuilt St. Martin’s bell-towers. When the impe-
rial commissioners insisted on additional maintenance of the chapter
church in 1579, the magistrates countered that debts from that earlier
work left no funds for additional repairs. The magistrates had limited

23
The Lord’s Supper at Whitsun in 1610 drew 882 communicants; Catholic com-
munion services in 1613 attracted 1500; see von Greyerz, Reformation, 154.
24
Catholic registers are incomplete until the mid-17th century, and Catholics prob-
ably represent the majority of confessionally “unidentified” householders: 10.7 percent
in 1610. Around 3 percent crossed confessional lines and appear in both registers
between 1575 and 1627.
25
Bücking, Rasser, 25–6.
 the case of colmar, 1550–1750 185

bell ringing at St. Martin’s to tolling the two smallest bells to call the
faithful to services; and after the canons ignored this prohibition on
Corpus Christi in 1578, they found the bell cords cut the following
Sunday.26 In 1588, “to preserve civic peace” after the Corpus Christi
procession had led to verbal confrontations, the magistrates banned
all Catholic processions. Civic officials scoured Catholic symbols
from civic buildings and demolished or secularized several chapels,
turning St. Peter’s priory into the municipal woodshed. Crosses and
shrines disappeared from niches, gates, and the civic cemetery.27 The
magistrates also declined to adopt the “popish” Gregorian calendar.28
Despite official biconfessionalism, by 1600, Colmar’s Catholic clergy
felt beleaguered, and the Catholic minority among the citizens was
confessionally alienated from civic life.
For much of its first decades, Colmar’s Evangelical community was
itself confessionally divided. Although the magistrates continually
cited the Augsburg Confession as the defining document for Colmar’s
Evangelical church, officials resisted pressure from Lutheran Stras-
bourg and Württemberg to sign the Formula of Concord. According
to Kaspar von Greyerz, Christian Serinus, Colmar’s first pastor, sup-
ported by Andreas Sandherr, the Gerichtsschreiber, favored a Philip-
pist interpretation of the Lord’s Supper and Christology, which was
unacceptable to “Orthodox” Gnesio-Lutherans at Strasbourg and
Horbourg-Riquewihr, who advocated the Formula.29 The theological
issues dividing the Alsatian Evangelicals were subtle, yet Colmar’s
magistrates must have appreciated the political implications of their
confessional stance.
In 1589, intra-Evangelical tensions triggered a public confrontation,
when Colmar’s new deacon, Johann Georg Magnus, preached Ortho-
dox views on the Lord’s Supper to the consternation of Serinus and
Sandherr, whom he referred to as “Zwinglian hornets”.30 In response
Sandherr composed a Deklarationsschrift that attempted to gloss over
the points of contention between Philippists and Orthodox Lutherans.
Orthodoxy, however, was triumphing among imperial Lutherans; when
Colmar’s regime shared the document with Lutheran churchmen at

26
Goehlinger, Histoire, 286–93.
27
Adam, Kirchengeschichte, 474–5.
28
AMC, GG 155, 1–4.
29
Von Greyerz, Reformation, 134–46.
30
Von Greyerz, Reformation, 131–2.
186 peter g. wallace

Strasbourg and Wissembourg, they condemned it.31 Nevertheless, on

22 December 1589, following an internal review and ratification, the
magistrates presented the Deklarationsschrift to Magnus, who refused
to sign and was released. Colmar’s next two diaconal recruits also
refused.32 One deacon, Andreas Irsamer, who had signed, later drifted
into fitful opposition, and, in 1594, the Lutheran pastor at Horbourg
mocked Colmar’s three Evangelical ministers and their “three differ-
ent religions”.33 Deteriorating confessional relations with Lutheran
Strasbourg and Horbourg-Riquewihr would eventually drive Colmar’s
Evangelical church to closer ties with Reformed Basel and Rhenish
Calvinism but not until the early-17th century.34 As late as 1600, Col-
mar’s disgruntled first deacon, Johann Ernst Fritsch, and the Latin
schoolmaster, Christoph Kirchner, headed an Orthodox Lutheran fac-
tion of prominent citizens within the Evangelical parish, while other
citizens made the “liminal” choice to worship at Horbourg’s Lutheran
church.35
Between 1575 and the disestablishment of the Evangelical parish in
1627, 21 men served as ministers. Colmar’s magistrates initially con-
sulted both Simon Sulzer at Basel and Johann Marbach at Strasbourg
regarding potential recruits, as relations between these leaders and
their churches remained cordial until Sulzer’s death in 1585. Afterward,
Johann Pappus at Strasbourg and Basel’s new Antistes, Johann Jacob
Grynaeus, became increasingly embittered confessional opponents.
Down to 1598, despite strained confessional relations over the Dekla-
rationsschrift, Colmar’s magistrates continued to consult Pappus and
to recruit ministers with ties to Württemberg or Strasbourg.36 In 1602,
Sebastian Wilhelm Linck von Thurnburg, now a magistrate, recruited
Ambrosius Socinus, who had been expelled from Badenweiler for his

31
Adam, Kirchengeschichte, 471–2.
32
Marie-Joseph Bopp, Die evangelische Geistlichen und Theologen in Elsaß und
Lothringen von der Reformation bis zur Gegenwart (Neustadt/Aisch: 1959), Bartho-
lomäus Haller (211, no. 943); and David Hiemeyer (241, no. 2243).
33
Von Greyerz, Reformation, 145–50, quote at 149, n. 114.
34
Kaspar von Greyerz, “Basels kirchliche und konfessionelle Beziehungen zum
Oberrhein im späten 16. und frühen 17. Jahrhundert” in Martin Bircher, Walter Sparn,
and Erdman Weyrauch (eds.), Schweizerisch-deutsche Beziehungen im konfessionellen
Zeitalter: Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte 1580–1650 (Wiesbaden: 1984), 227–52.
35
Wallace, Communities, 25. See also AMC, GG 158, 38.
36
Haller, Hiemeyer (see note 32), Andreas Irsamer (Bopp, Geistlichen, 264, no. 2486),
and Samuel Radspinner (423, no. 4066), had ties to Strasbourg; while Johannes Gloß
(186, no. 1698), and Johann Ernst Fritsch (168, no. 1504) had roots in Württemberg.
 the case of colmar, 1550–1750 187

Calvinism, as Serinus’s successor and then supported the new pastor

as he recruited ministers trained in the Calvinist centers of Heidelberg
and Basel.37 In 1624, Jacob Stephan became the city’s first native-born
deacon, and his appointment possibly signaled a deepening commit-
ment to Calvinism among Evangelical Colmarians. When the imperial
commission of 1627 disbanded the parish, its ministers sought refuge
and found new postings in Switzerland.38 Colmar’s Evangelical elite,
however, would be more divided in its response.
In 1575, three magistrates, Gregorius Berger, Michael Buob, and
Hans Goll, along with the Stadtschreiber, Beat Henslin, and Gerichts-
schreiber, Andreas Sandherr, advocated the Evangelical initiative. From
Colmar’s Reformation down to 1627, all new magistrates would attend
services at the Evangelical parish.39 The initial recruits, Henslin (1576)
and Linck (1582), replaced deceased Catholic magistrates. When plague
claimed the three Evangelical founders in 1588, just before the parish’s
intra-confessional dispute, Johann Georg Magnus may have anticipated
that the new magistrates would favor Orthodox Lutheranism. Linck
and Henslin, however, supported Andreas Sandherr’s Deklarations-
schrift, and von Greyerz believes that the new Obristmeister, Ludwig
Kriegelstein, joined them.40 From 1588 until 1627, new magistrates,
like Kriegelstein, came from a small circle of elite Evangelical families.41
Among Colmar’s councilors and guildmasters, only ten of 109 enter-
ing officeholders between 1575 and 1627 were Catholics.42 Colmar’s
Schöffenrat may have authorized religious biconfessionalism, but Col-
mar’s regime was almost, but not exclusively, Evangelical, although
the depth of confessional sympathies among regime members remains
obscure.
Among the economic elite, Colmar’s confessional swing toward
Basel and Rhenish Calvinism had an impact. In 1620, at least 85 percent

37
Bopp, Geistlichen, Socinus (516, no. 4935), Matthis Heiner (222, no. 2054),
Nicolaus Socinus (516, no. 4936), Georg Hopf (254, no. 2379), Matthias Könen (302,
no. 2851), Jacob Stephan (529, no. 5052), and Elias Pellitarius (409, no. 3298).
38
Colmar’s pastor, Matthias Könen, settled at Biel, while Pellitarius, Stephan, and
Hopf found livings in the Bernese countryside (see note 37).
39
Wallace, Communities, 28–30, table at 29.
40
Von Greyerz, Reformation, 141–2.
41
On Colmar’s elite, see Erdmann Weyrauch, “Die politische Führungsgruppe in
Colmar zur Zeit der Reformation” in Wolfgang J. Mommsen (ed.), Stadtbürgertum
und Adel in der Reformation: Studien zur Sozialgeschichte der Reformation in England
und Deutschland (Stuttgart: 1979), 215–35.
42
Wallace, Communities, 30–33, table at 31.
188 peter g. wallace

(46/54) of the householders with taxable properties assessed above

2,000 florins were Evangelicals.43 Among them were three French-
speaking Calvinist merchants (welsche Krämer) with Rhenish and
Swiss roots, Claude Sison, Jean-François Guibert, and Gideon Sarasin.44
They headed a cohort of Calvinist immigrants from the Rhineland
and Switzerland: 46 householders in all, about 13 percent of Evan-
gelical immigrants between 1575 and 1627. Nevertheless, significantly
more householders (136/360) immigrated from Lutheran communi-
ties in Lower and Upper Alsace. In contrast Colmar’s Catholic par-
ish remained insular, attracting only 52 outsiders, nearly all of whom
came from neighboring Habsburg villages.45 An immigrant’s place of
origin, however, did not necessarily imply his confession. The pewter
smith, Augustin Güntzer, came from a Reformed enclave in nomi-
nally Catholic Obernai in Lower Alsace. In 1623, he settled at Colmar
and married the daughter of a Calvinist councilor.46 Güntzer was a
devout Calvinist, and his marriage connected him to a network of elite
families who shared his faith. Unlike Güntzer, however, the welsche
Krämer had initially bickered with native merchants and intermarried.47
Although it is difficult to determine the depth to which the Calvinism
among Colmar’s early-17th-century Evangelical ministers resonated
among their parishioners, some elites supported the confessional shift.
Nevertheless, intra-confessional tensions among Colmar’s Evangelical
ministers and lay intellectuals and the Rhenish confessional networks
of some merchants probably did not penetrate into the rank and file
of Colmar’s Evangelical parish.
By 1620, Colmar’s Evangelicals, whether Lutheran or Calvinist,
formed a majority of taxpaying residents in every neighborhood except

43
Colmar’s tax on property (Gewerf ) officially assessed rates at 0.5 percent, but the
rich often paid at lower rates. Wallace, Communities, 75–8.
44
Lucien Sittler, “Commerce et commerçants dans le vieux-Colmar,” Annuaire de
Colmar (1966): 14–48, here at 28–9. In 1620, they were assessed at 13,500 florins,
far more than the combined assessment of the 103 householders in the lowest tax
stratum.
45
Wallace, Communities, 60–4.
46
Augustin Güntzer, in Fabien Brändle and Dominik Sieber (eds.), Kleines Biechlin
von meinem gantze Leben: Die Autobiographie eines Elsässer Kannengießers aus dem
17. Jahrhundert (Cologne: 2002), 156–64.
47
Guibert (Wybert), Sarasin, and Sison first traded as protected residents (Schirm-
verwandten), triggering calls for their expulsion from Evangelical commercial rivals.
AMC, HH 27, 33. In response, the three purchased citizenship and joined a guild. See
the excellent Lizentiatsarbeit of Nora Fehr, Gegenreformation und Migration in 17.
Jahrhundert: Colmarer Protestanten in Basel (Basel: 1999), 56.
 the case of colmar, 1550–1750 189

the streets surrounding the Dominican friary and convents. Evangeli-

cals also comprised the majority in all but Colmar’s two agricultural
guilds, Ackerleute and zum Haspel. The concentration of Catholics
among rural workers, including numerous vintners in Rebleute, may
be explained by the proximity of Outer Austrian villages and tenan-
cies available from Colmar’s Catholic religious houses. Although no
guild was exclusively Evangelical, some trades within the guilds were,
and Catholics had to purchase goods from Evangelical shopkeepers.
The Evangelical parish at Haguenau was limited to the city’s elite and
would not survive a Habsburg counter-reform in 1624. At Colmar,
Evangelicals formed a majority in every tax bracket, as wealthy mer-
chants, landowners, middling craftsmen, and poorer workers wor-
shipped together in both churches.48 At the outbreak of the Thirty
Years’ War, confessional differences at Colmar did not exacerbate
social tensions between rich and poor.

The Habsburg Counter-Reform and Colmar’s Second Reformation

As the Emperor’s armies drove his enemies out of much of Germany,

imperial commissioners under Archduke Leopold of Outer Austria
arrived at Colmar in November 1627 to implement a long-intended
counter-reform that ended the Calvinist era in Colmar’s Evangelical
history by closing the church and deposing the regime that supported
it. Although grievances from Colmar’s Catholic clergy had been instru-
mental in securing the imperial commission, they would play no role
in the Habsburg counter-reform, which was spearheaded by Jesuits
and Capuchins from Ensisheim. In January 1628, Emperor Ferdinand
II ended biconfessionalism at Colmar. Only Catholic services would
be sanctioned within the walls, and citizens faced stiff penalties if they
sang religious songs, engaged in private worship, or visited neighbor-
ing Lutheran villages for Sunday services. All Evangelical citizens had
six months to abjure their faith or to sell their properties and emi-
grate. Catholic religious houses recovered direct administration of
their goods, and the Jesuits reconsecrated the Evangelical church as
a Catholic chapel and assumed responsibility over Colmar’s schools.
Finally, only Catholics could serve in the civic regime.49 On 22 March

48
Wallace, Communities, 62–8.
49
Wallace, Communities, 34–7.
190 peter g. wallace

1628, the commissioners received the resignations of 24 Evangelical

regime members and installed a purely Catholic body.50 Many Evan-
gelical leaders, including four of the five magistrates, joined their pas-
tors in seeking refuge at Calvinist Basel and Mulhouse. The remaining
magistrate, Conrad Ortlieb, returned to his home town, Lutheran
Riquewihr.51 Augustin Güntzer also sought refuge at Riquewihr, but
was turned away because “the Colmarians are of the Calvinist reli-
gion,” and he later settled at Strasbourg.52
On the surface the confessional cleansing of Colmar seemed well
under way, but from the outset the new “Catholic” regime resisted the
counter-reform program. The magistrates repeatedly petitioned Outer
Austrian officials at Ensisheim for delays and exemptions in apply-
ing the new regulations and, when rebuffed, appealed from Ensisheim
to the Reichshofrat.53 In these negotiations, Catholic officials relied
on the expertise of the Evangelical Stadtschreiber, Anton Schott, and
Gerichtsschreiber, Niclaus Sandherr, whom they had retained until
confessionally “suitable” replacements could be found. The Catholic
magistrates’ legal appeals delayed full imposition of the new confes-
sional order down to 1630, when stunning Swedish victories in north-
ern Germany softened pressure from Habsburg agents. Henceforth,
Colmar’s officials would not fine their Evangelical neighbors when
they began visiting Lutheran villages for Sunday services.54 Throughout
the counter-reform interim, the Catholic regime’s most pressing prob-
lem was quartering the imperial garrison, which sought to occupy the
houses vacated by Colmar’s Evangelical refugees. Civic officials negoti-
ated payment from exiles in Basel and elsewhere, many of whom had
not relinquished their citizenship, to help defray costs, while limiting
troop assignments to occupied homes.55
The Catholic regime’s “entrenched” multiconfessional behavior sug-
gests some sympathy with Colmar’s Evangelical residents and exiles,
which can be explained, in part, by the confessional composition of

50
Lorentz Espach, a Catholic councilor, noted: “Mittwoch den 22 Mertz Nauen Kal-
endar Anno 1628 Jar ist der alten rot allhie in der statt Collmar abgestanten worten.”
Archives Départementales du Haut-Rhin [hereafter ADHR], 4G, 12, fol. 2r.
51
Fehr, Gegenreformation, 48–63, here at 52.
52
Güntzer, Biechlin, 214–5, here at 214.
53
AMC, GG 166, 3–9.
54
Adam, Kirchengeschichte, 482–3.
55
AMC, BB 52, Protocollum Missivarum, 1629–32, 322–4 and 445–6; and Fehr,
Gegenreformation, 60–1.
 the case of colmar, 1550–1750 191

the regime itself. Although Schott had resigned and emigrated to Basel
late in 1628, Sandherr remained. Among regime members in 1630,
six of the 32 had served as Evangelical councilors, while five others
had married or baptized their children in the Calvinist church and
apparently abjured. Of these 11 “converts,” only two—Andreas Siebert
and Matthias Glöcklin—would remain Catholics after 1632. Colmar’s
Catholic magistrates came from the Catholic economic elite, but only
Hans Obrecht had served in the regime before the counter-reform as
guildmaster.56 To govern effectively these men needed support from
experienced Evangelicals both in exile and in the city.
Their dependence on Evangelicals made sense given the impossi-
bility of expelling nearly two-thirds of the citizenry or questioning
too closely the beliefs of those who remained. The Habsburg counter-
reform was imposed by outside force at the expense of civic claims to
the ius reformandi, and it threatened Colmar’s imperial status. Confes-
sionalizing sympathies among Catholic civic leaders had to be mixed.
Moreover, the flight of committed Evangelicals had already left its
mark. Householders fell by over 14 percent (1074 to 931) between
1620 and 1630. Even so, the majority who remained (497) had married
or baptized their children in the Calvinist church, while the “subcuta-
neous” biconfessional balance in Colmar’s neighborhoods and guilds
was nearly unchanged. The counter-reform had driven off Colmar’s
Evangelical elite, as taxpayers assessed at over 2,000 florins fell from
54 to 25, and among merchants, from 25 to five. With their departure
assessed wealth declined by nearly one-third from over 487,000 to just
over 355,000 florins.57 Many found havens at Calvinist Mulhouse and
Basel. When biconfessionalism returned to Colmar, would they?
On 20 December 1632, faced with a Swedish siege, Colmarians
attacked the imperial garrison and capitulated. The Swedes ‘restored’
Colmar’s Evangelical parish and biconfessionalism by recognizing
civic Catholics’ right to worship at St. Martin’s. The new Evangelical
parish, however, would develop under Strasbourg’s Lutheran tutelage,
as Johannes Schmidt, president of Strasbourg’s consistory, delivered
the inaugural sermon and hand-picked the new ministers.58 Despite
imposition of Lutheranism from outside, Colmar’s Lutheran ministers

56
Wallace, Communities, 35–9.
57
Wallace, Communities, 82–5.
58
In 1637 Colmar modeled its first church ordinance after Strasbourg’s. Adam,
Kirchengeschichte, 486–9.
192 peter g. wallace

would eventually integrate into the community’s elite much more

deeply than their predecessors, who had formed few familial ties with
their parishioners. Of the 15 Lutheran ministers, who served Colmar’s
Evangelical church from 1632 to 1715, six were sons of ministers or
regime members. Whether immigrants or natives, the ministers would
marry into a narrow circle of elite Evangelical families.59 The density of
interpersonal ties must have enhanced confessional cohesion among
Lutheran elites, and these close associations would continue deep into
the 18th century.60
Full integration between the ministers and elite, however, took two
generations, and intra-confessional relations among Colmar’s Evan-
gelicals remained taut. In 1638, Schmidt condemned the “poisonous
and blasphemous” tone of an anonymous “crypto-Calvinist” pamphlet
critiquing his inaugural sermon.61 For a time Colmar’s Evangelical
magistrates tolerated “hybrid” multiconfessionalism within the Evan-
gelical parish. Augustin Güntzer had returned to the city and held
clandestine prayer meetings for Calvinist neighbors until he left the
city in 1653.62 As late as 1663, the Lutheran pastor, Joachim Klein, still
worried about the influence of “crypto-Calvinists” among Colmar’s
political leaders.63 These residual intra-confessional tensions within
the Evangelical community played out under a new political order in
Alsace and at Colmar.
In 1634, when French mercenaries and officials replaced the Swedes
as Colmar’s “protectors”, they retained the city’s biconfessional settle-
ment negotiated with the Swedes and confirmed it in a treaty signed
at Rueil, near Paris, on 1 August 1635.64 In 1648, the Peace of West-
phalia granted French officials all rights in Alsace formerly held by

59
Bopp, Geistlichen, Jost Haas (206, no. 1877); Joachim Klein (292, no. 2758); Mat-
thäus Bardellar (38, no 180); Wilhelm Weber I (571, no. 5476); Johann Paul Ziegler
(605, no. 5802); Niklaus Klein (292, no. 2759); Wilhelm Weber II (571, no. 5478);
Johann Balthasar Wetzel (586, no. 5617); Andreas Burger (95, no. 724); Andreas
Lichtenberger, 1687–1730 (334, no. 3161); Johann Heinrich Sprecht (591, no. 4961),
Andreas Röttlin (450, no. 4329) and Johann Daniel Bär (35, no. 148).
60
Claude Muller, Colmar au XVIIIe siècle (Strasbourg: 2000), 18–21.
61
Adam, Kirchengeschichte, 484.
62
Güntzer, Biechlin, 244 and 283.
63
Julius Rathgeber (ed.), Colmar und Ludwig XIV. (1648–1715): Ein Beitrag zur
elsässische Städtegeschichte im siebzehnten Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: 1873), 78.
64
André Waltz (ed.), ‘À l’ombre du lys’: correspondance diplomatique échangée entre
la couronne de France et la république de Colmar, 1634–1646 (Colmar: 1935), 231–4.
 the case of colmar, 1550–1750 193

the Habsburgs, while confirming Colmar’s status as an imperial city,

whose fragile autonomy, however, would depend on French recog-
nition of Colmar’s imperial status.65 More importantly, under the
treaties, biconfessionalism at Colmar was legally protected because it
had existed in the confessionally normative year of 1624. After 1648
French officials assumed the Habsburgs’ role in protecting Colmar’s
Catholics but lacked regional clerical allies. The prince-bishop of Basel
was a foreign lord, whose diocese had suffered from the long war.
There was no diocesan seminary, and the Jesuits and Capuchins had
been expelled from Colmar with the imperial garrison that brought
them.66 During the first decades of French rule, royal agents focused
on operating within the imperial system and rebuilding the lordships
acquired from the Habsburgs.67 Spared the confessional rigors of royal
policy, Colmar’s Evangelicals would enjoy an “Indian summer”.
Within the city the initial “Lutheran” regime that replaced its
“Catholic” and “Calvinist” predecessors in 1633 was a hybrid assembly
of former councilors and new men. Eleven “Calvinist” officials, who
had been deposed in 1628, returned to office; seven others (of whom
only four were Catholics) had begun their careers in the counter-re-
form regime; and three men, including Niclaus Sandherr, now served
under their third confessional banner. Obristmeister Conrad Ortlieb
was the only magistrate to return.68 Members of the Lutheran parish
predominated in the civic regime, but, as late as 1650, 21 of Colmar’s
32 Evangelical officials had earlier married or baptized their children
in the city’s Calvinist church.69 Colmar’s regime, moreover, remained
marginally biconfessional as Catholics continued to serve as council-
ors with at least three representatives in any given regime.70 None,
however, became magistrates.
Between the Swedish occupation of 1633 and the French conquest
in 1673, Colmar’s Evangelical magistrates increasingly recruited their
successors from a pool of legal professionals from the surrounding

65
Christian Ohler, Zwischen Frankreich und dem Reich: Die elsässische Dekapolis
nach dem Westfälischen Frieden (Frankfurt: 2002), 48–55.
66
André Schaer, Le clergé paroissial catholique en Haute Alsace sous l’ancien régime,
1648–1789 (Paris: 1966), 109–20.
67
Georges Livet, L’Intendance d’Alsace de la Guerre de Trente Ans à la mort de
Louis XIV (1634–1715), 2nd ed. (Strasbourg: 1991), 175–328.
68
Wallace, Communities, 37–41, members listed at 40.
69
Wallace, Communities, 39.
70
Wallace, Communities, 133–7.
194 peter g. wallace

Alsatian, Lutheran lordships. Nine of the 21 magistrates came from

Horbourg-Riquewihr, and Colmar’s leading politician in the 1640s
and 1650s, Johann Heinrich Mogg, had served as an official for the
neighboring Lutheran counts von Rappoltstein.71 The influence of
Lutheran immigrants was most evident in their tenure as Obristmeis-
ter in 34 of the 45 regimes between 1633 and 1679. The contraction
of political power into the hands of a regional Lutheran professional
elite coincided with the integration through marriage and recruitment
of the Lutheran ministers among elite families, as the parish and the
regime became closely intertwined. In 1664 the secretary to the French
Reichslandvogt of Haguenau argued that “this oligarchy has lasted since
the war. It is time to cut its roots and save the citizens from magisterial
slavery.”72 When the opportunity came a decade later, French officials
would undermine the Lutheran magistrates’ power and end their con-
fessional exclusiveness.
As the new Lutheran elite secured their political dominance and set
a Lutheran confessional stamp on their parish, the changing political
and confessional conditions made an impact on the civic community.
The restoration of the Evangelical parish encouraged at least 41 refu-
gee householders to return between 1633 and 1640. Their presence
was demographically critical as disease and famine in the late 1630s
reduced male householders at Colmar by nearly half. In 1640, Evan-
gelical refugees accounted for 7.3 percent of taxpayers and 18 percent
of taxable wealth.73 However, Colmar’s Calvinist merchants and mag-
istrates did not return to join the Lutheran parish, and householders
assessed above 2,000 florins would remain in the 20s—half the prewar
level—until the French conquest.74
Colmar would not recover its pre-war population until the 1670s,
but the post-war distribution of Catholics and Evangelicals in Colmar’s
guilds, neighborhoods, and tax brackets generally resembled pre-war
patterns. Nevertheless, Lutheran dominance in the city was growing.
In 1670, Lutherans accounted for nearly 70 percent of all household-
ers with Catholics at 24 percent. Evangelicals comprised a majority
in every guild except Ackerleute, and even among Colmar’s tenant

71
Wallace, Communities, 128–33, table on 129.
72
Georges Livet (ed.), Le Duc Mazarin gouverneur d’Alsace (1661–1713): Lettres et
documents inédits (Strasbourg: 1954), 150.
73
Wallace, Communities, 85.
74
Wallace, Communities, 172.
 the case of colmar, 1550–1750 195

farmers the Catholic majority was smaller. Two tiny tax districts in
the city’s center had become exclusively Lutheran for the first time, but
elsewhere pre-war, biconfessional residential patterns remained. Most
Colmarian had neighbors who attended the other church. Lutherans
comprised a greater portion of Colmar’s richest householders (21 of 24
assessed over 2,000 florins), but in other tax brackets, the confessional
mix roughly matched the population as a whole.75
The growing power of the Lutherans triggered some inter-confessional
tensions. In 1644, Colmar’s Catholics complained to French officials
that their widows felt pressure to marry Evangelicals while Lutheran
magistrates had assigned Evangelical guardians to Catholic orphans. In
response, the magistrates promised royal officials to protect Colmar’s
Catholics “as the king protected them”.76 In 1658, Lutheran officials
re-opened St. Peter’s priory church for Lutheran services to accommo-
date the growing community of faith. In the process, they transferred
two large bells from St. Martin’s to their new church, triggering an
angry sermon from the dean of the chapter and a response from the
pulpit by the Lutheran pastor. The magistrates enjoined all preachers
to observe civic peace, and the bells remained at St. Peter’s. Prior to
the French conquest, the imperial city of Colmar had become increas-
ingly Lutheran with an enfeebled Catholic minority.
Colmar’s demographic recovery depended on immigration, and
here the divergence between the two parishes is clear. Catholic house-
holders rebounded from a low of 174 in 1640 to 210 in 1650, but
then stagnated, with only 221 Catholic householders two decades later.
Meanwhile, Lutheran households nearly doubled from 348 in 1640 to
439 in 1650 and 637 in 1670. In that time frame the Catholic par-
ish welcomed only 57 immigrant householders; and as was true ear-
lier, nearly all came from neighboring Catholic villages. For the same
period, Colmar’s increasingly Lutheran parish attracted 289 immi-
grant householders. Switzerland continued to provide a little more
than a tenth (34), although craftsmen from the Bernese Oberland had
replaced merchants.77 Alsace now served as the principal reservoir for
Lutheran immigrants, accounting for nearly 53 percent (153), well
above the pre-war share of 34 percent. Among Alsatian immigrants

75
Wallace, Communities, 163–74.
76
AMC, GG 167, 10–1.
77
Adding Francophone and Rhenish migrants, who might have Calvinist leanings, raises
the share to 17 percent (50/289). None entered Colmar’s economic or political elite.
196 peter g. wallace

after 1632, Lutheran Strasbourg provided 39, more than one-quarter,

as a cohort of Strasbourg merchants, craftsmen, and officials settled
in Colmar, with several serving in the civic regime.78 By 1670 Col-
mar’s Lutheran religious, political and social elite had links to all the
Lutheran centers in Alsace.

Parity and New Horizons

On 4 August 1680, the French intendant in Alsace, Jacques de la Grange,

ordered Colmar’s Lutheran officials to appoint a Catholic magistrate
and four Catholic councilors to fill vacancies for the upcoming elec-
tion. When they refused, he disbanded Colmar’s regime. On 3 Octo-
ber, the Conseil d’État decreed that, as a biconfessional city, Colmar
must observe the imperial practice of “co-equal” confessional parity,
where all civic boards had equal confessional representation or where
incumbents in individual offices alternated between confessions.79
Threatened with wholesale depositions, Colmar’s Lutheran leaders
agreed to appoint Catholics and negotiated a gradual implementation
of parity through Catholic replacements on the death or retirement of
Lutheran incumbents. Confessional parity—mandated for a few impe-
rial cities in 1648 but unknown in the interior of France—became the
foundation of Louis XIV’s counter-reform at Colmar.80
Since Colmar’s Reformation the civic regime had never been con-
fessionally exclusive, but the demand for parity, initiated by Colmar’s
Catholic citizens, marked a dramatic shift in power relations between
civic Catholics and Lutherans.81 To facilitate confessional balance,
royal officials reduced council membership to 20, and in principle
each guild now provided one Catholic and one Lutheran councilor.
By forcing Catholic appointments, royal pressure initially broadened
the social base of regime recruitment, as early Catholic candidates
were civic guildsmen.82 Moreover, establishing confessional parity and
reducing the council to 20 members ended Lutheran recruitment into

78
Wallace, Communities, 150–1.
79
AMC, BB 24, 10.
80
Wallace, Communities, 182–6. On parity in Lutheran Strasbourg, see Paul Gre-
issler, La Class politique dirigeante à Strasbourg, 1650–1750 (Strasbourg: 1987), 121–
30 and 165–7.
81
AMC, BB 19, 1–2.
82
Wallace, Communities, 183.
 the case of colmar, 1550–1750 197

the regime for nearly a generation. Besides losing their confessional

monopoly, Colmar’s Lutheran magistrates found their authority cir-
cumscribed. In 1686, the king appointed Catholic préteurs royaux to
head the principal civic regimes in Alsace. Colmar’s magistrates would
require his approval on any major decision.
Parity had divided Colmar’s regime confessionally; but when it faced
three major political crises, from above in the mid-1690s and 1720 and
from below in 1711, Catholic and Lutheran officials rallied together
to defend their privileges and official parity. An edict in 1692, known
as the Reunion of Charges, created a set of venal offices that would
supplant the functions of civic regimes throughout France. To defend
their posts, Colmar’s Lutheran and Catholic officials joined together
to loan monies to the city to purchase and suppress these new offices.83
In the second crisis of 1711, a Lutheran apothecary and Kirchenpfleger,
Johann Jacob Sonntag, rallied a party of nearly 100 householders,
mostly German-speaking master artisans of both confessions, calling
for the reinstitution of triennial elections, decreed by the king in the
1680s but suspended as part of suppressing the Reunion of Charges.
Again the biconfessional regime successfully defended its privileges
against its biconfessional opponents.84 Finally, in 1720, royal officials
sought to reduce the council from 20 members to ten. The magistrates
and councilors of both confessions successfully defended the size of the
council and the continuation of confessional parity within the regime,
targeting as “expendable” only those offices held by Catholics under
the patronage of the city’s French commandant, where confessional
parity did not apply.85 Such instances of cross-confessional coopera-
tion notwithstanding, confessional tensions remained down to the
French Revolution as Lutheran magistrates resisted sporadic Catholic
efforts to undermine parity or the practice of alternating confessional
appointments by citing the royal decrees that had ended the Lutherans
dominance in civic government.86
French rule transformed Colmar from Lutheran-dominated, impe-
rial city to a Catholic-dominated, French provincial administrative cen-
ter, and this transformation was felt by both confessions throughout

83
Wallace, Communities, 190–8.
84
Peter G. Wallace, “Civic Politics and Civic Values in Colmar, 1648–1715,” French
Historical Studies 18 (1994): 907–37, here at 933–4.
85
Wallace, Communities, 225–6.
86
Muller, Colmar, 119–22.
198 peter g. wallace

the community. According to census data gathered by French officials,

households at Colmar rose from 930 in 1683 to 1,877 by 1718. In that
year 516 householders were non-citizens, while 80 more households
were directly tied to the Conseil souverain and 36 others belonged to
other royal provincial officials.87 In many ways the traditional civic
community of taxpaying citizens had become encased by a second
community that lived at Colmar without participating in civic life.88
Overall Catholic baptisms surpassed Lutheran in the 1690s and mar-
riages in the first decade of the 18th century.89 Among Colmar’s citi-
zens, Lutheran households grew from 529 in 1680 to 721 in 1720
(36 percent); Catholics more than doubled from 206 to 477. Lutherans
remained the majority within the civic community deep into the 18th
century, while many in the French-speaking, Catholic elite moved in
circles of privilege “above” civic life.
Growth for both parishes relied on immigration, and under French
rule confessional patterns of immigration among citizens changed
dramatically. Between 1631 and 1680, of the 939 new Lutheran house-
holders with identifiable geographic origins, immigrants accounted
for 30 percent (289). From 1681 to 1730, among 1,208 new Lutheran
householders with known origins, only 20 percent (250) were immi-
grants. The parish continued to attract Alsatians (129 or 51.6 percent)
and Swiss (30 or 12 percent) in proportions comparable to the past
until Louis XV prohibited “foreign” non-Catholics from purchasing
citizenship in Alsace in 1729. Throughout the 18th century Evangelical
immigrants from Switzerland and the Empire continued to enter Col-
mar’s guilds, but in much smaller numbers.90 Among Colmar’s Cath-
olics, French rule completely transformed the volume and scope of
immigration, making it the main engine of the parish’s demographic
growth. Between 1631 and 1680, of 297 new Catholic householders
with known geographical origins, 57 (19 percent) were immigrants,
with nearly half (28) from villages in Upper Alsace. Between 1681 and
1730, 869 new Catholics householders have known origins, of whom
319 (37 percent) were immigrants, nearly six times as many as the

87
AMC, AA 171, 1–10.
88
Wallace, Communities, 234–5.
89
Wallace, Communities, 238–9.
90
For full lists, see Wallace, Communities, 152 and 241. On Louis XV’s decree,
see Adam, Kirchengeschichte, 490. On 18th-century Evangelical immigration, see
Jean Bachschmidt (ed.), Le Livre des Bourgeois de Colmar 1660–1789 (Colmar: 1985),
328–82.
 the case of colmar, 1550–1750 199

previous half-century. Alsace provided more than one-third (119). A

significant number came from Southwestern Germany (73) and Swit-
zerland (18), and 49 immigrants came from the kingdom’s interior.91
They were in addition to the more than 100 French-speaking noble
households privileged before the fisc. French rule was slowing trans-
forming biconfessional Colmar from a Lutheran dominated imperial
city to a Catholic dominated provincial administrative center.
Under French sovereignty Colmar’s guilds grew to meet the demands
of a growing population and new markets, and for the first time the
bulk of growth favored Catholics. Between 1680 and 1720, Lutheran
guild membership grew slightly more than one-third from 504 to 697
guildsmen. Over the same decades Catholic guild membership mush-
roomed from 172 to 427 (148 percent). Catholics would remain the
minority among Colmar’s guildsmen into the late 18th century, but by
1720 Catholics comprised at least 20 percent in every guild. They had
recovered their majorities in the rural guilds and had gained majorities
among Colmar’s millers, butchers, and fishermen.92 Catholic guilds-
men had acquired contracts to supply royal garrisons in the city and
at the frontier.93 Moreover, as new French styles in dress, furnishings,
and architecture became popular, French-speaking Catholics com-
prised a growing number of Colmar’s clothiers, wig makers, jewelers,
masons, and carpenters. The growth of Catholics in these fields made
it possible for Colmarians to handle most if not all of their market
transactions with co-religionists and may, as it did at Augsburg, have
added to confessional alienation within the civic community.94
Although the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes disbanded Hugue-
not communities in the kingdom’s interior, the Peace of Westphalia
protected the proprietary and religious rights of Alsatian Evangelicals.95
Nevertheless, beginning in the late 1670s, Louis XIV’s provincial agents
implemented an aggressive counter-reform program.96 In December

91
Wallace, Communities, 152, 241.
92
Wallace, Communities, 250–1.
93
AMC, EE 174, 1–13.
94
François, Grenze, 133–4.
95
The Westphalian treaties defined Alsatian inter-confessional policies into the
19th century. Claude Muller and Bernard Vogler, Catholiques et protestants en Alsace:
le Simultaneum de 1802 à 1982 (Strasbourg: 1983), 16–17.
96
Livet, L’Intendance, 440–4. Schaer, Le clergé, 180–97; and Louis Châtellier, Tra-
dition chrétienne et renouveau catholique dans l’ancien diocèse de Strasbourg (Paris:
1981), 307–26.
200 peter g. wallace

1679, the intendant banned Lutheran services at St. Peter’s. The follow-
ing September on a “Wednesday morning,” the French commandant
announced the return of the Gregorian calendar by nailing the decree
on the Lutheran church door during Sunday services, and henceforth,
Colmar’s Lutherans would need to honor Catholic holy days. Shrines
and crucifixes gradually began to reappear throughout the city. In
1683, Lutheran magistrates advised their co-religionists to stay indoors
after Catholics youths had beaten Lutherans, who refused to kneel for
the passing monstrance during Colmar’s first Corpus Christi proces-
sion in more than 50 years. Colmar’s Catholic had regained the streets
to celebrate their faith, while Lutherans felt increasingly confined to
private worship.97 Since Colmar’s Reformation, its Evangelical church
had been the civic church. French rule ended the Lutheran church’s
privileged place within the civic community, but the residue of ties
between the regime and the parish endured. The senior Lutheran mag-
istrate remained as head of the consistory.98 Lutheran ministers and
schoolteachers continued to receive salaries and subsidized lodging
from the municipal budget, and the regime paid a comparable sub-
sidy to the Jesuits who established a school at Colmar in 1698.99 As the
century progressed fear of confessional oppression would dampen the
Lutheran’s centennial celebration of the Swedish restoration in 1732
and the bi-centennial of Colmar’s Reformation in 1775.100
French presence stimulated a spiritual revival among Colmar’s
Catholic clergy and the first expressions of Baroque Catholic piety
among the laity. In 1698, Swiss Capuchins had received royal per-
mission to found a house in the city and assumed responsibility for
preaching at St. Martin’s in German and in French. That same year
the Jesuits settled at St. Peter’s priory and established a College there.
Meanwhile Colmar’s long languishing Augustinian and Dominican
houses began baroque-style renovations on their churches. The census
of 1709 counted 68 priests and 72 nuns in Colmar’s religious houses, a
significant increase from earlier decades. Catholic jurists in the Conseil
souverain richly endowed the Augustinian chapel and used it as their
private graveyard, establishing what might be seen as exclusively noble,

97
Adam, Kirchengeschichte, 490–1.
98
Henri Strohl, Le Protestantisme en Alsace (Strasbourg: 1950), 277–8.
99
In 1715 the civic regime paid the Protestant ministers 1,590 livres and a pension
of 1,800 livres to the Jesuits, AMC, CC 145, 1715, fol. 3v.
100
Adam, Kirchengeschichte, 495.
 the case of colmar, 1550–1750 201

“concentric” confessional space, while the civic Catholic elite turned

to the Dominicans for their final resting place and commemorative
masses.101 The canons of St. Martin’s, whose religious indifference had
done much to damage Catholic interests before 1680, also embraced
the call for religious reforms.102 Meanwhile the belated establishment
of a diocesan seminary in 1718 for the bishopric of Basel eventually
improved the quality, training, and esprit de corps among parish
clergy at Colmar and the surrounding villages.103 The most visible sign
of Colmar’s Catholic revival was the Marian congregation founded by
the Jesuits in 1730. It had 400 members in 1763 and survived the sup-
pression of the order.104
Despite pressures from French officials, Colmar’s Lutheran parish
showed resiliency and energy. In the 1680s, Louis XIV offered mora-
toria on taxes for converts, prohibited mixed marriages, and ordered
all children in such households to be raised Catholic. Of over 1,320
Lutheran householders who paid taxes in Colmar between 1680 and
1730, only 26 converted (less than 2 percent).105 At the same time,
Colmar’s Lutherans financed a complete remodeling of the interior of
their church. In 1698, they moved the organ to the balcony above the
communion table and built an elaborately sculpted pulpit. Two years
later, donors purchased new candelabra to illuminate the nave. In
1709, the consistory commissioned 50 brightly colored paintings from
the Strasbourg artist, Johann Friedrich Wülckhen, which depicted dra-
matic events from the New Testament and marked a shift to increased
ornamentation in Alsatian Lutheran churches. In the same year, the
gymnasiarch, Johann Paul Ziegler, updated the hymnal and produced
a new catechism the following year, which would run through several
18th-century editions.106 Finally in 1729, the consistory financed the
construction of a beautiful new organ.107 Political patronage and pres-
sure heightened confessional awareness and identification, thickening
“invisible barriers” between the two confessions.

101
Muller, Colmar, 73–101.
102
Wallace, Communities, 245–6.
103
Schaer, Clergé, 109–20.
104
Louis Châtellier, Europe of the Devout: The Catholic Reformation and the Forma-
tion of a New Society (Cambridge: 1987), 197f.
105
Wallace, Communities, 245–6.
106
Adam, Kirchengeschichte, 495–6.
107
Muller, Colmar, 21–2; cf. François, Grenze, 133–40.
202 peter g. wallace

In 1715 Louis XIV erected a visible barrier that would symbolize

divisions between Colmar’s confessional communities into the mod-
ern era. Central to Louis XIV’s counter-reform program in Alsace
was the simultaneum—the enforced sharing of Lutheran churches by
Catholics.108 On 11 March, François Dietremann, the préteur royal of
Colmar, led a party of Catholic and Lutheran officials into the choir of
Colmar’s Lutheran church and claimed it for the Catholics to reconse-
crate as a chapel for the adjacent civic and newly-built royal hospitals.109
He ordered a wall to be built to seal off the choir from the nave and
assigned the responsibility for paying the chaplain and furnishing the
chapel to the canons of St. Martin’s.110 Over the next year, workmen
refurbished the new chapel dedicated to the Holy Trinity and walled
off the two churches.111
With the death of Louis XIV, Colmar’s Lutheran magistrates pro-
tested against the wall to the intendant, the provincial governor, and
ultimately Versailles. Colmar’s Catholics responded with a petition to
preserve the chapel. According to the Lutherans, their parish had always
been Lutheran, true to the Augsburg Confession, and thus protected
by the Peace of Augsburg. They described Colmar’s Reformation as
favored by the majority of Colmarians and carried through—as in the
poem above—by Buob, Goll, and Linck. In their account, the Swedes
had rescued Colmar’s Lutherans and restored their church, their right
to which Louis XIII had guaranteed through the treaty of Rueil in 1635.
Finally, Lutherans had occupied the entire building in 1624 and, given
the Westphalian guidelines, should be entitled to it.112 In their account,
the Catholics presented reform as the result of outside instigators
headed by Linck, who took over the former Franciscan church, which
was only empty “due to lack of clergy,” and invited his own minister
to preach there. The Catholics “being deprived of ministers . . . became

108
On the simultaneum and imperial law, see Christoph Schäfer, Das Simultaneum:
Ein staatskirchenrechtliches, politisches und theologisches Problem des Alten Reiches
(New York: 1995); for Alsace, see Claude Muller, “Ébauche d’un répertoire des églises
mixtes en Alsace,” Saisons d’Alsace 102 (1988): 27–121; and Muller and Vogler, Catho-
liques et Protestants, 9–10. Introducing Catholic worship into Protestant communities
led to mass conversions in several Lower Alsatian villages. Châtellier, Tradition, 290.
109
AMC, GG 172, 13, fol. 1.
110
AMC, GG 172, 13, fol. 2r. Disputes over the appointment and provisions of the
chaplain would sour relations among Catholics throughout the 18th century. AMC,
GG 172, 36–46 & 70–75.
111
AMC, GG 172, 26. Nearly one-third of 4,300 livres spent went to new bells.
112
ADHR, 101 J, 1278, 8.
 the case of colmar, 1550–1750 203

accustomed to going to hear this minister . . . unaware of the poison of

his doctrine, and by this means a number embraced this sect.” Linck
then displaced Catholic officials with his Lutheran allies and began
“afflicting and tormenting the Catholics on every occasion”.113 For
the Catholics, Ferdinand II was the savior whose efforts were under-
mined by the “treachery” of Lutheran Colmarians who “slaughtered”
the imperial garrison and put themselves under Swedish protection.114
The Catholics countered the Lutheran claim to protection under the
Peace of Augsburg by arguing that there were no Lutherans at Colmar
in 1555. Nor did the Peace of Westphalia apply, because “Lutherans
were in possession [of their church] through bad faith and by vio-
lence that had been condemned by various decrees of the emperor.”115
Whether persuaded by these arguments or not, the Regents for Louis
XV ordered the wall and chapel to remain. It became a mnemonic
symbol of Colmar’s confessional barriers, which Lutherans would con-
tinue to protest down to 1789.116

Conclusion

From its Reformation in 1575 to the French Revolution, Colmar was

officially biconfessional except for a brief Habsburg counter-reform
interim from 1628 to 1632. In this essay I have tried to make two
points. First, Colmar’s Evangelical confessional identity was shifting
and contested deep into the 17th century. Evangelical officials insisted
throughout that they honored the Confession of Augsburg, but their
understanding of the Confession of Augsburg shifted from Philippist
Lutheranism to Swiss Reformed Calvinism to Orthodox Lutheranism
between the 1590s and 1660s. After 1673, French rule reinforced Ger-
man Lutheran identity among Colmar’s Evangelicals, alienating them
from the new Catholic regime and from their own confessionally
complex past. Second, reform for Colmar’s Catholics was delayed and
driven by counter-reform measures initiated by external powers. Only

113
Bibliothèque Municipale de Colmar [hereafter BMC], Fonds Chauffour, MS 906,
fol. 2v.
114
BMC, Fonds Chauffour, MS 906, fol. 2v–3r.
115
BMC, Fonds Chauffour, MS 906, fol. 4r–5v, here at 4v.
116
Erich Pelzer (ed.), Les Cahiers de plaintes et doléances de la Haute-Alsace 1789
(Guebwiller: 1993), 257–63, here at 258.
204 peter g. wallace

in the 18th century would reformed Catholicism emerge at Colmar in

expressions of baroque piety.
In truth, Colmar was multiconfessional before its Reformation, and
between 1550 and 1750, Colmar’s Catholics and Evangelicals prac-
ticed aspects of David Luebke’s six categories for multiconfessional
relations. Prior to the reform, the fledging Evangelical party was “sub-
cutaneous,” protected by sympathizers within the civic regime and
spiritually nurtured through “liminal” ties with Horbourg-Riquewihr.
In 1575 Colmar’s magistrates, citing the ius reformandi and supported
in this claim by the civic guildsmen, authorized an Evangelical parish.
Afterward Colmar’s Catholics could freely attend their church, but the
Evangelical magistrates restricted Catholic public rituals and margin-
alized the Catholics’ political involvement. Confessional relations in
the imperial city of Colmar were never “co-equal”. Beyond the city
walls Colmar’s Evangelical church was challenged by Catholic authori-
ties, who questioned its legality under the religious Peace of Augs-
burg. Meanwhile within the Evangelical parish, political leaders sought
to maintain a “hybrid” convivium between Orthodox Lutheran and
Philippist factions in the confessional space provided by the Deklara-
tionsschrift. By the early 17th century, Colmar’s Evangelical ministry
had become predominantly Calvinist as had a significant portion of
the political and economic elite. Just the same, the pastors and magis-
trates had to tolerate Lutherans within the parish or risk exposing their
increasing alienation from the Augsburg Confession.
In 1628 when an imperial commission denied the legal status of Col-
mar’s Evangelical parish and enforced a counter-reform, official bicon-
fessionalism ended temporarily. The Habsburg-imposed “Catholic”
regime nonetheless tolerated a “subcutaneous” Evangelical majority in
part because the city could not afford a mass exodus and in part because
the regime continued to depend on the guidance of former Evangelical
officials. I would argue that the confessional mix within the nominally
“Catholic” regime reflected “entrenched” multiconfessionalism, with
the desire to maintain civic autonomy and norms fostering confes-
sional tolerance. In 1632 Swedish troops restored biconfessionalism to
Colmar, and relations between Catholics and the new Lutheran com-
munity assumed many of the early 17th-century patterns. Lutheran
ministers, however, were little interested in tolerating “hybridity”, but
a “subcutaneous” Calvinist cell survived for a time thanks to residual
support within the regime. The Peace of Westphalia legalized Colmar’s
biconfessionalism for the first time. The French conquest of Colmar
 the case of colmar, 1550–1750 205

could not undermine the Westphalian confessional guarantees. In the

1680s French officials established “co-equal” confessional relations by
instituting confessional parity in civic governance. French rule also
strengthened Lutheran confessional solidarity while stimulating the
first local expressions of reformed Catholicism for clergy and laity.
Finally, the forced implementation of the simultaneum in Colmar’s
Lutheran church erected a visible border between the two confessions.
In exploring imperial multiconfessionalism in any local context, one
inevitably uncovers the complexities of early modern religious life.
PART FOUR

FRANCE
 FRANCE: AN OVERVIEW

Keith P. Luria

The relations between early-modern France’s Christian groups, Catho-

lic and Reformed, present historians with a conundrum. How are we
to explain a situation in which the two groups were fiercely hostile
and perpetrated horrific violence one on another while simultane-
ously coexisting peacefully in numerous communities throughout the
kingdom? More often than not, historians have focused either on the
confessional violence or on the ways Catholics and Huguenots found
to live together. The result has left us with a double image of confes-
sional relations. On one side, fears ran deep; each group saw the other
as menacing salvation, social cohesion, and political stability. The gulf
between them provoked horrible brutality. On the other, Catholic and
Huguenot neighbors appeared capable of limiting conflict and inter-
acting peacefully on a daily basis. They lived side-by-side, did business
together, served jointly in civic government, married each other, and
shared communal burial grounds. The current challenge for historians
is to find ways to explain both bitter divisions and peaceful coexistence.
The search for such explanations is very much a work in progress, but
we can look at both conflict and coexistence in France’s confessional
relations, the basis for each, and the state’s role in promoting conflict
at some times and coexistence at others.1

Conflict

Although this is not the place for a detailed account of the French
Reformation, it is useful to trace its broad outlines to understand how
religious conflict grew. Luther’s works began appearing in Parisian
bookshops as early as 1519, and the Sorbonne condemned his ideas in

1
See Keith P. Luria, Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early-
Modern France (Washington, DC: 2005); Philip Benedict, “Un roi, une loi, deux fois:
Parameters for the History of Catholic-Reformed Coexistence in France, 1555–1685”
in Philip Benedict (ed.), The Faith and Fortunes of France’s Huguenots, 1600–1685
(Aldershot: 2001), 279–308, see 300.
210 keith p. luria

1521. Royal law made possession of his books a crime.2 But there were
also local sources of reformist ideas in the work of Christian human-
ists such as Jacques Lefèbvre d’Étaples, whose studies of scripture led
him to question purgatory and the cult of saints, and who taught that
Christ’s sacrifice counted for more in the redemption of sinners than
their good works or intercessory prayers. Humanist reformers found
encouragement and protection from other figures, for example, Bishop
Guillaume Briçonnet, who promoted pastoral reforms in his diocese
of Meaux, and Marguerite of Navarre, sister of King François I, who
gathered humanists at her court and participated in the movement
with her own evangelical writings. Reaction came from religious
orders, such as the Franciscans, who opposed Briçonnet’s efforts in
Meaux, and from the Sorbonne and the Parlement of Paris, both of
which opposed the spread of reformist ideas. Beginning in the 1520s,
heresy trials in the parlements reveal the spread of evangelical ideas
and the attempts to repress them.3
With the establishment of Reformed worship in Geneva in the 1530s
and the setting up of French printers there, Protestant propaganda in
France became more confrontational. On 18 October 1534 placards
carrying a message by Antoine Marcourt, denouncing the Catholic
mass, appeared simultaneously in Paris and elsewhere. The provoca-
tive act brought down another wave of repression on those suspected of
heresy. Many fled the kingdom, including Jean Calvin, who two years
later published the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion,
with its harsh critique of Catholic doctrine and adamant call for true
believers to separate themselves from the abominations of the Roman
Church. In 1543, at François I’s order, the Sorbonne drew up articles
of Catholic belief, creating for the first time a list of orthodox positions
on theological and ecclesiastical matters. The line being drawn between
the faiths in France was growing clearer and more rigid.
The confessional confrontation grew more violent, as the new
French churches increasingly aligned themselves with Calvin’s reform
in the 1540s, and as the Genevan Church began to supply minis-

2
Philip Benedict and Virginia Reinburg, “Religion and the Sacred” in Mack P. Holt
(ed.) Renaissance and Reformation France, (Short Oxford History of France) (Oxford:
2002), 119–146, see 136.
3
William Monter, Judging the French Reformation: Heresy Trials by Sixteenth-
Century Parlements (Cambridge, MA: 1999); Mark Greengrass, The French Reforma-
tion (Oxford: 1987), 32–38.
 france: an overview 211

ters for clandestine congregations in France. Encouraged by popular

preachers, Catholics mobilized to defend the elements of their faith
under attack. They founded new confraternities of the Blessed Sac-
rament to counter Reformed opposition to the doctrine of the real
presence and gathered in the streets to force passers-by to honor the
host or statues of the Virgin. The king, who had patronized human-
ist evangelicals, now appeared in penitential processions organized to
honor the consecrated host.4 Royal judges pursued suspected heretics
more vigorously, and executions for heresy tripled over the course of
the 1540s.5 Henri II, who succeeded François I in 1547, was even more
assiduous than his father in pursuing religious dissidents.
The repression did not succeed, and by the mid-1550s, with Calvin’s
prompting, Huguenots began to organize churches on the Genevan
model with ministers, consistories, and the administration of the sac-
raments. Their growth was spectacular. In 1559, the French Reformed
Church organized its first national synod and published a “Confes-
sion of Faith.” By 1562 France may have had as many as 1,000 such
congregations with members numbering some 1.5–2 million people
(about 10 percent of the population). They were located throughout
the country but were especially concentrated in the west and south,
where royal authority was weakest.
The deepening rift between members of the two churches, the
repression, and the increasing number of provocative acts by both
sides made conflict appear inevitable, or at least it has often seemed so
to historians. The influx of nobles into the Reformed Church brought
it a group of fighters who combined their concern for defending the
faith with their clan rivalries and political ambitions. The unexpected
death of Henri II in 1559 left the monarchy in a weak state and opened
political space for the machinations of powerful aristocratic leaders.
The sparks that set off the first war were not long in coming: in 1560
at Amboise, the failed Huguenot conspiracy to take control of the
young king, François II; that monarch’s death later the same year; the
failure of a 1561 conference at Poissy to reunite the churches; and at
Vassy the massacre of Huguenots by troops of the Catholic leader, the

4
Barbara B. Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-
Century Paris (Oxford: 1991), 45–47; Benedict and Reinburg, “Religion and the
Sacred,” 139, 145.
5
Benedict and Reinburg, “Religion and the Sacred,” 139.
212 keith p. luria

Duke of Guise in March 1562. In that same month war broke out, the
first of eight that would plague the kingdom until 1598.
There is no need here to recount the history of these military
conflicts.6 But what must be noted is the degree of and explana-
tions for the street violence in French cities and towns. It reached an
extraordinary level. Huguenots attacked both members of the Catholic
clergy and sacred objects—saints’ images, relics, and the consecrated
host. They assaulted Catholic churches and religious houses. Catho-
lics destroyed French Bibles, central to Reformed worship, and they
humiliated and massacred Huguenots in an effort to rid their society
of heresy’s polluting effects. The spiral of violence culminated in the
infamous 1572 massacre of Huguenots on Saint Bartholomew’s Day
in Paris, which was echoed over the succeeding weeks in a number of
other French cities.
The extent and nature of the violence have spawned a variety of
historical interpretations. Some scholars have highlighted economic
motives, linking the violence to rises in grain prices. Others have
pointed to class tensions, based on supposed social differences between
the religious groups that do not always stand up under close examina-
tion. Yet others have seen the outbursts as evidence of an enduring
primitive, atavistic, and irrational fear of the other. More successful
and more influential interpretations of the violence, found in the work
of scholars like Natalie Zemon Davis, Denis Crouzet, and Barbara
Diefendorf, have tied the violence to the particulars of 16th-century
French social, political, and religious life and to what Mack Holt has
described as the “two cultures of Protestantism and Catholicism.”7
Davis posed the question of how the perpetrators could legitimize
such horrors in their own minds and found the answer in their adop-
tion of the legal and religious rituals with which they were familiar.
Violence did not spring out of primitive impulses but made use of
the available forms of punishment and purification to respond to a
dread of social pollution. Rioters saw themselves as taking on the roles
both of clergy, ridding communities of sin, and of magistrates, sen-
tencing and executing those who were dangerous to their communi-
ties. Fire and water purified the community as corpses were burned or

6
For a history of the period, see Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562–
1629, 2nd edition (Cambridge, UK: 2005).
7
Holt, French Wars of Religion, 87.
 france: an overview 213

“baptized” by being thrown in rivers. For Catholics the “rites of vio-

lence” dehumanized heretics and thus permitted their extermination.
For Huguenots the sources of sin and pollution were found among
the “superstitious” objects used in Catholic worship and among the
Catholic clergy, whom Reformed propaganda had repeatedly accused
of sexual transgressions.8
Diefendorf, in her study of religious violence in Paris culminating in
the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, pays close attention to political
and social developments in the city and its relationship with the mon-
archy, but she also follows Davis in understanding violence as rooted
in ritual and legal norms, and sparked by Huguenot pollution of the
city’s Catholic communal identity and unity. And she shows how vio-
lence fed on violence; Catholic attacks on Huguenots often singled out
previous targets and replayed the forms of earlier attacks.9
Crouzet also focuses on the particular character of 16th-century
religion. He too sees the violence as growing out of opposed religious
cultures, each defined by a particular understanding of its relationship
with God. But hanging over the kingdom was an eschatological sense
of doom that fed two sorts of violence, one the royal violence of kings
who felt the need to protect the monarchy’s sacrality from heretics and
the other a popular violence rooted in a fear of impending apocalypse
and the need to root out pollution.10 The image that emerges from
such studies is that of a country torn apart by two unalterably opposed
groups, each bent on the other’s destruction.

The State and Coexistence

The bitterness of the division and ferocity of the violence cannot be

denied, and these works have done much to explain them. And yet an
alternate history is possible, one recognizing that, notwithstanding the
enmity, attempts were made to avoid conflict, to reconcile the groups, or,
at least, to construct a means for them to live together. As Jérémie Foa’s
essay in this volume explains, the treaties and edicts that ended the wars

8
Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Rites of Violence” in idem., (ed.), Society and Culture
in Early Modern France (Stanford: 1975), 152–187.
9
Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross.
10
Denis Crouzet, Les guerriers de Dieu: La violence au temps des troubles de religion,
vers 1525–vers 1610, 2 vols. (Seyssel: 1990).
214 keith p. luria

tried to create conditions for such peacemaking.11 Cultural resources

existed that could help those seeking reconciliation. While one cannot
claim that all these efforts were successful, they could temporarily or
locally counteract the forces of division and violence. And they set the
groundwork for the more successful pacification after 1598.
Reconciliation and conflict resolution do not necessarily mean reli-
gious toleration, at least not in a modern and positive sense of the
term. Toleration was conceivable and some argued for it—Sebastian
Castellion for example. And in biconfessional communities neighbors
could practice toleration by accepting one another’s right to worship
in a different manner. But the state did not seek to promote religious
toleration. The churches actively opposed it. And serious tensions in
local life often thwarted it. For the most part, toleration still had a neg-
ative connotation: one tolerated what one could not eliminate.12 Thus
toleration did not succeed. But coexistence, defined as an arrangement
by which two rival and often contentious groups found ways to live
together, could and did succeed, often to a surprising extent.
This section will discuss the state’s efforts to foster coexistence and
the ideas on which political leaders could draw to do so. I return below
to the communal construction of coexistence, though the two efforts
are closely linked. The best starting point is the Colloquy de Poissy,
Catherine de Medici’s attempt to reconcile the churches in 1561. Serv-
ing as regent for her son, the new king Charles IX, Catherine sought a
policy of moderation that would hold Catholic and Reformed extrem-
ists at bay and preserve the monarchy’s independence from power-
ful factions on either side of the religious divide. With the advice of
the moderate chancellor, Michel de l’Hospital, she sought religious
compromise by inviting to Poissy leaders from both sides (including
Calvin, who did not come, and Theodore Beza, who did) to see if a way
could be found to re-unite the two faiths in one church. By this point,
the rival theological positions were too hard and fast for the attempt
to succeed.13 But the conference gave some hope for reconciliation and
offered Reformed congregations a new sense of respectability, such as

11
Jérémie Foa, “Peace Commissioners at the Beginning of the Wars of Religion:
Toward an Interactionist Interpretation of the Pacification Process.”
12
On the 16th-century meaning of toleration, see Benedict, “Un roi, une loi, deux
fois,” 282–83.
13
Holt, French Wars of Religion, 45–46.
 france: an overview 215

in Lyon, where following the colloquy the Reformed community felt

confident enough to meet publicly for the first time.14
What lay behind Catherine’s attempt at reconciliation were French
ecclesiastical traditions and the ideas of influential individuals known
as the “moyenneurs” (“those in between”). Calvin devised the term to
denounce those who by any “means (moyens) sought a middle way
[moyenne]” between the churches.15 They espoused neither toleration
nor coexistence, either of which would allow the continuation of sep-
arate churches. Instead, the moyenneurs, who included among their
ranks Michel de Montaigne and his friend Étienne de la Boétie and
high-ranking members of the French Catholic Church and royal advi-
sors, such as Bishop Jean de Monluc of Valence and Cardinal Charles
de Lorraine, advocated a moderate reform of the French Church in
which concessions might be made to Reformed belief.16 The Church
in France had always proclaimed its orthodoxy to Catholic belief, but
also maintained that those beliefs guaranteed it a degree of autonomy
from Rome. The concept, known as Gallicanism, dated to the conciliar
disputes with the papacy of earlier centuries. But it now provided a
possible way to conceive of a church governed by a national council
that might institute reforms to which Protestants could agree. Once
agreement was reached, the reasons for a separate church would dis-
appear. Alain Tallon has described the attractiveness to the moyen-
neurs of the Anglican model of a royal reformation of the church, a
notion that was current in the early 1560s and which de l’Hospital
favored. The ecclesiological and theological issues were daunting, but
Tallon has identified a reform program that included communion in
both kinds, authorizing the use of French in the mass, singing the
psalms in French, relocating images from altars, and changing baptism
ceremonies.17

14
Timothy Watson, “The Reformed Church in Lyon, 1550–1572” in Raymond
A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer (eds.), Society and Culture in the Huguenot World,
(1559–1685) (Cambridge, UK: 2002), 10–28, see 20.
15
Calvin used the Latin terms mediator and medium. See Thierry Wanegffelen,
L’Édit de Nantes: Une histoire européene de la tolérance (Paris: 1998), 95.
16
Wanegffelen, Édit de Nantes, 95–101; idem, Ni Rome ni Genève: Des fidèles entre
deux chaires en France au XVIe siècle (Paris: 1997).
17
Tallon also demonstrates how such reform ideas ultimately failed. Alain Tallon,
“Gallicanism and Religious Pluralism in France in the Sixteenth Century” in Keith
Cameron, Mark Greengrass, and Penny Roberts (eds.), The Adventure of Religious Plu-
ralism in Early Modern France: Papers from the Exeter Conference, April 1999 (Bern:
2000), 15–30; Philip Benedict, “Un roi, une loi, deux fois,” 285.
216 keith p. luria

The intransigence of hardliners on both sides at Poissy insured that

reunification would not work. But the possibility remained of con-
structing a biconfessional state, something which the churches and
their more militant members would not readily accept, but which the
queen came to see as essential to protect the monarchy. In January of
1562, the government issued the Edict of Saint Germain, which granted
the Reformed Church legal, though limited, recognition. Catherine’s
attempt at compromise was made clear in the preamble, which stated
that the law’s purpose was “to appease the troubles and seditions over
the issue of religion.”18 Reformed congregations were allowed to wor-
ship legally, though not inside town walls, and the clergy were forbid-
den to insult each other. Huguenot nobles gained the right to organize
and protect Reformed worship on their estates. And Huguenots were
required to respect Catholic regulations by, for example, not work-
ing on Catholic festival days. The limits on the Reformed community
were strict, but its clergy agreed to the settlement, since, as they saw
it, the requirements “did not infringe on liberty of conscience.”19 And
the edict did represent a serious departure from the previous govern-
ment policy of persecution. Not surprisingly, it met opposition from
the Catholic ecclesiastical and military leadership and the judges of
the Paris Parlement, who objected when called upon to register the
law. They called on the king to fulfill his traditional role of defender
of the church and exterminator of heretics, and they quoted Matthew
in reminding him that “every kingdom divided against itself goes
to ruin.20
The war would put an end to the Edict of Saint Germain, but the
following conflicts would end in other edicts that granted more or
less scope to Reformed worship depending on the military outcome
of each war. As Penny Roberts’s essay in this volume explains, their
enforcement in communities also varied according to the local balance

18
Quoted in Holt, French Wars of Religion, 47. See also Benedict and Reinburg,
“Religion and the Sacred,” 146.
19
Quoted in Olivier Christin, “L’espace et le temps, enjeux de conflits entre les
confessions” in Jacques-Olivier Boudon and Françoise Thelamon (eds.), Les chrétiens
dans la ville (Mont-Saint-Aignan: 2006), 167–180, see 176. However, complaints about
Huguenot artisans and shopkeepers not respecting such regulations were frequent,
and during the 1560s the monarchy would compromise by insisting only that they
work behind closed doors in a manner that avoided scandal.
20
Matthew 12:25 quoted in Holt, French Wars of Religion, 48.
 france: an overview 217

of power between the two sides.21 Yet each settlement had to con-
tend with the biconfessionality of the kingdom. Philip Benedict has
described the monarchy’s “twisting path” toward a legal framework for
coexistence that was not so favorable to the Huguenots as to incite a
violent Catholic reaction nor so unfavorable as to provoke Huguenot
revolt. Catholicism remained the established faith. Reformed worship
was allowed but only in certain localities. Huguenots were required to
respect many Catholic practices and observances, such as not working
publicly on Catholic holidays. In the public realm, Huguenots enjoyed
equal access to government or professional positions and education;
their security was ensured; and they were to receive impartial justice
in the courts.
Unlike the situation in the Holy Roman Empire, characterized
by the famous phrase “cuius regio, eius religio” in which territories
would be, in principle, confessionally uniform following the religion
of their rulers, France would be one sovereign entity with two legally-
recognized churches. The kingdom could no longer envision itself as a
unified “community of salvation,” or at least not until religious division
was resolved. Those statesmen seeking to maintain peace by establish-
ing such a politico-religious vision could draw on various, often wide-
spread beliefs. One was the idea Erasmus had promoted that Christian
love and charity should triumph over rivalry and bloodshed. Such a
conviction appeared not only in the speeches and treatises of politi-
cians but in the local discourse of people who saw Christian charity as
a central part of their religious lives. Another equally straightforward
notion was that peace was better than strife and more in accord with
God’s wishes.
But along with such general beliefs was a more specific concept that
separated citizenship from religion. In arguing for the Edict of Saint
Germain before the hostile Paris Parlement, Michel de l’Hospital made
a distinction between “civis” and “christianus.” French Catholics and
Huguenots were members of the same polity, despite their religious
differences; the king, his laws, and his royal justice protected them all
equally. As de l’Hospital put it, “even the excommunicate does not

21
Penny Roberts, “One Town, Two Faiths: Unity and Exclusion during the French
Religious Wars.” Foa describes the interaction between central authorities and local
communities in “Peace Commissioners at the Beginning of the Wars of Religion.”
218 keith p. luria

cease to be a citizen.”22 The loosely-defined group known as Politiques

would rely on these ideas to argue that religious rivalry must be set
aside so that the kingdom could survive. To their opponents, their
contention sounded like an argument favoring political expediency
over religious truth, hence the name Politiques, which their opponents
gave them. But their ideas can be seen as having a religious compo-
nent, in so far as they drew on notions of Christian harmony. And
generally, they saw coexistence as a temporary measure lasting only
until such time as the nation was re-united in one faith.
We must recognize, of course, that such ideas were cultural
resources put to use as part of political strategies. As Roberts’s essay
in this volume shows, they did not convince everyone, and for the
most part, the leadership of both churches and both armed parties
would not accept them as a means to end conflict.23 For them, there
could be only one religious truth, and a nation divided between the
true faith and a false one could not survive. They could not counte-
nance any temporizing with confessional and political rivals. And so,
for 35 years France see-sawed back and forth between conflict and
coexistence. Street violence peaked in the Saint Bartholomew’s Day
Massacre of 1572. But the long-drawn out war sparked by the Catholic
or Holy League in the 1580s and 1590s created havoc in the coun-
try. These militant Catholics opposed first the Catholic Henri III, who
ordered the assassination of the League’s leader the Duke of Guise in
1588. The king’s assassination followed the next year. The prospect
of France having a Huguenot ruler, the successor Henri of Navarre,
further radicalized League opposition. Moreover, the specter of social
rebellion now overshadowed religious conflict in the southwest and
Burgundy, as peasants, traumatized by decades of fighting, rebelled in
1593–94. The Politique argument that these conflicts threatened the
very existence of the kingdom took on new potency. Reducing the last
League holdouts required years, and then only Henri IV’s conversion
to Catholicism put him in a position from which he could negotiate
the Edict of Nantes. Even this settlement did not entirely put an end

22
Quoted in Olivier Christin, “L’Édit de Nantes: Une relecture aujoud’hui?” in
Pierre Bolle (ed.), L’Édit de Nantes: Un compromise reussi? Une paix des religions
en Dauphiné-Vivarais et en Europe (Grenoble: 1999), 30–40, see 34. See also Marc
Venard, “Problèmes et modalities de la coexistence religieuse au XVI siècle” in idem.,
14–22.
23
Roberts, “One Town, Two Faiths.”
 france: an overview 219

to the violence, and it certainly did not make confessional tensions

disappear. But exhaustion from fighting and fear of social rebellion
had given a new impetus to peacemaking.
The edict re-established Catholicism everywhere in the country, a
provision of the law aimed at localities where Huguenots had suc-
ceeded in preventing Catholic worship. They also had to return all
Church properties they had appropriated. As in earlier edicts, they
were obliged to respect a variety of Catholic practices concerning
rules of consanguinity in marriage, paying tithes, and not working on
festivals, among others.24 Reformed worship was restricted to certain
localities. Huguenots could maintain temples in places where they had
worshipped regularly since 1597, and they could establish them in the
suburbs of one town in each bailliage or sénéchausée (court jurisdic-
tions). But they could not do so in any town that was a bishop’s seat.
Nor could they worship in Paris. The restrictions rankled, but liberty
of conscience seemed assured. And the principles of equity and co-
citizenship were maintained. Huguenots were to have equal access
to royal government posts and town councils, as well as educational
and charitable institutions. And to provide evenhanded justice, but
also as a sign of the king’s important traditional role as a dispenser of
justice, the edict, following upon arrangements made in earlier laws,
set up in some of the parlements chambers divided between Catholic
and Huguenot judges. The edict thus ensured that members of the
Reformed community would not have to face only hostile magistrates
when they brought cases to court.
Some historians have argued that the effect of equal treatment in
principle was to deny Huguenots the sorts of protections that a par-
ity system established in certain confessionally mixed German towns,
whereby the minority faith was guaranteed, for instance, a certain
number of positions on city councils.25 There the effect was to deny
the ability of a majority of either faith to determine a community’s
religious situation. In France, the Edict of Nantes’s promise of equal
access, for example to public posts, without regard for religion left the

24
For an English version of the edict, see Roland Mousnier, The Assassination
of Henri IV: The Tyrannicide Problem and the Consolidation of the French Absolute
Monarchy in the Early Seventeenth Century, trans. Joan Spencer (New York: 1973),
316–363.
25
Olivier Christin, La paix de religion: L’autonomisation de la raison politique au
XVI e siècle (Paris: 1997), 87–93, 139–146; Christin, “Édit de Nantes: Une relecture
aujourd’hui?,” 30–40.
220 keith p. luria

minority without any such assurance. But what the Edict of Nantes
dictated was actually more complicated. It did not always insist on
purely equal treatment of both sides. In certain situations, Huguenots
did gain special arrangements and rights, such as the fixed number
of Huguenot judges in parlementary mixed chambers. The commis-
sioners the king sent out to apply the edict had wide ranging pow-
ers to create settlements that might favor a local minority (Reformed
or Catholic). For example, in 1599 royal commissioners undertook
the delicate negotiations that led to the successful reintroduction of
Catholic worship in the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle. They
subsequently reached arrangements that allowed Reformed worship
in towns in nearby Catholic-dominated areas.26 In all these cases, they
followed the edict’s general principles but had to contend with the
sensitivities of locally powerful groups. In doing so, they served the
larger purpose of maintaining peace and royal authority. In the most
notable special arrangement under the edict, Huguenots were autho-
rized to maintain military forces, and they were granted towns in
which to establish garrisons. Permitting Huguenot places of security
might seem to contradict the edict’s objective of pacifying the coun-
try. But as Pierre-Jean Souriac has argued, security towns allowed the
Reformed community to protect itself, and they served as a warranty
against royal and Catholic military power. In giving the minority con-
fidence in its ability to survive, the policy might actually have served
a peacemaking role.27
After the last of the religious wars, the Rohan conflicts of the 1620s,
the apportioning of positions along confessional lines, as, for example,
in parlements, was extended to other institutions, such as town coun-
cils or school faculties.28 But increasingly the quota system was used
against Huguenots. By the early 1630s in Languedoc, Louis XIII and

26
Francis Garrisson, Essai sur les commissions d’application de l’Édit de Nantes,
Première partie: Règne de Henri IV (Montpellier: 1964), 93–99. Reformed worship
was permitted by right of concession, which allowed the establishment of Reformed
temples in one place in each court jurisdiction.
27
Pierre-Jean Souriac, “Une solution armée de coexistence. Les places de surêté
protestantes comme élément de pacification des guerres de religion” in Didier Boisson
et Yves Krumenacker (eds.), La coexistence confessionelle à l’épreuve: Études sur les
relations entre protestants et catholiques dans la France moderne (Chrétiens et Sociétés,
Documents et Mémoires) 9 (Lyon: 2009), 51–72.
28
Raymond A. Mentzer, “L’Édit de Nantes et l’établissement de la paix en Langue-
doc” in Paul Mironneau and Isabelle Pébay-Clottes (eds.), Paix des armes, paix des
âmes: Actes du colloque international tenu au Musée National du Château du Pau et à
 france: an overview 221

Richelieu had dictated the entry of Catholic consuls into the govern-
ments of over 60 Protestant dominated localities, including such major
centers of Huguenot power as Montauban and Nîmes. And henceforth,
the first consul was always to be a Catholic. Now in Protestant colleges
in Montauban, Nîmes, and Castres, the principals and half the faculty
would have to be Catholic.29 In Layrac (Agenais) the development went
further, as Gregory Hanlon’s close study has shown. In the late-16th
century, Huguenots dominated the town both socio-economically and
politically. For much of the next century, the confessional groups in
Layrac were able to coexist, a result of the Huguenots’ superior eco-
nomic status, but also out of the town’s need for consensus in gov-
ernment and civic solidarity to preserve some local autonomy. In the
wake of the Edict of Nantes, Layrac’s confessional groups negotiated a
“concordat,” which arranged for, among other matters, the sharing of
the communal cemetery. In 1603, Catholics gained entry to the consul-
ate. Changing political circumstances later led to the Huguenots losing
ground. Crown policies and the growth of a militant dévot group in
Layrac would tip the balance in a Catholic direction. In 1622, in the
midst of the royal campaign against Huguenot armies in the south,
members of the Reformed Church were excluded from the town’s con-
sulate. They subsequently gained readmission but would face exclusion
again in 1656.30
The Edict of Nantes succeeded where its predecessors had failed; it
provided a legal framework for peace that lasted for most of the 17th
century. But it did not succeed in eliminating all confessional conflict.
The king insisted on a policy of oubliance, a willed collective amnesia
for the outrages of the past. Courts would no longer hear cases con-
cerning violence committed in the name of religion during the wars.31
But French Catholics and Huguenots did not so easily forget the past.
Philip Benedict has shown how its memory was kept alive. Huguenots

l’Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour les, 8, 9, 10 et 11 octobre 1998 (Paris: 2000),
295–301, see 295, 300.
29
Stéphane Capot, Justice et religion en Languedoc au temps de l’Édit de Nantes: La
Chambre de l’Édit de Castres (1579–1679) (Paris: 1998), 74, 106.
30
Gregory Hanlon, Confession and Community in Seventeenth-Century France:
Catholic and Protestant Coexistence in Aquitaine (Philadelphia: 1993), 40, 41, 45, 51,
52, 67.
31
Diane C. Margolf, Religion and Royal Justice in Early-Modern France: The Paris
Chambre de l’Edit, 1598–1665 (Sixteenth Century Studies & Essays) 67 (Kirksville,
MO: 2003), 75–98.
222 keith p. luria

printed historical calendars that dwelled on the events of the wars,

especially on incidents in which their predecessors were victimized,
though they also included Henri IV’s military victories. The calen-
dars contributed to a distinct confessional memory and reinforced
the Reformed community’s sense of itself as the beleaguered “petit
troupeau.” Catholics kept their own memory of the wars alive with
processions, commemorating the deliverance of cities from Huguenot
surprise attacks or sieges during the wars, even though such celebra-
tions contravened the principle of oubliance.32
Raw memories contributed to interconfessional tensions, but so
did continuing conflicts that could envenom their relations. Confes-
sional confrontations and violence did not disappear. In the south,
Huguenot nobles, especially during the 1620s, committed acts of
iconoclasm, seized church property, and forced conversions. Catholic
nobles responded by demolishing temples and preventing Huguenots
from using civic spaces. Riots were less frequent than during the 16th-
century wars, but they did occur. Brittany witnessed anti-Protestant
pogroms at Rennes and Vitré, the assassination of a minister, and the
destruction of temples. In many places, Catholic seigneurs obstructed
Reformed worship. Conflict was especially sharp during the renewed
religious wars of the 1620s, but the return of peace did not prevent
further troubles, and violence flared again prior to the revocation of
the Edict of Nantes in 1685.33
But as long as the French state sought to maintain a pacified, bicon-
fessional kingdom, confessional rivalry more often found its outlets
in polemical publications, lawsuits, and complaints to the royal gov-
ernment than on battlefields and city streets. Coexistence could come
under severe strain, but the Edict of Nantes provided a basis for it that
combined principles of co-citizenship, equity, and impartial justice
and that supported the careful apportioning of public positions and

32
Philip Benedict, “Divided Memories? Historical Calendars, Commemorative
Processions and the Recollection of the Wars of Religion during the Ancien Régime,”
French History 22 (2008): 381–405.
33
Benedict, “Un roi, une loi, deux fois,” 302; Jean-Yves Carluer, “L’Édit de Nantes
en Bretagne” in Guy Saupin, Rémi Fabre and Michel Launay (eds.), La Tolérance:
Colloque international de Nantes (mai 1998) (Rennes: 1999), 29–40; Brian Sandberg,
“ ‘The Furious Persecutions that God’s Churches Suffer in This Region’: Religious
Violence and Coercion in Early Seventeenth-Century France” in Barry Rothaus (ed.),
Proceedings of the Western Society for French History: Selected Papers of the 2001
Annual Meeting (Greeley, CO: 2003), 42–52.
 france: an overview 223

power. The majority saw its faith re-established throughout the king-
dom, while the minority gained protection and freedom of conscience.
The guarantor in both cases was the monarchy, whose authority was
thereby strengthened. The edict seemed to have created a permanently
biconfessional kingdom, but not many at the time would have enter-
tained that idea. Catholics certainly looked to the religious unification
of the country, even if they disagreed over whether that goal should be
achieved by peaceful means or by force. The Reformed Church, reluc-
tantly, had to give up its hope of winning France to its faith. Instead,
Huguenots turned to insisting on their position as a protected minority
under the edict, which, they claimed, was permanent and irrevocable.
As many commentators have remarked, the edict did not propose
that biconfessionality would be a permanent situation. The preamble
declares that the law would be in force until such time as God saw
fit to reunite both confessions in one faith. Just how that was to be
accomplished was not clear; Henri IV may have continued to hope
for a resolution of religious difference in a reformed Gallican church.
He largely dealt evenhandedly with the religious groups.34 After his
conversion he cemented his ties to the Catholic Church by displays
of piety, support for the Catholic clergy, personal ties with aristo-
cratic Catholic leaders, and insistence on the Edict of Nantes’s rules
on re-establishing Catholicism everywhere. But his commissioners
negotiated or imposed local religious settlements that often satisfied
Huguenot rather than Catholic wishes, and he renewed permission for
Huguenots to maintain military garrisons in security towns beyond
what the edict had allowed. Louis XIII destroyed Huguenot military
power during the Rohan wars of the 1620s, but he renewed the edict’s
other provisions in the Peace of Alais in 1629. Faced with the Fronde
in the middle decades of the century and in need of good relations
with Protestant England, Mazarin softened the monarchy’s treatment
of the minority. But once Louis XIV took personal control of the gov-
ernment in the 1660s, he started to undermine the guarantees the edict
provided. In the 1680s he sent troops into areas with large Huguenot
populations to force conversions (the infamous dragonnades), and in
1685, he revoked the Edict of Nantes. Yet his policy for unifying the
kingdom in one confession would also fail.

34
Luria, Sacred Boundaries, 3, 15–16.
224 keith p. luria

Local Coexistence

While the French state remained committed to a policy of enforcing

peace edicts, confessional coexistence had a powerful force behind it.
In the wake of 16th-century peace settlements, and then again after the
promulgation of the Edict of Nantes, the government sent commission-
ers into religiously mixed areas to mediate or arbitrate the numerous
conflicts that arose in trying to enforce the laws. We should not exag-
gerate their effectiveness; the task was enormous and their resources
limited. But studies of their work have shown that they had an impact
in reducing tensions and arranging local settlements.35 They had to sat-
isfy Catholics who wanted strict enforcement of the law’s stipulation
that Catholic worship be restored everywhere and Reformed worship
be limited to certain localities. But they also had to address Hugue-
not complaints about transgressions of their rights. To a large degree,
success resulted from the recognition that the commissioners’ efforts
reflected the king’s will. The agreements they arranged in communities
often proclaimed the inhabitants’ willingness to live together because
it was the king’s desire that they should do so. And the commissioners
exacted solemn oaths from the local leaders of both sides to respect
the king’s wishes.
But local coexistence did not simply follow upon royal orders.
Indeed, the local success of peace settlements had depended on the
willingness of neighbors in the rival faiths to avoid bloodshed and live
together, even in the midst of the worst violence of the religious wars.
They may not have been aware of Erasmus’s thoughts on Christian
charity or those of Michel de l’Hospital on co-citizenship, but they fre-
quently practiced exactly those ideas in daily life, mixing in the politi-
cal, economic, and social activities of their communities. When they
negotiated peaceful coexistence, they used the language of friendship

35
Penny Roberts, “Religious Pluralism in Practice: The Enforcement of the Edicts
of Pacification” in Keith Cameron, Mark Greengrass, and Penny Roberts (eds.), The
Adventure of Religious Pluralism in Early Modern France: Papers from the Exeter Con-
ference, April 1999 (Bern: 2000), 31–43; Jérémie Foa, “Making Peace: The Commissions
for Enforcing the Pacification Edicts in the Reign of Charles IX (1560–1574),” French
History 18 (2004), 256–274; Elisabeth Rabut, Le roi, l’église et le temple: l’exécution de
l’Édit de Nantes en Dauphiné (Grenoble: 1987), passim; Daniel Hickey, “Enforcing the
Edict of Nantes: The 1599 Commissions and Local Elites in Dauphiné and Poitou-
Aunis” in Keith Cameron, Mark Greengrass, and Penny Roberts (eds.), The Adventure
of Religious Pluralism in Early Modern France: Papers from the Exeter Conference,
April 1999 (Bern: 2000), 65–83; Luria, Sacred Boundaries, 16–22.
 france: an overview 225

and brotherhood. In the 1560s, the inhabitants of two Dauphiné com-

munities, Nyons and Saint-Laurent-des-Arbres, took oaths to “live
in peace, friendship, and confederation.”36 If conflict prevented such
amicable feelings, they were still capable of reaching accommodations
through negotiations, which maintained peace in their communities.
Historians have made a distinction between these two forms of local
coexistence, though certainly one flowed into the other.37 The daily
willingness to live, work, and socialize together—what we might call
“practical coexistence”—seems likely to have been widespread.38 But it is
often the least likely to have been recorded in documents that allow us
to examine it closely. It is apparent, for example, in mixed marriages,
which were common in many, though not all, biconfessional commu-
nities. In Loudun (Poitou), between 1598 and 1601, at least of a third
of marriages recorded in the Protestant consistory records were mixed.
It seems likely, however, that the numbers of such matches declined in
later years as tensions increased between the groups and Huguenots
lost political power in the city.39 In the town of Melle (Poitou), mixed
marriages were numerous, even during the 1660s and 1670s, when
royal legislation tried to prevent it. The frequency with which Catho-
lics and Protestants were willing to ignore the confessional divide to

36
Benedict, “Un roi, une loi, deux fois,” 294.
37
For somewhat different descriptions of the varieties or stages of coexistence,
see Yves Krumenacker, “La coexistence confessionelle aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles.
Quelque problèmes de méthode” in Didier Boisson and Yves Krumenacker (eds.),
La coexistence confessionelle à l’épreuve: Études sur les relations entre protestants et
catholiques dans la France moderne, (Chrétiens et Sociétés, Documents et Mémoires) 9
(Lyon: 2009), 107–125; Richard Bonney, “The Obstacles to Pluralism in Early Modern
Europe” in Keith Cameron, Mark Greengrass, and Penny Roberts (eds.), The Adven-
ture of Religious Pluralism in Early Modern France: Papers from the Exeter Conference,
April 1999 (Bern: 2000), 209–229; Mark Greengrass, “Afterword: Living Religious
Diversity” in C. Scott Dixon, Dagmar Freist, and Mark Greengrass (eds.), Living with
Religious Diversity in Early-Modern Europe (Farnham, Surrey: 2009), 281–295; Bene-
dict, “Un roi, une loi, deux fois” and Luria, Sacred Boundaries.
38
Or what Bob Scribner called the “tolerance of practical rationality.” See Bob
Scribner, “Preconditions of Tolerance and Intolerance in Sixteenth-Century Ger-
many” in Ole Peter Grell and Bob Scribner (eds.), Tolerance and Intolerance in the
European Reformation (Cambridge, UK: 1996), 32–47.
39
On the early period see, Luria, Sacred Boundaries, 158–159. On the later, see
Edwin Bezzina, “La-mort, l’au-delà et les relations confessionelles: Les testaments et
leurs testateurs dans la ville de Loudun, 1598–1685” in Didier Boisson and Yves Kru-
menacker (eds.), La coexistence confessionelle à l’épreuve: Études sur les relations entre
protestants et catholiques dans la France moderne (Chrétiens et Sociétés, Documents
et Mémoires) 9 (Lyon: 2009), 151–168.
226 keith p. luria

make marriage alliances suggests that the town’s confessional bound-

ary was porous.40
Intermarriage did not necessarily create peaceful relations; in some
cases, matches made for reasons of familial advancement might sim-
ply have imported confessional conflict into domestic space. But more
often they indicated a willingness of families to cross the religious
boundary, or to ignore it, in the pursuit of desireable matches. Where
it occurred, intermarriage created religiously mixed kinship networks,
in which people of different faiths cooperated and participated in each
other’s family religious rituals—baptisms, marriages, and funerals.
At baptisms, godparents of one faith might present children of the
other.41
Practical coexistence extended across a wide range of other daily
activities, though we often have to infer it from the complaints of
those who were opposed to such interactions. In the Poitou town of
Niort, for example, the Reformed minister complained to the provin-
cial synod in 1601 that his congregants had attended the inaugural
banquet of the city’s new mayor, and some had even danced there
with Catholics. Consistory records from throughout the country con-
tain similar complaints. In the Languedoc community of Ganges, the
Reformed consistory heard complaints about congregants dancing on
Catholic saints’ festivals. In Nîmes, prominent Huguenots suffered
censure for dancing on such occasions, despite the riposte of one who
insisted, “there was no harm in dancing.” The problem for the con-
sistories was not just dancing, though that was sinful enough to pro-
voke their ire, but that it was often associated with Catholic religious
observances. Indeed, Huguenot participation in a range of Catholic
practices was a constant source of concern to ministers and elders.
Their co-religionists continued to bring their children to churches for
Catholic baptisms, seen as carrying a greater ritualistic power than
the Reformed version. They used elements of Catholic funeral rites in
their own burials. They consulted soothsayers, arranged for masses to
be said, and made the sign of the cross.42

40
Luria, Sacred Boundaries, 159–162.
41
For a discussion of mixed marriages, see Luria Sacred Boundaries, 143–192;
Benedict, “Un roi, une loi, deux fois,” 304–305; Hanlon, Confession and Community,
102–111.
42
Robert Sauzet, Contre-réforme et réforme catholique en bas-Languedoc: Le diocèse
de Nîmes au XVIIe siècle (Louvain: 1979), 173–178. On funerals see also, Luria, Sacred
Boundaries, 103–142.
 france: an overview 227

Daily practical coexistence is apparent in other sorts of interactions

as well. In Paris, Huguenots made use of Catholic notaries in credit
transactions rather than relying just on their co-religionists.43 In Sau-
mur, home to a Reformed Academy and an Oratorian school set up
to compete with it, the teachers of both institutions frequented each
other and maintained polite relations. Huguenot students sometimes
took courses at the Catholic school, and Catholic fathers sometimes
sent their sons to the Reformed one.44 In Huguenot-dominated Nîmes
too, intellectual life often crossed the confessional boundary. Samuel
Petit, professor of theology and Hebrew in the city’s Reformed Acad-
emy, counted Peiresc, Gassendi, and Mersenne among his friends.
And the Jesuit instructors imposed on the college in 1634 had occa-
sion in their annual reports to remark on their cordial relations with
their Huguenot colleagues, though, to be sure, that did not prevent
them from preaching polemical sermons and from trying to convert
Reformed students.45 In Brittany, the Benedictines of Vitré preserved
friendships with Huguenots they had known since childhood. Breton
nobles of different faiths protected each other and met for courteous
discussions of theology.46
Castres, in Languedoc, was home to the mixed chamber associ-
ated with the Parlement of Toulouse. As such it had a biconfessional
population of families associated with the court. Examination of the
chamber’s records shows that the judges rarely split along confessional
lines in their decisions, except in cases dealing with the most sensitive
issues of religious coexistence, such as Huguenots working on Catholic
festivals or provocative sermons by militant preachers. Otherwise, the
judges partook of an outlook born of a shared professional training.

43
Christian Aubrée, “Les relations entre protestants et catholiques dans le marché
du crédit parisien au XVIIe siècle” in Didier Boisson and Yves Krumenacker (eds.),
La coexistence confessionelle à l’épreuve: Études sur les relations entre protestants et
catholiques dans la France moderne (Chrétiens et Sociétés, Documents et Mémoires) 9
(Lyon: 2009), 127–149. However, Aubrée points out that they preferred fellow Hugue-
not notaries for recording their private family documents.
44
François Lebrun, “Saumur au XVIIe siècle: Les limites d’une cohabitation confes-
sionelle” in Guy Saupin, Rémi Fabre and Michel Launay (eds.), La Tolérance: Colloque
international de Nantes (mai 1998) (Rennes: 1999), 41–47.
45
Robert Sauzet, “Les difficultés de la tolérance dans une région sensible, le pays
nîmois” in Guy Saupin, Rémi Fabre, and Michel Launay (eds.), La Tolérance: Col-
loque international de Nantes (mai 1998) (Rennes: 1999), 49–54, see 52; idem, Nîmes,
270–271.
46
Carluer, “Bretagne,” 38–39.
228 keith p. luria

Outside the courtroom they mixed as friends and attended the same
learned academy, which provided a forum for toleration and furthered
a common culture.47 The cooperation among the local elite and the
prosperity that the court’s presence brought to Castres helped maintain
peace in the community for decades until the crown imposed Catholic
consuls on the town’s government and obliged the Reformed school to
accept Jesuit instructors. Only then did the confessional equilibrium
come under strain.
But harmony in Castres was not simply the result of practical daily
coexistence between Huguenots and Catholics. It was also carefully
negotiated and thus provides an apt example of the second form of
local coexistence based not simply on the willingness of both groups to
get along but on carefully constructed agreements that recognized the
possibility for both groups to live and worship in communities. Such
agreements did not blur the confessional boundary. Indeed they clari-
fied it by carefully delineating the rights of and limits on each group
and apportioning civic space between them. The key was to reach
accommodation on the main flashpoints that could provoke conflict—
temple locations, cemetery use, the timing and location of religious
observances, work on Catholic festivals, access to civic institutions of
poor relief and education, and the composition of town councils.
In 1598, prior to the Edict of Nantes, leaders of the Reformed and
Catholic communities of Castres and surrounding towns swore to an
act of union to keep the peace. They renewed the oath each time con-
flict threatened: in 1615 during Condé’s revolt and during religious
warfare in 1620, 1621, and 1627.48 Such agreements had numerous
precedents. Just before the outbreak of the second religious war in
1567, the two groups signed pacts in Vienne, Montélimar, Orange,
Caen, and Annonay.49 In the Limousin town of Beaulieu, Huguenots
and Catholics agreed to a “concordat” in 1575 that regulated public life

47
Stéphan Capot, “La paix vécue à Castres au temps de l’Édit de Nantes (1595–
1670)” in Paul Mironneau and Isabelle Pébay-Clottes (eds.), Paix des armes, paix des
âmes: Actes du colloque international tenu au Musée national du château du Pau et à
l’Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour les, 8, 9, 10 et 11 octobre 1998 (Paris: 2000),
303–312; Capot, Justice et religion en Languedoc, 107; Raymond A. Mentzer, “The
Edict of Nantes and its Institutions” in Raymond A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer
(eds.), Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559–1685 (Cambridge, UK: 2002),
98–116, see 108–115.
48
Souriac, “Places de surêté,” 66–67.
49
Christin, La paix de religion, 122–128.
 france: an overview 229

in the town, including elections to the council. The minority Catholics

were assured representation. In Argentat (also in Limousin), the local
seigneur, Charlotte of Nassau, arranged a similar settlement that guar-
anteed both groups access to positions on the three-member syndicat,
which governed the town.50 Such settlements helped these places avoid
the conflicts over cemeteries and temples that plagued other Limousin
towns, such as Rochechouart, Treignac, and Aubusson.
These agreements display a very matter-of-fact concern to keep
confessional violence outside towns and minimize the possibility for
conflict inside them. But they also had deeper roots. In Limoges, for
example, confessional tensions were sharp in the early 1560s. Protes-
tants, who were a small minority, committed acts of iconoclasm, and
Catholics countered with menacing processions. The night guard had
to be maintained constantly to prevent worse outbreaks of violence.
But hostility ebbed after 1564 when Limoges’s leadership made a clear
decision to avoid internal conflict by invoking the city’s historical
struggle for autonomy from superior authorities as a way to promote
it rather than religion as the primary sense of identity. This strategy
worked for decades as each side avoided its most conflict-provoking
activities: Huguenots refrained from iconoclastic attacks, and Catholics
did not engage militant preachers. “Municipalism,” as Michel Cassan
has called it, created a civic solidarity that could overcome confes-
sional division and marginalize militant Catholics in the city, who
organized themselves into associations, such as the Confraternity of
the Holy Cross, to harass Huguenots. That some of the city’s consular
families were confessionally mixed no doubt facilitated peacekeeping.
And Huguenots could on some occasions accede to consular office.
One notable result of these efforts was that Limoges suffered no vio-
lence in the wake of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in Paris.
Confessional tensions did not disappear from Limoges; rather they
were managed and contained by cooperation among the city’s elite.
Unfortunately, the city’s efforts at evenhandedness did not survive
into the 17th century. Huguenots complained to commissioners sent
into the provinces in 1611, the year after Henri IV’s assassination,
that Catholics had been throwing stones at them and their minister
had been attacked. They were being excluded from the city’s hospital,

50
Michel Cassan, Le temps des guerres de religion: Le cas du Limousin (vers 1530–
vers 1630) (Paris: 1996), 343–344.
230 keith p. luria

and their poor were being denied municipal aid unless they con-
verted. Such complaints must be assessed carefully; petitioners might
well have exaggerated the situation as part of a rhetorical strategy to
gain advantage in ongoing negotiations between confessions.51 But in
Limoges tensions do seem to have been on the rise, and the com-
missioners decided in the Huguenots’ favor. Cassan suggests that the
changed atmosphere resulted from a growing militant, Catholic piety,
evident in the multiplication of penitent confraternities and the arrival
of the Jesuits.52
Other cities also experienced either ongoing or renewed confessional
conflict. In the former Holy League stronghold of Poitiers (Poitou),
for example, the Huguenot minority felt under frequent attack. They
complained that Catholics had forced them to build their temple far
from town and then assaulted them while they were in transit to the
construction site. In one particularly tense incident in 1606, Poitier’s
Reformed community met at the temple to celebrate a fast day and
rumors started to spread among Catholics that Huguenots were plan-
ning to take over the city. The mayor called out the militia, which
increased the sense of panic. Eventually magistrates were able to gain
control of the situation and calm matters before violence erupted. In
the aftermath of Henri IV’s assassination in 1610, tensions once again
ran high. At the end of June, Catholics raised barricades in the streets,
and Huguenots hid indoors. Two years later, Huguenots complained
that their cemetery had been attacked, and that students of the Jesuit
school broke doors and windows in the minister’s house. During the
period of religious warfare in 1622, the students attacked the cemetery
once again. Apparently, confessional tension was a constant factor in
the life of this provincial capital, and violence easily surfaced in par-
ticularly difficult times.53
In nearby Parthenay relations between the groups also seemed partic-
ularly strained, and at certain moments the inhabitants barely escaped
armed conflict, such as on Christmas Eve 1618. Catholics complained
that while they were at their vigil, Huguenots armed themselves and
gathered in secret locations around the city. The Huguenots claimed
self-defense; rumors had spread that the Catholics were planning to

51
Luria, Sacred Boundaries, 45.
52
Cassan, Temps des guerres, 228, 237–239, 245–247, 346–348.
53
Luria, Sacred Boundaries, 21–22, 28.
 france: an overview 231

massacre them. Bloodshed was only narrowly avoided. But the his-
tory of confessional relations in this town suggests that the break
between the groups was not absolute and that, given the right circum-
stances and the efforts of outside authorities, Parthenay’s Catholics
and Huguenots could arrive at agreements on difficult issues. They
had done so in 1600, when, with the mediation of the royal lieutenant-
general of Poiters, the two sides drew up a contract that established
a location outside the town for the Reformed temple. The contract’s
language suggests a high level of tension in the town but also a will-
ingness to reach accommodation. The Huguenots insisted they had
a right to worship in the town but because doing so “engender[ed]
divisions and enmity,” they had agreed to move outside. Catholics
objected that Huguenots had no legal right to worship either in the
town or at the place they had chosen outside it. But Catholics realized
that their stance had provoked a “great altercation between the parties
such that each side was close to taking up arms to preserve its rights.”
So, “to avoid tumult and sedition and to nourish peace between the
inhabitants, who for the past 30 years have unanimously maintained
themselves in the king’s service,” they would now consent to public
Reformed worship, providing it was located at a place further from
the town. The Huguenots, seeking to remain in friendship with their
Catholic neighbors, agreed.54 The contract and the report on the 1618
incident suggest that in Parthenay the potential for violence was real,
but so too was the desire of the two groups to find some way of pre-
venting it through compromise.
Cemeteries were often at the center of serious disputes. Catholics
were angered by the burial of those they deemed heretics in sacred
ground. During the religious wars and even after, the remains of
Huguenots buried in Catholic cemeteries could suffer disinterment
and desecration. Huguenots rejected the very idea of sacred ground.
And they sometimes targeted Catholic cemeteries for attack. Yet as
members of biconfessional communities, they did not want to be
excluded from an important civic institution, the burial ground.
And so they insisted on sharing it with their Catholic neighbors. The
Edict of Nantes called for the establishment of separate Catholic and
Reformed cemeteries, but such a resolution was not always possible in
cash-strapped communities. And so the negotiation of a compromise

54
Luria, Sacred Boundaries, 23–24.
232 keith p. luria

ensued.55 In 1609 in Castelmoron (Agenais), the inhabitants came to

an agreement to continue sharing the cemetery. In the contract, the
Huguenots stated, “that since the beginning of the [religious] troubles
in France, . . . the inhabitants . . . have comported themselves so agree-
ably toward each other under the . . . king’s edicts that they have had
neither debates nor contention among them over the burial of the
dead of one or the other religion . . . [The] inhabitants of each reli-
gion have buried their dead in the parish cemetery . . . without anyone
objecting.” The Catholics declared that, “they will agree that those of
the said [Reformed] religion will continue to use, just as they will, the
parish cemetery.”56
Such mixing in cemeteries was not always acceptable, but the reli-
gious groups could still arrive at settlements, often with the help of
royal commissioners. Sometimes the arrangements involved giving
Protestants a part of the cemetery, as was the case in Marans (Aunis)
in 1599. Often the Protestants received the portion of the burial ground
furthest from the parish church, in that way soothing Catholic fears
of desecrating sacred grounds. In Fresne (Normandy) in 1612, royal
commissioners gave Huguenots the right to bury their dead at the end
of the cemetery, and ordered them to separate that share from the part
Catholics would continue to use.57
Local Catholics and Protestants were the parties to such agree-
ments, but as is evident in many of these cases, often a third party,
an authority from outside the community, played a crucial role. Pro-
vincial officials, magistrates, and royal commissioners could take the
lead in negotiating agreements, or they could exert pressure on a
biconfessional town’s inhabitants, all the while being aware of what
the inhabitants of rival confessions would agree to and relying on
their sense of the local balance of power. The resolution of conflicts
in two Poitevin towns—Saint-Maixent and Niort—can provide useful
examples.58 The population of Saint-Maixent early in the century was
split roughly in half between Catholics and Huguenots. The Edict of
Nantes made it a Huguenot security town with a governor from the

55
Luria, Sacred Boundaries, 103–142.
56
“Usage en commun d’un cimetière entre catholiques et protestants en 1609,”
Bulletin de la société d’histoire du protestantisme français 2 (1853): 502–505. See also
Luria, Sacred Boundaries, 113–114.
57
Luria, Sacred Boundaries, 116.
58
I draw here on a more detailed discussion in Luria, Sacred Boundaries, 32–46.
 france: an overview 233

Reformed Church, but its mayor, town councilors, and militia cap-
tains were Catholics. Little evidence exists of any conflict over this
arrangement in the period before Henri IV’s assassination. But after
his death, tensions quickly appeared. In 1610, the former king’s advi-
sor, Sully, reached a deal with Catholics in the city that allowed the
entry of two Huguenots onto the city council, with the proviso that
in the future councilors would be chosen without regard to religion.
The arrangement did not assuage tensions. In 1612, Huguenots com-
plained to royal commissioners that they wanted to open their shops
on Catholic festivals (which the Edict of Nantes expressly prohibited)
and that Catholics were preventing them from eating meat in hostel-
ries on Fridays. Furthermore, they insisted that, as a security town,
Saint-Maixent should have a Reformed mayor. Catholics complained
about Huguenots opening their shops on festivals and eating meat on
forbidden days. They also claimed that Huguenots had not built a wall
to separate their cemetery clearly from the Catholic one, even though
they had been ordered to do so. More ominously, Catholics accused
their rivals of taking up arms and plotting to seize the town’s hotel de
ville. The rhetoric was heated, but one gets the sense that while the
tensions were real, both sides were also using their claims to influence
the commissioners, who, in turn, stuck close to the Edict of Nantes in
rendering their decision. Huguenots were not to be molested for eat-
ing meat in their homes and inns, but they could not open shops on
Catholic festivals. They did make concessions to the Huguenots’ politi-
cal demands. Henceforth, they would get two permanent seats on the
council. But Catholics would retain the majority, a decision that main-
tained their authority in this otherwise Huguenot-dominated town.
In Niort, a third of the population followed the Reformed Church,
but the city had Huguenot mayors and royal governors. As we have
seen, there is evidence from the early years of the century of easy mix-
ing between the two groups. But here too the rise of tensions in the
city mirrored that in the kingdom in the 1610s and 1620s. In 1618,
a conflict erupted over Catholic processions. Catholics complained
that Huguenots had blocked a procession, and Huguenots retorted
that Catholics had tried to inflame passions by directing the proces-
sion by the temple. The two sides reached a pragmatic compromise
in which the times of processions were regulated so that they did not
pass by the temple while Huguenots were worshipping. But during
the renewed religious wars of the 1620s, the situation deteriorated.
In 1622, both groups took advantage of Louis XIII’s stay in the city
234 keith p. luria

to present complaints and re-negotiate their relations. Catholics com-

plained about Huguenot obstruction of the free exercise of their reli-
gion. Once again, processions were an issue, but added to that was
the charge that Huguenots were harassing the newly arrived Jesuits
and Capuchins whose presence in Niort exacerbated confessional con-
flict. Catholics also insisted that Huguenots refused to decorate the
facades of their homes on Catholic festivals and resisted the placing of
a crucifix in Niort’s courtroom. Huguenots countered that they were
being prevented from opening a school that they claimed the Edict of
Nantes allowed them. They also protested that their poor were denied
entrance into the city’s hospital.
The most threatening accusation, however, was the Catholic charge
that Huguenots were colluding with rebel co-religionists outside the
city. That the king spent time in Niort, while campaigning against the
rebels in the province, did not bode well for the minority’s claims. And
indeed, Catholics did gain much from the decisions of the king and his
commissioners. From now on, Niort would have Catholic mayors, and
Catholic preachers would operate freely in the city. But as in Saint-
Maixent, the judgments largely followed what the Edict of Nantes said.
Huguenots could open their school, as long as its teachers did not
“dogmatize,” and their poor would have access to the hospital. They
would not have to decorate their homes on Catholic festivals, but, just
as the Edict stipulated, they would have to allow civic authorities to
do so. Most importantly, the king rejected the accusation that Niort’s
Huguenots were colluding with the rebels. The king’s adjudication
favored the Catholics, hardly a surprising outcome given the situation.
But he continued to protect Huguenots as long as they were loyal.
In Saint-Maixent and Niort, as elsewhere in the kingdom, the rival
confessional groups managed to keep peace by reaching accommo-
dations, which government authorities encouraged and mediated.
Peaceful coexistence depended on this local willingness to negotiate
coupled with the monarchy’s backing. What changed in France and
what undermined coexistence was the disappearance of this royal sup-
port for accommodation. Peaceful daily interactions and compromises
between the confessional groups did not cease, but the government’s
policy turned from conciliation to persecution. Once that happened,
earlier agreements might be ignored or overturned. In biconfessional
communities this change was most evident in the re-arrangement of
 france: an overview 235

communal and sacred space.59 Step by step, Protestants lost their claim
to a presence in the communities they shared with Catholics. Their
cemeteries were pushed outside towns or shut down. Their temples
suffered the same fate.
The outcome of changing cemetery arrangements in the Poitevin
community of Latillé is representative of what happened in many
biconfessional communities. Early in the 17th century, commission-
ers arranged a settlement by which Catholics and Huguenots shared
the parish cemetery. In 1619, a lawsuit led to the separation of burial
grounds, but the new Huguenot burial ground was still in the town.
Three decades later, a new suit shut down this cemetery and forced
the local Reformed Church to find another outside the town. In Lou-
dun, the groups shared the parish cemetery of Saint-Pierre-du-Mar-
ché, though in 1611 commissioners ordered the city to construct a
wall between the Catholic and Reformed parts. In 1633, Richelieu’s
agent in Loudun, ordered the Huguenot burial ground out of the city.60
Throughout western France, the decade of the 1630s brought an end
to cemetery sharing in many communities. In 1634 and 1635, a royal
court ordered cemeteries to be separated in some 69 communities in
Poitou along with others in nearby provinces.61 Lawsuits in later years
would force Huguenots to move their cemeteries outside towns, thus
diminishing their claim to co-citizenship with their Catholic neighbors.
By the 1680s, Huguenots were losing their rights even to their separate
burial grounds. Royal intendants insisted so many had converted to
Catholicism (a claim the Huguenots disputed) that those remaining
no longer needed much in the way of cemeteries.
By the second half of the century, the Edict of Nantes, which Hugue-
nots had successfully used to defend their position in communities,
was now increasingly being turned against them, as was evident in the
more restrictive way courts decided disputes over temples. Plaintiffs

59
On the 16th-century arrangements of space, see Jérémie Foa, “An Unequal
Apportionment: The Conflict over Space between Protestants and Catholics at the
Beginning of the Wars of Religion,” French History 20 (2006): 369–386; Penny Rob-
erts, “The Most Crucial Battle of the Wars of Religion? The Conflict over Sites for
Reformed Worship in Sixteenth-Century France,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte
89 (1988): 247–267.
60
Luria, Sacred Boundaries, 132–133.
61
Luria, Sacred Boundaries, 135.
236 keith p. luria

had increasing success in bringing lawsuits that challenged Hugue-

not rights to some temples, because Reformed consistories could not
produce documents proving they had worshipped in them in 1597, as
the edict required. Others were condemned because, they were con-
structed on properties ecclesiastics possessed or because they were
located in former church buildings. Huguenots also lost the right to
worship on noble domains when courts decided that Reformed sei-
gneurs, who had sponsored temples, did not have the privilege of high
justice and thus could no longer do so.62
Lawsuits against Reformed worship also employed new strategies.
One was to claim that temples near Catholic churches, chapels, or reli-
gious houses disturbed Catholics at the mass. The accusations cited
Article Three of the Edict of Nantes which ordered that Catholicism
could be “peaceably and freely exercised” everywhere without “any
trouble or impediment.” No one could “trouble, molest, or disquiet”
priests in their “celebration of the divine service.”63 Previously this
article had provided the legal means for re-establishing Catholic wor-
ship in places it had ceased and for returning the Church’s property to
the Catholic clergy. But it became a potent weapon against temples in
the sacred space of biconfessional communities, when priests claimed
that the sound of nearby Reformed worship disturbed their religious
observances. Another legal strategy depended on a royal council deci-
sion of 1682 ordering the destruction of temples, which received back
Huguenots who had converted to Catholicism. Catholics seeking to
close down Reformed worship found means to infiltrate converts
back into temples, where they were “discovered,” bringing an end to
Reformed worship in biconfessional communities.
In Niort both strategies were used. In 1683, the royal intendant
Lamoignon de Basville ordered the temple closed, because it was too
close to a Catholic almshouse in which the mass was celebrated. The
local Huguenots dragged their heels in complying, and on 19 April
1684, a Catholic crowd invaded the temple, sacked it, and made more
than enough noise to “prove” that the mass in the nearby almshouse
could be disturbed. Even this assault did not immediately have the

62
Keith P. Luria, “Sharing Sacred Space: Protestant Temples and Religious Coexis-
tence in the Seventeenth Century” in Kathleen Perry Long (ed.), Religious Differences
in France: Past and Present (Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies) 74 (Kirksville, MO:
2006), 51–72.
63
Mousnier, Assassination of Henri IV, 319.
 france: an overview 237

desired effect, and 11 days later the Catholic mayor produced a young
convert, whom he claimed had returned to Reformed worship. The
Niort temple did not survive this last ploy. Throughout France temples
succumbed to such attacks. By 1680, France had only half the number
of temples that had existed in 1598. The 1682 order multiplied the clo-
sures. In the last seven months of 1681, only one temple in the country
suffered condemnation. In 1682, the tally increased to 48, with a simi-
lar number the following year. In 1684, the total jumped to 65.64
Changing royal policies, the rising tide of Catholic-Reformation
militancy, the influence of religious orders, such as the Jesuits and
Capuchins, the draining away of the Reformed population through
conversions—all these contributed to disabling peaceful confessional
relations that careful negotiations or simple practical coexistence had
created in biconfessional French communities. But the Niort example
illustrates another development. It was not royal officials or Catho-
lic ecclesiastics who found a way to shut the temple for good. It was
the Catholic mayor. The situation had changed in this town, where
decades before Catholics and Huguenots had mixed easily and the
leadership of the two groups had negotiated over sensitive issues.
Confessional coexistence appeared to be dead. But was this necessar-
ily the case? What the evidence suggests is not that all the daily local
relations between Catholics and Huguenots were poisoned. Instead,
the problem was that when the two confessional groups came into
conflict, there was no longer anyway to negotiate a peaceful result.
The monarchy, its officials, and its courts no longer mediated or arbi-
trated; they persecuted. France’s Huguenot’s were losing the status of
co-citizens and their recognition as loyal subjects of the king. In 1685
Louis XIV, in a convenient political fiction, claimed that there were
few Huguenots left in his kingdom and therefore the Edict of Nantes
was unnecessary. He revoked it.
What ensued is beyond the scope of this essay. But the revocation
did not mean the end of the Reformed religion or biconfessionalism in
France. Many Huguenots converted but thereafter frequently shunned
Catholic ceremonies and continued Reformed worship clandestinely.
Many others fled the kingdom. In both cases, Catholics often aided
and abetted their Reformed neighbors, which suggests that not all

64
Solange Deyon, Du loyalisme au refus: Les protestants français et leur député-
général entre la Fronde et la Révocation (Villeneuve-d’Ascq: 1976), 150–51.
238 keith p. luria

the king’s co-religionists shared his bigotry.65 Huguenot revolt in the

southern Cevennes region led to a bloody repression, and royal agents
throughout the country pursued secret Reformed worship. But it sur-
vived and by the late-18th century the French Reformed Church had
reconstituted itself, though true toleration of its faith did not arrive
until the Revolution. Despite royal persecution, France had become a
permanently biconfessional country.

65
See, for example, the experiences of the Poitevin Huguenot Jean Migault
recounted in his memoir, Les dragonnades en Poitou et Saintonge: Le Journal de Jean
Migault (Le Poiré-sur-Vie: 1988); see also Yves Krumenacker, “Les dragonnades du
Poitou: Leur écho dans les mémoires,” Bulletin de la société de l’histoire du protestan-
tisme français 31 (1985): 405–422.
 PEACE COMMISSIONERS AT THE BEGINNING
OF THE WARS OF RELIGION: TOWARD AN
INTERACTIONIST INTERPRETATION OF THE
PACIFICATION PROCESS IN FRANCE

Jérémie Foa

Two opposing models for the diffusion of social phenomena are usu-
ally proposed: researchers have often to choose either bottom-up or
top-down explanations in dealing with issues like “reformation”, “con-
fessionalization”, or, in this case study, “pacification.” When it comes
to the return of a state of calm during the French Wars of Religion,
the top-down model for pacification has long been the favored one.
Historians have rightly stressed the role played by Catherine de Med-
ici, Henry IV, the pacification edicts, and the edicts’ commissioners.
According to Arlette Jouanna, coexistence was “imposed from the top
by royal edicts, maintained by governors and controlled by specially
nominated commissioners”.1 There is no denying that, while enjoining
his subjects to “live together as brothers, friends and fellow-citizens”,
King Charles IX (1560–1574) recommended a solution to the violence
that only the Crown seemed able to administer. In promulgating a
series of edicts granting freedom of worship and conscience to the
Huguenots2 and sending out commissioners for the enforcement of
the edicts of pacification, two by two through the kingdom, the king
encountered the opposition of most of his subjects.3 But this interpre-
tation could be criticized for ignoring the subjects’ role in the pacifi-
cation process and for turning them into eternal children, constantly
brawling and incapable of restoring calm on their own. Did the state

1
Arlette Jouanna, “Coexister dans la différence: expérience de l’union avant
Coutras” in J. Pau, and D. Pau (eds.), L’avènement d’Henri IV. Quatrième centenaire
de la bataille de Coutras (Pau: 1988), 149–166, cit. 151.
2
Edict of January 1562, Amboise March 1563, Peace of Longjumeau March 1568,
Edict of Saint-Germain August 1570, and Boulogne July 1573. The best edited edition,
published under the aegis of Bernard Barbiche, is to be found on-line: http://elec.enc.
sorbonne.fr/editsdepacification/.
3
On this matter, see: Jérémie Foa, “Making peace: The commissions for enforcing
the pacification edicts in the reign of Charles IX (1560–1574)”, French History 18
(2004): 256–74.
240 jérémie foa

truly have the means to impose peace instead of reacting to daily prob-
lems, and did it truly hope to succeed in achieving peace without con-
sidering local interests?4
As early as 1563, an opinion offered by a Huguenot from Tours is
quite revealing about how the King’s subjects have been infantilized,
when confronted with religious coexistence:
It is true that during the time that the commissioners were present, they
[the Catholics] saw the commissioners, they [the Catholics] acted like
small school children, who behave while the master is present and are
all in a fury when he is gone. Those about whom I speak have done this,
but with a rage far more lethal than that of children: for they have killed,
murdered, vandalized, and looted most of the good houses of the city.5
Were the Crown and its agents, in particular the peace commissioners,
really the school masters of pacification? Were the inhabitants truly
incapable of maintaining peace without them, or without constraint?
Were the subjects really deaf to the pacification process? This article
does not aim to deny the state and its agents’ key role in peace-keeping
but tries to offer a more nuanced vision of the respective roles of all
the actors by using an interactionist interpretation of the pacification
mechanisms.6

Friendship Pacts and Avoided Saint Bartholomews: Local Forms

of Self-pacification? Inventing Peace on a Local Level

Although rare, archives do exist to study pacified relationships between

the two confessions at a local level, especially during the reign of
Charles IX. Among those discordant pieces, the curious and appar-
ently spontaneous agreements made between Huguenots and Catholics
during major periods of violence are especially interesting. In these
written documents, on the eve of war, believers of the two religions

4
Jean-Frédéric Schaub, “Le Temps et l’Etat: vers un nouveau régime histo-
riographique de l’Ancien Régime français”, Quaderni fiorentini per la storia del pensi-
ero giuridico moderno 25 (1996): 127–181.
5
Remonstrance faite au Roy estans au Plessis les Tours, par le deputté de la Religion
reformee de ladite ville, et telle que de vive voix elle à (sic) été prononcée et recueillie le 25.
de Novembre 1565, s. l., s. n., 1566 (Bibliothèque Nationale, RES LB 33–468), B 2 vo.
6
Heinrich Richard Schmidt, “Emden est partout. Vers un modèle interactif de la
confessionalisation”, Francia. Froschüngen zur westeuropaïschen Geschichte. Frühe
Neuzeit, revolution, Empire 26 (1999): 23–45.
 peace commissioners 241

agreed to avoid violence and always to behave as “brothers, friends

and fellow-citizens”, even though elsewhere passions were exploding.
These agreements are filled with the vocabulary of friendship, in such
a surprising way that few historians have studied them. Olivier Chris-
tin, who published and studied the first examples, christened them
“friendship pacts”.7 Today, two dozen of them have been found for
the time of Charles IX, something that distinguishes this reign from
all those that came before or after it.
In a number of cities in the kingdom, as the sound of war came closer,
inhabitants from both confessions promised one another, in writing,
to live peacefully and to behave like “brothers, friends and fellow-
citizens” (see table 3). In Châlon-sur-Saône, for example, on May 18,
1562, as the first civil war was beginning, the inhabitants decided to
live together “peacefully and in accordance with the king’s edicts”.8
In Nant, in the province of Rouergue, in August 1568, the bourgeois
“from one and the other confession . . . have said and affirmed that
they want to live in good and perfect peace”.9 A few days after the
Saint Bartholomew massacres, the inhabitants of Millau declared that
they “will live in peace”, “loving, cherishing, and continuing to see
and frequent one another”.10 In Saint-Affrique, the pact proclaimed
“peace, concord, love and friendship”.11 The same was true in Caen
and Annonay.12 Physical and symbolic violence were thus excluded.
In this way, words of peace founded a peace of words.

7
Olivier Christin, La paix de religion. L’autonomisation de la raison politique au
XVIe siècle, 122–132; idem, “Pactes d’amitié et républicanisme urbain: quelques villes
françaises devant la biconfessionalité” in Heinz Duchhardt and Patrice Veit (eds.),
Krieg und Freiden im übergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit, Theorie—Praxis—Bilder,
Guerre et Paix du Moyen Age aux Temps Modernes, Théories, pratiques, représenta-
tions (Mainz: 2000), 157–166; idem, “ ‘Peace Must Come from Us’: Friendship Pacts
between the Confessions during the Wars of Religion” in Ruth Whelan and Carol
Baxter (eds.), The Edict of Nantes and its implications in France, Britain and Ireland
(Dublin: 2003), 92–103.
8
Claude Perry, Histoire ecclesiastique et civile ancienne et moderne de la ville et cité
de Chalons sur Saone (Chalon sur Saône: 1659), 327.
9
Elie Mazel, Les Guerres de religion à Nant et le pays d’extrême Haute-Marche du
Rouergue (Rodez: 1920), 39 sq.
10
Archives Municipales [hereafter AM] Millau, CC 42, 2e inventaire.
11
Olivier Christin, “Amis, frères et concitoyens. Ceux qui refusèrent la Saint-
Barthélemy (1572)”, Cahiers de la Villa Gillet, 11 (2000): 71–94.
12
Olivier Christin, L’autonomisation de la raison politique au XVIe siècle (Paris:
1998), 311–318.
242 jérémie foa

Nevertheless, friendship pacts are not theoretic discourses but per-

formative speeches, which aimed not only to say the peace but to
enforce it. They thus described the duties of the “friends,” those who
were deemed capable of peace. The others were excluded; they were
declared in advance incapable of peace and, as strangers or vagrants,
potential traitors. Outside of the pact, the enemies were soldiers and
looters, regardless of confession. Pacts were a strictly political alliance
in the face of war; they enacted at the local level the patriotic solution
recommended by theoreticians and poets.
Local peace was not guaranteed, however. In fact, those pacts where
the inhabitants took one another for “brothers and friends” paradoxi-
cally bear witness to a breach of communal trust and cohesion. What
confidence could be placed in someone of the other faith? What ritual
could be used to cement the union? In a word, how to force the other
to keep his word when trust was missing and pressures for war mount-
ing? In refusing to place responsibility for peace strictly on the good
will of the people, and instead imposing an external and inflexible
constraint, the inhabitants were trying to protect themselves against
betrayal. As such, these pacts were expressions of distrust.
In an ancien régime society, the divinity traditionally constituted
a superior principle, guaranteeing the irreversibility of an oath. But
an appeal to a supra-human intermediary that assured union posed
problems in this case. After the confessional schism, people no longer
imagined their relationship to the sacred or its intervention in the same
way. That is why, with the exception of Saint-Affrique, pacts did not
mention any sacred oath.13 There were no ritual gestures, no priests
or pastors, no masses or sermons; the lack of an appeal to the sacred
is glaring. The traditional delegation of the maintenance of the ordo
rerum to gods and holy things, to patron saints, relics, and images,
was abolished and replaced by man-made sanctions. Therefore, as
God himself could no longer force men to keep their word, multiple
layers of constraints were built into the peace pacts: signatures, indi-
vidual promises, judicial guaranties, exchanges of pledges, reminders
of common financial interests, and practical devices. In so doing, pacts

13
The formula they used, “foy et serement presté par eux a Dieu” (faith and oath
sworn to God), is a compromise: the faith sealed the agreement for the Huguenots,
the oath for the Catholics.
 peace commissioners 243

constituted both a reflection on the frailty of words of peace in time of

war and an attempt to compensate for this weakness.
The signatures on most of these pacts attest to an intention to bind
a signer to verifiable obligations, whatever he might say in the future.14
But even the guarantee posed by the signature was not enough, inas-
much as it rested on the person’s postulated morality and constancy.
It was thus reinforced by judicial guarantees: in Caen, for example, the
inhabitants stipulated that “if one side gives offense to the other”, they
could “all go to court for justice”. In many cases, moreover, these pacts
were sworn before a local judge who became their legal guarantor.
This is what happened in Compeyre, where the agreement was signed
“before the honorable judge”.15 In addition, the peace agreement was
backed by an economic guarantee, the financial interest helping to
ensure that the parties would keep their word.16 The agreement made
in Barre-des-Cévennes explicitly recalled that peace would “guarantee
trade and commercial relations in a peaceful and communal way”.17
In Millau and in Nîmes, the pacts mentioned “freedom of trade”. The
aim was not only to save peace by nobility of spirit but also to preserve
business by sheer self-interest.
Finally, pacts instituted material constraints in order to reduce the
unpredictability of those who promised, as they did in Caen, not to use
either daggers or swords. The maintenance of peace still resided oth-
erwise in the good will of the contracting parties. And yet, the experi-
ence of past wars proved that good will alone could not be trusted.
On several occasions then, objects served to mitigate human weakness
and to force people to keep their word. City keys served this role of
external constraint, unassailable by human will. One clause of Saint-
Affrique’s pact foresaw giving half the city keys to the Catholic consuls
and the rest to the Huguenots, so that neither “could open the doors
without the others”. The same was done in Casteljaloux, where the
inhabitants decided to install two new locks, one of which was given
to the Huguenot, the other to the Catholic consul.18 Keys facilitated

14
Béatrice Fraenkel, La Signature. Genèse d’un signe (Paris: 1992).
15
AM Millau, CC 42, 2d inv.
16
Bruno Latour, La Clef de Berlin et autres leçons d’un amateur de sciences (Paris:
1993).
17
Jean-Paul Chabrol, La Cévenne au village. Barre des Cévennes sous l’Ancien
régime: 1560–1830 (Aix-en-Provence: 1983), 182–183.
18
Archives Départementales [hereafter AD] Lot-et-Garonne, E SUP 2386 (1er sept.
1572).
244 jérémie foa

peace not by “internalizing a law” but by “externalizing a force”.19 The

same was true for weapons, which were sometimes distributed equally
among the inhabitants, thereby constituting a sort of balance of ter-
ror. Elsewhere, weapons were confiscated from both sides. In this
way, arms reinforced the preservation of (words of ) peace by reifying
an external constraint independent of the persons’ will. In this way,
friendship pacts testify to a “local” capacity to make peace. Faced with
external threats, it was essential that peace come from below. As the
first consul of Montélimar declared on October 1, 1567, “it is neces-
sary that peace come principally from us, and . . . it is expedient that we
all, without regard to religious difference, live in peace, friendship and
perpetual fraternity, like true fellow citizens”.
When analyzing friendship pacts, two essential levels of peacekeep-
ing are evident: neighborhood and municipality. Indeed, in many of
the kingdom’s cities, especially the ones with fewer than 10,000 inhab-
itants, everyone knew everyone.20 Consequently, it was much more
difficult to achieve the anonymity of victims and tormentors that is
a condition for a guilt-free massacre. On many occasions during the
Wars of Religion, French people showed that they could consider them-
selves not only as anonymous representatives of antagonistic churches
but also as neighbors. In Montferrand, at the time of the Saint Bar-
tholomew’s Day Massacre, in September 1572, the consuls refused to
jail Françoise Morel, a Huguenot, because of “her serious illness”.21 At
the same time in Lisieux, the échevins let the Huguenot Albert de la
Couyère go free because he was a surgeon.22 Health, profession, and
wealth were all determinants of identity, along with confessional clas-
sifications, and could be used when a person was well known, as is the
case in a small town. In Chalon-sur-Saône, maintaining neighborly
relations took precedence over religious hatred: in September 1572, a
number of Huguenots were “imprisoned in the homes of prominent
Catholics, who would answer for them at the risk of their own lives”.23
Huguenots were not only heretics, but also sons and daughters, neigh-

19
B. Latour, La Clef de Berlin, 9.
20
Mark Konnert, “La tolérance religieuse en Europe aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Une
approche issue de la psychologie sociale et de la sociologie” in Thierry Wanegffelen
(ed.), De Michel de l’Hospital à l’Edit de Nantes. Politique et religion face aux Eglises
(Clermont-Ferrand: 2003), 97–113.
21
AD Puy-de-Dôme, E 113, Fonds [hereafter fds]. II, BB 20, fol. 20 vo.
22
AM Lisieux, BB 7, fol. 347 sq.
23
AM Chalon-sur-Saône, EE 1.
 peace commissioners 245

bors and lover, rich and poor. The possibilities inherent in these mul-
tiple identities suggest that inter-confessional relationships at the time
of the religious wars should not be reduced to confrontations. There
were numerous ways of apprehending human relationships, even if
religion remained the predominant framework within which identity
was defined. Independent of any direct state intervention, inhabitants
often managed to maintain peace between themselves.
In many cities, for example Chalons-sur-Marne or Limoges,24
“municipalism” formed the other, powerful framework for circum-
venting confessional opposition and keeping the peace, independent
of the state. That is why all the friendship pacts were made to the
detriment of outsiders or strangers: in Millau for example, the authori-
ties expelled all “the vagrants and vagabonds” ( gens sans adveu) and
in Caen, it was forbidden for any innkeeper or inhabitant to accom-
modate strangers. The citizens of Saint-Laurent-des-Arbres declared
that if “strangers” were to come to the city to attack either one of the
religious groups, everyone should resist. The outsider embodied the
insiders’ enemy, whatever his religious convictions, and was not owed
the assistance granted to natives. Behind this rejection lay the percep-
tion of a double weakness. The vagrant (expelled, whatever his reli-
gion) was assumed to be so poor that he could be bought to betray the
city. Second and more important, he lacked the familial and personal
bonds that linked the inhabitants of a small community. In Limoges,
as elsewhere, Huguenots enjoyed a selective tolerance depending on
their birthplace. A Protestant could claim his right to safety because
his citizen “pedigree” prevailed over his heterodoxy.25 Municipal pride
appears to have been stronger than confessional exclusiveness, estab-
lishing a hierarchy of priorities that can be found in various other cit-
ies that avoided massacres. In 1572, municipalism seems still to have
been a pertinent framework for maintaining peace and containing the
turmoil of religious fighting. Friendship pacts were relatively efficient,
even though their existence cannot by itself explain the preservation of
order: Most cities with those agreements nevertheless avoided violence.

24
Michel Cassan, Le Temps des Guerres de Religion. Le Cas du Limousin (Paris:
1996); Mark Konnert, “Urban Values versus Religious Passions: Châlons-sur-Marne
during the Wars of Religion”, Sixteenth Century Journal, 20 (1987): 387–405.
25
Michel Cassan, “Les choix politiques et confessionnels de la ville natale de Jean
Dorat durant la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle et les débuts du XVIIe siècle” in Chris-
tine de Buzon and Jean-Eudes Girot (eds.) Jean Dorat. Poète humaniste de la Renais-
sance, Actes du colloque international Limoges, 6–8 juin 2001 (Genève: 2007), 47–63.
246 jérémie foa

The State as a Local Expectation

However, several vertical logics came to thwart the solidity of these

horizontal bonds. In the first place, by writing the oath the inhabit-
ants attested, in spite of their sincerity, to the indelible distrust that
had settled into the heart of the city with the religious schism. Why
else would they spell out the conditions of their agreement? Not long
before, the cohabitation of inhabitants in their diversity had occurred
without fuss, free from worries and promises, in the humdrum routine
of daily life. The friendship pacts, on the contrary, left nothing tacit.
In itself, the need to put into writing the conditions of social cohesion
already indicates a crack in municipal harmony. We thus discover that
in Châlon-sur-Saône in 1572, several Catholics who first had agreed
to imprison Huguenots in their homes began to “be wary” of them
and asked to have them placed “into the prisons of the tax collector
[receveur] and bishop”.26 The fact that the inhabitants largely borrowed
from the “language of state”, as can be seen in analyzing the language
of the compacts, also shows that the subjects were seeking external
guarantees for the maintenance of law and order.
The recurring conception behind the pacts is that of friendship,
which, if not always present, is frequent enough to have nothing ran-
dom about it. It derives from a common fund of Christian values
widely shared by both confessions. Since the Middle Ages, the concept
of friendship had frequently been used in arbitration proceedings and
the regulation of the social relationships. Moreover, Raymond Mentzer
has shown how frequently consistories mobilized the terminology of
friendship to regulate conflicts within the Protestant community.27 For
us, the origin of this vocabulary of friendship is nevertheless to be
sought elsewhere—with the king, his agents, his regulations, and his
administrators, in particular the commissioners charged with enforc-
ing the edicts. Neither the Bible nor even the Christian tradition
was the source from which this concept of friendship was borrowed.
Besides the fact that numerous theologians were very far from inciting
brotherly friendship between confessions, the rhetoric of these pacts
reflects more of a Ciceronian vocabulary. But these citations (“broth-

26
AM Chalon-Sur-Saône, BB 5, fol. 210 vo (5 septembre 1572).
27
Raymond A. Mentzer, La Construction de l’identité réformée aux XVIe et XVIIe
siècles: le rôle des consistoires (Paris: 2006).
 peace commissioners 247

ers, friends and fellow citizens”) owe less to the great success of the De
Amicitia in the 16th century, than to royal legislation and, in particu-
lar, to the edicts of pacification: already in the Edict of January 1562,
the Crown deplored the “dissolution of the bonds of friendship” in
the kingdom. The Edict of Amboise (March 1563) was the first exam-
ple of the King ordering his subjects of both confessions “to contain
themselves and live peacefully together as brothers, friends and fellow
citizens”. The Edicts of Longjumeau (August 1568) and Saint-Germain
(August 1570) reiterated this injunction in an identical way. In July
1572, on the eve of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, Charles IX
published an injunction to all his subjects to live in friendship with one
another. When rereading the pacts, the similarity of language leaves
no doubt: in 1572, the inhabitants of Saint-Affrique promised “to live
and remain in peace with one another like brothers, friends and fellow
citizens” (freres, amys et concitoiens) and proclaimed between them
“peace, love and friendship”. Those of Nant, in August 1568, “both of
one religion and the other [. . .] said and affirmed they wanted to live in
good and perfect peace”. They thus repeated word for word the terms
of the pacification edicts, which served to mediate between local com-
munities and Ciceronian ideas.
This is all the more true in that the edicts of pacification were very
widely disseminated in France, whether in printed, handwritten, or oral
form. In 1564, François Coderc, notary of the clerk’s office of Millau,
was paid six pounds for having forwarded a copy of the pacification
edicts to the nearby cities of Compierre, Saint-Affrique, Nant, Cornus,
le Pont-de-Camarès, and Saint-Lyons. In 1571, the bailiwick of Auxerre
spent 40 pounds to pay a sergeant to disseminate the texts of the paci-
fication edict throughout its jurisdiction. Charles IX enjoined the mag-
istrates ( justiciers) and officers of his provinces to have the articles of
the pacification edicts read and published “throughout the most com-
mon and frequented places in their jurisdictions by public criers with
trumpets sounding and to have them posted in the most frequented
places in their jurisdictions”.28 In particular, the commissioners sent

28
Le reiglement donne par le commandemenet du roy charles IX Nostre souve-
rain seigneur, sur le faict de lentretienement de l’Edict par luy cy devant faict, pour la
pacification des troubles du royaulme. Publie par le commendement et en presence de
Monsieur le conte du lude gouverneur pour ledict seigneur en ce pais de poictou des sei-
gneurs de cusse, et des masparraulte commissaires deputez pour la pacification desdictz
troubles en la ville de Poictiers, capitalle dudict pays le vendredy XIIe iour du moys de
novembre 1563, (Poitiers: 1563).
248 jérémie foa

by the king to enforce the edicts of pacification in the provinces were

indispensable agents of this broadcasting of the peace in the prov-
inces. From town to town, they everywhere had the text of the edicts
read, published, copied, and distributed; they explained the contents
and enforced them. As the commissioners had ordered in prohibiting
insults and the use of force, physical and verbal violence were in turn
forbidden by the pacts. The inhabitants thus promised not “to offend
one another by word or by deed,” for example, in Caen and Annonay.
In a systematic way, the commissioners had the king’s subjects swear
an oath to respect the edicts of pacification. In February 1571, for
example, the marshal of Vieilleville, appointed by the king to enforce
the Edict of Saint-Germain, made the councillors of the Parliament of
Dijon, the officers, the mayor, and the aldermen of Bourgogne “swear
to respect the edict of pacification” with “raised hand”.29 In Montéli-
mar, the commissioners Bauquemare and la Madeleine received an
oath from the new consuls to respect the king’s edicts.30 The same
was done in La Rochelle in January 1571, when Marshal Cossé made
Catholics and Huguenots swear to respect the edict of pacification. By
acting this way, the monarch was proclaiming himself the principal
author of the constraints on the speeches that aimed at official recep-
tion. And friendship was thus fixed in grammar.
The oaths of obedience and the edicts themselves constituted the
frame of reference for the communities, which often renewed in the
pact their promise to respect the edicts of pacification. The use of
the concepts of friendship and citizenship throughout the pacts can be
read as the reiteration of the oath of obedience sworn to the commis-
sioners: the inhabitants of Millau explicitly admitted this when they
affirmed acting “just as they had previously promised at the publica-
tion of the edict, made in this present city before the commissioner
delegated for this occasion”.31 And indeed, just one year earlier, com-
missioners Jehan de Tambonneau and the marquess of Villars had
administered an oath of friendship to the Millavois. In Nimes, on
August 30, 1572, when inhabitants of both confessions promised that
they “would maintain and preserve one another in all security and lib-
erty of persons and properties, as true citizens, inhabitants of the same
city, can and must be, without allowing the use of violence against any

29
Louis Etienne Acere, Histoire de la ville de La Rochelle et du pays d’Aulnis, vol. 1
(1756; repr. Marseille: 1975), 389.
30
AM Montélimar, BB 46, fol. 34 sq.
31
Joël Rigal (ed.), Mémoires d’un calviniste de Millau (Rodez: 1911), 222.
 peace commissioners 249

inhabitants”,32 they repeated in part the oath taken before Damville, a

commissioner for the Edict of Saint-Germain, who, on September 16,
1570, had the same men swear “to keep, have kept, obey and observe
without violation the edict, in keeping with its form and content, and
promising one another fidelity, loyalty and security. Promising one
another on penalty of death that neither on their account nor by their
means would anything be done prejudicial to one another’s person or
property or to the content of the edict”.33
In this context, friendship had the character of a quotation, and
peace was built on a local use of royal initiatives, decided in coopera-
tion with the inhabitants. Consequently, a strictly internalist analy-
sis of those pacts would prove ineffective: firstly, because they made
explicit references to the royal legislation; secondly, because the ideal
point of reception for these agreements, namely the state, must be
kept in mind. These pacts thus had an external as well as an inter-
nal function. They not only aimed to make peace but also to say that
peace was made: they had a proclamative or demonstrative intention.
It was important for the inhabitants to show themselves to be peace-
ful because they had everything to gain from being in accordance
with the ideals promoted by the Crown. These small and average cit-
ies had everything to lose in appearing too divided; a violent, inter-
confessional conflict was a golden opportunity for the monarchy to
intensify its presence by sending in governors or garrisons or even by
establishing state control over the guarding of the city. In towns like
Orléans or Lyon, where confessional tension was profound, the mon-
archy decided in 1564 to erect citadels in order to ensure the defense
of the city. Consequently, the inhabitants, both Huguenots and Catho-
lics, would rather play down their level of inter-confessional violence
by appropriating a rhetoric and practices approved—and tested—by
the Crown. In Pont-Saint-Esprit (Languedoc), for example, both con-
fessions multiplied the promises and appearances of good agreement;
and yet, rather than representing a precocious ideal of “tolerance”,
their primary (and admitted) motivation lay in their common will to
be exempted from the imposition of a gendarmerie by the governor.34
In the same way, the consuls of Chalon-sur-Saône wrote in 1572 that
they did not need a garrison, given “that they were well united and

32
AM Nîmes, LL 11 (August 30, 1572).
33
AM Nîmes, DD 3, pièce 7 (September 16, 1570).
34
AM Pont Saint-Esprit, BB 2, fol. 26–27 (January 1564) and fol. 38–39 (August
1564).
250 jérémie foa

peaceful”.35 In other words, besides the information they conveyed,

friendship pacts communicated a message to the king and his agents,
among others. They represent a stake in rule as much as a stake in
peace. Hence, these very local pacts cannot be understood indepen-
dently of the national and, in particular, the political context within
which they fit. Because the signers of these pacts anticipated material
and symbolic advantages from compliance with the state’s rules, they
mobilized the language of legitimacy, that of peace and friendship.
In embracing the king’s words, the inhabitants asked him to compel
them to keep their word.36 Indeed, despite the pacts, when confronted
with a crisis, neither personal morality, nor neighborly solidarity, nor
even municipal authority ever seemed strong enough to uphold the
peace. It was rather the king who, as a last resort, came to strengthen
social cohesion, bearing witness to a transition from “community” to
“society,” which characterizes the Wars of Religion.37 The monarch
established himself as a form of externalization of constraint, through
the citizens’ “delegation of their lost morality”.38 Now the question
is to understand how the monarch, through his work of pacification,
answered local needs by elaborating, in cooperation with his subjects,
solutions for the crisis of the religious wars.

The Commissioners: Men of the King or Middle-men between

Monarch and Subject?

“The needs of the times” forced the young Charles IX to authorize the
reformed religion in his kingdom, in order to preserve its unity and to
keep peace. The King’s conciliatory politics met with great resistance,

35
AM Chalon-sur-Saône, EE 1.
36
Jérémie Foa, “Gebrauchsformen der Freundschaft. Freundschaftsverträge und
Gehorsamseide zu Beginn der Religionskriege” in Klaus Oschema (ed.), Freundschaft
oder amitié ? Ein politisch-soziales Konzept der Vormoderne im zwischensprachlichen
Vergleich (15.–17. Jahrhundert) (Zeitschrift historischer Forschung. Beihefte) 40 (Ber-
lin: 2007), 109–135.
37
Marcel Mauss, “La cohésion sociale dans les sociétés polysegmentaires” (1931),
Œuvres, vol. 3: Cohésion sociale et divisions de la sociologie (Paris: 1969), 13; Ferdinand
Tönnies, Communauté et société: catégories fondamentales de la sociologie pure (1887;
repr. Paris: 1977). Tönnies writes that “whereas, in the Community, people remained
bounded in spite of any separation, they are, in the Society, separated in spite of
any connection” (81). Here, in spite of the pact of union, the signatories remained
separate.
38
B. Latour, La Clef de Berlin, 9.
 peace commissioners 251

especially from the traditional seats of royal authority (parlements,

bailliages, governors, municipalities, etc.). As a result, the monarch
dispatched commissioners to execute his policies, even if it meant by-
passing recalcitrant administrators. They had to apply the peace legis-
lation, to attribute temples and cemeteries to the Huguenots, to share
municipal responsibilities between both confessions, to return confis-
cated goods and offices seized, and to settle local disputes.39 These com-
missioners were chosen by the monarch alone from among his most
faithful servants.40 Their commissions were revocable at will, and they
answered only to the king. Our present state of knowledge enables us
to estimate the number of direct commissioners of the Edict of January
at about ten men, those of the Edict of Amboise at about 30, and those
of the Edict of Saint-Germain at about 20.41 To this must be added
the even greater number—at the very least, 20—of commissioners for
the “final completion” (parachèvement) of the edicts, who toiled in the
wake of the first commissioners, as well as perhaps 20 men specially
appointed to local missions and the assistants of the commissioners.
We may safely say that there were, at a conservative estimate, about
100 royal agents working for the pacification of the realm between
1561 and 1574. Thus, the process of pacification and the invention
of the commissioners for the enforcement of the edicts—whose links
with future intendants have recently been stressed42—confirm that the
civil wars contributed in more ways than intellectually to the modern-
ization of the state. Pacification was thus a driving force behind the
“executive turn” taken by the French monarchy at the end of the 16th
century. During these singular times, the Crown favored extraordinary
over ordinary administrative agencies.

39
Commission expédiée par le Roy pour envoyer par les provinces de ce royaume cer-
tains commissaires pour faire entretenir l’edict et traicté sur la pacification des troubles
advenuz en iceluy (Paris: 1563).
40
Jérémie Foa, Le Tour de la Paix. Missions et commissions d’application des édits de
pacification sous le règne de Charles IX (1560–1574), (Ph.D. diss., Université Lumière
Lyon 2, 2008).
41
The Peace of Longjumeau (1568) which was too ephemeral, did not give the
Crown enough time to despatch agents to implement it. There were some exceptions,
however, among them the mission of the maréchal de Vieilleville and of René de
Bourgneuf in the West. (Archives Nationales (AN) J 1037, pièce 31 and Bibliothèque
Municipale (BM) Angers, Ms. 297).
42
Michel Antoine, “Des chevauchées aux intendances: filiation réelle ou putative?”,
Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société d’Histoire de France (1994): 35–65.
252 jérémie foa

Table 1—Peace commissioners in January 1562 (Edict of January)

Guyenne Blaise de Monluc, Charles de Coucys,
Nicolas Compaing, and Pierre Girard
Provence and Dauphiné Antoine de Crussol, André Ponnat, and
Anthoine Fumée
Languedoc Michel Quelain and Jehan de la Guesle

Table 2—Peace commissioners in March 1563 (Edict of Amboise)

Bourgogne and Nivernais Estienne Charlet and Jehan de
Monceaux.
Bretagne Estienne Lallemant de Voulzay and
Pierre de Chantecler.
Champagne and Brie No commissioners.
Guyenne Anthoine Fumée, Jerosme Angenoust,
thereafter Jacques Viart.
Ile-de-France Mathieu Chartier and Pierre de
Longueil.
Languedoc Jean-Jacques de Mesmes and Jacques
de Bauquemare.
Lyonnais, Auvergne Michel Quelain and Gabriel Myron.
Bourbonnais (etc.)
Normandie Jacques Viole and Jehan de la Guesle.
Orléanais and Berry Baptiste de Machault.
Picardie Charles de Lamoignon and François le
Cirier.
Poitou, Saintonge, La Rochelle, René de Bourgneuf and Pierre de
and Aunis Masparraulte.
Provence and Dauphiné Jacques Phellypeaux and Jessé de
Bauquemare.
Touraine, Anjou, and Maine François Briçonnet, Arnoul Bouche,r
and Jehan de Lavau.
 peace commissioners 253

Table 3—Peace commissioners in August 1570 (Edict of Saint-Germain)

Champagne, Bourgogne, Auvergne, Nicolas Potier and Charles de
and Bourbonnais Lamoignon.
Guyenne Robert de Montdoulcet and René
Crespin.
Paris and Ile-de-France Estienne Lallemant and Jessé de
Bauquemare.
Normandie and Picardie Anthoine Fumée and Simon Roger.
Lyonnais, Dauphiné, Provence, and Edouard Molé, Jehan de Belot, and
Languedoc Claude Faulcon.
Orléanais, Anjou, Bretagne, and Philippe Gourreau de la Proustière
Poitou and François Pain.

Complaint as Catharsis

Every time the commissioners arrived in a city or a village, they sum-

moned a general assembly, composed of inhabitants of both confes-
sions, whom they encouraged to come present their complaints. At
the end of the assembly of Aulnay, in Sainctonge, in October 1563,
commissioners Bourgneuf and Masparraulte invited the inhabitants to
come to them “to have justice done”.43 In Lyon, commissioners Que-
lain and Myron declared that “those whose goods had been taken and
usurped . . . could apply to them for justice”.44 Even though a great num-
ber of remonstrances are today lost, several sources show that inhabit-
ants literally overwhelmed commissioners with their complaints.45 More
than 150 complaints have been found in the archives. In Valence, for
example, in February 1572, an inhabitant worried about the number
of “affairs which are every day presented before the honorable com-
missioners” and described the plaintiffs’ craving to have the ear of the
prince.46 It is thus evident that, if the commissioners were imposed
from above, their power increased as they answered requests from

43
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits Français (hereafter BNF, Ms. fr.)
15878, fol. 149 vo.
44
AM Lyon, BB 83, fol. 132 (19 août 1563).
45
J. Foa, Le Tour de la Paix . . . , 6, 279–366 « La prise de la parole ».
46
AM Montélimar, BB 53, fol. 41.
254 jérémie foa

below. As Hans Maier pointed out in his study on Polizeiwissenschaft,47

serious problems concerning the preservation of peace and economic
and religious questions proliferated at the end of the 16th century in
a way that forced the state to come to the aid of the traditional organs
of self-government. The king’s subjects collaborated decisively in this
process, through their representatives or, in this case, by multiplying
requests sent to the monarchy.
During the slow progress toward the “disciplinary society” described
by Michel Foucault, governing powers more than ever sought people’s
confidences, competed for their confessions, and invited ever more
indiscretions.48 Handling this continuous stream of requests required
considerable effort on the part of the state: instituting precise networks
for the deposit, transmission, and examination of petitions and requests,
fixing requirements of style and codification of the expected formulae,
setting a maximum size for texts submitted to the authorities, deter-
mining protocol for requests for supporting documents. But the activi-
ties of the applicants also contributed to the standardization of forms
and strategies, because, in their desire to see their request succeed, they
addressed themselves to specialized intermediaries, taking up tried
forms, anticipating the criteria of examination and judgment of the
authorities to whom they turned and, at the same time, juggling this
imposed rhetoric and their desire for a distinctive self-presentation.
This anticipation of the eye of the state explains why the religious
conflicts did not weaken with peace, but rather changed strategies,
continuing by other means, particularly legal ones. In other words, the
opponents did not at all give up on “conquering” their enemies, but
the weapon of choice, henceforth, the one that brought about the best
results, was an appeal to the justice system. The confessional confron-
tations were thus the occasion, not only of a judicial transformation
of the religious conflicts, but also of a larger appropriation of judicial
authority by the subjects, favoring the intervention of new actors, nei-
ther theologians nor military men, but rather jurists. Inhabitants of
both faiths engaged lawyers, taking advice from specialists in the law
to formulate their complaints adequately and to have their opponents
condemned successfully. For example, the mayor and the échevins of

47
Hans Maier, Die Ältere deutsche Staats-und Verwaltungslehre: Polizeiwissenschaft,
ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der politischen Wissenschaft in Deutschland (Berlin: 1966).
48
Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir, (1975; repr. Paris: 1993), 225–227.
 peace commissioners 255

Tours requested five lawyers from the présidial to attend “the assem-
blies, to deliberate and advise on what complaints and demands they
should place before the king’s commissioners for the enforcement of
the edict of pacification”. The consuls of Romans turned to a certain
Marcel, a “lawyer from Grenoble”, “presently in the commissioners’
retinue”. In this way, as Olivier Christin observed, pacification was “a
boon to jurists”.49
In their complaints, the petitioners had to adopt a precise gram-
mar, formulated in detail by the commissioners. The conditions laid
down by the latter forbade insults; on the contrary, petitioners should
express their intention to seek the common good and not only the
benefit of a confessional group. It follows that the corpus of com-
plaints sent to the agents of the Crown is free from any offensive
name calling: Huguenots were never labeled “heretics”, but rather as
belonging to the “alleged religion”, in sharp contrast to contemporary
pamphlet literature. And Catholics were no longer called “papists.” In
the archives, the proliferation of trials for insult shows the progress of
this policing of language as a tangible element of peaceful coexistence.
Jehan de Mercieu did not hesitate to go to court to “obtain redress”
for having been called a “Huguenot” in Dardilly. At the same time,
a potter from Amiens lodged a complaint for having been “called a
Huguenot”. Rewarded with 20 sous for damages, he gained more by
complaining than by fighting.50 In the same way, the plaintiffs’ argu-
ments were strictly secularized: one could no longer hope to win in
court by claiming to be a better Christian, but rather by presenting the
most convincing argument, the one most in compliance with the law.
This ceaseless to and fro between local and national horizons is
manifest in the first motive for complaint (one-fifth of all affairs),
namely questions of worship. Charles IX’s commissioners had to pro-
vide the Huguenots with churches: in addition to the two churches
they held inside cities when peace was concluded (on March 7, 1563,
for the Edict of Amboise and August 1, 1570, for the Edict of Saint-
Germain respectively), Huguenots were entitled to one church in the
suburbs of a city in each bailliage by the Edict of Amboise and two
in each government district by the Edict of Saint-Germain. But where
was this place of worship to be established? Was it to be established

49
Olivier Christin, La paix de religion . . . , 104.
50
AD Rhône, BP 314; AM Amiens, CC 178, fol. 42 vo.
256 jérémie foa

in the region’s principal city or, on the contrary, in some remote vil-
lage? Was it to look like a true place of worship, with a real dignity,
an obvious focal point, or, on the contrary, would it have to remain
discrete and worshippers to be satisfied with the featureless facade of
a private house? If the Huguenots had a stake in obtaining a nearby,
representative place, the Catholics’ aim was just the opposite—to place
the Huguenot church as far away as possible. In all the complaints they
sent the commissioners for this purpose, the Huguenots demanded
churches nearby, not on grounds of salvation, but always on grounds
of public order: a remote site would force them into clandestinity and
thereby arouse new disorders. Similarly, the Catholics’ arguments to
keep the churches at a distance never mentioned the threat that such
a presence posed to their salvation, nor even the fear of heretical “pol-
lution”. If these underlying confessional motives remained unspoken,
the rules of the game forced the Catholics to stress the economic or
military risks connected with the construction of a Huguenot church.
To this end, the use of “perverse effect” rhetoric, that is to say
“warning” about the unexpected risks of too close a Huguenot church,
became the favored weapon of the anti-church petitioners. It allowed
the opponents, while claiming to adhere to, even to applaud, the proj-
ect of peaceful coexistence, to denounce the means implemented to
reach this goal. This technique of secularizing arguments is quite obvi-
ous in Nantes, where the aldermen with help from the clergy used
all the wealth of their empirical knowledge of the city to avoid the
installation of a reformed place of worship: in their presentation, the
suburb of Beauregard is not a highly sacred place and thus incompat-
ible with the celebration of the Huguenot cult; it is not profaned by
the church, but rather is “a small island on the bridges”, which indi-
cates clearly the inconvenience for “the king and the city [should the
Huguenots] control the crossing of the bridges”. The aldermen warned
the commissioners of the unfortunate consequences for business if a
Huguenot church were to be built in this suburb (“with this celebra-
tion of services, trade would be entirely interrupted”).51 This argument
allowed the debate to be confined outside of the religious field, that is
to say, to politicize it, while giving it a technical form. The impartial
criterion of the kingdom’s security offered an acceptable replacement
for the inadmissible religious criterion. It matters little that the sub-

51
AM Nantes, GG 643, 3 (1564).
 peace commissioners 257

jects never confessed what really worried them, what truly bothered
their conscience or motivated them to act as they did, whether fear for
their salvation or hope for their adversaries’ damnation. What matters
is the obligation they felt to articulate their opposition in a technical
and legal way, in order to convince the commissioner and, along with
him, the Crown. What is important is that they forced themselves to
keep silent about the confessional motivations for their confrontations
and instead based their justifications on a secularized formula of the
common good, in a “seesaw of arguments” that Jon Elster christened
the “civilizing strength of hypocrisy”.52
As the place par excellence where religious conflict was immedi-
ately translated into political arguments, the question of the location
of Huguenot churches facilitated the legal, or rather technical, con-
version of religious confrontations. Here, more than anywhere else,
it became essential for the believers to put up a convincing front and
to collect the essential technical information, the forgotten detail that
would prohibit or, on the contrary, legitimize the installation of the
church, the one that carried the day would have proven, not how
the salvation of all was threatened, but rather how the fundamental
interests of most of the inhabitants suffered or benefited from such a
presence. From this followed the obligatory detour through economic
advantage or military strategy (“the nearby countries are not without
suspicion of disorders, as is evidenced by the recent news of the sur-
prise attempted in Lorraine”), the behavior of the crowds (“crowding
together of persons of opposing religions in a so small place would be
an occasion for popular violence”), young people’s behavior (“students
of both religions could always produce some dissension”), sociological
analysis (the place is “inhabited by bargemen and fishermen”),53 etc.
In their judgments, commissioners thus had to take into account
not only the law of the prince and all of these “warnings”, but also
the balance of power between Huguenots and Catholics, and, depend-
ing upon the circumstances, they had to authorize construction of a
church more or less distant from the principal city. In places where
the Protestants were numerous, rich, well supported politically, or par-
ticipant in city government, they were able to secure closer places of

52
Jon Elster, “Argumenter et négocier dans deux Assemblées constituantes”, Revue
française de science politique, 44 (1994): 186–256, cit., 191.
53
AM Nantes, GG 643, pièce 3 (1564).
258 jérémie foa

worship. Conversely, wherever they were meagrely endowed, their

places of worship were remote and erected in places with a high
concentration of negative characteristics. The Huguenots of Lyon,
for example, had to make do with Quincieu, which they described
despairingly as an “old clod of earth”.54 In reaching their decisions, the
commissioners employed a justice of conciliation, closer to medieval
traditions than to modern conceptions of justice, but also quicker to
pacify conflicting parties than implementation of the law at all costs.

Forgiveness as a Way for Peace

In Lyon, a Catholic witness affirmed that the demand for an exhaus-

tive restoration of possessions seized during the wars set the inhab-
itants against one another—in particular the Catholics against the
Protestants—more than the military confrontations had. Claude de
Rubys asserted that the Catholics were summoned daily before com-
missioner Jean Jacques de Mesmes “for frivolous things and of little
value, such as for the return of a parrot, an anvil, a jar of fat, a pound
of candles, and an infinite number of other things of the same sort”.
He concluded that the actions of the commissioner had tragically “ani-
mated the inhabitants of the city against one another more than all
the disorders and past civil wars had done: and this wound continued
bleeding until the news arrived of the action taken against the Protes-
tants on Saint Bartholomew’s Sunday, August 24, 1572”. We need not
accept Claude de Ruby’s charges against the commissioners to realize
that pacification and justice did not always go hand in hand.
The commissioners, more than the inhabitants, had a keen con-
sciousness of the irreversibility of the “time of troubles”. Through their
daily actions, they knew that not everything was reparable, neither
the deaths, nor the wounds. More than justice, they sought concord.
No one could return Gilbert Douxsaintz, a Huguenot from Clermont
killed during the Corpus Christi procession of 1568, to his inconsolable
widow. Despite the request for reparations she presented, the commis-
sioners refused to pursue the culprits. In Lisieux, a few years earlier,
in August 1563, commissioners Viole and La Guesle had imposed
a similar “silence” on Christine Hébert, a Catholic, concerning the

54
AM Lyon, GG 77, fol. 2 (1571).
 peace commissioners 259

murder of her husband, killed in a confrontation with Huguenots that

occurred during the disorders of the first civil war.55 Forgetting served
to strengthen the peace and avoid the renewal of conflicts, which a too
pointed inquiry could not fail to bring about.
In Saint Maixent, the commissioners wrote to the king to tell him
that peace was favored by such a selectivity: the inhabitants “gave up
part of their vengeances and their hope to get it by means of our com-
mission”. When the commissioners declared to the inhabitants that
“what they complained was forgiven and abolished”, was peace facili-
tated or pretexts given to those, deprived of justice, who would take up
arms to have the revenge that the court refused to them? Inhabitants
had to give up the reopening of a cycle of vengeance, not their own
memories. But the commissioners always had to take into account the
balance of power—and much fewer legal standards—when they made
themselves censors and rewrote history with their complaints, when
they moralized it by sorting out legitimate and illegitimate conflicts.
Obviously, one had more chances to keep the goods acquired during
the disorders, to escape revenge or persecution, if he was more pow-
erful. The politics of forgiveness then contributed to the concentra-
tion of precious power in the hands of the king—the one of changing
confrontations into glorious exploits or into news items. The monarch
and his commissioners, thus, gained a capital of loyalty from those
who took advantage of their generosity, who would put their hearts
into protecting a peace that was in their favor, and who were courted
all the more since they were numerous. Forgiveness yielded thus a
profit to be reinvested and used for the benefit of pacification, the
benefit of “notabilization”, as well as the benefit of dominion. Making
peace required privileging political considerations over juridical ones.
The agents of the king preferred forgiveness to systematic repair,
following the Edict of Amboise, which decreed that “any insults and
offense that the injustice of time had generated between our subjects,
and all other things past and caused by these present tumults, would
stay switched off, as died, buried and not happened” The “not hap-
pened” expression celebrated the magic of the operation—turning
back the clock, rewriting history—that is, the miracle carried out by
the politics of reconciliation. While refusing forgiveness, the inhabit-
ants were condemned to blame themselves ceaselessly for the past and

55
BNF, Ms. fr. 16221, fol. 122 vo.
260 jérémie foa

to see ad infinitum the renewal of conflicts. In Amiens, as everywhere

else, the commissioners thus ordered the inhabitants not “to scold
and provoke the one the other by criticism of what has happened”.
A possible coexistence required inhabitants not only to trust in the
future (promoted by the oath), but also to forget the past. It is why the
commissioners hoped to confine the future by oath and attempted to
cancel the past by forgiveness.
The possibility of a peace was based on a political negation of the
inherent limits of human time. Politics, indeed, allowed the commis-
sioners to deny the irreversibility of the past by encouraging forgive-
ness, as well as to decrease the uncertainty of the future by the swearing
oaths. Living together during the religious confrontations thus required
playing human political powers against human anthropological limits.
That could only strengthen the state, manipulator par excellence of
this symbolic reformulation of temporal borders. As Hannah Arendt
noted, living with the “other” is the condition of forgiveness quite as
that of promise (because nothing can force a man to forgive himself,
and a promise sworn to one’s self is not very binding);56 the religious
confrontations, as they arose from the daily presence of the “other”,
precipitated the process of politicization of society. By making more
imperative the necessity of forgetting and committing, the civil wars
precipitated the formation of the modern political state. Finally, if the
commissioners remained nomads and their pacificatory work never
became long-lasting, it remains necessary to present the spaces of
debate they created as a means to facilitate the adoption of peaceful
behaviors by the subjects of the king.

Peace through Local-level Politics

During the wars, city council and consulates became homogeneous in

their religious observance, the dominant confession having excluded
from power the members of the minority confession. This was the
case in Troyes, in Lyon, and in Montauban for example. As a result,
confessional conflict could no longer be expressed peacefully, could no
longer occur without damage to civic unity. It is all the more regret-
table, because the coexistence of two opposite confessions in a single

56
Hannah Arendt, La Condition de l’homme moderne, (1961; repr. Paris: 1983),
301–314.
 peace commissioners 261

territory generated countless conflicts that had to be mediated. Lacking

such mediation, they found resolution in the streets, in blood. The after-
math of the religious wars did not bring an end to religious conflict,
but rather provided it a strict frame of expression: symbolic spaces
regulated by standards of debate and decision that were not violent;
religious validation of political processes that forced the consent of the
opponents. In Grenoble, for example, a city violently torn by competing
confessions, the consuls decreed in December 1563, at the request of
the commissioners, that “from now, those who would want to pray to
God in the councils would do so in a low voice and in secret freely”.
The necessity of secularizing the decision-making space resulted from
that confessional coexistence, implemented by the commissioners.
They ordered in a systematic way that subjects of both confessions
be allowed “in the councils”, independently of their relative, demo-
graphic importance. In September, 1563, the commissioner La Mad-
eleine authorized the Huguenots of Briançon to attend continuously
the general assemblies “with deliberative voice”; this offered them a
chance to politicize their opposition—that is, at once to demilitarize
and secularize it. At the same time, the commissioner Pot de Chemault
decreed in Blois that “general assemblies for the business of the city”
would include the Huguenots. The commissioners even went so far
as fixing quotas, as they did in Aix in October 1564, by ordering that
“those of the new religion” would constitute one-quarter of the council.
The measure was extraordinary on two counts and attested a greater
interventionism on the part of the Crown in the municipal political
management: first, the commissioner place the Huguenots in the heart
of power in a city with a Catholic majority; and second, he cancelled
the former election of hardly one month earlier, that is September 24,
1564, made “according to the traditional way”. The agents of the peace
went even farther in Lyon, Gap, Millau, Nîmes, Béziers, Montpellier,
and Vienne by imposing the election of an equal number of Catholic
and Huguenot consuls. When such an intervention in the “local liber-
ties” seemed impossible, the commissioners attempted to bypass the
consulate by refusing to mediate its confessional disputes. They thus
instituted a parallel, mixed authority, the task of which was to calm
these conflicts. This is what they undertook in Romans, negotiating the
creation of an assembly of 30 men, 15 Catholics and 15 Huguenots,
in charge of the daily problems created by confessional coexistence.57

57
AM Romans, BB 10, fol. 109 (October 1563).
262 jérémie foa

As the traditional appeal to restore the sacred was powerless, the

commissioners found in the political space a privileged place for the re-
creation of social consensus; as it was impossible to resort, as formerly,
to processions or masses to restore peace and unity, the community
was invited to mend itself in those man-made spaces. Distinguishing
the corps of citizens from the corps of believers, the Crown dissolved
the unity of the mystic corps of the city. It created a secular public
community “which was not a break of the link with God, of course,
but was the recognition of the human part, thus of the contingent, in
the political construction”.58 In this autonomous space, affairs dealing
with the salvation of the believers would not been decided; henceforth,
they would be reserved to the churches only. This mixed management
offered a deconsecrated future: the secular political space would con-
cern itself exclusively with the collection of the taxes, the preservation
of weapons, the renovation of bulwarks, the purification of streets, the
organization of the holidays, etc.
By facilitating the access of minorities to city hall, the commission-
ers encouraged a commitment to the political space, competent from
now on to resolve disputes among the inhabitants. Opponents granted
a new importance to political methods. Struggling to achieve a posi-
tion of strength within these political assemblies, from the city councils
to the consulates, the inhabitants attested to an important modifica-
tion in the tactics of confessional confrontation and mobilization. In
these spaces, invented by royal commissioners and appropriated by
local inhabitants, the pacification of inter-confessional relations was
achieved from below as well as above.
During the religious wars, the state had no means, neither material
nor intellectuals, to impose from the top a peace nobody wanted. On
the contrary, fragile as it was, the peace fed on ceaseless exchanges
between the state and the localities and built itself upon permanent
negotiation between the Crown and its subject. It was not a matter
of dissolving political hierarchies, monarchical authority, or Catholic
domination into a negotiated order of social exchanges, nor of suc-
cumbing to the illusion of a juridical communism that would make
everyone equally competent agents in negotiating peace. The question
is: how, on the ground and through the mediation of the commis-

58
Arlette Jouanna, “L’Edit de Nantes et le processus de sécularisation de l’Etat”,
Paix des armes, paix des âmes, (Paris: 2000), 481–489.
 peace commissioners 263

sioners, did monarchical prescriptions undergo tests of validity, from

which they might be adopted, amended, or rejected, as the case may
be? And how, in return, did new, local solutions pass tests of perti-
nence before commissioners who could, at any time, deny or accept
them and then submit them for the Crown’s approval? In this respect,
we can consider the commissioners “public intermediaries”, whose
task was to validate or invalidate both the juridical orders of the state
and local-empirical solutions.59

Table 4—Friendship pacts under the reign of Charles IX

Ville Date
Grenade-sur-Garonne May 1562i First civil war
Chalon-sur-Saône May 18, 1562ii (March 1, 1562–March 19,
1563)
Lectoure April 15, 1564 Peace of Amboise
Valence October 8, 1565 (March 1563–September
1567)
Vienne September 29, 1567
Montélimar October 1, 1567
Orange October 2, 1567 2nd civil war
Casteljaloux October 1567iii (September 1567–March
Mâcon October 3, 1567iv 23, 1568)
Caen October 3, 1567
Annonay October (?), 1567
Nant August 1568v
St-Lrt des Arbres August 14, 1568vi 3rd civil war
Nyons September 12, 1568vii (September 1569–August
Nyons September 28, 1568viii 8, 1570)

59
Alain Cottereau “Dénis de justice, dénis de réalité: remarques sur la réalité sociale
et sa dénégation”, in Renaud Dulong, Pascale Gruson, (eds.), L’expérience du déni
(Paris: 1999), 159–189; idem, “Droit et bon droit. Un droit des ouvriers instauré, puis
évincé par le droit du travail (France, XIXe siècle),” Annales, 6 (2002): 1521–1557.
264 jérémie foa

Table 4 (cont.)
Ville Date
Nîmes August 30, 1572ix
Nyons August 31, 1572x
Chalon-sur-Saône August 31, 1572xi
Casteljaloux September 1, 1572xii 4th civil war
Millau September 2, 1572xiii (October. 1572–July 1573)
Compeyre September 10, 1572xiv
Saint-Affrique September 14, 1572xv
Barre-des-Cévennes September 19, 1572xvi
i
AD Haute Garonne, 3 E 11400, fol. 108 v°–109 (minutier du notaire Algayrès,
année 1562).
ii
Claude Perry, Histoire ecclésiastique et civile ancienne et moderne de la ville et
cité de Chalons sur Saone (Chalon-sur-Saône: 1659), 327: “les habitans faisans profes-
sion de l’une et de l’autre religion vivroient paisiblement ensemble et conformement
aux edicts du Roy”.
iii
Jean-François Samazeuilh, Histoire de l’Agenais, du Condomois et du Bazadais
(1847–1848), 130–134.
iv
Ami Bost, Histoire de l’église protestante de Mâcon (Mâcon: 1977), 134.
v
Elie Mazel, Les Guerres de religion à Nant et le pays d’extrême Haute-Marche
du Rouergue (Carrère: 1920) 39 sq. On September 11, 1568, Nant was in Protestant
hands.
vi
AD Vaucluse, 1 G 258, fol. 46–48.
vii
Pacts of Lyon, Vienne, Montélimar, Orange, Caen, Annonay, and Saint-Laurent-
des-Arbres have been published by O. Christin, La paix de religion. L’autonomisation
de la raison politique au XVIe siècle (Paris: 1997), 311–318.
viii
Baudoin, Histoire de la Ligue en Bourgogne, t. I, 369.
ix
AM Nîmes, LL 11 (30 août 1572), in Léon Menard, Histoire de la ville de, Nîmes
(ed. Rediva:, 1989, 1st ed. 1750), t. 5, 62.
x
AM Nyons, BB 5, fol. 32 vo sq.
xi
AM Chalon-sur-Saône, BB 5, fol. 208.
xii
AD Lot et Garonne, E SUP 2386 (AM Casteljaloux, BB 1).
xiii
AM Millau, CC 42, 2e.
xiv
AM Millau, CC 42, 2e inv., non numérotée.
xv
O. Christin, “Amis, frères et concitoyens. Ceux qui refusèrent la Saint-Barthélemy
(1572)”, Cahiers de la Villa Gillet, 11 ( 2000): 71–94 (The original document is pre-
served in the Archives Nationales, TT 268 (1), fol. 169 sq.).
xvi
Jean-Paul Chabrol, La Cévenne au village. Barre des Cévennes sous l’Ancien
régime: 1560–1830 (Aix-en-Provence: 1983), 182–183.
 ONE TOWN, TWO FAITHS: UNITY AND EXCLUSION
DURING THE FRENCH RELIGIOUS WARS

Penny Roberts

Sixteenth-century France might not seem like the most promising

context for an exploration of the dynamics of multiconfessionalism.
The French religious wars were among the most bloody and hard-
fought conflicts of the era and were characterised more by division
and confrontation than by harmony and coexistence. That said, recent
studies have suggested that, in the interests of stability and security,
substantial efforts were made at both a central and a local level to
establish some form of modus vivendi between the faiths.1 Neverthe-
less, major obstacles still remained and were to pose a formidable
challenge to the peace-making measures employed by royal commis-
sioners and local officials alike throughout the kingdom. Not least of
these was the sheer variety and complexity of local circumstances and
the necessity for negotiation and mediation between different interest
groups. Achieving parity of provision on a nationwide scale, such that
both faiths were able to practice their worship on equal terms, was an
impossible task. The provincially-minded nature of the French polity
weakened royal efforts to establish uniformity in the day-to-day prac-
ticalities of religious coexistence within communities. As Ben Kaplan
has remarked, “Looser state structures, like those of the empire and
confederation, could accommodate multiconfessionalism more easily”
than could centralized monarchies, such as France.2
Above all, such tensions played out in an urban context, for it was
in the towns of France that the majority of the Protestant or Hugue-
not population was concentrated. Within some of these communities,
Huguenots were able to form a substantial enough minority to assert

1
Olivier Christin, “La coexistence confessionnelle, 1563–1567,” Bulletin de la
Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français (1995): 483–504; Jérémie Foa, “Making
Peace: the Commissions for Enforcing the Pacification Edicts in the Reign of Charles
IX (1560–1574),” French History, 18 (2004): 256–74; Penny Roberts, “Royal Authority
and Justice during the French Religious Wars,” Past and Present, 184 (2004): 3–32.
2
Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Tol-
eration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge MA: 2007), 232.
266 penny roberts

themselves and, so, might be perceived to pose a threat to public order.

Thus, the “one town, two faiths” of my title is not just a play on the
ancien régime aphorism “one king, one law, one faith”, but a refer-
ence to the strain of upholding urban unity in the face of confessional
division. It therefore reflects the situation in which the ruling elites of
many French towns found themselves during the wars, struggling to
maintain the peace which, as a result of religious tensions, the actions
of inhabitants of both faiths threatened to disrupt. At the same time,
royal authorities put pressure on municipal officials to reconcile local
differences. Despite the controversy it generated, the promotion of
confessional harmony was a policy pursued by the crown from early in
the wars. The practical measures designed to achieve this end would,
however, prove controversial and shall be the focus here. Special com-
missioners were sent to the provinces to implement the edicts as well
as to resolve resulting disputes in situ.3 As tensions increased, so the
conditions of such provision became increasingly circumscribed and
difficult to enforce. Partly, this was due to the fact that the crown never
envisaged toleration as anything other than a temporary solution to an
intractable problem. This was explicitly stated in the Edict of January
and in subsequent legislation, “in order to maintain our subjects in
peace and concord, until God permits us to reunite and return them
to the same fold”.4 The ultimate goal was the restoration of religious,
specifically Catholic, unity.
Although toleration was viewed in the 16th century in this restrictive
and conditional way, its promotion by the monarchy was nevertheless
contentious.5 It was embodied in a series of royal edicts, legislative
pronouncements produced at intervals prior to as well as throughout
the wars, which sought to resolve the confessional conflicts within the
kingdom.6 In order to enforce the required measures, while attempting
not to enflame local tensions, the authorities had to tread warily. The

3
On their deployment, see Foa, “Making Peace” and Roberts, “Royal Authority
and Justice”.
4
http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/editsdepacification/edit1.php. Also in André Stegmann
(ed.), Édits des guerres de religion (Paris: 1979), 10.
5
On contemporary understandings of toleration, see Mario Turchetti, “Religious
Concord and Political Tolerance,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 22 (1991): 15–25; Wil-
liam H. Huseman, “The Expression of the Idea of Toleration in French during the
Sixteenth Century,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 15 (1984): 293–310.
6
Most notably in the early 1560s; then in 1563, 1568, 1570, 1576, 1577, 1579, 1580,
and 1598—the so-called edicts of pacification. See Stegmann, Édits. Full texts of the
edicts can be located at: http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/editsdepacification/
 one town, two faiths 267

importance of local concerns and sensitivities had to be gauged, such

as how each faith might be enabled to carry out its devotions with-
out causing offence to the other, or how the retention or surrender
of weaponry on either side might be negotiated. The distribution of
space in a 16th-century town, its outer limits demarcated by perimeter
walls, heightened tensions at vital thresholds and meeting points, such
as street corners, public squares, and especially at the town gates. In
order for confrontations between the faiths to be avoided, such practi-
cal and physical constraints as well as strategic considerations needed
to be taken into account. At the same time, they served to limit the
effectiveness of the edicts as well as the room for maneuver of those
charged with enforcing them.
In particular, the provision after 1562 of places where the Reformed
minority might worship was vehemently contested.7 The outcome in
most cases was not truly biconfessional since, unlike for Catholic devo-
tions, a number of restrictions were placed by the crown on where and
when Reformed worship was allowed. In addition, as a result of local
Catholic opposition, the sites provided were often increasingly remote
from the community to which they were allocated. The provision of
separate cemeteries for the Huguenot dead further cemented the phys-
ical and symbolic separation of the religious minority from the wider
community.8 Yet, neither did royal policy equate to segregation, since
no prohibition was placed on where Huguenots might live within a
locality. Nevertheless, neighborly relations could become tense; the
carrying of arms was sometimes deemed necessary during a time of
war, but increased suspicion on both sides of the other’s intentions.
Thus, despite concession and compromise, against a backdrop of civil
strife and contested rights, the development of multiconfessionalism
in France would be a fraught and protracted process.
Tellingly, the monarchy itself and the city of Paris were excluded
from the provision of Reformed worship, which was forbidden within

7
The Edict of January 1562, issued just a few months before the outbreak of war,
was the first to allow freedom of worship; specific sites were not designated until the
end of the first war in 1563. For more on this issue, see Penny Roberts, “The Most
Crucial Battle of the Wars of Religion? The Conflict over Sites for Reformed Worship
in Sixteenth-Century France,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 89 (1998): 247–67.
8
Penny Roberts, “Contesting Sacred Space: Burial Disputes in Sixteenth-Century
France” in Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall (eds), The Place of the Dead: Death and
Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, UK: 2000),
131–48.
268 penny roberts

two leagues of wherever the court was residing and from the environs
of the kingdom’s capital.9 Furthermore, tense and sometimes violent
confrontations, mutual recrimination, and distrust between the faiths
in many communities were not conducive to declarations of amity
and reconciliation. Nevertheless, in the interests of keeping the public
peace, the authorities were mindful of the need to secure undertakings
from both sides that they would refrain from internecine hostilities.
Consent was achieved by appealing to notions of obedience and loy-
alty to the monarchy, whose support was vital to further the cause
of either faith, as well as to the “common good” or bien publique of
the community as a whole. The monarch was designated “king of all”,
underlining the responsibility of both faiths to observe his authority.10
Demonstrably, in a confessionally-divided Europe, the allegiance of
religious minorities to those who ruled over them could often be
called into question. Less often recognised, loyalty to the community
in which one resided was considered equally vital and would prove to
be a much-disputed battleground between Huguenot and Catholic, as
demonstrated in claim and counter-claim in many localities through-
out the religious wars.
In such circumstances, suspicion and distrust were easily generated
on both sides, largely focused around the provision of, and obstacles
to, both faiths’ ability to carry out their devotions in peace. As a result,
there was tension between the royal emphasis on the need for unity
to hold the kingdom together, predicated on the obligation to provide
places of worship for both faiths, and the response of local communi-
ties when faced with the practicalities of enforcing coexistence. Divided
beliefs were equated with divided loyalties that might disrupt the ties
which bound the community together, such as parochial responsibili-
ties, and might even lead to betrayal of the town to external forces.
Maintenance of the peace was a vital consideration for the authorities
in upholding an orderly urban community. As a result, despite fierce
confessional division and outbursts of popular violence, there were
attempts in a number of French towns to establish “friendship pacts”

9
Bibliothèque Nationale de France [hereafter BNF], Imprimés, F 46827, no. 11 (24
June 1564): “this worship will cease for the time that we remain there. And indeed a
little after”. The exclusion zone around Paris fluctuated in size, but even in 1576, when
worship was otherwise unrestricted, it was set at two leagues.
10
A phrase used in Lettres de Catherine des Médicis, H. de La Ferrière and B. de
Puchesse (eds.), 10 vols. (Paris: 1880–1943), iii, 167–8 (July/Aug.1568).
 one town, two faiths 269

between the faiths during the wars.11 Even where no formal provision
was made, many communities were predisposed to hope that the faiths
could live peacefully alongside one another in the interests of the com-
mon good. It was when the interests of the individual faith cut across
these communal solidarities that trouble flared up, suspicion returned,
offence was given, and exclusion was reinforced.
Yet, no matter how often and how sincerely oaths were taken and
declarations made for the faiths to live amicably and peacefully together
in French towns, the practical provision of worship undermined this
harmonious facade. The presence of Huguenots and notions of confes-
sional coexistence were accepted, but Reformed services were gener-
ally excluded from the intramural community, and often even from
the town suburbs. Threats to prevailing peace and unity were cited to
argue that only the distancing of worship would defuse the tensions
that such open displays of the Reformed faith invariably ignited. In
Nantes, Catholic remonstrances highlighted the “danger of ruining the
town, its trade and commerce” if services were allowed that attracted
foreigners and others into the town.12 Further disruption was caused
by the public singing of psalms “day and night”, assaults on Catholic
clergy, and the “outraging and offending” of those guarding the city
gate nearest the designated site of worship. Thus, in order to avoid
such risks to public order, security, and economic prosperity, services
should be removed to “the suburbs of another town” six to seven
leagues away. This assessment was vehemently challenged by Prot-
estant inhabitants, who claimed that local trade had benefitted from
their presence, and distancing a site was far more disruptive, resulting
in “disturbances and assaults”.13 Above all, a distinction was made here
between the officially-sanctioned toleration of another faith on the one
hand, and of the destabilising effect of its practices on the public peace
on the other.
Thus, while the ideal of unity was upheld by royal officials, rep-
resentatives of either faith, or the collective authorities and inhabit-
ants of a town, it was also used to promote one side’s interests over
those of its opponents. The resulting tensions between the desire for
social unity and communal harmony and the impact of confessional

11
See Christin, “La coexistence confessionnelle” and Foa’s essay in this volume.
12
BNF, Manuscrits français [hereafter MS fr] 15581, fols. 335–41.
13
BNF, MS fr 15581, fols. 373–4.
270 penny roberts

division in French towns were characteristic of the religious wars. As

the conflict developed, the seizure of towns by forces on either side,
but more particularly by the Huguenot minority during the first and
second wars, as well as the mistreatment suffered during war-time,
including harassment, intimidation, and acts of violence, made the
faiths extremely wary of one another’s intentions despite declarations
of peace. The authorities sought to reconcile the faiths to one another
through proper application of the law, embodied in royal justice.14
The more prescriptive the legislation, however, the more it reinforced
rather than reduced existing divisions, arguably promoting sectarian
division rather than harmonious coexistence. While all could agree
that maintenance of the peace was vital, the practical concessions that
were invoked to achieve this end proved controversial. Municipal offi-
cials were caught between the pressure to enforce royal declarations
and the forceful sensibilities of the local inhabitants. This highlights
the fundamental tension between the interests of the majority and the
accommodation of the needs of a minority. Despite appeals to Chris-
tian unity, social exclusion was often the end result.
In her article “The Sacred and the Body Social”, Natalie Davis
examined Catholic and Huguenot uses of space in 16th-century Lyon
through, as she puts it, “social interaction within the town walls”,
emphasizing the faiths’ “differing interpretations of urban space, time
and community”.15 More recently, Jérémie Foa and Andrew Spicer
have explored similar themes in the conflicting use of urban space.16
While Foa focuses on the spatial exclusion of the Huguenot minority
within urban communities, Spicer demonstrates how Catholics reas-
serted their control of urban space in Orléans. In Lyon, Davis argues,
“Catholic space was full of special places and sacred spots”, intensified
by Protestant iconoclastic purging as the town was reordered follow-
ing the successful Protestant coup in 1562, while Spicer asserts that
“the Reformers dismissed the idea that any place could be more holy
than another”.17 In Lyon and Orléans, we have towns where each faith

14
Roberts, “Royal Authority and Justice”.
15
Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Sacred and the Body Social in Sixteenth-Century
Lyon,” Past and Present, 90 (1981): 40–70, quotations, 42, 52.
16
Jérémie Foa, “An Unequal Apportionment: the Conflict over Space between
Protestants and Catholics at the Beginning of the Wars of Religion,” French History,
20 (2006): 369–86; Andrew Spicer, “(Re)Building the Sacred Landscape: Orléans,
1560–1610,” French History, 21 (2007): 247–68.
17
Davis, “The Sacred,” 52; Spicer, “(Re)Building,” 248.
 one town, two faiths 271

had a period of dominance so that their different approaches can be

easily contrasted; such a comparison is more difficult when dealing
with the more usual situation of a marginalized minority that was
never able to assert its position except in reaction to Catholic hege-
mony. Confessional relations are thus more often viewed through the
lens of direct clashes between Protestant and Catholic inhabitants than
through everyday attempts at coexistence, however fraught.
Religious devotions, such as Catholic processions, have long been
recognised as a particular flashpoint for conflict between the faiths
in French towns. For Davis, Catholic processions traditionally pro-
moted unity of space, while during the religious wars, as Foa remarks,
“processions took on a sectarian and polemical significance”, and for
Spicer, “also served as a means to purify the city from the violation
of the ritual landscape by the Huguenots”.18 Meanwhile, other histo-
rians have discussed similar causes of confessional conflict over the
use of communal space, specifically in relation to burial and cemetery
disputes, during both the 16th and 17th centuries.19 The allocation
of the site of les Terreaux in Lyon not only offended religious sen-
sibilities, but was held to have been “usurped” from the community,
a claim refuted by local Huguenots.20 Keith Luria’s emphasis on the
construction, transgression, and negotiation of confessional boundar-
ies is instructive when considering the most contentious issues.21 In
particular, a pivotal role was played by the location of Reformed wor-
ship in promoting a sense of Huguenot exclusion, as well as a very real
physical distancing of their devotions.22
The prohibition of Reformed worship within town walls and at night,
established prior to the wars in the January edict of 1562 and upheld
thereafter, had enormous symbolic value as well as practical implica-
tions. While Huguenots could reside within urban communities and
were not to be molested for matters of conscience or private prayer
within their homes, for the more public acts of collective worship and

18
Foa, “Unequal apportionment,” 380; Spicer, “(Re)Building,” 262.
19
Keith Luria, “Separated by Death? Burials, Cemeteries, and Confessional Bound-
aries in Seventeenth-Century France,” French Historical Studies, 24 (2001): 185–22;
Roberts, “Contesting Sacred Space”.
20
Archives Municipales de [hereafter AM] Lyon, GG 78, no. 21, i, fol. 3v (Jan.
1572).
21
Keith P. Luria, Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early-
Modern France (Washington, DC: 2005).
22
Roberts, “The Most Crucial Battle”.
272 penny roberts

reception of the sacraments they were forced out beyond the town
gates. This effective expulsion from the town and, therefore, from the
community made them vulnerable to attack, at the gates themselves or
elsewhere on their journey to and from services. In Dijon, for instance,
in March 1564, local Huguenots complained that every week, “almost
ordinarily on the way out and return, they have been insulted and
threatened by several gatekeepers and their supporters”.23 It was all
too easy for opponents to lie in wait at the gate giving access to the
route to the designated site at the customary time when the Huguenots
departed or returned. They were thus forced to run the gauntlet of
intimidation and possible assault. As a result, the shift from a clan-
destine often underground existence to public and legal recognition
of the Huguenots’ right to worship, contrary to expectations, in many
places restricted rather than improved the provision of Reformed
services. Huguenots, who had previously worshipped in each other’s
houses, in public open spaces or buildings within towns, or even in
local churches, were forced to attend services at designated sites that
were far less convenient and accessible.
In contrast, Catholic access to churches was safeguarded and unre-
stricted. In those towns where the Reformed represented the majority
faith, such as at La Rochelle, there were attempts by the Huguenots
to obstruct Catholic provision, but their appeals fell largely on deaf
ears. Furthermore, attempts to retain the use of ecclesiastical buildings
were largely unsuccessful, except in the short term in towns such as
Grenoble and Valence. The provocative use of bells to announce ser-
vices was also prohibited in royal legislation against “using churches,
bells and other religious items at Huguenot services”.24 Meanwhile,
the new measures restricting Reformed worship handed local Cath-
olic inhabitants the grounds for opposing nearby sites, on the basis
that they would be disruptive of local peace and order, or threatened
regional or even national security. The frequent clashes that had arisen
in the past as a result of the faiths worshipping in close proximity to
one another could be easily cited. One such was the notorious incident
in the parish of Saint-Médard in a Parisian suburb in December 1561,
which was said to have been sparked off by the ringing of bells during

23
AM Dijon, D 63 (8 Mar. 1564).
24
F. A. Isambert, Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, depuis l’an 420, jusqu’à
la Revolution de 1789 (Paris: 1829), xiv (1559–1589), 228 (7 Sept. 1564).
 one town, two faiths 273

a Protestant sermon.25 It resulted in a violent confrontation between

Catholic and Huguenot congregations, some fatalities, and mutual
accusations of blame. Such episodes served to discourage any change of
heart in royal policy when it came to the allocation of extramural sites.
This is not to say that Huguenots were secure within the town walls
either, as those in Paris found to their cost in August 1572, when the
gate of Saint-Germain was closed during the St. Bartholomew’s Day
massacre.26 Violent incidents on the streets and an irregular policy of
house arrest during war-time, in communities right across France, also
bore witness to Huguenot vulnerability. Even at less fraught times,
their presence could provoke resentment, as urban streets were easily
permeated by the sights, sounds, and smells emanating from domestic
activities. When these transgressed religious prohibitions and custom
regarding when one could work, how one should act, what one could
eat, and what one should say, violence could ensue. The ebb and flow
of the conflict must have increased Huguenot fears of exposure and
intimidation as they stepped out onto the streets or even as they sat
within their homes with the external noise of holy day processions and
festivities passing by. Their refusal to participate in the usual parochial
obligations, such as the decoration of their houses on holidays or con-
tributions to parish-related collections or observances, must have hit
a nerve with their Catholic neighbors. Unsurprisingly, the “body of
believers” was fractured by such actions.27
Furthermore, the leaving of the town to attend services would have
seemed like a public act of defiance and rejection of those commu-
nal bonds which urban inhabitants held dear. Rather than heading
to their parish church, where those bonds of community were rein-
forced, Huguenots set out for the gates that severed them; an action
that made it awkward for the customary bonds to be renewed on
their return. It was through the town gates, too, that they would leave
and return during periods of temporary exile with each declaration
of war or subsequent peace, underlining their exclusion. What would
have reinforced still further the Huguenot sense of ostracization and

25
For accounts in English of the incident, see David Potter (ed.), The French Wars
of Religion: Selected Documents (Basingstoke: 1997), 41–2.
26
For much more on the physical and symbolic significance of urban walls, see
Michael Wolfe, Walled Towns and the Shaping of France: From the Medieval to the
Early Modern Era (Basingstoke: 2009).
27
This phrase is taken from Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629
(Cambridge, UK: 1995), 2.
274 penny roberts

marginalization was that they were forced to worship in peripheral,

often rural areas on the edge of the locality, far away from the heart
of their community. The discourse of remoteness and vulnerability
dominated their representations to the crown in an effort to have
unpalatable decisions overturned. Likewise, Catholics focused on the
danger that Huguenot activities posed to the integrity and security of
the community, thereby justifying the need to distance and contain
them. In such circumstances, no wonder it was hard for either faith
to believe that the bonds of unity, amity, and peace which the crown
encouraged were being effectively upheld and demonstrated by the
other side.
The convenience and accessibility of the sites provided was the par-
ticular focus of Huguenot petitions to the crown and its representa-
tives. Requests most often stipulated that the faithful, both young and
old, should, ideally, be able to “conveniently go and come back in a
morning” (as requested at Poitiers) or, at least, be granted a site “to
which they can go and come back in a day” (as demanded at Bor-
deaux and Lyon).28 In particular, fears were expressed about the dan-
gers posed to the health of new-borns as they were carried to far-flung
sites for baptism. The terrain and climate, of both the journey and
the location, also had to be deemed suitable. Forests, marshes, moun-
tains, and rivers all posed physical barriers and practical limitations to
the accessibility of sites. The hostility of the inhabitants as well as the
risk of attack en route and, in particular, of violence when leaving or
entering the town, was carefully assessed and scrutinized. At Tours,
having initially secured a site only a league away in the town sub-
urbs, the official designation in 1563 was deemed unsuitable by local
Huguenots, because it was on ecclesiastical land, took more than an
hour to reach by foot, and en route they had to pass through “several
harbors, marshes, rivers and other dangerous places”.29 Even another
site two leagues to the west they described as “highly inappropriate,
exposed to sun and rain causing sickness and other inconveniences”,

28
On Poitiers, BNF, MS fr 18156, fols. 15r, 35r (Feb.–Mar. 1564); on Bordeaux,
BNF, MS fr 15881, fol. 294r (1565); AM Bordeaux, GG 983a, no. 21 (Sept. 1564); on
Lyon: AM Lyon, GG 78, no. 34 (Oct. 1579?).
29
David Nicholls, “Protestants, Catholics and Magistrates in Tours, 1562–1572: the
Making of a Catholic City during the Religious Wars,” French History: 8 (1994): 19,
n. 15.
 one town, two faiths 275

and requested the use of the local village hall instead.30 In addition, the
route there involved crossing a major bridge through a Catholic sub-
urb where they had been attacked before and also lay on a dangerous
wooded route. After fighting broke out between the faiths at the site in
January 1566, the authorities at Tours locked the gates and the return-
ing Huguenots were forced to spend the night outside the town.31 No
clearer demonstration of their exclusion from the community, justified
on the grounds of protecting the interests of upholding public order,
could be given.
Unsurprisingly, Huguenot concerns about access commonly focused
on the threat of violence as they journeyed to external sites. At Orléans,
they requested that the governor, “provide them with an appropriate
and nearby site for worship where they will not be attacked”.32 They
mentioned a couple of possible locations in the suburbs that would
suit and furthermore “contain everyone in peace”, as well as another
that would prove “extremely dangerous because of the sailors as well as
the vine-growers and millers who are very seditious”. Conscious of the
obstruction they had already faced, the Huguenots also pleaded that
guards be removed from the city gates and that these be left open on
Sundays and holidays to allow free passage for the faithful. Reported
attacks on Huguenots and their children, as they went to and from
services, were common, almost routine.33 Yet, Catholics clearly saw
the town gates as points of vulnerability too, as in the case discussed
earlier of the supposed Huguenot intimidation of the gatekeepers at
Nantes. At Meaux, the Catholic inhabitants opposed a request by local
Huguenots to restore the drawbridge that separated the town from a
nearby suburb, arguing that the gates were open from early morning
until late at night and the drawbridge kept down, so that there was no
need for such additional provision.34 More generally, the positioning
of a town’s gates might make it more vulnerable to external attack,
and suitable precautions had to be taken to guard against such an

30
Bibliothèque Municipale [hereafter BM] d’Angers, MS 997, no. 7 (1564/65); cf.
Nicholls, “Protestants, Catholics” on the unsuitability of the site being “exposed to rain
and wind”, 24.
31
Nicholls, “Protestants, Catholics,” 27–8.
32
BNF, MS fr 3189, fol. 8 (1563/64?).
33
For some examples from Provence, see Archives Départementales des Bouches-
du-Rhône (annexe), B 3328, fols. 718v–20 (1562); also B 3329, fols. 390v–3r (May
1565).
34
BNF, MS fr 18156, fol. 71v (Apr. 1564).
276 penny roberts

eventuality. At Castres, in 1569, while some existing gates were closed

for strategic reasons, a new one was opened up; whereas during peace-
time this so-called “gate of troubles”—suggesting its immediate associ-
ation with the religious wars, referred to as “the troubles”—was walled
up and the others re-opened.35 Such examples serve as a reminder that
troop movements and other military activities might place towns in
the affected region on a state of alert, which was unlikely to improve
confessional relations or to reduce concerns about internal subversion.
Indeed, Catholic opposition to sites frequently focused on a his-
tory of tension and unrest as well as seditious activity by local Hugue-
nots. It was argued, therefore, that allowing their services ran contrary
to the ideals of unity and order. At Nantes, it was declared that if
Reformed worship was allowed in the town there would be “sedition”
and “division”.36 By 1565, such a prospect would be “damaging to the
king and public interest”, causing sedition and scandal.37 In Troyes, in
April 1563, a survey was conducted to gauge opposition to the loca-
tion of Reformed services in the town’s suburbs. The more vocal of the
inhabitants declared that the services “would divide the town”, or com-
mented that “the services hitherto” had led to “great disturbances”.38
Some expanded on these fears with reference to the wider impact on
the people and even the kingdom, arguing that the services caused
“great ruin to the people” and were contrary to “the peace and tran-
quillity of the realm”.39 Similarly at Dijon, Huguenot behaviour was
deemed “prejudicial to the king, the town and (the) governorship, and
consequently the entire kingdom”. By contrast, at Meulan near Paris,
the authorities took a determinedly local view of the situation. They
declared the inhabitants “peaceful and unified in the old religion”,
and that toleration of the Huguenots “would only bring division, dis-
rupting the unity and peace between the inhabitants”.40 Thus, even if
the rest of the kingdom was embracing biconfessionalism, a case was
made for its rejection in this particular locality. Such framing of the

35
See Jean Faurin, Journal de Faurin sur les guerres de Castres in Pièces fugitives
pour servir à l’histoire de France (Paris: 1759), 53.
36
BNF, MS fr 15879, fol. 6r (Jan. 1563); Huguenots in Rennes had been refused a
site in 1561 because of the risk of “trouble and popular unrest”, cf. 15875, fols. 287,
289.
37
BNF, MS fr 15881, fols. 409–10.
38
AM Troyes, Boutiot BB 14, 1er liasse, no. 24, fols. 3, 53.
39
Ibid., fol. 50.
40
BNF, Collection du Vexin, MS 26, fol. 156r.
 one town, two faiths 277

problem according to local interests continually plagued the attempts

of royal officials to introduce a nationwide settlement that all could or
would be prepared to accept.
Concerns about national security restricted the provision of sites still
further, and provided additional arguments for those looking to remove
Reformed worship from their locality. Frontier towns (a contested des-
ignation, although defined as guarded by a governor and soldiers) as
well as those on a strategic route (again debatable) or with a sovereign
court or parlement (more clear-cut) were excluded as potential sites.41
Once secured, this exclusion was extended beyond the town walls to
the suburbs and any other nearby settlements which might be deemed
contiguous, setting up another basis for many a challenge. Reformed
worship was also banned from lands belonging to the Catholic Church
and the crown (a more substantial constraint). As the wars progressed,
precedent had some standing, where public worship could be proven
on a certain date (again much disputed) or provided for by an earlier
commission. It is not quite true to say that any location was “up for
grabs”, but both faiths made the most of official prescriptions to assert
and invent claims as well as to oppose them. The suitability of a given
site was a matter of perspective and dominated the correspondence
between the crown and those responsible for the edicts’ enforcement.
In response to the appeal of the Catholics of Bayeux against the provi-
sion of Reformed worship in the town’s suburbs, the local governor
was directed by the king to allocate another site “convenient” for the
Huguenots, but not “inconvenient” for local Catholics.42 Such direc-
tives were more easily issued than met.
It is evident that the Huguenot minority were almost wholly depen-
dent on the goodwill of the crown for securing the designation and
subsequent establishment of a site. This becomes clear in the case of
Metz, a vital strategic stronghold on France’s eastern border with the
Empire. In 1569, the Huguenots of Metz provided a robust defence
of their claims to a site of worship in the town. First, they pointed
out that a place had been granted eight years or so before by royal

41
Recueil de pièces relatives aux troubles civils de 1562–1564 (Paris: 1564). On
disputes about frontier status, see Penny Roberts, “Huguenot conspiracies, real and
imagined, in sixteenth-century France” in Barry Coward and Julian Swann (eds.),
Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in Early Modern Europe: From the Waldensians
to the French Revolution (Aldershot: 2004), 55–69.
42
BNF, MS fr 15546, fol. 260r (June 1568).
278 penny roberts

commission. Although it had been less than they had wanted, they
had accepted it “in the hope that after having provided sufficient proof
of their fidelity, modesty and obedience, your majesty would better
accommodate them”.43 Now they hoped that he would “not only con-
tinue the freedom and favour which they have so long and so peacefully
enjoyed under your protection sire, but also after such a long period of
patience grant them some greater grace and favour”. They also wished
to counter the attempts of their Catholic opponents to slander them
and give grounds for the removal of their temple, although “not a
single one of them can say that they have been assaulted by word or
deed, neither against them nor their property”.
Further underlining Metz’s biconfessional credentials, the Hugue-
nots emphasised that the abolition of worship would endanger and
chase out Protestant “relations, allies, neighbors and good friends”
with whom Catholic citizens had previously socialized “as if all had
been of the same religion”, so that “the tranquillity, peace and concord
of this town served as an example to all others”. The removal of this
harmony, they argued, through the Catholic attack on their practices
and the hounding of the king’s most loyal subjects, was “as damaging
to your service as to the Republic”. Furthermore, the clergy’s condem-
nation of their doctrine and their claim that their imperial neighbors
were horrified by it was contrary to royal acceptance of the confession
of faith and the imperial princes’ approval of its practice in the villages
of the region. Metz’s peculiar position on the imperial border made
the need for the accommodation of both faiths both more conspicuous
and more pressing. It is unsurprising that local Protestants looked to
the Empire for support. Yet, despite repeated emphasis on their obedi-
ence, unfulfilled royal promises, and the calumnies of their opponents,
not only did the Huguenots of Metz receive no further favour from
the king, but their existing temple was demolished by royal order the
following week.44 By contrast, the much shorter and blunter appeal
from the clergy of the town, protesting that the crown had breached
an earlier agreement to exempt the town from Reformed worship,
was accepted.45 The ebb and flow of war between the crown and the
Huguenots, 1569 being a year of open conflict, as well as making the

43
Calendar of State Papers Foreign [hereafter CSPF], 70/106, fols. 72–3 (30 Mar.
1569).
44
CSPF, 70/106, fol. 93; BNF, MS fr 3188, fols. 38–9 (both 6 Apr. 1569).
45
CSPF, 70/106, fols. 48–50 (19 Mar. 1569).
 one town, two faiths 279

king less well-disposed to their requests, disrupted the continuity of

provision of sites of worship and, subsequently, the cause of multicon-
fessionalism in France.
Another issue which increased rather than reduced tension and divi-
sion between the faiths, and undermined efforts to establish effective
coexistence, was that of disarmament. It was difficult for either side
to feel safe or secure when fearful about the consequences of weapons
being carried by their opponents. A principal Catholic anxiety, again
concerned with public order and security, was to disarm those attend-
ing Reformed services. Unsurprisingly, a right to bear arms beyond
the town walls was stoutly defended by Huguenots, who were fearful
of being rendered vulnerable to attack as they travelled to and fro. At
Lyon they pleaded that it was the danger and distance of the route they
had to take that forced them to carry weapons to services solely for the
purposes of self-defence.46 Yet, Catholics were equally nervous about
the presence of armed groups in close proximity to their town. In
1570, the municipal authorities in Dijon were anxious about those of
the “new opinion leaving town in troops with swords and daggers and
going to the suburbs . . . (to) hold assemblies and dangerous services”.47
Whether or not the other faith continued to be armed was to prove
a contentious issue throughout the wars, redolent of the distrust felt
on both sides. From the point of view of the royal authorities it was
better that no-one bore weapons, so as to reduce the likelihood of vio-
lent clashes, and the crown produced regular legislation to this effect.
In 1564, for instance, it forbade “everyone from carrying arquebuses,
pistols, or guns, nor other firearms, on pain of confiscation of their
weapons and horses”.48 At other times, there were prohibitions on the
carrying of arms and wandering the streets at night, and even on the
sale and purchase of weaponry.49
In practice, however, there was much resistance to disarmament
unless it was first, or even only, carried out by the other side. Synchro-
nization of the process might have been the ideal solution, as the Prot-
estant peace negotiator Calignon proposed in 1581, but it was hard

46
AM Lyon, GG 78, no. 21, iv, fol. 3r (May 1572).
47
AM Dijon, B 207, fols. 62v–3r (Sept. 1570).
48
BNF, Imprimés, F 46826, no. 7 (28 Jan. 1564).
49
BM de Lyon, 354292, ordinances by the king and governor Vieilleville (Feb. & Apr.
1564); BNF, MS fr 17832, fol. 71r (May 1564), against sale of weapons in Troyes.
280 penny roberts

to achieve.50 Those seeking to evade observation of the royal direc-

tives justified exemption on a number of grounds. For instance, a case
was frequently made for the security needs of the (usually majority
Catholic) population because of local tensions or, once again, prox-
imity to a frontier. Both arguments were deployed in Burgundy in
1563, noting the still unstable situation at Lyon to the south, and that
in Beaune “several townspeople, mostly craftsmen, carry daggers and
clubs as usual” due to its frontier status.51 By 1568, with the renewal
of war threatening, the governor complained that the fact that most
Burgundian towns had disarmed successfully now left them “prey to
our former enemies”.52 In 1564, Marseille and Toulon on the south
coast had protested to the crown, which admitted that a mistake had
been made in ordering them to disarm since they were frontier towns,
but it stated that arms were “to be used in cases of necessity against the
invasions and incursions of enemies and not otherwise”.53 In Bayonne,
by contrast, it was suggested that arming the inhabitants was “more
dangerous in frontier towns than elsewhere”.54 Meanwhile, in the Loire
valley towns of Tours, Amboise, Blois, and Orléans, the regular alarms
raised as a result of the amassing of Huguenots in the region was
used to counter the order to disarm in 1568.55 At Tours, the authori-
ties reported to the king that the inhabitants were “so suspicious of
their Huguenot citizens that they would not like them yet to enter
nor return until things are a little more assured than we see them”,
and that those who lived in the populous suburb through which they
would have to pass on their way to services found “such manner of
people extremely odious”.56
During the religious wars, both faiths complained about the other’s
failure to disarm and warned the crown of the danger that would result
from such a state of affairs. At the same time, a case was often made
for why arms should be retained by their coreligionists. At Blois, in the
autumn of 1563, Huguenot claims “in their accustomed manner” that
disarming would leave them exposed were dismissed. Instead, they

50
BNF, MS fr 4047, fols. 122v–3r.
51
BNF, MS fr 17832, fol. 3v (May 1563); 4048, fols. 77–8 (Sept. 1563); 4632, fol.
32r (Oct. 1563).
52
BNF, Ms fr 15547, fol. 13 (July 1568).
53
BNF, MS fr 15879, fols. 134–5 (Mar. 1564); 15880, fol. 228r (Aug. 1564).
54
BNF, MS fr 15880, fols. 404–5r (Dec. 1564).
55
BNF, MS fr 15546, fols. 95–7, 99–100, 107r, 147r, 180–2 (May/June 1568).
56
BNF, MS fr 15546, fols. 99–100r, 233–4 (May–June, 1568).
 one town, two faiths 281

were counter-accused of being the worst offenders, since they openly

carried weapons in the countryside and conducted armed assemblies,
whereas the town-hall’s inventory revealed Catholic compliance with
royal directives on disarmament.57 A similar situation was described
at Angoulême, but the general picture was one of universal defiance
of such orders.58 Resistance even came from officials themselves, such
as the parlementaires and municipality of Bordeaux, who claimed that
they had exemption (as was the case for sword nobles).59 Here and
elsewhere, chateaux (whether inside or outside a town) were some-
times viewed as safer holding-places for weaponry than the town-hall,
handing the responsibility for their safe-keeping to local governors
rather than to the (perhaps less dependable) municipality. For instance,
in the Nivernais, it was the Huguenots’ turn to accuse their Catho-
lic neighbors of failing to comply with the royal directive to disarm,
while all weaponry in the region was to be taken to the chateau, to
which the royal bailli had the key.60 The presence of armed garrisons
led to similar concerns among Huguenots regarding their vulnerabil-
ity to intimidation and even assault. Those at Dieppe reported being
terrorized by members of its garrison and requested that a company
be raised to guard the town instead.61 The Catholics of Lectoure in
Languedoc, however, felt equally threatened by the activities of the
Huguenot leader, Henry of Navarre, and his followers in the region,
including the enemy garrisons maintained at their expense.62
In 1565, a request was sent to the governor that arms be restored
to loyal citizens and subjects in the Bordeaux region “to avoid the
dangers of surprise”, and once a search had been made by those “not
suspected of sedition”, those identified as suspect were to be disarmed
and expelled.63 In line with other petitions to the crown, a distinc-
tion was almost certainly being made here between “loyal” Catholics
and “disloyal” Huguenots. Reference was made to those bearing arms
against the king, underlining the impact of the ongoing conflict on

57
BNF, MS fr 15878, fols. 151–60, 181–93r (Oct. 1563).
58
BNF, MS fr 15878, fols. 96–7 (Aug. 1563), 116 (Châtellerault in Poitou).
59
BNF, MS fr 15878, fols. 239–40r (Nov. 1563), 287–9r; and 15880, fol. 129r (May
1564), on continuing resistance in Bordeaux.
60
BNF, MS fr 15878, fol. 296r; 15879, fol. 26 (Jan. 1564), on continuing difficulties
with disarmament at Nevers.
61
BNF, MS fr 15548, fols. 175, 177 (1568).
62
BNF, MS fr 15564, fols. 87–89r (1581).
63
BNF, MS fr 15881, fol. 320r.
282 penny roberts

perceptions of community solidarity, breeding instead mutual suspi-

cion and hostility. During the 1560s in particular, there were numerous
attempts by the Huguenots to seize the major towns of the kingdom,
beginning with the prince of Condé’s capture of Orléans in April 1562.
Thus, references to “those who have carried arms at Orléans and else-
where” or “against the king” became shorthand for Huguenot traitors.
At Laon in Picardy, in 1568, there was concern not only about assem-
blies in arms being held around the town and the presence of nearby
Protestant strongholds, but also about the carrying of weapons within
the town by the approximately 100 Huguenots who lived there and had
fought against the king.64 Similarly, at Loriol in Dauphiné, the authorities
argued that the prohibition of arms following the peace of 1570 should
be delayed until the “new religion” had been disarmed and removed
from the places in the province that they had “usurped”.65 The implica-
tion was, since their actions had been illegitimate, that the Huguenots
had forfeited their opportunity to benefit from crown protection.
In the province of Burgundy, it was claimed in 1568 that armed
Huguenots were carrying out “services, movements and negotiations
as much or more than they ever did”.66 Elsewhere, reports came in of
both the successful disarming of Huguenots as they returned through
town gates, taking weapons “which are given back to them when they
leave to go out to the countryside”, and the unsuccessful disarming,
which meant that they were refused entry, for instance at Nantes,
when returning from exile after the second war.67 The careful regula-
tion of the distribution of arms was one measure by which tensions
might be avoided, but it could be a risky strategy if either side chose
not to comply with the authorities. Yet, the decisions of the officials
charged with enforcing royal directives, both external commissioners
as well as local officers, could also be viewed with suspicion. Some-
times this was because their confessional sympathies were well known,
but at others they were simply accused of returning biased judgments,
those with which their accusers did not agree. This was as true of the
“covert Huguenots” of the parlement of Bordeaux as of the “principal
enemies” of the Huguenots among the councillors of the parlement of

64
BNF, MS fr 15546, fol. 128r (May 1568); 15548, fols. 170–1 (Nov. 1568).
65
BNF, MS fr 15552, fol. 233r (Aug. 1570).
66
BNF, MS fr 15547, fol. 13 (July 1568).
67
BNF, MS fr 15547, fol. 20 (Normandy); 15546, fol. 25 (May 1568, Nantes).
 one town, two faiths 283

Toulouse.68 Likewise the sénéchal at Nantes was accused of wanting

“to sell the town to the Huguenots”, whereas at Mâcon a “seditious
and factious” clerk was held responsible for the most recent surprise
of the town.69
A memorandum composed by the Huguenots to the king, in Febru-
ary 1579, argued the case for equitable treatment of the faiths, as “the
means to assure the re-establishment of the peace”.70 This was to include
“justice equally and well administered” and, in particular, freedom of
worship in contrast to the inconsistent and dangerous provision with
which the Huguenots were currently faced. Just as the crown argued
that its subjects of either faith were obliged to be equally obedient in
return for which they would receive royal protection, so the Hugue-
nots asserted that this obedience entitled them to equal treatment with
Catholics. Furthermore, they claimed that such inequalities were con-
trary to the intention of the edicts and that they nurtured rather than
eased the conflict. Although certain judicial concessions were granted,
including the establishment of special chambers attached to the parle-
ments, which included among their members judges of both faiths,
the balance of power still lay with the Catholics. This fundamental
inequality between the faiths in France, the inevitable result of the
Huguenots’ minority status and dependence on a Catholic crown, lies
at the heart of the failure to establish a truly biconfessional commu-
nity, whether at the local or national level. As a result, Huguenots were
frustrated by the lack of progress they made and the many obstacles
they faced in achieving recognition for their demands. Catholics too
were uncomfortable even with the limited concessions they had to
make to their Huguenot neighbors, discouraged by fears about the
dangers and disruptions that might result. In different localities, these
concerns were grounded in recent experience or reports of violence
or sedition coming from other communities, whose example they did
not wish to emulate. In order to protect, as they saw it, the wider
interests of the majority, local authorities sought to push the minor-
ity out, reducing the threat which they posed by locating their activi-
ties elsewhere. This figurative expulsion from the community, which
nevertheless involved a very physical separation from the rest of the

68
BNF, MS fr 15550, fol. 87 (Oct. 1569); 15882, fols. 192–6 (July 1566).
69
BNF, MS fr 15879, fol. 58 (Feb. 1564); 15546, fol. 53 (May 1568).
70
LCM, vi, pp. 417–35 (6 Feb.).
284 penny roberts

inhabitants, eroded Huguenot goodwill and trust in the concessions

they had gained and the willingness of the authorities to uphold them.
They were often made to feel more vulnerable to attack than before,
sought armed protection to mitigate the situation, and in turn caused
further concern to their Catholic counterparts. The resulting anxieties
on both sides made a workable state of coexistence difficult, but not
impossible, although sudden scares or the return of conflict brought
tensions to the fore, as was the case in several communities in the
wake of the St Bartholomew’s Day massacres.71
One of the few countries in Europe to pursue an officially-sanctioned
biconfessional solution to the schism caused by the Reformation,
France provides examples of all the difficulties that such an approach
might face. The practical arrangements necessary to ensure that the
Huguenot minority were able to carry out their devotions in peace
were among the most contested issues. The designation of sites for
worship established a physical demarcation and separation of confes-
sional groups at the same time as it legitimized coexistence. Their loca-
tion was crucial for the Huguenot sense of inclusion, or more often
exclusion, with regard to their local community. The segregation and
separation of the Huguenots through the distancing of sites for wor-
ship reflects the concern of many that confessional division would
lead to social division. Complete integration was illusory, because so
many contemporary aspects of sociability and community were bound
up with religious affiliation and practice. Thus, the convenience of a
site had to be weighed against the potential for disorder. Urban com-
munities faced a daily struggle over confessional balance and social
disruption; unity was highly prized but, in practice, precarious and
controversial. An additional concern about the threat to the welfare
and safety of the community, which the carrying of weapons inside or
outside the town posed, worsened relations between the faiths. Obedi-
ence to the crown was upheld, but local authorities did not accept royal
directives unconditionally, if they were thought to threaten the public
good. Could the coreligionists of their opponents really be trusted, at a
time of civil strife or even during peacetime? As a result, the Huguenot
minority, while seeking inclusion, often experienced exclusion from,
and marginal status within, the urban community. Competitive peti-

71
Philip Benedict, “The Saint Bartholomew’s Massacres in the Provinces,” Histori-
cal Journal, 21 (1978): 205–25.
 one town, two faiths 285

tioning of the crown and its officials to secure or obstruct conces-

sions exacerbated divisions; the interchangeability of open warfare and
declarations of peace complicated the situation further. Attempts to
establish neither social unity nor confessional exclusion would ulti-
mately resolve the tensions within communities. Thus, practical issues
and simmering resentments provided a significant obstacle to the
successful implementation of the royal policy of pacification during
the religious wars (and beyond), as well as to the establishment of an
untroubled state of multiconfessional harmony in France.
PART FIVE

BRITAIN
 MULTICONFESSIONALISM IN EARLY MODERN BRITAIN

Bernard Capp

Multiconfessionalism in Britain has a checkered history that really

begins only in the mid-17th century. Monarchs from Elizabeth to
Charles I had sought, with varying degrees of success, to mould Eng-
land into a confessional state, with political authority and public office
bound tightly to the Established Church, of which they were succes-
sive heads. Catholics faced fierce persecution, as did the tiny groups
of radical separatists. This pattern was transformed by the civil war.
Oliver Cromwell established an extensive measure of religious free-
dom, enshrined in the constitution, and though the Restoration in
1660 brought back a compulsory Established Church, monarchs now
turned against their predecessors’ strategy. Parliament and the bish-
ops still hoped to forge an exclusive bond between crown and church,
but Charles II, James II, and William III all favored a multiconfes-
sional state. Such a structure would free them, they believed, from
an unwelcome dependence on the Anglican Church and its political
supporters, crystallized from the late 1670s in the new Tory party.
They had a variety of motives. None felt any personal commitment
to the Anglican Church, with Charles a Catholic sympathiser, James a
Catholic convert, and William a Dutch Calvinist. Charles and William
both saw toleration as more likely to deliver political stability, while
James was desperate to secure a lasting freedom and equality for his
co-religionists. After the civil wars monarchs were moreover no longer
able to impose their own religious preferences on the nation, as their
Tudor predecessors had done. Years of negotiation and confrontation
between crown and parliament eventually produced an English settle-
ment that was more multiconfessional than most parliamentarians
and churchmen had wanted, if less than the crown, dissenters, and
Catholics had hoped.1 Things turned out very differently in Scotland
and Ireland, where the issue remained which church could achieve

1
For recent surveys see John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant Eng-
land 1558–1689 (Harlow: 2000); Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred. Tolerance
and Intolerance in England 1500–1700 (Manchester: 2006).
290 bernard capp

religious and political domination. In Ireland, where most of the pop-

ulation remained firmly Catholic, the Episcopalian church emerged
triumphant, despite Catholic interludes in the 1640s and 1680s. In
Scotland, the Presbyterians lost control to the Episcopalians after the
Restoration, but regained it in 1689, with the satisfaction of seeing
episcopacy abolished and outlawed.
The mid-Tudor world had been very different. Mary Tudor had
hoped to eradicate Protestant heresy, and might have succeeded had
she lived. Elizabeth, treading cautiously, hoped that in time the entire
population would come to accept her new Church, whether from con-
viction or habit. The oaths of supremacy and uniformity, which all
officeholders, clergy, and (from 1571) Members of Parliament were
required to take, signalled that government was inseparably tied to
the Church of which the queen was supreme governor. The crown
reinforced its message by suppressing Catholic services, imposing
heavy fines on recusants, and jailing and later executing many Catho-
lic priests and their protectors.
Elizabeth was no zealot. Realising at her accession that it would be
impracticable and dangerous to sweep all Catholic sympathisers out of
public life, she allowed many to continue for years as local magistrates.
But she would make no formal concessions to Catholicism, either in
the religious or political sphere. Her determination was evident in the
long-running marriage negotiations involving Catholic princes of the
Habsburg and Valois families. In each case the Habsburg or French
negotiators were told bluntly that a marriage treaty would give the
queen’s husband no rights whatever to practise the Catholic faith in
England, even in private. He and his courtiers would be expected to
attend services conducted according to the 1559 prayer-book, con-
forming at least outwardly and eventually, it was anticipated, convert-
ing to the faith of the English church. Predictably, the negotiations all
failed.2 It is probable that by the time she died Elizabeth recognised
that her dream of religious unity had failed. Missionary priests, arriv-
ing from the continent from the later 1570s, brought a new spirit of
resolution and Catholic recusancy remained strong among the nobility
and, in some areas, the gentry. But with England locked in war with
Catholic Spain from the late 1580s, Catholics were viewed as potential

2
Susan Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony. The Courtships of Elizabeth I (London:
1996).
 multiconfessionalism in early modern britain 291

traitors and their chances of securing toleration, let alone formal rec-
ognition, remained nil.
The first signs of tectonic shift appear with the manoeuvring of James
VI of Scotland as he sought to smooth his succession to the English
throne. Conscious of the strength of Catholicism among the English
elites, and with all the major continental powers still firmly Catholic,
James put out a number of feelers in the late 1590s. There were discreet
contacts with the papacy, and his queen (Anne of Denmark) hinted
that her husband might follow her own example and convert to Rome.
To English Catholics James promised that once installed as king he
would end their persecution and prosecution. Wishful thinking led
Pope Clement VIII to hope that the king was ripe for conversion and
English Catholics to hope for formal toleration once he was secure on
the throne. Most English Catholics supported his succession and, for a
while, joyfully anticipated a new dawn of liberty. For about 18 months
James cancelled the collection of recusancy fines, and Catholic priests
moved about with relative safety. The queen supported appeals for tol-
eration, and pressed openly for Catholics to be given offices at court
and for Prince Henry, the heir-apparent, to be brought up a Catholic.
James himself proved far more cautious. While lacking any appetite
for persecution, he insisted that Catholics make an outward show
of conformity to the Established Church, demanding in effect that
they become “church-papists”. Even so, the Catholics’ new boldness
and James’s indulgence drew fierce criticism from many bishops and
councilors, which soon forced him to change course. The Gunpowder
Plot of 1605, launched by extremists who had wanted a Catholic state
rather than mere toleration, inevitably prompted a further tightening
of the laws. In this new climate, there could be no chance of formal
toleration, though once the panic had died down Catholics enjoyed
relatively lenient treatment, and Catholicism became acceptable, even
fashionable, at the royal court.3
Only in the final years of the reign did any possibility resurface of a
major shift in policy. Its context was the protracted negotiations for a
marriage between Prince Charles, now Prince of Wales, and the Span-
ish Infanta. The project appealed to James as a chance to balance and
perhaps reconcile the warring states of Europe and, he hoped, secure

3
D. H. Willson, King James VI and I (London: 1956), 145–9, 217–42; Coffey, Per-
secution, 117–21.
292 bernard capp

Spanish help towards the restoration of his son-in-law to the Palati-

nate. Naturally Spain would expect concessions, and in 1622 James
went a long way (as he thought) towards meeting them by relaxing
the laws against Catholics and releasing imprisoned Catholic priests
and laymen. Negotiations dragged on, however, and in 1623 Charles
and the royal favourite, Buckingham, made an extraordinary, unan-
nounced visit to Madrid in the hope of cutting through the diplomatic
obstacles. In the event, the papacy made its approval of the match con-
ditional on James suspending the laws against Catholics and allowing
them to worship freely. Charles, under pressure, agreed in his father’s
name to these demands, and promised that within three years a parlia-
ment would both confirm the suspension and repeal the anti-Catholic
laws. It is highly unlikely that any parliament would have accepted
such demands, though in the event Charles did not have to make good
his promise. For Spain now demanded further concessions, blocking
the marriage until either Catholic toleration had been confirmed by
both the privy council and parliament, or James or the prince had con-
verted to Rome. These new demands effectively destroyed the treaty.
James had made substantial concessions, including a dispensation that
would have given Catholics freedom to worship at home instead of
attending their parish church. But he refused to issue a proclamation
to that effect, knowing the outcry it would provoke, and instructed that
the dispensation would take effect only after the marriage had taken
place. Deadlocked, the negotiations petered out. Charles returned to
England, welcomed by crowds deliriously happy to find him safe and
still Protestant. James assured parliament, when it met early in 1624,
that he had never intended more than a temporary relief for Catholics,
and the opposition the match had encountered even among his own
ministers meant that he could probably have delivered no more even
had he wished to do so.4
By the end of 1625 Charles had inherited the crown and declared
war on Spain, riding a wave of anti-Spanish feeling. By then he had
also acquired a French bride, Henrietta Maria. The French had simi-
larly demanded religious concessions, but were in a weaker bargaining
position than Spain had been. Prince Charles had promised a suspi-

4
Roger Lockyer, Buckingham. The Life and Times of George Villiers, First Duke of
Buckingham 1592–1628 (Harlow: 1984) 125–65; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic
[hereafter CSPD], 1619–23, 436, 448; CSPD 1623–5, 35, 42, 69, 78, 166.
 multiconfessionalism in early modern britain 293

cious parliament in 1624 that if he ever married a Catholic princess,

he would make no concessions to Catholics. James told the French
ambassador that as the recusancy laws were effectively asleep, it would
be counter-productive to reawaken passions by issuing a public decla-
ration. In the event, James and Charles agreed to a secret article prom-
ising to end prosecutions, though there was no question of any formal
suspension or repeal of the laws. Even so, James instructed the judges
in December 1624 to show favor to accused Catholics, ordered the
release of those imprisoned, and forbade new prosecutions, triggering
complaints in the 1625 parliament that this de facto toleration was a
direct consequence of the French marriage-treaty.5 Although another
twist in policy soon brought war with France too, suspicions contin-
ued to fester. A Commons committee in February 1629 condemned
the “suspension or negligence in execution of the laws against Popery”,
and demanded a reversal in government policy.6 Suspicions about the
favour Catholics enjoyed at Court and the arrival of a papal envoy
in 1636 helped create the atmosphere of religious fear that led to the
collapse of royal authority in 1640, triggered by religious upheavals in
Scotland.
The Reformation in Scotland, a separate state until the union of
crowns in 1603, had taken a very different course. Its church had a
reformed, Presbyterian structure, over which the bishops exerted only
limited control. James VI (James I of England after 1603), eager for
greater uniformity between his dominions and to increase his influ-
ence over the church, took several steps to strengthen the bishops’
position, and the Articles of Perth (1618), which imposed new litur-
gical demands, such as kneeling at communion, represented another
move in the same direction. In 1637 Charles I pressed further, impos-
ing a more ceremonial liturgy modelled on the English prayer-book.
The Scots saw this move as both popish and autocratic and erupted
in revolt. In 1638 a general assembly abolished episcopacy, and by
1639 a national covenant had pledged them to erect Presbyterianism
throughout Britain. In 1640 a Scottish army invaded England.

5
Lockyer, Buckingham, 198–206, 208–9; Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English
Politics 1621–1629 (Oxford: 1979), 154, 209–11, 229–30, 243; CSPD 1623–5, 323, 417,
419.
6
S. R. Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625–1660
(Oxford: 1906), 79, 82.
294 bernard capp

The Scottish rebellion forced Charles to summon parliament in

England, and religious passions quickly surfaced. The Root and
Branch petition (December 1640), calling for the abolition of episco-
pacy, complained that the favours Catholics had lately enjoyed had
led them to expect “that their superstitious religion will ere long be
fully planted in this kingdom again”. The Grand Remonstrance, a year
later, went still further. Complaining that Catholics had enjoyed “such
exemptions from penal laws as amounted to a toleration”, it accused
the king’s evil counsellors of promoting a dangerous “conjunction”
between the Arminian (High Church) and Catholic parties, “only it
must not yet be called Popery”. The Nineteen Propositions, presented
to the king in June 1642 as the basis for a settlement, demanded the
strict execution of the laws against all Catholics.7
The Grand Remonstrance marked the emergence too of another
religious issue. The collapse of ecclesiastical authority had allowed
the tiny separatist churches to emerge from hiding and grow, espe-
cially in London. The king’s friends accused parliamentarian leaders of
encouraging, or at least allowing, this division within the Church. The
Remonstrance firmly rebutted the charge. There was no desire to “let
loose the golden reins of discipline and government in the Church”,
its authors declared. Far from permitting particular congregations
to devise their own forms of worship, they wanted to see strict uni-
formity enforced throughout the land. That uniformity, it was later
resolved, was to be based on the Scottish Presbyterian system. The
Solemn League and Covenant, parliament’s alliance with the Scots in
1644, committed both parties to work for the extirpation of popery
and prelacy in England and Ireland and the establishment of a godly
uniformity in all three kingdoms.8 That goal became the basis for par-
liament’s negotiating position with the king, as the civil war dragged
on. At Uxbridge, in 1644, and Newcastle, in 1645, parliament’s envoys
demanded that the king should accept this model for godly reforma-
tion and agree to the strict enforcement of the laws against Catholics
and to root out heresy and schism.9
As the war entered its final stages, in 1645–6, the debate shifted
significantly. It now raged too among the parliamentarians them-

7
Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, 143, 207, 216, 219, 252.
8
Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, 229, 268–9.
9
Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, 275–6, 291–2.
 multiconfessionalism in early modern britain 295

selves, at Westminster, in the pulpit and press, and in the New Model
army. Most Members of Parliament still wished to see a compulsory
national church, along the Presbyterian lines favoured by most mem-
bers of the Westminster Assembly, a body of divines established to
recommend a new church settlement. But the Independents disagreed;
though sharing the same Calvinist theology, they viewed the Presbyte-
rian structure as oppressive. Separatist groups, such as the Baptists, felt
this even more strongly, demanding the freedom to worship in their
own voluntary, non-parochial congregations. Many army leaders sup-
ported their pleas. Oliver Cromwell reported that religious differences
(at least among different branches of the Calvinist brotherhood) did
not disturb the harmony he reported in the New Model and insisted
that freedom could be equally unproblematic elsewhere. He dropped
broad hints that soldiers risking their lives to serve parliament would
expect to enjoy the freedom they had surely earned.10 Rigid Presby-
terians waged an energetic counter-attack. Thomas Edwards, a fero-
ciously combative minister, complained that the de facto toleration
of the war years had already spawned a flood of heretical and blas-
phemous ideas. Any formal toleration, he warned, would be infinitely
worse, leading inevitably to the collapse of religious, moral, social, and
political order.11
The issue of religious pluralism was thus now firmly placed on the
political stage. The old Church of England was still defended vigorously
by the king; the Presbyterians enjoyed a power-base in Parliament and
support from the Scots; the Independents had some support in parlia-
ment, and much more in the officer corps of the New Model army;
and the separatists had allies both in the emerging Leveller movement
and in the army. In August 1647 the army leaders issued The Heads of
the Proposals with a set of remarkable and carefully-worded religious
provisions. They appeared to allow for the survival of both bishops
(stripped of their coercive powers) and the old prayer-book services
(on a voluntary basis). No ecclesiastical officer was to possess any
coercive power, and dissenters (though not Catholics) would enjoy
the right to worship in their own separate meetings. Parliamentary
orders and ordinances concerning the Covenant would be repealed. It

10
W. C. Abbott (ed.), The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, vol. 1 (Oxford:
1988), i.360, 377–8.
11
Thomas Edwards, Gangraena (London: 1646), i.120–4; Ann Hughes, Gangraena
and the Struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford: 2004).
296 bernard capp

remained unclear what form the non-compulsory established church

would take, and General Ireton and his colleagues probably expected
this to be clarified in the course of negotiations with the king.12 A
few weeks later the Levellers, a radical London-based movement with
considerable support among the army rank-and-file, came up with a
still bolder proposal. Their Agreement of the People, a constitutional
outline, proclaimed religious freedom a fundamental right, with which
no government might meddle. The state might, at most, make provi-
sion for some form of public instruction, non-compulsory. Whether
by accident or design, Catholics and even non-Christians would have
received protection under such a guarantee. Hard bargaining with
the officers eventually resulted in a revised Agreement, still radical by
most contemporary standards. It now provided for a non-compulsory
national church, with freedom of worship guaranteed for other Chris-
tians; whether this should extend to Catholics and Episcopalians was
left undecided.13 Neither the king nor parliament would have been
willing to go so far, though a new flexibility was in the air. Writing
to the Lords in November 1647, Charles himself declared that while
he could not accept the abolition of episcopacy, he was now willing
to see bishops work in tandem with the Presbyterian authorities. And
he expressed a readiness to let the Presbyterian model remain in force
for three years, until a permanent settlement could be established by
agreement. Any Protestants unable to accept such a final settlement,
“upon conscientious grounds”, would enjoy “full liberty”. Parliament
responded by demanding that Charles accept a Presbyterian national
church, with a grudging toleration for Protestant dissenters that explic-
itly excluded the old prayer-book services.14
All these manoeuvres were overtaken by events. The army staged a
coup in December 1648, purging moderates from parliament and pav-
ing the way for the trial and execution of the king a few weeks later.
With the monarchy and House of Lords abolished and a depleted
Commons now dominated by Independents, the political climate was
transformed. The fledgling Commonwealth began to inch towards
multiconfessionalism. While the Presbyterian church settlement
approved in 1646–7 remained technically in force, it was implemented

12
Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, 321; Austin Woolrych, Soldiers and States-
men (Oxford: 1987), 163.
13
Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, 334, 369–70.
14
Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, 328–9, 345–6.
 multiconfessionalism in early modern britain 297

only in a few areas, notably London and Lancashire, and had no teeth;
separatists were left unmolested. Early in April 1649 the Baptist leader
William Kiffin presented a petition to the Commons, pledging the
movement’s allegiance and repudiating the Levellers, whereupon the
Commons’ Speaker, William Lenthall, responded with an assurance
that separatist churches would enjoy freedom and protection, as long
as they remained peaceable.15 Though merely verbal, this declaration
marked the first formal step towards religious freedom. Further prog-
ress proved painfully slow. A bill introduced in June 1649 to repeal the
Elizabethan statutes, requiring all adults to attend their parish church,
took 15 months to pass, a reminder that only a few Members of Par-
liament genuinely favoured the radicals and that most saw wooing the
Presbyterians as a far more pressing concern. A fierce Blasphemy Act
in 1650, criminalising a range of beliefs associated with those known as
Ranters, served this goal and received far more publicity.16 Only with
Cromwell’s installation as Lord Protector in December 1653 did mul-
ticonfessionalism receive more positive endorsement. The new consti-
tution, The Instrument of Government, provided for a non-compulsory
national church and guaranteed freedom of worship for those of dif-
ferent judgments, though not to “Popery or Prelacy”.17 The Humble
Petition and Advice of 1657, modifying the Instrument’s provisions,
laid out a set of very broad fundamental beliefs which all must accept,
while confirming the freedom enjoyed by those who differed over
matters of worship or discipline (with the usual exceptions of papists
and prelatists). It called for the punishment of those who disrupted
parish services (a swipe at the confrontational tactics of the Quakers)
but added an important new guarantee that religious non-conformists
were also eligible for “any civil trust, employment or promotion”.18
How far Cromwell really believed in the principle of religious toler-
ation and pluralism is a matter of some debate. It has been argued that
his genuine tolerance extended only to the Calvinist brotherhood of
Independents, Presbyterians, and Particular Baptists and that he hoped

15
Commons Journals, vi.177–8; Murray Tolmie, The Triumph of the Saints (Cam-
bridge: 1977), 181–3.
16
Commons Journals, vi.245, 255, 474; C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait (eds.), Acts and
Ordinances of the Interregnum 1642–1660 (London: 1911), ii.409–12; Blair Worden,
The Rump Parliament (Cambridge: 1974), 121, 232–3, 238–9.
17
Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, 416.
18
Gardiner Constitutional Documents, 454–5.
298 bernard capp

they would eventually be able to reunite.19 There is little sign that he

expected any such reconciliation in the foreseeable future, however; in
1654 he told Parliament that religious freedom must remain a “fun-
damental” principle “for us and the generations to come”. Moreover
his tolerance extended in practice well beyond the Calvinist circle: to
General Baptists, who modified Calvinism, to peaceful Quakers, who
rejected it outright, and even to Jews, whose readmission to England
he promoted. And if Anglicans and Catholics remained beyond the
pale, they fared far better than they had probably anticipated.20
What is certain is that public opinion, both inside and outside Par-
liament, was far less tolerant than the Protector. The Parliament of
1654–5 tried to water down the guarantees enshrined in the Instru-
ment, and the Parliament of 1656–8 imposed a brutal punishment
upon the misguided Quaker leader, James Nayler, accused of blas-
phemy and narrowly escaping with his life. These tensions prompt a
more general question: how far did the religious freedoms now guar-
anteed by law correspond to social realities? Were dissenting groups
able to meet in peace?
In practice, religious freedom often required firm intervention by
the central authorities, both under the Commonwealth and the Crom-
wellian Protectorate. Many local magistrates proved unsympathetic,
and the general public viewed separatists as dangerous and divisive.
For their part, moderate puritan ministers who had inveighed against
episcopal persecution in the 1630s now demanded a monopoly for
their own beliefs and practices. Nicholas Darton, a moderate Episco-
palian, complained in 1649 that two parish churches in Oxford had
been shut up and barricaded to prevent him and others from preach-
ing there. The local Presbyterians were demanding a monopoly for
themselves. Monopolies in the secular sphere had been condemned,
Darton observed, so why should there be a “monopoly upon divinity?
And a monopoly upon churches? And a monopoly upon men’s con-
sciences?” Had not Parliament promised religious freedom?21 This was
a novel line of argument indeed from an Episcopalian clergyman.

19
Blair Worden, “Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate”, in W. Sheils (ed.),
Persecution and Toleration (Studies in Church History) 21 (Oxford: 1984).
20
Abbott, Writings, iii.459; Bernard Capp, “Cromwell and Toleration”, in Jane
Mills (ed.), Cromwell’s Legacy (forthcoming, 2011); Coffey, Persecution and Toleration,
147–9.
21
Nicholas Darton, Ecclesia Anglicana, or Dartons Cleare & Protestant Manifesto
(1649), 2, 5.
 multiconfessionalism in early modern britain 299

Minority groups also had to contend with far more direct challenges
to the principle of religious freedom. Separatists in Oxford were forced
to beg for government protection in December 1651, after townsfolk
and students rioted against their assemblies. The Council of State
responded with stern letters ordering the Mayor, Vice-Chancellor, and
college heads to investigate and prevent any similar disturbances. The
government also intervened after a riot in London in October 1653
against Edmund Chillenden’s Baptist congregation, which worshipped
with official approval in the Stone Chapel of what had been St. Paul’s
Cathedral. There were disturbances too at Lowestoft in February 1654,
aimed at a gathered congregation which met in a chapel there. Sympa-
thetic magistrates investigated and secured an order from the Council
that the congregation’s freedom should be protected and any further
disturbances prosecuted.22
Separatists also encountered hostility and obstruction from many
local magistrates and parish officials. Hester Hobson, for example, the
wife of a prominent Baptist, was stopped by a local justice while she
was riding to a service in County Durham one Sunday in August 1657.
Accusing her of profaning the Sabbath, the justice, George Lilburne,
seized her horse and demanded a heavy fine for its return. Hester
complained to the Council that his action was a flagrant breach of the
constitution. The Council ordered an investigation and had Lilburne
dismissed from office. The following year, the Congregationalist church
in Warwick complained that one Ralph Blick, parish constable of a
nearby village, had indicted a church-member at the recent assizes for
absenteeism from his parish church and had sought to have him fined
2s 6d for each occasion under an Elizabethan statute now repealed.
The Council condemned his action.23 Hostile local magistrates enjoyed
considerable success, however, in harrying Quaker preachers and their
followers. They found grounds to jail Quakers on charges such as refus-
ing to take an oath or pay tithes, or disrupting church services, and
here they had both law and public opinion on their side. Cromwell
himself was often deeply irritated by Quaker behaviour. But Crom-
well regarded most Quakers as genuinely godly, if misguided, and was
sympathetic to pleas that they were being victimized by intolerant
magistrates. The late 1650s saw a flurry of letters from the Council to

22
CSPD, 1651–2, 81–2; CSPD, 1652–3, 423; CSPD, 1653–4, 205; CSPD, 1654, 3.
23
CSPD, 1657–8, 78–9, 101; CSPD, 1658–9, 28, 31.
300 bernard capp

local authorities around the country, demanding to know how many

Quakers were held in custody, on what charges, for how long, and on
what authority.24
Separatists were by no means the only people to face persecution
or breed division. In many parishes an ejected Episcopalian minister
refused to accept his removal, and he or his supporters did all they
could to obstruct his successor. Thomas Jessop, intruded at Luton,
Bedfordshire, in 1650, was still fighting a rearguard action eight years
later against a “malignant” faction, who persuaded parishioners to
boycott his services and attend private, prayer-book meetings instead.
One of their leaders even broke into the church one night to conduct
an illegal prayer-book funeral service, in open defiance of Jessop, who
eventually abandoned the struggle and moved away.25
Religious freedom often became entangled, as here, with disputes
over the control of sacred space or, more generally, with the availabil-
ity of suitable premises for worship. This was a particular problem for
dissenting groups: where could they meet, if no member had a suffi-
ciently large house? At Wantage the gathered church met in the town-
hall, or the “village house” of nearby Grove. After encountering local
hostility, they secured government authorization in 1653 to continue
using these premises undisturbed, whenever they were not required
for court sessions or public business. But in late 1654 they complained
of being locked out of the town-hall on the orders of the new stew-
ard, Thomas Holt, who was also a Member of Parliament for nearby
Abingdon, a reminder of the tensions within the ruling elites. Major
Francis Allen, an army officer and religious radical, came to their res-
cue and secured a new Council order confirming their rights.26 Other
congregations using civic or parish premises also took care to have the
arrangements confirmed by Whitehall. A newly formed Baptist church
at Chard (Somerset) successfully petitioned early in 1655 to be allowed
to meet in the town’s shire-hall when not in use, explaining that none
of the members had a suitable house. And when a congregation at
Wedmore (Somerset) asked to meet in a room in the church-house
there, explaining that it was only occasionally used for business, the
Council directed local magistrates to see the worshippers’ right main-

24
CSPD, 1656–7, 122–3, 133, 229–30, 262, 278; CSPD, 1657–8, 156–7.
25
CSPD, 1658–9, 37.
26
CSPD, 1652–3, 381; CSPD, 1654, 385–6; CSPD, 1655, 2.
 multiconfessionalism in early modern britain 301

tained.27 Religious radicals recognised that their best chance of help

and protection would generally come from central government, not
local magistrates. In September 1653 parliament even voted to award
land and materials to a separatist congregation in Barking, Essex, to
build what may have been England’s first purpose-built nonconformist
meeting-house.28
Gathered churches were often forced to look for larger premises
once numbers made it impractical to meet in members’ homes. One
Baptist church in London hired a room in Glaziers’ Hall, in Thames
Street. Another, in Southwark, had a large meeting-room capable of
holding hundreds.29 By the late 1650s some were looking for more per-
manent solutions. In October 1658 the Baptist William Kiffin and his
friends petitioned for a grant of premises in the Old Artillery Ground
in London, for 99 years, for use by his congregation. The Council,
sympathetic, ordered a survey of the site to see whether this could be
granted without prejudice to the state.30 Other groups, notably moder-
ate Congregationalists and even some Baptists, sought to worship in
the parish church itself, when it was not required for parish services.
The shared use of churches was common whenever the pastor of a
gathered congregation was also minister of the parish itself, as was
often the case in Norfolk and Suffolk, including the two churches in
Ipswich. At Sheffield too, James Fisher served as both vicar of the par-
ish and pastor of a Congregational church.31 Such a dual arrangement
was attractive on both ideological and financial grounds. It enabled the
minister and members to maintain the “purity” of their church and
sacraments while still bringing the gospel to the unconverted majority.
More prosaically, separatist groups often found it a heavy financial
burden to hire premises from local civic bodies as well as supporting
their pastor. The Baptist church in Exeter turned to the government
and secured an order in March 1656 granting it the best-repaired of
the superfluous churches in the city. Similarly the Independent church
at Bury St. Edmunds petitioned Cromwell and his Council, complain-
ing that they had to hire the shire-house “at a great rent” because the

27
CSPD, 1655, 30–1, 61.
28
Commons Journals, vii.316. It is unclear whether it was ever erected.
29
Michael Watts, The Dissenters (Oxford: 1978), 161; William Braithwaite, The
Beginnings of Quakerism (London: 1923), 379.
30
CSPD, 1658–9, 191.
31
G. Nuttall, Visible Saints (Oxford: 1957), 22–3; A. G. Matthews (ed.), Calamy
Revised (Oxford: 1988), 198, 229, 465.
302 bernard capp

Presbyterians controlled both parish churches. They begged to use one

church themselves, or at least its chancel, which they suggested could
be divided from the body of the church. In 1659 the restored Com-
monwealth ordered the Bury magistrates to accede to the petitioners’
wishes.32
Dual use of the parish church could bring its own problems, how-
ever. If a minister refused to administer the Lord’s Supper to those
not members of his gathered congregation, or baptize their children,
he might well find angry parishioners refusing to pay tithes or even
going to law to remove him from office.33 Rival claims to church and
pulpit were particularly bitter when the beneficed minister was at war
with a parish lecturer with his own supporters, or with a gathered
congregation with its own pastor. In such cases the government itself
sometimes had to intervene and adjudicate. Thus in January 1652 the
Council of State ordered the mayor of Dartmouth to ensure that John
Pendarves, a Baptist pastor, should enjoy free access to the pulpit of
St. Saviour’s on Sundays after 4 o’clock, Friday afternoons, and at any
other time when it was not required by the parish minister.34 The Lon-
don parish of St. Botolph’s, Aldgate, witnessed a prolonged and bitter
struggle between the combative Presbyterian minister, Zachary Crof-
ton, and the Baptist lecturer, John Simpson, and their respective sup-
porters. The Council’s order in February 1657, that Simpson should
be allowed to preach from the pulpit on Sunday afternoons and one
weekday, failed to restore peace. On 31 July Crofton sent his rival a
terse note, announcing his intention to preach on Sunday between
one and two, ordering him to stay away, and challenging him to sue
if he would not agree. Instead Simpson persuaded the Council to con-
firm its earlier order, though to no avail; his supporters subsequently
lodged a complaint to Cromwell and the Council that he had been
physically barred from the pulpit. Two senior Councillors, Major-
General Fleetwood and Sir Gilbert Pickering, were thereupon deputed
to arbitrate. Crofton, they reported, was willing to let Simpson use the
pulpit from 3 o’clock; for his part, Simpson was demanding right of
access from 2 o’clock. If religious freedom raised issues of profound
significance, its battles could be extraordinarily petty and personal.

32
CSPD, 1655–6, 224; CSPD, 1659–60, 225; Watts, Dissenters, 158.
33
Watts, Dissenters, 153–5.
34
CSPD, 1651–2, 91.
 multiconfessionalism in early modern britain 303

Ninety-four of Simpson’s supporters raised the stakes still further in

October, denouncing Crofton as an enemy to the Commonwealth and
calling for him to be removed.35
An equally fraught situation developed at Hull, where the rival sup-
porters of the Presbyterian lecturer, John Shaw, and the army garrison’s
radical chaplain, John Canne, struggled over control of Holy Trinity,
the town’s main church. In 1650 the Council intervened, ordering
the Deputy-Governor to make the two ministers share it, with Shaw
having priority. That failed to settle a dispute between two ministers
equally pugnacious. A wall was eventually built dividing the chancel
from the main body of the church, allowing both congregations to
worship at the same time; it was so thick that Canne’s followers in the
chancel could not even hear the psalms being sung by Shaw’s huge
congregation. Even so, the feud rumbled on. Canne attacked Shaw in
print as “corrupt and rotten”, and forwarded articles against him to
the Council of State in 1653, calling for him to be turned out.36
Quakers and the more radical separatists would have found it
unthinkable to use parish churches for their own worship. Both
defined the church as a body of true believers; buildings were irrel-
evant, mere “steeple-houses” in the Quakers’ dismissive phrase. The
first Quakers in London met initially in private houses, and often
continued to use them for private meetings, but early in 1655 they
hired a huge meeting-room above the Bull and Mouth tavern in Alder-
sgate, premises which could hold a thousand people, standing. The
new venue, used for meetings also open to non-Quakers, witnessed
many stormy confrontations. When the early Quakers of Southwark
outgrew the private houses where they had initially met, a prosperous
widow erected a meeting-house behind some houses she was building
in Horsleydown, which survived until eventually demolished on the
king’s orders in 1670. A Quaker group in Spitalfields assembled first
in a private house, then in a large tent, and finally in another purpose-
built meeting-house, which in this case survived Restoration attempts
at suppression.37 A similar development appeared to be under way at
Newcastle, when a leading Quaker hired a large house in the Corn-
market in 1657 as a meeting-house, but when the Quakers assembled

35
CSPD, 1656–7, 272; CSPD, 1657–8, 48, 52, 62, 64–5, 133–4.
36
CSPD, 1650, 452; 1653–4, 91; The Life of Master John Shaw in C. Jackson (ed.),
Yorkshire Diaries and Autobiographies (Surtees Society, 65, 1875), 143–5, 423.
37
Braithwaite, Beginnings, 182–5, 379–80.
304 bernard capp

on market-day, the mayor forbade their meeting as a threat to public

order.38
Parish churches played a significant role in the later 1640s and 1650s
as the venue for crowded public disputations arranged between parish
clergy, separatist preachers, and Quaker missionaries. Such assemblies,
often lasting for hours, could attract huge and sometimes rowdy audi-
ences, with rival supporters applauding their champions and jeering,
hissing, and stamping their feet at their opponents. The audience might
also join in, as at “a great meeting for a dispute” at Leicester in 1648.
The young George Fox, later a leading Quaker, found Presbyterians,
Independents, Baptists, and “common-prayer-men” (supporters of the
pre-war services) in fierce debate, some speaking from the pulpit, oth-
ers from the pews. A woman joined in, and so did Fox. When the
meeting eventually broke up in confusion, many of the participants
moved to an inn close by to resume their debate.39 Such public debates
became one of the defining religious features of the interregnum. A
dispute at Ellesmere in Shropshire in 1656 between Presbyterians and
Baptists attracted an audience of “some thousands” and lasted five
hours. At Rochester Cathedral, the radical preacher Richard Coppin
took on opponents over four days of acrimonious debate in December
1655 with the mayor, magistrates, and army officers in attendance as
well as jeering and cheering townsfolk. If such occasions displayed
little of the calm, rational debate central to Habermas’s conception of
an emerging “public sphere”, they underlined the fact that religious
diversity had become a recognised, though not yet accepted, feature
of public life. The authorities intervened only when they anticipated a
serious threat to public order or feared the occasion would be used to
promulgate blasphemy. Receiving information in June 1655 that the
Socinian John Biddle had denied the divinity of Christ in a huge public
debate at Chillenden’s congregation in St. Paul’s and was intending to
resume the debate, the Council ordered Biddle’s arrest and banned any
further meeting.40
The interregnum saw two further important steps towards multi-
confessionalism. First, several of the radical groups quickly developed

38
The Publick Intelligencer, 117 (11–18 Jan. 1658), 232.
39
George Fox, Journal, ed. J. Nickalls (Cambridge: 1952), 24–5.
40
Thomas Porter, A True and Faithfull Narrative . . . of a Publique Dispute (London:
1656), 1, 21; Richard Coppin, A Blow at the Serpent (London: 1656); CSPD, 1655,
224.
 multiconfessionalism in early modern britain 305

a degree of provincial and even national organisation. By the later

1650s we are not looking at isolated congregations but at move-
ments with elaborate structures, both formal and informal. The Gen-
eral Baptists held a regional assembly in the midlands in 1651, and a
national assembly in London three years later. The Particular (Cal-
vinist) Baptists developed a network of associations linking churches
in South Wales, the midlands, the west, and London with each other
and with other associations. The Independent (Congregationalist) evo-
lution was slower, but in 1658 representatives from over a hundred
churches assembled at the Savoy Conference in London. The Quakers
too quickly developed an informal regional and national framework.41
In each case, these were steps towards the development of major and
lasting denominations.
Second, and equally important, men from outside the loose Crom-
wellian church were able to play a role in public life and hold public
office. While this right was only formally recognized by the Humble
Petition and Advice in 1657, it operated in practice throughout the
interregnum. In 1656 the separatist colonels Edward Whalley and
Thomas Pride were chosen to sit as Lords in Cromwell’s new upper
house in Parliament. William Kiffin, Baptist preacher and merchant,
sat as a Member of Parliament for Middlesex in the parliament of
1656–8. The naval officer corps included many religious radicals too,
such as Vice-Admiral William Goodson, a member of the Stepney
Congregational church. William Burton, a member of the Congre-
gationalist church at Great Yarmouth, was busily involved in public
life throughout the 1650s as Bailiff, Alderman, Member of Parliament,
and naval administrator. In London, Thomas Andrewes, a member of
Sidrach Simpson’s Independent congregation, and Robert Tichborn, a
member of George Cockayne’s gathered church, both served as Lord
Mayor. The lawyer John Cook, who had led the prosecution at the
king’s trial in January 1649, was also a member of a gathered church.42
Such examples could be multiplied.
There were of course limits to the religious freedoms enjoyed in
the 1650s. Catholic and “prelatist” worship was explicitly excluded
by the Cromwellian constitution, and Catholics were excluded from

41
Watts, Dissenters, 166–7; Hugh Barbour, The Quakers in Puritan England (New
Haven: 1964), 58–9, 66.
42
Tolmie, Triumph of the Saints, 22, 65, 156–9, 187–8; and Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography [hereafter ODNB] (Oxford: 2004) for all these.
306 bernard capp

office and the right to vote.43 Cromwell allowed Jews to return to Eng-
land but had to abandon his attempt to secure them a legal footing.
A report that the Jews wanted to buy a beautiful room in Whitehall
(perhaps the Banqueting House) to use as a synagogue was probably
no more than alarmist rumor.44 Had Cromwell lived longer, it is just
possible that prayer-book supporters who kept clear of politics might
in time have received some measure of formal toleration. Cromwell’s
son and successor, Richard, had less interest in toleration and little
sympathy for religious radicals. The flavour of his only parliament was
also intolerant; in February 1659 it called for a bill to tighten the law
against using the prayer-book and established a committee to advise
on measures to suppress Quakers, Catholics, anti-sabbatarians, anti-
Trinitarians, and Jewish worship.45
The “religious freedom” of the 1650s inevitably meant something
very different in Scotland and Ireland, which had very different reli-
gious cultures and histories. Both were conquered by Cromwellian
armies after they had rejected the Commonwealth and declared for
Charles II in 1649, and both were formally covered by the religious
guarantees of the Instrument of Government. The Scots had already
been forced to accept a settlement early in 1652, by which religious
toleration was extended to all Protestants (except Episcopalians). In
practice, the settlement changed little. While tiny groups of Indepen-
dents, Baptists, and Quakers emerged, Scottish religious life continued
to be dominated by the Presbyterians, split between rival “Protesters”
and “Resolutioners”. The two groups were bitterly divided over politics
rather than faith. The Protesters adhered rigidly to the Solemn League
and Covenant, hated royalists, distrusted Charles II, and loathed the
far more numerous Resolutioners for their readiness to compromise
with Charles II and his supporters. Paradoxically, that made them
more willing to work with the Cromwellian authorities, on the basis
of hating the Resolutioners even more. Initially the English therefore
favored the Protesters, but they also pressed the Resolutioners to come
to terms with the new regime, with some success; in 1655 the Resolu-
tioners grudgingly agreed to live peaceably under it and to stop pray-
ing for Charles II. The main concern of the Cromwellian authorities

43
Gardiner, op. cit., 410, 416, 449.
44
David Katz, Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England 1603–
1655 (Oxford: 1982); CSPD, 1658–9, 367.
45
The Publick Intelligencer, 165 (21–8 Feb. 1659), 254.
 multiconfessionalism in early modern britain 307

throughout was to reduce the Presbyterian clergy’s political influence

and the Resolutioners’ royalist commitment, not to protect religious
minorities. Their main achievement was to prevent the rival Presbyte-
rian parties from an all-out, fratricidal conflict.46
The Irish situation offered a sharp contrast. Since Elizabethan times,
a Protestant elite had ruled over a nation still overwhelmingly Catho-
lic. A Protestant Church of Ireland ministered to the ruling elite, while
Catholic priests tended to the majority, risking arrest and execution,
and operating with varying degrees of danger or safety, according
to the zeal and resources of the local English authorities. Ulster, in
the north, had been dominated by Scottish Presbyterian settlers from
the early 1600s. The Catholic rebellion of 1641 destroyed the English
ascendancy in most of the island, and during the 1640s a thousand
friars and several hundred secular priests were able to minister freely
to the Catholic majority, except in Ulster and around Dublin. A shared
hatred of the puritan regime in England led Ormond, the royalist com-
mander in Ireland, to agree to a treaty with the Confederates (the Irish
Catholics) in January 1649, in which he pledged that Catholic worship
would not be disturbed and that the king would consider their request
for the formal recognition of the Irish Catholic Church. The king’s
execution two weeks later, followed by the Cromwellian invasion and
reconquest in 1649–53, transformed the situation. A loose state church
was erected, dominated by Independents with some participation by
Presbyterians and former Church of Ireland ministers. As in Eng-
land, the Presbyterian clergy, initially hostile to the Commonwealth
regime, gradually reached an accommodation, especially after Henry
Cromwell had become Lord Deputy. Outside the state church, Baptists
and Quakers gained a small foothold, mainly among the English sol-
diery. Catholic worship was now brutally suppressed. Seventy Catholic
clergy were executed after the conquest, including three bishops, and
over a thousand were imprisoned and exiled. But the new regime had
neither the resources nor the will to convert the masses, and by the
late 1650s a small band of itinerant Catholic clergy, living precariously,
were once more operating in the countryside.47

46
Gordon Donaldson, Scotland: James V to James VII (Edinburgh: 1965), 336–42,
353–6; Frances Dow, Cromwellian Scotland 1651–1660 (Edinburgh: 1979), 26–30,
58–61, 102–5, 195–210.
47
T. W. Moody et al. (eds.), A New History of Ireland: Early Modern Ireland,
1534–1691, (Oxford: 1976), 375–86; Jane Ohlmeyer (ed.), Ireland from Independence
to Occupation 1641–1660 (Cambridge: 1995), 201–40.
308 bernard capp

The restoration of monarchy in 1660 marked a dramatic shift in

religious policy throughout Britain. In the Declaration of Breda, issued
only a few weeks before his return, Charles II deplored the religious
“passion and uncharitableness” of recent years, declared “a liberty to
tender consciences”, and promised to approve any bill that might be
offered by Parliament “for the full granting that indulgence”.48 The
Cavalier House of Commons elected in 1661, and the leaders of the
restored Anglican Church, had other ideas. Many equated puritan and
sectarian religion with rebellion, treason, and fanaticism and adhered
to the traditional belief that unity was essential in both church and
state. It was self-evidently wrong, they believed, to tolerate beliefs that
were heretical or blasphemous. Others were swayed by the desire for
revenge. The result was a series of punitive measures between 1661
and 1665, later dubbed the “Clarendon Code”. In the years immedi-
ately following the Restoration, over 2,000 ministers were ejected from
parishes in England and Wales, with hundreds of magistrates similarly
removed from county benches and urban corporations. Nonconform-
ists were prosecuted in large numbers for attending religious assem-
blies now proscribed as illegal “conventicles”. Most of those ejected,
dismissed, fined, or imprisoned were not radical sectarians but main-
stream puritans who had happily worshipped within the broad Crom-
wellian church. The persecution was fierce and often vindictive. Yet it
never seemed likely that repression could destroy the nonconformists
altogether. Many preachers and their followers found ingenious ways
to evade arrest, some local officials connived at their meetings, and
some magistrates eventually wearied of the apparently endless pursuit.
Moreover, in some corporations, like Coventry, men of nonconformist
sympathies contrived to hold civic office by the practice of “occasional
conformity”, attending Anglican services just often enough to meet the
formal requirements. And in Essex even some Quakers could be found
holding parish offices, such as overseer of the poor, or sitting on the
vestry, with the connivance of the local authorities; elsewhere some
served as parish constables.49
Charles himself went along reluctantly with the campaign of repres-
sion. No zealot, he always feared that persecution might drive non-

48
Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, 466.
49
Watts, Dissenters, 221–56; Coffey, Persecution, 166–77; Anthony Fletcher, “The
Enforcement of the Conventicle Acts, 1664–1679,” in Sheils, Persecution; Alan Davies,
The Quakers in English Society 1655–1725 (Oxford: 2000), 244–6.
 multiconfessionalism in early modern britain 309

conformists to plot or rebel. In March 1672, while parliament was pro-

rogued, Charles dramatically reversed policy by issuing a Declaration
of Indulgence. Observing that persecution had manifestly failed, he
suspended all laws against Catholics and nonconformists, and invited
nonconformists to apply for licences to preach in approved premises.
Not all nonconformists welcomed the gesture, for this liberty would
rest on royal prerogative alone, not law. Some dissenters accordingly
held back, including all the Quakers. Nonetheless, over the following
year some 1610 licences were issued to Presbyterians, Independents,
and Baptists, in a ratio of roughly 4:2:1. Many nonconformist assem-
blies were soon packed, swelled by sympathisers who had earlier stayed
away through fear of prosecution. Some groups were sufficiently con-
fident to erect their own, purpose-built meeting-houses, as at Leeds
and Great Yarmouth, where the congregation raised £800 and erected
a substantial building with its own galleries.50
The Indulgence proved short-lived. When parliament reassembled,
it challenged the king’s power to suspend the laws and quickly forced
him to withdraw the Declaration, in March 1673. The penal laws were
now reinforced. The Test Act (1673) required all office-holders to take
the oaths of supremacy and allegiance and to make a declaration repu-
diating the Catholic faith; among its victims was the king’s own brother
and heir, James, duke of York, a Catholic convert forced to resign as
Lord Admiral. Another Test Act, in 1678, extended these restrictions
to parliament itself; no Catholic peer could henceforth sit in the Lords,
and all men elected to the Commons were required to take the oaths
and make the declaration as specified in 1673. With fears of popery
intensifying following the exposure of an alleged Popish Plot in 1678,
public opinion began to shift toward the Protestant dissenters, now
viewed more positively as allies against popery. In 1680 a new par-
liament, dominated by the more sympathetic Whigs, saw bills intro-
duced for Comprehension and Toleration, designed to reunite the
church and relieve any dissenters left outside it. But another political
shift meant that both bills failed; and with the Whigs shattered by the
Rye House Plot, the Anglican Tories regained their ascendancy. Whig
sympathisers were purged from county benches and urban corpora-
tions, and with Charles no longer disposed to protect nonconformists,

50
J. P. Kenyon, The Stuart Constitution (Cambridge: 1966), 407–8; Watts, Dissenters,
247–9.
310 bernard capp

the final years of his reign saw a new wave of persecution, the fiercest
of all.51
The Restoration era in Scotland witnessed similarly sharp fluctua-
tions between phases of persecution and leniency. Episcopacy was
restored in 1661, and by 1663 268 of the more rigid Presbyterian
ministers, (a quarter of all the Scottish clergy), had been ejected. Pres-
byterianism remained strong and defiant, however, in much of low-
land Scotland. Charles gave a limited toleration to former Protesters
in 1669, but a new wave of repression soon followed, provoking fierce
opposition which culminated in the assassination of Archbishop James
Sharp of St. Andrews in 1679 and an armed rebellion. As in England,
the last years of Charles II’s reign saw a new wave of fierce repression,
with a Scottish Test Act (1681) aimed at Presbyterians rather than
Catholics.52 In Ireland, the Restoration had also brought the return of
the episcopalian Church, though it had little presence in most of the
country. In Ulster, where 60 nonconformist ministers were ejected,
the regime lacked the resources to crush the Presbyterian dominance
of the province. For their part, Catholics enjoyed a considerable mea-
sure of informal toleration, and Catholic bishops were even able to
hold a synod in Dublin in 1670. Periods of persecution also occurred,
however, triggered by alarms on the mainland, and culminated in
1681 with the execution of Oliver Plunkett, Catholic Archbishop of
Armagh, for alleged treason.53
The short reign of James II, succeeding his brother in 1685, saw yet
another reversal of policy: a renewed experiment in English multicon-
fessionalism and major shifts in Scotland and Ireland too. Catholics
naturally hoped that a monarch of their own faith would improve their
situation. Nonconformists had little reason to expect any such change,
and after the brutal suppression of Monmouth’s rebellion in the
autumn of 1685, in which many dissenters had taken part, their pros-
pects looked grim. James even requisitioned several dissenters’ meet-
ing-houses in London and turned them into army barracks.54 Royal
policy soon changed, however. James had commissioned a number

51
Kenyon, Stuart Constitution, 408–10, 461–2, 465–6; J. R. Western, Monarchy and
Revolution (London: 1972), 181–5; Coffey, Persecution, 172–87.
52
Donaldson, Scotland, 360–72; J. Buckroyd, Church and State in Scotland 1660–
1681 (Edinburgh: 1980).
53
Moody, New History, 429–38.
54
John Childs, The Army, James II and the Glorious Revolution (Manchester: 1980),
88–9.
 multiconfessionalism in early modern britain 311

of Catholic officers into the army to deal with the rebellion, using the
royal prerogative to dispense with the Test Acts and, once the crisis
was over, made it clear that he intended to retain them. When parlia-
ment objected it was hastily dissolved. James thereupon embarked on
a radical policy designed to break the shackles of the Anglican Tory
elite, and secure a free hand in both secular and religious matters. In
a crucial test case, Godden v Hales (1686), the judges upheld the king’s
right to dispense with the law’s requirements in appointing military
and civil officers. In April 1687 James issued a Declaration of Indul-
gence, renewed a year later, which suspended all penal laws against
Catholics and nonconformists, and granted them freedom of worship
and the right to hire or build their own meeting-houses. Persecution
ceased, and the prisons were emptied of religious prisoners. For the
first time Catholics were also able to hire buildings for worship, and by
1688 most large provincial towns had Catholic chapels. London had
18, some linked to embassies, others in the suburbs, and one in the
heart of the city, in Lime Street, despite attempts by the Lord Mayor
to suppress it and riots by enraged citizens. A similar Declaration in
Scotland gave freedom of public worship to Catholics and Quakers.
Presbyterians, viewed by James as his unrelenting enemies and initially
excluded, were brought into the fold by a second proclamation a few
months later, in June 1687.55
James acknowledged that his ideal would be a nation wholly Catho-
lic. Recognising the impossibility of that dream, he promised to protect
the Established Church, but he remained determined to use his pre-
rogative powers to secure far more than a bare toleration for Catholics
and nonconformists and to free the crown from the Anglican-Tory
stranglehold. By this point a significant proportion of moderate opin-
ion would have been willing to see laws against nonconformists relaxed,
but politically-motivated fear and suspicion of Catholicism remained
strong. It was this fear, indeed, which was helping to make the noncon-
formists more acceptable, as memories of the civil war gradually faded.
Committed Tory Anglicans remained strongly opposed to any tolera-
tion, and by the end of 1685 James had purged a huge swath of such
men from the magistracy throughout England. His long-term ambition

55
Kenyon, Stuart Constitution, 410–3, 483–9; John Miller, Popery and Politics
in England 1660–1688 (Cambridge: 1973), 243–8; Western, Monarchy, 187, 206–8;
Donaldson, Scotland, 382–4.
312 bernard capp

was to secure a parliament that would repeal all the penal legislation,
and to that end he ordered Lords-Lieutenant in each county to see
whether local justices would support such a programme. Hundreds of
justices of the peace, who made it clear they would oppose any such
move, were removed and replaced by Catholics, nonconformists, and
compliant time-servers. By 1688 there were over 400 Catholic justices,
about a quarter of the total—all the more striking as Catholics com-
prised little more than 1 percent of the population. Urban corpora-
tions were similarly purged. At Great Yarmouth, six aldermen and 11
councilors were removed in January 1688, with several leading Con-
gregationalists nominated to replace them, including several elderly
Cromwellian veterans. In London, James forced the aged and reluctant
William Kiffin to serve as an alderman in 1687–8.56
Catholics also appeared in many other spheres of public life. The
Anglican monopoly in the two universities was undermined, and by
1687 three colleges had Catholic heads. When the Fellows of Magdalen
College, Oxford, objected to James’s attempt to impose one there too,
they were almost all deprived of their posts.57 Some Catholics now
also held high government office. By 1688 13 members of James’s
Privy Council were Catholics, including his chief minister, the earl
of Sunderland (a convert); moreover the head of the Treasury, the
earl of Rochester, was dismissed after he refused to convert. There
were Catholic Lords-Lieutenant and sheriffs, and Catholic mayors at
Newcastle, Worcester, Gloucester, and Stafford. Catholics remained a
minority in all these roles, but James’s determination to entrench their
position in every branch of public life was plain.58 The same applied
to the army. Catholics comprised only about 11 percent of the officer
corps in 1688, with little evidence that the king aspired to transform
its overall character. But he was clearly signalling that the crown no
longer felt tied to any particular faith. Moreover, Ireland had experi-
enced far more radical change. Within a short period the officer corps
of the Irish army was wholly replaced by Catholics, mostly from Old
English families, with a similar mass purge of civic and governmental
bodies, including the judiciary. Irish Catholic bishops even began to

56
Miller, Popery, 218–9; Perry Gauci, Politics and Society in Great Yarmouth, 1660–
1722 (Oxford: 1996), 167–8; ODNB, Kiffin.
57
Miller, Popery, 240; Western, Monarchy, 198–202.
58
Miller, Popery, 219–22.
 multiconfessionalism in early modern britain 313

receive modest salaries from the state itself, and new Catholic schools
and convents sprang up.59
In 1688 mounting alarm at James’ Catholic zeal and autocratic ten-
dencies triggered the ‘Glorious Revolution’ and the king’s flight to
France. Protestants had drawn together in the face of a perceived com-
mon threat, and it seemed unlikely that the new government of Wil-
liam III (a Dutch Calvinist) and his wife Mary would revert to a policy
of repression. Beyond that, however, the shape of their religious settle-
ment remained in doubt. Early in 1689 two bills were introduced in
the House of Lords, one for Comprehension, the other for Toleration.
The first offered concessions in the liturgy designed to tempt moderate
nonconformists back into the Church of England. The second prom-
ised religious freedom for those Protestants who remained outside.
Mixed motives lay behind these initiatives: while some genuinely sup-
ported the principle of religious freedom, others saw comprehension
as a means to divide and weaken the dissenters and toleration as a
device to block any possibility of full emancipation. William hoped
for the right to employ Protestants of any persuasion, but parliament,
still firmly Anglican, snubbed his request. The Comprehension Bill
was dropped, partly because the Presbyterians overplayed their hand,
partly through fear that concessions might lead more High Church
Anglicans to break away, joining the six bishops and 400 ‘Nonjuring’
clergy who had refused to accept William and Mary. The Toleration
Bill did become law, and within a year almost 1200 nonconformist
meeting-houses had been registered.60
The Scots were able to force a very different settlement on the new
king. William reluctantly had to recognize Presbyterianism as the
established church north of the border, and his pleas for moderation
were ignored. Episcopacy was swept away, and rampant Presbyterians
expelled roughly half of all ministers from their livings for refusing
to accept the new order. Many Episcopalians were able to retain their
positions in the Highlands, where they were much stronger; elsewhere
they now had to operate through private conventicles. The Union of
Scotland and England in 1707 left the Presbyterian establishment
intact, and it was only by an Act of the British Parliament in 1712

59
Childs, Army, 18–82; Moody, New History, 482.
60
Western, Monarchy, 360–76; Geoffrey Holmes, The Making of a Great Power
(London: 1993), 350–6; G. Bennett, “Conflict in the Church,” in G. Holmes (ed.),
Britain after the Glorious Revolution 1689–1714 (London: 1969), 160–2.
314 bernard capp

that Episcopalians north of the border received the right to worship in

their own meeting-houses. A handful of bishops continued to provide
leadership, of sorts, and the church survived precariously. In Ireland it
took another invading army, initially led by William himself, to crush
the Jacobite and Catholic cause. The Episcopalian Church of Ireland
regained its supremacy, with the Presbyterians still entrenched in
Ulster and the majority Catholic population once more marginalized,
though with its priests no longer persecuted.61
The 1689 Settlement was to define the shape of multiconfessionalism
in England until the 19th century. It was far from complete, of course.
Catholics remained outside the law, along with Jews and those who
denied the Trinity (Unitarians, Socinians, and Deists). Some of these
radical thinkers suffered persecution, such as Arthur Bury, removed as
head of an Oxford college, and William Whiston, dismissed from his
professorial chair of mathematics at Cambridge.62 More important, it
was far from certain in 1689 that the Settlement would endure. Nei-
ther Anglicans nor Dissenters found it satisfactory, and many Tory
politicians and Anglican clergy hoped to rewrite it and, if possible, find
some way to secure uniformity. Though Anglicans constituted some 90
percent of the population, they now felt on the defensive. Dissenters
were opening new meeting-houses and operating more publicly than
ever. They were particularly strong in London with tens of thousands
of followers, and in cities such as Norwich, Bristol, and Birmingham
they numbered almost a third of the population. Though they were
still barred from university, successful dissenting academies appeared
to undermine the privileged status of Oxford and Cambridge. And
though still excluded from public office by the penal legislation of the
1660s and 1670s, they increasingly found ways to by-pass it through
the practice of “occasional conformity”, receiving Anglican commu-
nion once to obtain a certificate, and thereafter frequenting a dissent-
ing meeting-house. Moreover, by infiltrating urban corporations, they
were increasingly able to influence parliamentary elections and secure
sympathetic Members of Parliament. These developments led Church-
men and Tories to raise the cry, “The Church in danger!” and rally
popular support. Three bills banning Occasional Conformity were

61
William Ferguson, Scotland, 1689 to the Present (Edinburgh: 1968), 13, 50,
102–12, 127–32; Moody, New History, 505–6.
62
Western, Monarchy, 374; ODNB, Whiston.
 multiconfessionalism in early modern britain 315

introduced in the Commons in 1702–04, and only narrowly defeated.

A High Church demagogue, Henry Sacheverell, stirred up passions
still further in 1709, sparking violent riots in the capital in which six
meeting-houses were destroyed. A Tory ministry in Queen Anne’s
last years pushed through a less extreme Occasional Conformity Act
(1711) and a Schism Act (1714) to suppress the academies. But it
was too late. The accession of the Hanoverian George I, a Lutheran,
brought with it the end of Tory control, and the 1711 and 1714 laws
were both repealed in 1719.63
Thereafter religious passions gradually and at last died down. Cath-
olics, still subjected to heavy taxation, remained otherwise largely
ignored. Most Dissenters felt content to have secured toleration and
did not press for anything more. Full emancipation, for both Catholics
and Dissenters, had to wait until the 19th century. Religious life in
the 18th century lost much of its earlier fire, and pious clergy (both
Anglican and nonconformist) became increasingly preoccupied with
new concerns: a perceived decline in public morals and a very real and
steep decline in church attendance, especially in the towns. Multicon-
fessionalism gradually bedded down in a novel atmosphere of religious
quiescence.

63
Bennett, ‘Conflict’, 167–74; Watts, Dissenters, 267–89; Geoffrey Holmes, British
Politics in the Age of Anne (London: 1967), 101–5.
EARLY MODERN IRELAND AS MULTICONFESSIONAL STATE

Raymond Gillespie

Across Europe for most of the 16th and 17th centuries rulers sought to
apply the principle of cuius regio, euis religio agreed at Augsburg. That
the religion of the ruler should also be the religion of his people was
clearly both convenient and practical. It provided ideological cohe-
sion for a political entity, and it allowed the state to use the institu-
tions of the church for the maintenance of moral and social order. At
least until the middle of the 17th century lapses in this situation were
tolerated, but governments were always on the lookout for opportuni-
ties to rectify aberrant situations. Perhaps the best known example of
this drive for conformity and cohesion was the fate of Bohemia, like
Ireland at the edge of Europe, but unlike Ireland composed of a Prot-
estant majority within the larger Catholic Holy Roman Empire. After
1619 the Protestant political elite of Bohemia was eliminated and a
program of Catholic evangelization was implemented to ensure not
simply political but religious conformity also. The confessional state
was a powerful and pervasive force in early modern Europe.
At first sight Ireland under English control in the 16th and 17th centu-
ries appears to fit this model of the confessional state. In many respects
the legal forms that shaped religious life in Ireland imitated those in
England, making it a good example of the attempted creation of a con-
fessional state through a reformation from the monarchy downwards.
This contrasted starkly with the reform from below, characteristic of
16th-century Scotland. In England and Ireland the respective Acts of
Uniformity that established the Church of England (1558) and its Irish
counterpart (1560) as state churches were almost identical. Both created
a coterminous religious and political community with the monarch as
the head of both state and church. Loyalty to this confessional state was
proclaimed by attendance at the parish church on Sunday with a fine of
12d for those who did not do so.1 Again, at the Restoration of Charles II
in 1660, the legislation passed in England and Ireland to create a

1
1 Eliz c. 2 (Eng), 2 Eliz c. 2 (Ire).
318 raymond gillespie

uniformity of worship and structures of church government was

almost identical. In both countries the parishes of the established
church came to fulfil similar functions, moving from being expres-
sions of local community to instruments of state government, charged
with the provision of roads, care of the poor, prevention of fire, and
the maintenance of law and order.2 Such linkages between Irish and
English legislation on the nature of social and religious order were
regarded by some as central to the relationship between the two enti-
ties in the 16th and 17th centuries. As the earl of Essex, the lord lieu-
tenant of Ireland in the 1670s, wrote when dealing with the Ulster
Presbyterians in 1673, “if some indulgence be granted them I humbly
conceive the methods which you may design for England will probably
be the fittest to be practised here, for generally the nearer we conform
to England in the administration of the government in this county
the firmer the interest of the crown [is] supported”.3 Again in 1672,
following Charles II’s declaration of indulgence, Essex, trying to find
a solution to the problem of controlling large Presbyterian communi-
ties, observed to the earl of Arlington “the best solution I can think
of would be to do the same here as is practis’d in England which is to
license some places and prohibit others”.4
There is much that is attractive about the neat conception of the
alignment of theological and secular power in a confessionalized state
as set out in the Irish reformation statutes and derived from a quasi-
colonial relationship with England the early modern period. This view
certainly provided a convenient model, used by an earlier generation
of Irish historians to describe religious and political change over the
early modern period. The idea is all the more beguiling because of its
ability to link together a number of disparate themes into a coherent
pattern of change, driven by London or Dublin and implemented in
the Irish provinces by the officials of the central administration. Thus
the government policy of land confiscation and plantation in Ireland
could be neatly linked with centrally driven religious change creating
a “top-down” model of social and religious change. Thus Protestant-
ism and the English administration in Dublin could be associated with

2
For instance, Raymond Gillespie, “Urban Parishes in Early-Seventeenth-Century
Ireland: the Case of Dublin” in Raymond Gillespie and Elizabeth FitzPatrick (eds.),
The Parish in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland (Dublin: 2006), 228–41.
3
Osmond Airey (ed.), The Essex Papers, 1672–9 (London: 1890), 77.
4
Airey, Essex Papers, p. 15.
 early modern ireland as multiconfessional state 319

colonists and Catholicism with the dispossessed and excluded Irish. As

one recent survey of 17th-century Ireland has expressed it, the “orga-
nising grand narrative of the seventeenth century has been a story of
conflict and dispossession as a native elite was progressively displaced
by a new colonial ruling class”.5 In this historiographical tradition
multiconfessionalism was essentially a side issue. The nature of rela-
tions between the various confessions within Ireland was essentially
antagonistic, characterized by violence and pre-determined by ethnic-
ity rather than shaped in any other way.
This model of confessional relationships has become increasingly
difficult to sustain. Even the apparently simple legislative framework
that created the confessional state within Ireland was less straightfor-
ward than it appears at first sight. When viewed against the legislation
passed to maintain the confessional state in 16th-century England, the
Irish statutes seem less draconian than their English counterparts. In
1580 anyone who heard Mass in England was fined 200 marks and
imprisoned for a year with additional monthly fines imposed on those
who did not attend their parish church.6 In 1593 further fines and
imprisonment were introduced, and in that same year confiscation of
land was provided as a penalty for failure to attend the parish church.7
None of this legislation was applied to Ireland where, it might well
have been argued, it was more urgently needed to tackle the prob-
lem of Catholic subversion. There may well have been good practical
reasons for these differences. The 16th-century Irish parliament met
infrequently, and when it did assemble it was difficult to manage effec-
tively, which led to a rather attenuated parliamentary program. The
government did have alternative means of introducing legal change in
Ireland, most significantly through proclamations, yet these were not
deployed. In the 17th century, the pattern was repeated. Ireland lacked
a Test Act, a Five Mile Act, or a Conventicle Act, all of which were
enacted to control Protestant dissent in late-17th-century England.
Again in 1606, after the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, the penal legisla-
tion against Catholics introduced in England, which required them
to come to the services of the established church or pay £20 a month
or lose two-thirds of their property, found no counterpart in Ireland.

5
Pádraig Lenihan, Consolidating Conquest: Ireland 1603–1727 (London: 2008), 255.
6
23 Eliz c. 1 (Eng).
7
35 Eliz c. 1 (Eng); 35 Eliz c. 2 (Eng).
320 raymond gillespie

There may have been a move to introduce similar legislation in Ireland

in 1616, since a book entitled God and the king, which was associated
with the 1606 legislation, was ordered to be published in Ireland. Yet,
despite this intention the legislation was never enacted.8
In other areas too there are problematic aspects to the thinking of
the English administration in Ireland. Before the 1660s Catholics were
not excluded from the political nation. Subject to property qualifica-
tions they could vote, sit in the Irish parliament, and hold most local
offices, and many did so. After the wars of the 1640s, attitudes hard-
ened but this inclusive theoretical definition of a political nation, which
encompassed a number of confessions, survived until the beginning of
the 18th century. The rise of the fiscal state in the years after the 1690s
prompted the London parliament to think more clearly about exactly
how the political nation was to be constituted and how the various
political nations within the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and
Ireland would interact. The result was a process of definition of the
Irish political nation such as had not been seen in the 16th or 17th
centuries. The sacramental test of 1704 may, for convenience, be seen
as the beginning of this and its culmination was clearly in the 1728 act
that deprived Catholics of the parliamentary franchise. It is certainly
true that there had been attempts to remove the vote from Catholics
in 1697 and 1698, by requiring an oath denying the deposing power
of the pope, but while such an act passed in England it failed to do
so in Ireland. Again attempts in 1709 to remove the vote from Cath-
olics were countered by the sort of sentiments set forth in William
Molyneux’s Case of Ireland . . . stated (1697), that Catholics could not
be bound by laws to which they had not consented. This early-18th-
century activity is clearly related to the emergence of a rather different
type of political entity than had existed earlier.9
Exploring these omissions and ambiguities in trying to create a
confessional state through legislation is, of course, only one way of
highlighting the problems and difficulties of making the realities of
life in early modern Ireland coincide with the conceptions of those
who viewed that world from the ivory towers of the theological fac-

8
Calendar of State Papers Relating to Ireland, 1615–25 (London: 1880), 144.
9
J. G. Simms, “The Making of a Penal Law, 1703–4,” Irish Historical Studies 22
(1970–1): 105–18; idem, “Irish Catholics and the Parliamentary Franchise,” Irish His-
torical Studies 12 (1960–1): 28–37. For a fuller discussion of the penal code and its
effects, see Ian MacBride, Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin: 2009), 194–250.
 early modern ireland as multiconfessional state 321

ulty of Trinity College, Dublin, the council room of Dublin Castle, or

one of the episcopal palaces scattered around the country. Many of
the assumptions inherent in the traditional historical interpretations
of confessional relations in Ireland have proved difficult to sustain.
A case in point is the linkage of Protestantism with newcomers and
Catholicism with natives of various hues. Investigation of the beliefs
of some of those involved in colonization have revealed a substantial
cadre of English Catholic settler landholders in Munster and a few
others, such as John Brown of the Neale, in 16th-century Connacht.10
In the early 17th-century plantation of Ulster, driven mainly by Scot-
tish migrants, Catholics too could be found. English Catholics, such
as the earl of Castlehaven, appeared among those granted land in the
scheme and Scottish Catholics, most significantly the earl of Abercorn,
were also prominent among the settlers. The Catholicism of these men
was sincere. In the 1640s the settler Castlehaven fought on the side
of the Catholic Confederation against the Dublin administration, and
Abercorn and his relations, who also received land in the barony of
Strabane, introduced Catholic settlers and a Jesuit community into his
estates, converting a number of prominent settler women to Catholi-
cism.11 Outside the formal plantation schemes Catholic settlers from
the Isles of Scotland, such as Randall MacDonnell, first earl of Antrim,
obtained a substantial estate comprising of almost three quarters of
County Antrim, making him one of the six richest men in Ireland by
1640.12 Cases such as these have gone a long way to suggesting that
deterministic links between ethnicity and confessional position are, at
best, problematic.
What made this situation unusual was that the confessional balance
bore little resemblance to the ideal that underpinned the establish-
ment of the Church of Ireland. While many European societies could
boast a dissenting minority confession within the larger confessional
state, Ireland was unusual in that the vast majority of the population
of early modern Ireland did not share the confessional position of the
head of state. Unfortunately, reliable numerical evidence for the size of

10
David Edwards, “ ‘A Haven of Popery’: English Catholic Migration to Ireland
in the Age of Plantations” in Alan Ford and John McCafferty (eds.), The Origins of
Sectarianism in Early Modern Ireland (Cambridge, UK: 2005), 95–126.
11
Calendar of State Papers Relating to Ireland, 1625–32 (London: 1900), 499, 509,
513.
12
George Hill, A Historical Account of the Macdonnells of Antrim (Belfast: 1873),
195–202.
322 raymond gillespie

Irish confessional groups is fragmentary and late. The guesses by early

political economists, most notably William Petty, in the 1670s reck-
oned that there were some 300,000 Protestants in Ireland as opposed
to 800,000 Catholics. Of the Protestants, Petty reckoned, 100,000 were
members of the established church and 200,000 were dissenters, the
latter split evenly between Scottish Presbyterians in Ulster and English
radicals of various confessions in the remainder of the island.13 There
are some grounds for suggesting that Petty’s estimates, particularly for
the numbers of Protestant dissenters, say more about fears of the splits
within Protestantism than about the real balance between confessional
groups. However, there is no reason to doubt the reality that Catho-
lics outnumbered Protestants by between two and three to one. This
may even be an underestimate since commentators in the early-18th
century believed that Catholics may have outnumbered Protestants by
five or even seven to one.
It is possible to consider the same reality from another position,
that of the fate of the institutions of the various confessions in Ireland.
Despite a good deal of historical research on the general positions of
the churches in early modern Ireland, much less has been done in
trying to describe how the institutions that the various confessions
created fared within the legislative framework of the confessional state.
Two examples might clarify the issues involved. In the case of Catholi-
cism the high standard of record keeping by the Franciscans means
that it is possible to chart with some precision the fate of their order in
17th-century Ireland. Despite a number of proclamations to expel the
friars in the early-17th century, the size of the community in Ireland
in 1623 was estimated at 200 friars, but by 1639 had grown to 574.
Perhaps surprisingly, the number of friars seems to have fallen slightly
to 400 by 1648, but this may reflect a poor guess about membership
rather than reality. Certainly, the number of convents increased from
32, listed in a 1629 chapter bill, to 61, recorded in the 1647 chapter
bill. By 1700 the size of the community had grown to 600 members.14
Growth was thus not even across the century, the impact of spurts of
growth was ameliorated by periods of stagnation and, in the 1650s,

13
For a discussion of numbers, see Sean Connolly, Religion, Law and Power: The
Making of Protestant Ireland, 1660–1760 (Oxford: 1992), 144–9, 159–61.
14
For these numbers and commentary on them, see Raymond Gillespie, “The Irish
Franciscans, 1600–1700” in Edel Bhreathnach, Joseph MacMahon and John McCaf-
ferty (eds.), The Irish Franciscans, 1534–1990 (Dublin: 2009), 45–76.
 early modern ireland as multiconfessional state 323

decline. Yet overall the Franciscans managed to grow substantially and

reorganise within a confessional setting.
From a Protestant perspective the evidence is less clear, partly
because many affiliated to the dissenting tradition operated within a
very weak organisational structure.15 However, those Presbyterians of
Scottish extraction who settled in Ulster understood their ecclesiasti-
cal structures to be central to their understanding of the church. In
the years after 1642, when the first presbytery was formed in Ulster,
Presbyterians began creating in Ulster a system of church government
more powerful and effective than that of the established church. By
1690 they had replicated the ecclesiastical structure of Scottish Pres-
byterianism in Ulster, drawing on the support of local communities of
dissenters that the state admitted were impossible to suppress.16 As the
Irish lord lieutenant, the duke of Ormond, expressed it, closing illegal
Presbyterian churches “is no better than scattering a flock of crows
that will soon assemble again, and possibly it were better to leave them
alone than to let them see the impotence of the government upon
which they will presume”.17 Examples such as this tend to reinforce
the evidence of religious demography. However, they do suggest that
the position is perhaps rather more complex than the simple figures
of confessional allegiance indicate. The existence of large numbers
of Catholic and Protestant non-conformists in 18th-century Ireland
might simply point to the failure of the Reformation in the preced-
ing two centuries, suggesting that the resulting multiconfessionalism
was essentially the product of the failure of state-sponsored religious
reform. However the evidence of the formation of institutional struc-
tures points to a rather different way of looking at the evidence. Mul-
ticonfessionalism was not simply the by-product of this failure, but
rather a response to a series of confessional options that were offered
within a weakly confessionalized structure. In this sense the disjunc-
tion between the apparent desire of the legislative framework to create
a confessional state and the evolution of realities on the ground in

15
Raymond Gillespie, “Dissenters and Nonconformists” in Kevin Herlihy (ed.), The
Irish Dissenting Tradition 1660–1800 (Dublin: 1995), 11–28.
16
Raymond Gillespie, “The Presbyterian Revolution in Ulster, 1660–90” in W. J. Shiels
and Diana Wood (eds.), The Churches, Ireland and the Irish (Studies in Church His-
tory) 25 (Oxford: 1988), 159–70.
17
Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of the Marquess
of Ormonde at Kilkenny Castle, new series, vol. 5 (London: 1902–20), 102.
324 raymond gillespie

effect allowed the emergence of a multiconfessional society framed by

a confessional state.
Some modification of this picture may be necessary, since these
descriptions of confessional balances need to be treated with care, if
we are to understand the realities of multiconfessionalism that under-
lay these large aggregates. The 1732 hearth tax provides an important
geographical perspective on the reality of multiconfessionalism.18 On
a regional basis areas of what might be described as genuine multi-
confessionalism can be identified, while other areas are, in fact, nearly
monopolized by a single confession, albeit not that of the state. In the
western province of Connacht some 91 per cent of households were
returned as Catholic, ranging from some 95 per cent in the southern
county of Galway to 81 per cent in Sligo in the north of the province.
In the northern province of Ulster, by contrast, only 38 per cent of
households returned themselves as Catholic, ranging from 43 per cent
in the western county of Donegal to 19 per cent in the eastern county
of Antrim. The remaining provinces of Leinster, in which Dublin lay,
and Munster in the south of the country returned Catholic popula-
tions of 70 and 89 per cent respectively, but with some counties, such
as Kerry, Clare, Kildare, and Waterford recording over 90 per cent
Catholic inhabitants. Such distributions may be late evidence, but they
almost certainly reflect earlier patterns of religious allegiances; indeed
estimates for the proportion of Catholics in the various parts of Ireland
in the mid-17th century should almost certainly be higher than those
for 1732. The poll money return for 1660, for instance, suggests that
in large areas of the west of the country settlers formed less than 5 per
cent of the population and this is probably roughly proportionate to
the number of Protestants.19 This sort of skewed geographical distri-
bution should warn of the dangers of shaping general models of the
operation of multiconfessionalism within even such a small, if excep-
tional, area as Ireland. While most of the western part of the country
cannot be seen as conforming to the norms of the confessional state by
conforming to the established church, neither can it be seen as multi-
confessional, since the area was so heavily dominated by Catholics. Put
another way, it is impossible to describe relations between Catholics

18
Mapped in Connolly, Religion, Law and Power, 146.
19
Mapped in William J. Smyth, “Society and Settlement in Seventeenth-Century
Ireland: The Evidence of the ‘1659’ Census” in William J. Smyth and Kevin Whelan
(eds.), Common Ground: Essays on the Historical Geography of Ireland (Cork: 1988), 74.
 early modern ireland as multiconfessional state 325

and Protestants in large parts of Ireland simply because there were

virtually no Protestants to have relations with.
Within the geographical and legal constraints of understanding
the workings of multiconfessionalism there were some areas, most
especially Ulster and Leinster, where multiple confessions did exist
in close proximity and hence these regions approximate more closely
to the idea of a multiconfessional society within a confessional state.
To understand how this structure might have evolved, the forces that
held it together, and the tensions that drove it apart, it is important to
understand the factors that influenced confessional choice, the ways
in which these multiple choices could be accommodated within the
idea of the confessional state, the negotiations that made such accom-
modations possible and, finally, the consequences that ensued when
these social negotiations broke down. Perhaps the most basic of these
problems is that of confessional choice. In areas of multiconfessional-
ism a range of possible positions was on offer and, given weakening
of the deterministic links between ethnicity, political positions, and
religion discussed above, the reasons for the adoption of a particular
confessional position are of some importance in understanding how
confessions might relate to each other. There was clearly a wide range
of factors at play in shaping confessional choice. Given the nature of
the evidence much more is known of how adherents to the various
varieties of Protestantism reached their own positions. A number of
individuals, who have left indications of how they came to their own
positions, may stand for much wider groups in early modern Irish
society. The first is Eleanor Stringer, the wife of a carpenter in Cork.
In 1642 when asked by a Catholic priest which religion she belonged
to she replied “she was of that religion wherein she had been bred
and would live and die”.20 The second, a Mr. Dean, was also from
Cork. In 1645 when he asked some of the Irish Catholic rebels why
he was being persecuted by them they answered “he was a Protes-
tant and a Roundhead. He replied I take it upon my death I know
not what those words mean but I am of the religion of both the king
and the lord lieutenant general of Ireland profess which is the same
Protestant religion and if I suffer I know not what I die for . . .”.21 The
third individual is another woman, Mary Burrill, a member of a Godly

20
Trinity College, Dublin [hereafter TCD], MS 826, f. 244.
21
TCD, MS 826, f. 299.
326 raymond gillespie

congregation meeting in 1651 in the former Christ Church cathedral

in Dublin. Speaking before the congregation she declared, “I have had
in my dreams two terrible conflicts with Satan by all which I have
been much assured of God’s love for that I always had the better, the
victory. O, I love the saints of God, His Word, And all his ways, and
I rest on Christ Jesus alone, and on nothing of self ! And I do desire
your prayers to God for me to grow in grace etc”.22 In like manner
Henry Blaney of Monaghan, a member of the established church, told
Catholic insurgents in 1641 “I am of the true church and so assured
of my salvation. That though you would spare my life yet I will not
alter my faith”.23 A final example comes from some years later in 1686
as the Church of Ireland was only starting to come to terms with the
Catholicism of the new king and head of that church, James II. Two
members of the Irish gentry, both members of the Church of Ireland,
Sir James Leigh and the Westmeath landowner Sir Henry Piers, were
discussing religion and the ideas of Catholicism and those of their own
church. Leigh suggested that saints and angels could intercede with
God and should be prayed to. Piers replied that this was a ridiculous
idea and claimed that saints and angels could not hear our prayers.
Leigh retorted that “in this I [Piers] was contrary to my own divinity.
I told him that I had never met with anything in any of our divines
that would favour the doctrine”. He advanced the proposition based on
Matthew 11:28 that Christ invited those who were burdened to come
to Him for rest “but find not that he invites any to address in this case
to his mother or any other saint”. He quoted Augustine to prove his
case, but Leigh dismissed Augustine as a Catholic and replied with a
text from Paul. The conversation on confessional doctrine collapsed in
confusion, and both men agreed to consult a bishop when they were
next in Dublin.24
A good deal can be gleaned from these cases, and from other simi-
lar exchanges that took place in early modern Ireland, about the pro-
cess of making confessional choices and how those choices related to
each other in a multiconfessional context. At the simplest they reveal
a wide range of variables in shaping patterns of confessional choice.
For Eleanor Stringer one’s religious position was dictated mainly by

22
John Rogers, Ohel or Beth Shemesh (London: 1653), 413.
23
TCD, MS 834, f. 143.
24
Armagh Public Library, Dopping MSS, no. 50.
 early modern ireland as multiconfessional state 327

custom; for Mr. Dean it had overtones of political loyalty; while for
Mary Burill it was a highly charged emotional experience. It is dif-
ficult to decide how these various motives may have worked in dif-
ferent people, but at least two general points might be drawn from
these experiences. First, when lay men and women were asked what
they believed, they did not naturally turn to the formulations of belief
articulated by the institutional church. The creeds or the catechism,
with which many must have been familiar, were not central in shaping
their expressions of belief. Indeed when lay men and women entered
theological discussion, they were not necessarily well prepared for it.
The dialogue between Sir John Leigh and Henry Piers, two literate and
well-informed Protestants, demonstrates this. Catholics too were wary
of entering into the complexities of theology, preferring to leave that
to the professionals. As the Catholic boatman from Wexford, Mathew
Lamport, put it during his trial after the Baltinglass rising in 1580:
“I do not know how to debate these things with you. I only want you
to know that I am a Catholic and I believe in the faith of my holy
mother the Catholic church”. This was not simply the ignorance of the
lowly in the social order, since similar sentiments appear in the will
of a Meath gentleman of the 1580s.25 Again, while works of religious
controversy poured off the printing presses in England, with some 630
works during the reign of Elizabeth and another 764 in the reign of
James I, the press in Dublin produced almost nothing.26 Theological
controversy with Catholics was muted, and little made its way into the
print.27 With Presbyterians there was almost no controversy. Before
the 1640s emphasis was placed on common matters, and it is only after
the 1690s that serious theological issues began to be debated in print.28
In general laymen and women did not think of confessional positions
as discussable philosophical systems or even as collections of ideas.

25
Raymond Gillespie, Devoted People: Belief and Religion in Early Modern Ireland
(Manchester: 1997), 26.
26
Peter Milward, Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age (London: 1977);
Peter Milward, Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age (London: 1978).
27
For example Declan Gaffney, “The Practice of Religious Controversy in Dublin,
1600–41” in W. J. Shiels and Diana Wood (eds.), The Churches, Ireland and the Irish
(Studies in Church History) 25 (Oxford: 1989), 145–58.
28
Phil Kilroy, “Sermon and Pamphlet Literature in the Irish Reformed Church,
1613–34” in Archivium Hibernicum 33 (1975): 110–21; Raymond Gillespie, “Irish
Print and Protestant Identity: William King’s Pamphlet Wars, 1687–97” in Vincent
Carey and Ute Lotz-Heumann (eds.), Taking Sides: Colonial and Confessional Mental-
ités in Early Modern Ireland (Dublin: 2003), 231–51.
328 raymond gillespie

They wanted to understand how their own positions affected daily life;
personal and communal systems of religious thought were devised to
be workable, not intellectually tidy, and were often validated by custom
as much as by independent thought. Thus confessional positions that
rested solely on ideas were weakly based and allowed leakage across
confessional boundaries to create multiple confessional positions that
might draw on common assumptions.
A second conclusion that might be drawn from these examples is
that at their heart confessional positions were understood as ways
of comprehending the work of God in the world. Contemporaries
described their experiences of God as “wonders” or the out-workings
of God’s providence in their daily lives. Such events were not always
easy to understand. In the confessional debate much of the action sur-
rounded claim and counter-claim about on whose side God acted in
time of war or in peace. Bible reading in the case of Protestants and
preaching in the case of Catholics contributed to how they thought
about the world, but they were often prepared to adopt perspectives
that were not always the orthodox position of a well-defined confes-
sional viewpoint. While Protestant clergy might condemn miracle sto-
ries as Catholic propaganda, there were many Protestants who felt that
they had witnessed miracles in their everyday lives and held fast to
those as the manifestation of God’s power in the world, whatever their
clergy said. As a result confessional positions were often messy and the
boundaries between them often permeable with practices sometimes
associated with one group being used by another. Such confessional
leakage is perhaps most clear in the use by Protestants of a Catholic
devotion, such as visiting holy wells.29 Confessional choice was not,
therefore, a simple matter, determined by ethnic or political inclina-
tions alone, and in particular the experience of daily life was important
in shaping how people thought about religion.
Such understanding of the mechanics of confessional choice serves
to highlight the variety of influences at work in shaping confessional
positions. It also highlights the problem of how such confessional
choices related to each other. While confessional positions could be

29
For this whole issue Gillespie, Devoted People, passim and for some further exam-
ples Raymond Gillespie, “Devotional Landscapes: God, Saints and the Natural World
in Early Modern Ireland” in Peter Clarke and Tony Claydon (eds.), God’s Bounty?
The Churches and the Natural World (Studies in Church History) 46 (Woodbridge:
2010), 217–36.
 early modern ireland as multiconfessional state 329

influenced by political or customary considerations many were the

result of everyday experience and hence were treated by contempo-
raries as fundamental decisions that affected their worlds. Thus con-
fessional positions contained within themselves the potential to draw
communities together but also to force them apart. The role of cus-
tom in determining religious allegiance, for instance, demonstrates
the powerful forces at work for conformity within local communities.
Custom, according to the early-17th century Irish attorney general Sir
John Davies, “obtaineth the force of law [which is] the most perfect
and most excellent and without comparison to best make and preserve
a commonwealth”.30 Thus the local customary power of religion was
held to be a very important bonding force in the local commonwealth
and among particular social groups. Later in the century, William
Petty’s comment that the religion of Catholics at the lower end of the
social order was “rather a custom than a dogma among them” helps to
explain something of the power of traditional Catholicism in Ireland
that resisted the blandishments of both Reformation and Counter-
Reformation into the 19th century.31 However, when local communi-
ties were pressured to make confessional choices, they often did so as a
group rather than on an individual basis. Thus, for example, in 1606 a
note on the reformation of religion in Ireland recorded that the bishop
of Cork brought all his tenants to the local Church of Ireland church,
while the bishop of Ferns observed that in parts of his diocese Catho-
lics remained within that church because local landowners would not
let land to member of other confessions.32 Thus the pressures within
local commonwealths were for uniformity of confession to provide a
common bond, but, since confessional adherence was determined by
local political and experiential factors, such uniformity was not always
attainable. Local communities grappled with the implications of con-
fessional choice that both held communities together and drove them
apart. Confessional relations did break down as the drive for local con-
formity exercised itself, most notably in the early weeks of the rising of
1641, but most of the 17th-century communities, where multiconfes-
sionalism existed, devised mechanisms to contain the drive towards
local confessionalization.

30
John Davies, Le primer report des cases & matters en ley resolves et adjudges en
les courts del roy en Ireland (Dublin: 1615), preface.
31
William Petty, The Political Anatomy of Ireland (Dublin: 1691), 94–5.
32
For this point see Gillespie, Devoted People, 29–30.
330 raymond gillespie

For those who lived in the local commonwealths of early modern

Ireland the problem might have been formulated by two biblical texts:
Matthew 10:34, which declared that “I come not to bring peace but
a sword”, to be balanced against Luke 6:27 that required followers of
Christ to “Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you”. There
was much to be said in favor of the latter if only because it created
social order. To that end contemporaries of many confessional per-
spectives tried to find common cultural and social formations in their
lives that could be made to co-exist within their differing confessional
positions. Perhaps at the simplest almost all agreed that there was a
God, that the king was his agent, and that hierarchy was the natural
way in which society was organized. By the 16th century, some com-
mentators emphasised the cultural diversity of Ireland, contrasting the
Gaelic Irish, the new settlers, and the “middle nation” or Anglo-Irish
(later Old English) descended from the medieval English settlers of
Ireland. By the early part of the 17th century, however, there appeared
to be a great deal of convergence as a result of commercialization,
colonization, and both Tridentine and Protestant religious reforma-
tion.33 Thus when war broke out in 1641 it came as a shock to many
contemporaries. The Catholic Old Englishman Richard Bellings began
his history of the war by noting that the inhabitants of Ireland “(set-
ting aside their different tenets in matters of religion) were as perfectly
incorporated and as firmly knit together as frequent marriages, daily
ties of hospitality and the mutual bond between lord and tenant could
unite any people”. For Bellings the war of the 1640s was “a war of
many parts, carried on under the notion of so many interests per-
plexed with such diversity of rents and divisions among those who
seemed to be of a side”.34 These views were shared by the virulently
Protestant Sir John Temple who began his own, very different, history
of the 1640s with much the same sentiments.35
These linkages of marriage and sociability across confessional bound-
aries were clearly shaped in particular places and by specific agendas.
In particular two sites emerged where people of varying confessional

33
Raymond Gillespie, Seventeenth-Century Ireland (Dublin: 2006), 6–7, 68–72.
34
J. T. Gilbert (ed.), A History of Irish Confederation and the War in Ireland, vol. 1
(Dublin, 1882–91), p. 1.
35
John Temple, The Irish Rebellion (London: 1646), pt. 1, p. 14. For evidence of
co-operation early in the war see Joseph Cope, England and the 1641 Irish Rebellion
(Woodbridge: 2009), 32–75.
 early modern ireland as multiconfessional state 331

backgrounds could meet and shape the structures of everyday life.

The first of these was the institutions of the common law. While the
legal structures were provided by the confessional state and could be
used to enforce confessional conformity, local courts were also places
that a great deal of everyday business was done at a very local level.
Here Protestants and Catholics could meet on a regular basis in many
parts of Ireland but not necessarily within a confessional agenda. We
know little about such relationships, since they were so normal that
they called for no comment until they went wrong. For instance, the
Catholic Hugh MacMahon, one of the justices of the peace for Mon-
aghan and a substantial landowner, became involved in the 1641 rising
because, as he expressed it, one Fermanagh settler “gave him [Mac-
Mahon] not the right hand of friendship at the assize, he being also
in the commission of the peace with him” and described the settler
as “proud and haughty”.36 That Catholics and Protestants could hold
local administrative office that required them to meet frequently is
significant but called for little comment until the relationship broke
down. Increasing involvement in the processes of the common law by
the Gaelic Irish is also clear since the Irish language contains a signifi-
cant number of early-17th-century borrowings of legal terminology.37
In the case of the Ulster plantation counties it is possible to trace
the interaction of native and settler through legal institutions because
of the survival, albeit fragmentary, of the records of some courts. Sum-
monister rolls, for instance, record fines levied on large numbers of
individuals, both native and settlers, as a result of actions at the quar-
ter sessions. These include fines for non-attendance, and for ploughing
by tail. Whole communities were fined for failing to maintain roads
and bridges.38 Even clearer evidence of the engagement of the Catholic
Irish with the law is provided by the few surviving jail delivery rolls of
the assizes for Ulster from the second decade of the 17th century.39 By

36
Raymond Gillespie, “The Murder of Arthur Champion,” Clogher Record 14
(1991–3): 58–9.
37
For this wider context of legal borrowings see Liam Mac Mathúna, Béarla sa
Ghaeilge (Dublin: 2007), 89–128 and Raymond Gillespie, “Negotiating Order in Early
Seventeenth-Century Ireland” in Mike Braddick and John Walter (eds.), Negotiating
Power in Early Modern Society (Cambridge, UK: 2001), 195–204.
38
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast, T/808/ 15090, 15120, 15126,
15130–5, 15139.
39
J. F. Ferguson (ed.), “The Ulster Roll of Gaol Delivery,” Ulster Journal of Archae-
ology 1st ser. i (1853): 260–70; ii (1854): 25–9; R. M. Young (ed.), Historical Notices of
Old Belfast (Belfast: 1896), 30–9.
332 raymond gillespie

this date it appears that the Irish were active players in the legal system
both as accused and accuser. The rolls reveal the Irish as involved in
theft, mainly of livestock, affray and, occasionally, rape. Grievances
were resolved through the common law process. Perhaps the clearest
evidence of the Irish understanding of the working of the law comes
with the ability of bandits, or woodkerne, to manipulate the process
of obtaining legal pardons for themselves. Some used intermediaries,
such as landlords, to obtain pardons for their activities, but others
managed to acquire multiple pardons for themselves, suggesting that
they were at home with the legal system that granted these and were
adept at using it for their own ends. In other cases what appears to
have been groups of woodkerne offered to go bail for another, usually
resulting in additional woodkerne activity.40 Again, familiarity with the
workings of the law is suggested in the early weeks of the rising of
1641 by the fact that some of those who seized castles gained admis-
sion by asking for warrants for thefts as pretext for gaining entry.41
At an even lower level in the hierarchy of legal institutions, both
Catholics and Protestants met to resolve very local problems in mano-
rial courts, which enforced local customary law. The records of these
institutions have only survived in a very patchy form, but those for the
archbishop of Armagh’s lands between 1625 and 1627 are preserved.
Admittedly this was an unusual sort of estate and, since it was owned
by the church under the plantation scheme for Ulster, was allowed to
take Irish tenants. The overwhelming majority of the litigants in the
archbishop’s manorial court had Irish names, and among the members
of the juries about a third bore Irish names, the majority of whom were
almost certainly confessionally Catholic.42 The sort of cases in which
they were involved, mainly assaults and slander, were perhaps typical
of local societies grappling with the difficulties of minor rule break-
ing and local anti-social behaviour and turning to a local common
law framework to resolve these. One further set of manorial records,
for County Clare in the second half of the 17th century confirms the
pattern indicated by the Armagh courts. Here too both Catholics and
Protestants, although the evidence for confessional positions is based on

40
British Library, Add MS 3827, f. 41; Raymond Gillespie, Conspiracy: Ulster Plots
and Plotters in 1615 (Belfast: 1987), 36–7, 41.
41
TCD, MS 839, f. 40; MS 835, f. 26v.
42
T. G. F. Paterson, “The Armagh Manor Court Rolls, 1625–7,” Seanchas Ardmh-
acha 2 (1956–7): 301–9.
 early modern ireland as multiconfessional state 333

ethnic background indicated by surnames, appear to have co-operated

to resolve a whole range of local problems with no confessional over-
tones such as debt, disorder, and trespass.43 The importance of law in
this process of maintaining local relations is particularly clear from the
way it was used in a confessional context. In the early-17th century,
Catholic clergy used the same civil law processes that were used to
enforce adherence to the laws establishing the Church of Ireland to sue
their parishioners for the payment of ecclesiastical dues and to take
their own bishops to law if they did not agree with his decisions.44
A second mechanism in providing common linkages that allowed a
number of confessions to co-exist was, paradoxically, the fundamental
unit of the established church: the parish. Like the local evidence for
the workings of courts, the evidence for the workings of the Church
of Ireland parish in the 17th century is thin with few parochial records
surviving before the latter half of the century. However, some case
studies are suggestive. In the aftermath of an abortive rising in Ulster
in 1615 one Cnougher McGilpatrick O’Mullan, a leaseholder from the
Haberdasher’s company in County Londonderry, gave a deposition
about his very marginal involvement in the conspiracy. In the course
of the deposition another episode was recounted that appears to have
had nothing to do with the plot. A dispute between Art McTomlen
O’Mullen and Brian McShane O’Mullen became violent and “the said
Art uttered these speeches to the said Brian saying ‘Thou art a church-
warden and yet dost not attend thy office according to thy instructions.
Thou had sixteen Masses said in thy house by Gillecome McTeige,
abbot, to whom thou gavest a white cow for his service and then
relievest the said Gillecome and harbourest him in thy house as well as
abroad”.45 A good deal of the detail here is vague. The identity of Gille-
come McTeige is unclear but he may have been the abbot of the recently
dissolved Cistercian house at nearby Coleraine and he may have been
living off local charity. The number of Masses suggests that McTeige
may have been invited to fulfil some specific task, such as a request
in a will for a specific number of post-mortem Masses. Whatever the

43
S. C. O’Mahony (ed.), “The Manor Courts of the Earl of Thomond, 1666–86,”
Analecta Hibernica 38 (2004): 135–222; Raymond Gillespie, “Finavarra and its Manor
Court in the 1670s,” The Other Clare 25 (2001): 45–9.
44
Brian Mac Cuarta, Catholic Revival in the North of Ireland, 1603–41 (Dublin:
2007), 121–3.
45
Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, 1615–25, 54–5.
334 raymond gillespie

problems with the details of this evidence, its main thrust is clear: in
the very early stages of the plantation process churchwardens of the
established church were not necessarily subscribers to the confession
of the established church, although they clearly wished to be part of
the structure that they did not perceive to be significantly different to
what had preceded it. This may not be as strange as first appears, given
that before the canons of 1634 there was no requirement for parochial
officials to subscribe to any doctrinal statements and, in practice, this
does not appear to have been enforced until after the restoration of the
Church of Ireland as the established church in 1660. Given the close
linkages between parish and society before the 17th century, it would
only be normal that the native population would wish to maintain
links with their own parish and to maintain burial and other rights
in the parish graveyard. This implies among at least some Catholics
an ability to differentiate between the idea of the parish as a building
block of local society and the parish as a religious community and to
participate in one without the other. This has certainly been revealed
by studies of parish life in much better documented areas of Ireland.
In areas such as Crumlin, on the outskirts of Dublin, for instance,
Church of Ireland churchwardens continued to be appointed during
the 17th century in a parish that was largely Catholic.46 Similarly, in
St. John’s parish in Dublin city, a number of Catholics can be identi-
fied holding office in the Church of Ireland parish.47 In the later-17th
century Catholic parochial officials at lesser levels can be identified,
and, in St Catherine’s parish in Dublin, Presbyterians and Quakers
can be found holding parochial offices for which they did not have to
take oaths, most importantly surveyors of the highways and collectors
of the poor rate.48 Such offices were marks of local distinction that
were important in a socially volatile society in which immigration had
broken traditional networks that often determined a man’s place in
the world. A rapid social rise needed to be underpinned by the sort of
marks of approbation that parochial office conferred, and thus such
office was sought by individuals of all confessional backgrounds.

46
Raymond Gillespie, “Godly Order: Enforcing Peace in the Irish Reformation” in
Elizabethanne Boran and Crawford Gribben (eds), Enforcing Reformation in Ireland
and Scotland, 1550–1700 (Farnham: 2006), 200–1.
47
Gillespie, “Urban Parishes,” 238–40; Raymond Gillespie (ed.), The Vestry Records
of the Parish of St John the Evangelist, Dublin, 1595–1658 (Dublin: 2002), 12–3.
48
Raymond Gillespie (ed.), The Vestry Records of the Parishes of St Catherine’s and
St James, Dublin (Dublin: 2004), 14–5.
 early modern ireland as multiconfessional state 335

The mechanisms to maintain local peace in early modern Ireland

were remarkably successful in their operation. They could be effective
in a rather limited way. In the early 1620s, for instance, Lord Deputy
Falkland decided to enforce some of the anti-Catholic legislation that
had fallen into disuse. He instructed sheriffs to present recusants at the
next assizes, but no sooner had he done this than he received a letter
from the Catholic countess of Kildare complaining of his actions. The
result was the withdrawal of all the writs against her tenants, Falkland
informing the sheriff this was “for reasons best known to ourself ”.
Thereafter relations between the two parties were more circumspect.
Complaining to the Protestant earl of Thomond, he observed that one
Catholic bishop was becoming bold in exercising his episcopal functions
but was careful not explicitly to prohibit him from doing so, stipulat-
ing that Catholics “may be contained within the bounds of moderation
as formerly they were”.49 Such accommodations were clearly tenuous
and when subjected to economic, social, and political pressures, some-
times generated from outside, they frequently collapsed, resulting in
a local drive for confessional conformity. This breakdown was not
inevitable and usually took place in local contexts and in particular
circumstances and ensured that the consequences of the breakdown
of local relations would often have unusual features. Specific events,
such as funerals, could provide local flash points, because they were
the focus of liturgical actions that were not only deeply contested but
could have repercussions for the soul of the deceased.50
Perhaps the most widespread collapse of multiconfessional relations
occurred in the late months of 1641 and the early months of 1642, as
growing political and economic instability erupted into local warfare
across Ireland. Those who lived through those early months of the ris-
ing and reported their experiences to commissioners later described a
breakdown not only of the local structures of government but also of
the local structures of accommodation that allowed multiconfessional-
ism to exist. Catholic majorities in various parts of Ireland pressured
smaller Protestant communities to conform to the majority, usually
signalling this by attendance at Mass. In Westmeath, it was claimed
that one of the insurgents had claimed “that none should live in Ireland

49
Charles McNeill, “Rawlinson Class C,” Analecta Hibernica 2 (1931): 14–15, 17.
50
Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report of the Manuscripts of the Earl of
Egmont, vol. 1 (London: 1905–9), 33; Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, 1615–25,
429–30.
336 raymond gillespie

but such as would go to Mass”.51 Protestants were urged to attend

Mass for various reasons. Some were offered protection if they did
so.52 When John Cook in County Leitrim attended Mass his looted
property was returned to him and in Kilkenny similar promises were
made.53 In other cases more violent encouragements were offered to
induce individuals and families to go to Mass. Some were imprisoned
because they refused.54 Threats were made to make individuals con-
vert, and, in Mayo, John Goldsmith, the Church of Ireland vicar of
Burrishoole, claimed that “the younger priests and friars demanded
of Stephen Lynch, prior of Strade, in this deponent’s own hearing if it
were not lawful to kill this deponent because he would not turn to Mass
which prior answered them that it was as lawful for them to kill this
deponent as to kill a sheep or a dog”. 55 In New Ross in County Wex-
ford, some Protestants were brought to the town with “ropes around
their necks to hang them if they would not turn to mass”.56 How many
of these threats were actually carried out is unclear, and only a few
were reported as having been executed for failing to go to Mass.57 This
sort of return to a single confessional norm for a community was not
restricted to the living. Throughout Ulster and also around Kildare in
north Leinster, the recently buried corpses of Protestants were disin-
terred because, it was claimed, they profaned parish churches that had
been seized by Catholics for their own use.58 Custom was not the only
factor at work here, for some of the other motives examined above that
shaped confessional positions also appeared among the testimonies of
the deponents. One man in Kerry, for instance, was told “that he must
be a papist for the king is one”. Again, in Monaghan, it was believed
that the viceroy and judges were all Catholics. In Waterford, one man
believed that the forged royal commission, by which the insurgents
claimed royal approbation for their actions, commanded “the extirpa-
tion and utter rooting out of all English Protestants in the kingdom of

51
TCD, MS 817, f. 2v.
52
TCD, MS 815, ff. 41v 115v.
53
TCD, MS 831, ff. 11, 36; MS 812, f. 239, MS 811, f. 88; MS 837, ff. 9v, 18, MS 813,
f. 2; MS 812, f. 27v.
54
TCD, MS 832, f. 66v.
55
TCD, MS 831, ff. 151 (Goldsmith), 268.
56
TCD, MS 818, f. 24v.
57
TCD, MS 816, f. 179; MS 817, f. 180.
58
For examples, TCD, MS 832, ff. 84v, 105, 120; MS 835, f. 20v; MS 813, ff. 260–60v.
 early modern ireland as multiconfessional state 337

Ireland that would not conform themselves to the church of Rome”.59

How many Protestants responded to these demands to convert can-
not be ascertained with any degree of accuracy, but deponents cer-
tainly reported that a number did, including a few Church of Ireland
ministers.60 In one case the conversion was brief, since in Monaghan a
number of those who went to Mass had their throats cut “before they
could become heretics again”.61 While there is little doubt about the
collapse of local structures that made multiconfessionalism possible,
that collapse needs to be balanced against particular instances, where
structures had allowed sufficiently strong personal relationships to be
built up to transcended more general forces. In Galway, one man was
helped to escape from the clutches of the Catholic rebels by a Catholic
“to whom this deponent had done some former courtesies”. In County
Meath, at the outbreak of hostilities, one wealthy British Protestant
gave his goods to a Catholic friend for safekeeping. Such instances
testify to the importance of the values of good neighborliness, codes
of honour, and a flexibility of conviviality that determined the limits
of controversy even when the normal support structures for such a
world lay in tatters.
While there was certainly a local drive towards Catholic confessional
unity in areas where Catholicism was the majority confession before
the rising, there were also other moves towards uniformity. In east
Ulster, where Presbyterianism was becoming increasingly organized in
the early 1640s, a similar process was under way. Local Presbyterian
meetings began to act in the same way as the established Church of
Ireland had tried to do before 1640. They created parishes and the kirk
session assumed the function of social discipline for all those living
within the bounds of the parishes. In Templepatrick parish, prominent
Presbyterians were instructed to ensure that the Catholic Irish came to
church, and the kirk session summoned a number of people with Irish
names before it. While their confessional position cannot be proven,
it seems highly likely that those summoned were Catholics. The drive
for local conformity seems to have had its origin in the collapse of the

59
TCD, MS 828, f. 280v; MS 834, f. 88; MS 820, f. 261v.
60
TCD, MS 817, f. 5v; MS 820, ff. 44, 46v 186, 239; MS 821, ff. 67, 69; MS 831,
ff. 147, 162; MS 816, ff. 113, 128; MS 831, f. 100; MS 818, ff. 10v, 18v; MS 829, ff. 138v
209, 221, 252, 262, 273, 319v; MS 814, ff. 56, 81v; MS 813, f. 360v; MS 815, ff. 25, 70v,
34v; MS 830, f. 22, MS 812, f. 66v, 193v; MS 811, ff. 34, 158; MS 812 ff. 19, 21, 66v;
MS 829, ff. 41v, 52, 59.
61
TCD, MS 834, f. 85v and for a similar case in King’s County, MS 814, f. 57.
338 raymond gillespie

legal and parochial structures, discussed above, that created at least

some of the bridges that made multiconfessionalism possible. As a
result, new ways of organizing local life needed to be created in the
wake of war, and the Presbyterian church and its structures provided
a coherent and effective way of achieving this.62
Ireland in the early modern period provides something of an enigma
in European terms. It was one of the few states in which the religion of
the ruler and the religion of the people failed to coincide. And it was
not a minority of the population of Ireland that failed to conform, but
rather the majority. Thus Ireland became a multiconfessional society
framed by all the structures of a confessional state. This was not an
accidental situation, created by the failure of the reformation process,
but rather it existed because individuals made choices about belief and
practice informed by politics, custom, and experience. That those two
ideas could co-exist, and even at times feed off each other, suggests
that a majority devoted at least some time and effort to shaping a drive
for peace and order that existed in tension with the desire to enforce
religious reform of either the Catholic or Protestant variety. The rela-
tive abundance of resources in early modern Ireland, reflected in a
low population to land ratio, together with a rapidly commercializing
economy, helped to defuse, though not eliminate, some of the potential
flashpoints in that world. This, for instance, may help to explain why
about 20 per cent of the membership of the overtly Catholic guild of St
Audoen, which supported Catholic clergy, was made up of Protestants
who presumably hoped to benefit from the wealth of the guild.63 Simi-
lar socio-economic factors may also explain why Ireland escaped the
witch craze that swept 16th- and early-17th-century Europe. However,
economics will not explain other anomalies. For instance, the govern-
ment clearly knew the location of most of the Catholic Mass houses
in the 17th century and those of dissenters in the later 17th century,
yet the authorities did little to close down any of these, and when they
acted did so only sporadically. At least one Jesuit house was located
within yards of the diocesan cathedral of Dublin, but it was allowed

62
Raymond Gillespie, “Scotland and Ulster: a Presbyterian perspective, 1603–1700”
in W. P. Kelly and J. R. Young (eds.), Scotland and the Ulster Plantation (Dublin:
2009), 96–102.
63
Colm Lennon, “The Chantries and the Irish Reformation: The Case of St. Anne’s
Guild, Dublin, 1550–1630” in R. V. Comerford, Mary Cullen, Jacqueline Hill and
Colm Lennon (eds.), Religion, Conflict and Coexistence in Ireland (Dublin: 1990), 22.
 early modern ireland as multiconfessional state 339

to operate for some years before being closed. Again the Church of
Ireland knew a good deal about Catholics and their business. In 1637
one Catholic priest described his church and vestments in his will,
which was then proved in the testamentary court of the Protestant
archbishop of Dublin.64 All this suggests a more considered attitude
and an awareness that religious change was not a set of binary opposi-
tions, but a set of social relationships traversed by a series of potential
fracture lines that responded to both conflict and conciliation.
The reality of the existence of multiconfessionalism within a con-
fessional state is perhaps most clearly demonstrated in a story about
Humphrey Thompson, the Presbyterian minister of Ballybay in Mon-
aghan from 1696 until 1744. According to a later memoir that appears
to draw from a still earlier account, possibly written by Thompson
himself:
coming into the congregation of Ballybay and finding his parishioners
so jealously and bigotedly attached to hold their neighbours of other
persuasions pretty much on a par with them on this head [bigotry], he
immediately set out about reforming this great abuse by closely attach-
ing himself of a worthy clergyman of the Church of England . . . who
afforded him every assistance in the prosecution of his scheme . . . they
proceeded so far as to effect the most peaceful harmony and good will
among their parishioners which produced intermarriages and such con-
nections that on the absence of either clergyman from their congrega-
tions on a Sunday that the other generally filled with his parishioners.
By their joint management of the popish priest ... they put a stop to the
violent antipathies to the people of that persuasion and the murders,
bloodshed and thefts that were too common and frequently committed
by papists by way of retaliation.65
Thompson was clearly an unusual figure, although the sort of links he
established with the Church of Ireland may be more common than
historians tend to accept. In Antrim town in the 1670s, for instance,
Presbyterians shared the parish church building with the established
church.66 However, Thompson’s actions may only be a much more
transparent version of the sort of calculations that many in early mod-
ern Ireland made. For them muticonfessionalism was not an idea of

64
For discussion and references, see Gillespie, “Godly order,” 190.
65
Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Eng hist d 155, ff 27v–8.
66
J. S. Reid, History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, vol. 1 (London: 1853),
138; Phil Kilroy, Protestant Dissent and Controversy in Ireland, 1660–1714 (Cork:
1994), 27–8.
340 raymond gillespie

virtuous toleration but a practice of survival in a world where power

was concentrated in the hands of one confessional group who might
use it or restrain themselves from exercising it as conditions permit-
ted. The decisions of early modern Irish people, based on experience,
were intended to smooth the problems of daily life, to bring peace as
much as the sword, by using law and local interests to hold together
the divisive forces of custom, politics, and belief that characterized
confessional choice.
 EUROPEAN MULTICONFESSIONALISM AND THE ENGLISH
TOLERATION CONTROVERSY, 1640–1660

John Coffey

Old-fashioned histories of toleration typically assumed that “ideas rule

the world”.1 As a result, they gave pride of place to a heroic line of pro-
gressive thinkers from Castellio to Voltaire who condemned persecu-
tion and argued for intellectual and religious freedom. In recent years,
however, historians of toleration have started to “play down the power
of ideas”.2 Intellectual history, which was once central to accounts of
“the rise of toleration”, is now being displaced by the political and
(especially) social history of religious coexistence.3 This historiographi-
cal shift is an important corrective to the overly idealist (and idea-
lised) scholarship of earlier generations, for it gives us a sophisticated
insight into the actual practice of tolerance and intolerance in states
and communities across Europe. However, it raises questions. How do
the old and the new history of toleration relate to each other, if at all.
Is intellectual history now passé? Or should we be exploring the inter-
face between early modern practice and early modern theory?4 Judith
Pollman has suggested that this is the way forward. She wonders if
the practice of coexistence was “the catalyst for new ideas on religious
uniformity”, and whether “the everyday experience of living with

1
Perez Zagorin says just that in How the Idea of Toleration Came to the West
(Princeton: 2003), 12.
2
The phrase is Alexandra Walsham’s in Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intoler-
ance in England, 1500–1700 (Manchester: 2006), 8. Walsham herself is ambivalent on
the power of ideas. On the one hand, she argues that ‘the early modern ideology of
religious intolerance . . . exerted enormous influence at the end of the 17th century, no
less than at the beginning of the 16th’ (p. 49). The case for toleration, by contrast, is
assumed to be largely ineffectual “outside the circles of the literate intellectuals who
articulated it” (p. 238).
3
The best synthesis of this new scholarship is Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith:
Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge,
MA: 2007).
4
For further reflections on the historiography, see my “Milton, Locke and the new
history of toleration,” Modern Intellectual History, 5 (2008): 619–32.
342 john coffey

pluralism” caused “an intellectual orientation away from the Augus-

tinian imperative compelle intrare”.5
In this essay, I want to address such questions and bridge the gap
between theory and practice by considering what participants in the
English toleration controversy had to say about the multiconfessional
polities of continental Europe. Surprisingly, perhaps, this has received
little attention from historians. It is a commonplace that the Dutch
republic was exhibit A for tolerationists, and some historians think
that pragmatic arguments for toleration based on “reason of state”
were more persuasive and important than philosophical or theologi-
cal arguments.6 Yet studies of tolerationist texts tend to concentrate
on the latter, and there has been no sustained examination of English
appeals to European religious diversity. By focussing on England’s first
major toleration controversy—the one that raged during the Puritan
Revolution of the mid-17th century—we should be able to explore the
uses of European multiconfessionalism.7

European Example in English Debate

Perhaps the first thing to note is how little English tolerationists

referred to the multiconfessional polities of continental Europe. At
its debates over toleration in Whitehall in December 1648, the New
Model Army and its clerical supporters concentrated overwhelmingly
on philosophical, theological, and biblical arguments, and only one

5
Judith Pollman, “Getting along,” History Workshop Journal, 64 (2007): 423.
6
Henry Kamen asserts that “Trade was usually a stronger argument than religion”.
See Kamen, The Rise of Toleration (London: 1967), 224–27, quotation at 224. For a
theoretical defence of the priority of political (and economic) factors see Anthony Gill,
The Political Origins of Religious Liberty (Cambridge, UK: 2008).
7
For overviews of this controversy, see W. K. Jordan, The Development of Religious
Toleration in England, 4 vols. (Cambridge, MA: 1932–40), vols. III and IV; B. Worden,
“Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate” in W. J. Sheils (ed.), Persecution and
Toleration (Oxford: 1984), 199–233; Andrew Murphy, Conscience and Community:
Revisiting Toleration and Religious Dissent in Early Modern England and America (State
College, PA: 2001), ch. 3; Sebastian Barteleit, Toleranz und Irenik: Politisch-Religiose
Grenzsetzungen im England der 1650er Jahre (Mainz: 2003); Zagorin, How the Idea
of Toleration Came to the West, ch. 6; John Coffey, “The toleration controversy” in
C. Durston and J. Maltby (eds.), Religion in Revolutionary England (Manchester:
2006), ch. 2. None of these accounts offers an extended analysis of how tolerationists
and their critics argued over European multiconfessionalism.
 english toleration controversy 343

short reference was made to the Dutch practice of toleration.8 In a

series of pamphlets against religious uniformity, the Leveller William
Walwyn made only the briefest of comments about pluralism in the
Netherlands and elsewhere.9 In his lengthy treatise, The Bloudy Tenent
of Persecution, Roger Williams made just a single fleeting reference to
toleration in the United Provinces. The great bulk of this work was
devoted to deconstructing the biblical arguments for uniformity. As
he explained: “[S]o great a waeight of this controversie lyes upon this
president of the Old Testament”.10
Anti-tolerationists, like the Covenanter Samuel Rutherford, shared
the view that biblical and theological issues were at the heart of the
controversy. Rutherford’s A Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty
of Conscience (1649), has been described by Owen Chadwick as “the
ablest defence of persecution in the 17th century”,11 but in a treatise of
more than 400 pages, Rutherford never so much as mentioned mul-
ticonfessionalism in contemporary Europe. By contrast, he devoted
entire chapters to the exegesis of specific biblical passages, like the
Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. In 17th-century Christendom,
as in 21st-century Islam, much hung on the interpretation of sacred
texts.12 Toleration controversies involved a battle for the Bible. Because
this was a battle no one could afford to lose, it absorbed far more
polemical energy than the race to find current examples of successful
(or unsuccessful) regimes of toleration. Most advocates of toleration
mentioned European religious pluralism only in passing—it was not a
major plank of their case, and no one elaborated at length on Dutch,
French, or Central and Eastern European arrangements.
But it would be a mistake to dismiss tolerationist pamphleteers as
abstract theorists with little interest in the practicalities of power. On

8
A. S. P. Woodhouse (ed.), Puritanism and Liberty: Being the Army Debates
(1647–49) from the Clarke Manuscripts (London: 1992), 125–78; reference to the
Netherlands on 138.
9
J. R. McMichael and B. Taft (eds.), The Writings of William Walwyn (Athens,
GA: 1986), 57, 114, 161.
10
[Roger Williams], The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (1644), 160, 179. As we shall
see, Williams made more reference to the Netherlands in later writings.
11
Owen Chadwick, The Reformation (Harmondsworth: 1964), 403.
12
For the scriptural character of modern Islamic debates over blasphemy law, see
Abdullah Saeed and Hassan Saeed, Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam (Alder-
shot: 2004).
344 john coffey

the contrary, they were often immersed in local and national politics.13
Throughout the 1640s, the merchant William Walwyn was an activist
for the Parliamentarians, the Independents, and then the Levellers.14
Sir Henry Vane the Younger had been the Governor of Massachu-
setts during the Antinomian Controversy, and though that turned out
badly, he re-emerged in the 1640s as one of the most capable admin-
istrators in the House of Commons, playing a key role in running the
navy.15 Vane’s friend Roger Williams was in London to gain a charter
for the fledgling colony of Rhode Island and exploited his high level
connections to outmaneuver Massachusetts.16 John Goodwin was a
London pastor, but he and his congregation were in the thick of City
politics, supporting the Independent faction through printing, peti-
tioning, spying, and sitting on key bodies like Common Council and
the Militia Committee.17 Henry Robinson was a merchant, a member
of the Hartlib circle, and an enthusiastic promoter of practical schemes
of improvement.18
As practical men who wished to get things done, these toleration-
ists could not afford to ignore the standard early modern assumption
that religious unity was fundamental to political stability.19 Protestant
England was a confessional state, and most early Stuart commentators
agreed that withdrawal from the national church was effectively with-
drawal from the commonwealth itself. “Religion being the chief band
of human society”, wrote Sir Francis Bacon, “it is a happy thing when
itself is well contained within the true band of unity”.20 The member-
ship of church and state was conceived as coextensive. “There is not
any man of the Church of England,” wrote Richard Hooker, “but the
same man is also a member of the commonwealth; nor any man a

13
For what follows, see the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as well as the
sources listed.
14
See references in K. Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London
(Aldershot: 1997).
15
His career as a Parliamentarian politician is ably explored in V. Rowe, Sir Henry
Vane the Younger: A Study in Political and Administrative History (London: 1970).
16
His career is best followed through Glenn La Fantasie (ed.), The Correspondence
of Roger Williams 2 vols. (Hanover, NH: 1988).
17
See John Coffey, John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution (Woodbridge: 2006).
18
The fullest study of Robinson remains W. K. Jordan’s Whiggish monograph, Men
of Substance: A Study of the Thought of Two English Revolutionaries, Henry Parker and
Henry Robinson (Chicago: 1942).
19
See Conrad Russell, “Arguments for religious unity in England, 1530–1650,”
Journal of Ecclesiastical History 18 (1967): 201–26.
20
Francis Bacon, “Of unity in religion,” Essays (London: 1992), 8.
 english toleration controversy 345

member of the commonwealth, which is not also of the Church of

England.”21 The Puritan divines who preached before Parliament in the
1640s echoed this sentiment. “Schism in the church, begets a Schism
in the State,” averred Matthew Newcomen. “Divisions whether they
be Ecclesiasticall or Politicall in Kingdomes, Cities and Families, are
infallible causes of ruin,” claimed the Presbyterian Edmund Calamy.22
One way to respond to this charge was to turn it around, by blaming
intolerant regimes for fomenting religious wars. The Leveller, Richard
Overton, produced a satirical tract purporting to describe the trial of
“Mr Persecution”. The witnesses against him included “Mr Blood-of-
Princes”, “Mr Desolate-Germany”, and “Mr Domestick-Miseries”.23
Tolerationists frequently blamed heavy-handed Laudian bishops for
provoking the conflict that led to civil war. Williams called the idea
of forced uniformity a “State-killing doctrine”.24 Another pamphleteer
asked: “What blood, confusions, strifes and contentions, hath compul-
sion brought forth? All wars, tumults, almost every where, have arisen
from this spirit of violence and compulsion. Hence the Papist perse-
cutes the Protestant, and the Protestant the Papist. Hence the Turkes
opposeth the Christian, the Christian the Turke”.25
But pointing to the political chaos wrought by religious coercion
was insufficient. Tolerationists also needed to show that their propos-
als were compatible with stable and flourishing states. Thus among
his witnesses against “Mr Persecution”, Overton included “Mr Unity-of-
Kingdomes”, “Mr National-Strength”, “Mr Setled Peace”, “Mr Humaine
Society”, “Mr Publique Good”, and “Mr National-Wealth”. The case
against the accused was forcefully put by “Mr State Policie”: “[W]ere the
devouring principle of persecution weeded out from betwixt all Reli-
gion, they might all enjoy their publike safety to the generall enlarge-
ment and strengthening of politike power . . .”26 Arguments from
“reason of state” or national interest were one important component
of the case for toleration.
Alongside general arguments for the viability of pluralistic states,
tolerationists offered concrete examples. Often they pointed to ancient

21
Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, VIII.i.2.
22
Cited in an Anglican compilation of Puritan testimonies: Toleration Disapprov’d
and Condemn’d (1670), 43, 33.
23
[Richard Overton], The Arraignement of Mr Persecution (1645), 5–6.
24
Roger Williams, Mr Cottons Letter . . . Examined and Answered (1644), 6.
25
Freedom of Religious Worship (1654), 17.
26
Overton, The Arraignement of Mr Persecution, 4–5, 29.
346 john coffey

cases of peaceful coexistence. The Hebrew patriarchs had lived peace-

fully among Egyptians, Philistines, and Hittites. The Jewish nation at
the time of Christ had accommodated various sects: Pharisees, Sad-
ducees, Essenes. The Roman Empire was religiously pluralistic, and it
was under this regime that Christianity first thrived.27
But advocates of toleration also turned to contemporary examples.
It was here that multiconfessional polities became very pertinent. A
number of writers suggested that Christian Europe would do well to
learn from the Ottoman Turks, who had found ways peacefully to
accommodate religious difference.28 But it was more common to cite
the experience of Christian states. Henry Robinson covered all angles,
pointing to the religious freedom granted to minorities by the United
Provinces, “a Popish French King”, and “an unbelieving Turk”.29 Roger
Williams listed “the Cities of Holland, Poland, or Turkie” as places
where there was “some freedome”, and where adherents of differ-
ent religions “were commingled in civil cohabitation and commerce
together”.30 The Baptist Christopher Blackwood noted that Poland
and Holland permitted diversity of religion “with no small benefit to
the publike peace”.31 When the Scottish Presbyterian Adam Stewart
claimed that there was “no State in Christendome, where there is one
onely Religion established, that will admit the publick exercise of any
other”, John Goodwin retorted that this was “manifestly untrue, as is
notoriously knowne in France, the Low Countries &c”.32 The author
of Liberty of Conscience Asserted (1649) cited the tolerance of religious
dissenters in Holland, France, Germany, and Switzerland, adding that
the Dutch Reformed tolerated the idolatrous inhabitants of their colo-
nies in the East Indies.33 In the epic parliamentary debates over the
blasphemy of the Quaker James Nayler, one of the few voices raised
in his defense was that of the Baptist Major-General Packer. Packer

27
See, for example, Overton, The Arraignement of Mr Persecution, 31; Samuel
Richardson, The Necessity of Toleration (1647), 20.
28
See Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 (Cambridge, UK: 1998), 103–7;
Nabil Matar, “The Toleration of Muslims in Renaissance England” in John Christian
Laursen (ed.), Religious Toleration: “The Variety of Rites” from Cyrus to Defoe (London:
1999), 129–31; Gerald Maclean, “Milton, Islam and the Ottomans” in Sharon Achin-
stein and Elizabeth Sauer (eds.), Milton and Toleration (Oxford: 2007), 285–90.
29
[Henry Robinson], John the Baptist, or Liberty of Conscience (1644), sig. A4r.
30
Williams, The Bloudy Tenent Yet More Bloudy (1652), 166.
31
Christopher Blackwood, The Storming of Antichrist (1644), 17.
32
John Goodwin, M. S. to A. S. or Liberty of Conscience (1644), 87. See also 108.
33
Liberty of Conscience Asserted (1649), 5–6.
 english toleration controversy 347

declared that the duty of Parliament was “to give every man his native
liberty, which is given in Holland, Poland, and other countries, a free
exercise of their consciences”.34
Some tolerationists had first hand knowledge of these lands, and it
is tempting to speculate that travel had broadened their minds.35 Sir
Henry Vane and John Milton had been on the Grand Tour, but while
this exposed them to a cosmopolitan humanist culture, it also cemented
their lifelong hostility to Tridentine Catholicism, and their toleration-
ist works in this period make no admiring references to European
examples.36 Henry Robinson, by contrast, did emphasize the peaceful
religious diversity in other lands, something he had witnessed himself
as a merchant who had worked abroad as a factor for his father. He
was well informed about the scope and limits of religious tolerance in
Holland, France, Spain, Italy, and Turkey. Roger Williams had lived
up close and personal with Native Americans, and his largely positive
interactions with pagan Algonquians underpinned a sense of common
humanity and mutual respect for people of other faiths.37
Even tolerationists who had no experience of foreign travel were
keen to acquire information about the religious toleration practiced on
continental Europe. William Walwyn expressed some scorn for those
who travelled abroad, but he acquired a smattering of cosmopolitan
learning through vernacular translations of Montaigne and the clas-
sics and was an admirer of the Dutch.38 John Goodwin, who (as far as
we know) never ventured beyond London and East Anglia, explained
that he had learned about religious diversity abroad “in report from
persons of good esteem and worth, who have been eye-witnesses and

34
J. T. Rutt Esq. (ed.), The Diary of Thomas Burton vol. 1 (London: 1828), 100.
35
For contrasting perspectives on this claim, see John Christian Laursen, “Irony
and Toleration: Lessons from the Travels of Mendes Pinto,” Critical Review of Inter-
national Social and Political Philosophy 6 (2003): 21–40; James Ellison, George Sandys:
Travel, Colonialism and Tolerance in the Seventeenth Century (London: 2002); Joy
Charnley, Pierre Bayle: Reader of Travel Literature (Berlin: 1998).
36
See [Henry Vane Jr.] Zeal Examined (1652); John Milton, Areopagitica, A Speech
of Mr John Milton for unlicens’d Printing (1644); J[ohn] M[ilton], A Treatise of Civil
Power in Ecclesiastical Causes (1659). Vane, however, did think that England could
emulate the Dutch republic by flourishing as a ‘free state’: See Diary of Thomas Burton,
III, 173–80.
37
See Williams, A Key into the Language of America (1643). See also P. Rubertone,
Grave Undertakings: Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians (Washington, DC:
2001), and M. Nussbaum, Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of
Religious Equality (New York: 2008), ch. 2: “Living Together: The Roots of Respect”.
38
The Writings of William Walwyn, 50.
348 john coffey

diligent observers of such things, both in the Low-Countries and in

France”.39
A number of writers wrote admiringly of the French example. “States
lose nothing,” wrote one Independent, “by preserving the Liberties of
men’s consciences”. “In France,” he continued, “the Protestants are
accounted the best Subjects, they are tolerated contrary to the pub-
like Government of the State, yet are not inconsistent with the well
being and flourishing condition of it”.40 Henry Robinson agreed. In
mixed company, French Protestants were typically outnumbered by
their Catholic compatriots, but the Catholics “are so temperate and
discreet, that it is held an unseemly and uncivill part, for a Papist to
aske an other what Religion he is of ”, lest the Protestants should feel
intimidated. In England, however, it was sadly acceptable “to reproach
one an other with the nick-name of Puritan or Separatist, Presbyterian
or Independent”.41
The Anglican tolerationist Jeremy Taylor also appealed to the recent
history of France in making the prudential case for a multiconfessional
state:42
the experience which Christendom hath had in this last Age is Argument
enough, that Toleration of differing opinions is so farre from disturbing
the publick peace, or destroying the interest of Princes and Common-
Wealths, that it does advantage to the publick, it secures peace . . . When
France fought against the Huguenots, the spilling of her own blood was
argument enough of the imprudence of that way of promoting Religion;
but since she hath given permission to them, the world is witnesse how
prosperous she hath been ever since.43

39
John Goodwin, Innocencie and Truth Triumphing Together (1645), 54. See also
Goodwin, Theomachia, or the Grand Imprudence of Men Fighting Against God (1644),
23, where he explains that he has been ‘credibly informed’ about the Dutch situation.
40
A Moderate Answer to Mr Prins Full Reply (1645), 40.
41
[Henry Robinson], Liberty of Conscience (1644), 40–1.
42
On Anglican Royalists and toleration, see G. Burgess, “Royalism and liberty of
conscience in the English Revolution” in John Morrow and Jonathan Scott (eds.), Lib-
erty, Authority, Formality: Political Ideas and Culture, 1600–1900 (Exeter: 2008), ch. 1;
Nicholas McDowell, “The ghost in the marble: Jeremy Taylor’s Liberty of Prophesying
(1647) and its readers” in Ariel Hessayon and Nicholas Keene (eds.), Scripture and
Scholarship in Early Modern England (Aldershot: 2006), ch. 9.
43
Jeremy Taylor, Liberty of Prophesying [1647] (1650 edn), 21.
 english toleration controversy 349

Going Dutch

But of Europe’s multiconfessional states, the Dutch republic ranked

first in the estimation of English tolerationists.44 Richard Overton
listed Holland, Poland, and Transylvania as nations that had rejected
persecution, but Holland came first, and “Mr United Provinces” was
one of Overton’s chief witnesses.45 The priority of the Dutch model is
not surprising. The Dutch republic was the foreign country that Eng-
lish tolerationists knew best. This was true in the later-17th century,
when it was home for a time to John Locke, Gilbert Burnet, and Ben-
jamin Furly.46 In the early-17th century, the United Provinces was a
haven for English nonconformists and dissenters, including the first
English Baptists, who produced some of the pioneering toleration-
ist tracts in English.47 Henry Robinson had worked for nine years in
the Netherlands as a merchant. Richard Overton seems to have lived
there for some time too, possibly joining an Anabaptist congregation.
Hugh Peter had been a chaplain and pastor in the United Provinces
for several years and visited the country again in 1643 to raise funds
for Parliament.48 He believed that the English needed to catch up with
the Dutch republic by imitating its policies in numerous areas.49 Roger
Williams may not have been to the Netherlands, but he had learnt
some Dutch (or the Dutch dialect of German) from colonists at New
Amsterdam, and later passed it on to John Milton.50

44
See especially Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs, “Dutch contributions to religious tolera-
tion”, Church History, 79 (2010): 585–613, an important article that appeared after this
chapter was written, and should be read alongside it. English admiration and emula-
tion of the Dutch is explored by Lisa Jardine, Going Dutch: How England Plundered
Holland’s Glory (London: 2008), though she overlooks religious toleration. See also
Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven: 2009).
45
Overton, The Arraignement of Mr Persecution, 12, 31, 5.
46
See John Marshall, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture
(Cambridge, UK: 2006), ch. 16.
47
See Kevin Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism: A History of the English and Scottish
Churches of the Netherlands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Leiden: 1982);
James Coggins, John Smyth’s Congregation: English Separatism, Mennonite Influence
and the Elect Nation (Waterloo: 1991).
48
For Peter, Overton, and Robinson, see the Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography.
49
See Hugh Peter, Good Work for a Good Magistrate (1651), sig. A6r-v, 19, 20, 22,
27, 39, 92, 102, 104–7.
50
See Gordon Campbell and Thomas N. Corns, John Milton: Life, Work and Thought
(Oxford: 2008), 247.
350 john coffey

For the most part, English tolerationists chose not to emphasize the
limits and complexities of Dutch tolerance.51 In some cases, that may
be due to ignorance, but mostly it was because complexity did not
serve polemical purposes. Henry Robinson went further than most
in acknowledging the chequered history of Dutch policy, but he too
accentuated the positive. He insisted (on the authority of Grotius) that
during the revolt against Spain, the United Provinces had declared
“that they took not up Armes for Religion”. The Dutch Revolt was
not a war of religion. Indeed, at a time when Amsterdam and other
towns had been overwhelming Catholic, the states had agreed that
there should be freedom of conscience for all. Later, however, in the
wake of the Synod of Dort, there had been fierce repression of the
Arminians, “in some few places by the instigation of a most violent
party, seconded by the Prince”. Nevertheless, the Remonstrants were
“quickly restored againe, and have now their places of publicke meet-
ings, and greater liberty than ever”, even in Amsterdam and Utrecht,
where they had suffered most. Indeed, Robinson did not know of “one
place, or City throughout the united Provinces”, where the decrees of
the Synod were “at present, coercively enforced”. To the contrary, the
Dutch:
permit people of all Religions to live amongst them, and though they
have continual wars with Spain, and Papists in some Towns amongst
them have more liberty then in others, yet every where their freedome
is great, and though in some places they are one fourth or one halfe
part Papists, yet doe not the States subject themselves to be terrified or
troubled with jealousies or other plots and treacheries then in punishing
the authours at such times as they happen to be discovered.52
The most critical comments on the limits of Dutch generosity came
from Roger Williams in The Bloudy Tenent Yet More Bloudy (1652).
Here he acknowledged that toleration in the Netherlands was driven
by pragmatism more than principle. “The Politick States-men” of Hol-
land had been “lamentably whipt by the King of Spaines (and Gods)
Scourge, Duke D’alva, into a Toleration of other mens Consciences”.
Forced to build an ecumenical alliance against Spain, they then fore-

51
Recent scholarship highlights these limits. See especially R. Po-Chia Hsai and
Henk van Nierop (eds.), Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age
(Cambridge UK: 2002); Marshall, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment
Culture, 138–93, 335–70.
52
[Robinson], Liberty of Conscience, 47–8.
 english toleration controversy 351

stalled clerical criticism by providing Reformed divines with “sure and

setled Maintenance out of the States purse”. Hence, Williams wryly
observed, “The Dutch Ministers zeale is not so hot against the Tolera-
tion of Hereticks in the Civill State, as the English hath been”. Dutch
tolerance owed much to “worldly policie” and “State-necessity”. Some
had even suggested that they feared toleration in England because it
would stem the influx of economically productive religious refugees.
Williams hoped that England would go far beyond “Dutch President”.
Despite learning lessons in “their School of Warre” (the revolt against
Spain), the Dutch had failed to “learn that one poor Lesson of setting
absolutely the consciences of all men free”. They had merely “vouch-
safed to the Papists and Arminians the liberty (as I may so speak) of the
prison and sometimes to go abroad (as I may say) with a Keeper, &c”.53
Most Puritan tolerationists did not share Williams’ desire to outstrip
the tolerance of the Dutch. They wanted to secure liberty for all con-
scientious Protestants, but were much more hesitant about Jews and
especially Catholics.54 The appeal of the Dutch owed much to the fact
that they were a predominantly Protestant people, with a Reformed
public church. The policy of Dutch magistrates seemed more directly
applicable to the English situation than that of popish French kings
or distant Polish noblemen. Faced by English Presbyterians agitating
for a comprehensive national church, Independents could highlight
the very different setup tolerated by the Dutch Reformed. As John
Goodwin pointed out, the Presbyterians had sworn (in the Solemn
League and Covenant) to follow “the example of the best reformed
churches”, but “the Church of Holland” was known to be “very indul-
gent . . . to give Toleration upon Toleration, I mean to tolerate sever-
all kinds of Religion, and Church-Government amongst them”. The
Reformed Church was the public church of the Netherlands “and is
reputed Presbyteriall”, but “in severall populous towns in the Low-
Countries, scarce every 5th, nay, not every 8th person . . . is immembred

53
Williams, The Bloudy Tenent Yet More Bloudy, 175, sigs. Ar, Br.
54
This is especially true of the conservative Congregationalists. See Avihu Zakai,
“Religious toleration and its enemies: The Independent divines and the issue of tolera-
tion during the English Civil War,” Albion 21 (1989): 1–33.
352 john coffey

into any of their Churches”.55 The implication was clear: if the Dutch
Presbyterians could be so accommodating of non-members and other
congregations, why not the English?
Tolerationists insisted that the Dutch way was a godly way. Whereas
Presbyterians pitted licentious Amsterdam against godly Geneva, Wil-
liam Dell told a very different tale of two cities. Dell asserted the spiri-
tual credentials of Amsterdam, as a city that gave “free passage” to the
Gospel, and accused Protestant forcers of conscience of taking their cue
from Rome, the capital of persecution.56 According to Roger Williams,
“the States of Holland” had learned from Christ (“the wisest Polititian
that ever was”) who taught that the tares should be allowed to grow
alongside the wheat until the day of judgement. The Dutch “tollerate,
though not owne (as you say) the several Sects amongst them which
differ from them, & are of another conscience and worship”.57 In the
1650s, one writer declared that he much preferred “the free Ayre” of
Holland “where all Religions are permitted”, to the enforced confor-
mity of Puritan New England.58 For radical Independents, the Dutch
republic was a model to set against Presbyterian Geneva and Congre-
gationalist Massachusetts.
Tolerationists also suggested that Dutch tolerance had secured tem-
poral blessings from above. Roger Willliams was convinced of it:
What was it, that within the memory of man hath so wonderfully (almost
miraculously) raised and advanced from the low valleys, that poor fisher-
town of Amsterdam (now one of the gallantest of the Lady Cities of the
world)? I say, What was it but Mercy, Mercy which that poor Fisher-town
shewed to distressed and persecuted consciences . . . ?59
In another work, Williams expanded the point, claiming that Amster-
dam had been populated by religious refugees fleeing from the town of
Enchuysen, “whose Zealous, over-zealous and furious Clergie provoke the
Civil Magistrates to persecute dissenting, non conforming consciences”:
This confluence of the persecuted, by Gods most gracious coming with
them, drew Boats, drew Trade, drew Shipping, and that so mightily in so
short a time, that Shipping, Trading, wealth, Greatnesse, Honour (almost

55
John Goodwin, Anapologesiates Antapologia (1646), 70; Goodwin, Theomachia,
23.
56
Dell, Right Reformation (1646), 41–2.
57
Roger Williams, Queries of the Highest Consideration (1644), 12.
58
Freedom of Religious Worship, 26.
59
[Roger Williams], The Examiner Defended (1652), 17–8.
 english toleration controversy 353

to astonishment in the Eyes of all Europe, and the world) have appeared
to fall as out of Heaven in a Crown or Garland upon the head of that
poor Fisher-Town.60
The Anglo-Dutch war of 1652–54 made it more difficult to celebrate
the Dutch miracle.61 Williams, who was writing in the year the war
broke out, joined other Independents in accusing the Dutch of falling
into pride, ingratitude, and drunkenness. But with some ingenuity,
he turned the conflict to his advantage by stressing that God judged
nations on their treatment of the oppressed. The rise of the Dutch
republic was due to its mercy, but its failure to assist the embattled
godly of England would “stain the Pride of all their rising Glory”.62
Despite the Anglo-Dutch war, tolerationists throughout the 1640s
and 1650s were consistent in attributing the stability and prosperity
of the Netherlands to their policy of toleration.63 The Baptist Black-
wood alleged that liberty of conscience united all citizens behind the
magistrates.64 John Goodwin insisted that the Dutch had never experi-
enced any “contentions or mischiefs” from their religious minorities.
Their only real crisis (in the 1610s) came about because of quarrels
among the established clergy, not the tolerated; their Presbyterians,
not their Independents.65 Walwyn argued that “the prosperity of our
Neighbours in Holland” discredited the charge that religious diver-
sity was fatal to a polity—the Dutch lived peaceably “one amongst an
other”, and the Spaniard could testify that they united effectively in
defense of their common liberties and their common enemies.66 At the
Whitehall Debates in 1648, when leading Independents allied to the
New Model Army clashed about the degree of toleration to be afforded
minorities, the preacher Hugh Peter attacked “that old spirit of domi-
nation, of trampling upon your brethren”. “Witness the country next
from us,” he remarked, “that hath all the marks of a flourishing state
upon it—I mean the Low Countries: they are not so against, or afraid

60
Williams The Bloudy Tenent Yet More Bloudy, sig. A4v.
61
The shifts in English attitudes and policy towards the Dutch in 1650s are explored
in Steven Pincus, Protestantism and the Making of English Foreign Policy, 1650–1668
(Cambridge, UK: 1996), 9–191.
62
[Williams], The Examiner Defended, 18.
63
See, for example, Richardson, The Necessity of Toleration, 38.
64
Blackwood, The Storming of Antichrist, 21.
65
Goodwin, Anapologesiates Antapologia, 115.
66
The Writings of William Walwyn, 114–5. See also 161.
354 john coffey

of, this toleration”.67 The Baptist John Vernon declared that English
toleration should extend to “Jews or heathens”, for had not the Low
Countries flourished “ever since they suffered every man to worship
according to his conscience, and even the Jews themselves to worship
in their publike synagogues”.68 Another radical tolerationist declared
that “The wise and Potent States of Holland—by long experience, have
found no danger, but much increase of wealth and Trade, to accrue
by the permission of all Religions”.69 In the 1650s, the republican pro-
pagandist Marchamont Nedham attacked “Uniformity-mongers” and
declared that England could learn from “the states of Holland, who
by a prudent toleration of severall professions, have established them-
selves in such a measure of peace plenty, and liberty, as is not to be
equalled by any other [nation]”.70
The most intriguing defence of Dutch pluralism was developed by
Henry Robinson. In an argument reminiscent of Pascal’s wager or
Rawls’ veil of ignorance, he suggested that one’s chances of finding
the true religion were greater in a multiconfessional society than in
a confessional one. Imagine, he said, a man suffering from a “deadly
disease”, for which there are 20 possible remedies, only one of which is
effectual. If the man has access to just one possible cure, his chances of
recovery are 20 to one. But if he is able to experiment with all the rem-
edies, his odds of finding the right one are significantly higher. So it is
with religion. In Roman Catholic Spain or Lutheran Germany, one has
access to just one possible remedy. But in Holland, all the options are
available. Suppose that a Turk comes to Amsterdam, seeking Chris-
tian truth. Here he “informes himself fully of them all and at last fixes
upon one”. He may, given the human “propensity to evill”, make the
wrong choice. But he will at least have encountered the true religion,
and made an “examination or triall” of the alternatives. In most coun-
tries, by contrast, the people are “only suffered to be instructed in the
Country Religion (be it good or bad)”, and they take up “a Religion at
hap hazard”. Better to live in Amsterdam, than in Rome.71 And bet-
ter to choose your religion, than entrust that choice to the magistrate.
Gamblers preferred to “lose their own money, then that others should

67
Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty, 138.
68
John Vernon, The Swords Abuse Asserted (1648), 13.
69
Freedom of Religious Worship, 11.
70
Marchamont Nedham, The Case of the Commonwealth Stated (1650), 98–9.
71
[Robinson], John the Baptist, 84–5.
 english toleration controversy 355

lose it for them”, and in the case of souls, we would “quickly chuse to
hazard the losse of our own souls our selves”, rather than take a chance
on the judgment of someone else.72
Robinson’s probabilistic approach to the salvific prospects of indi-
viduals was couched within a wider missionary argument for multicon-
fessionalism.73 Dutch toleration advanced the Gospel; the “execrable
tyranny and dominion” of the Papacy in Italy and Spain retarded it.
The early Christians had been able to spread their Gospel freely across
national boundaries thanks to the pax Romana. Modern Protestants,
however, had made little effort to take the Gospel to “Infidells and
Hereticks” in their own lands, nor had they “allured them to come unto
us”.74 Yet Christians had a duty to “preach the Gospel unto all Nations”
(Matt 28:19), and this could only be done when Reformed Protestants
debated freely with Papists and Turks without fear of persecution.
“This combat,” Robinson explained, “must be fought out upon eaven
ground, on equall termes, neither side must expect to have greater
liberty of speech, writing, Printing, or whatsoever else, then the other”.
Protestants would never fulfil Christ’s missionary mandate until they
lived among other peoples and tolerated other faiths. The “maximes
of persecution” prevented Christians from fulfilling Christ’s commis-
sion.75 Robinson the godly merchant wanted to see the removal of the
protectionist barriers erected by confessional states. His vision of free
trade in religion, of a competition for hearts and minds “fought out
upon eaven ground, on equall termes”, was remarkably bold, though it
has more in common with the strategy of later Protestant missionary
movements than with modern secular liberalism.76

72
[Robinson], Liberty of Conscience, 41.
73
John Locke advanced a similar argument in response to Jonas Proast in the
Second Letter concerning Toleration. See Richard Vernon (ed.), Locke on Toleration
(Cambridge, UK: 2010), 69–70.
74
[Robinson], John the Baptist, 44, 6–7.
75
[Robinson], Liberty of Conscience, 17–21.
76
On later efforts to promote “free passage” of the Protestant Gospel, see Todd
Thompson, “The Evangelical Alliance, Religious Liberty, and the Evangelical Con-
science in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” Journal of Religious History 33 (2009):
49–65.
356 john coffey

Catholic Tolerationists

The arguments and examples used by radical Protestant tolerationists

were ripe for exploitation by members of England’s Catholic minority.
Many Independents (including Milton) refused to extend toleration to
Catholics, citing both their idolatry and their loyalty to a foreign power.77
But some did envisage toleration for peaceable Catholics.78 A number
of Catholic writers posed as Independents and pushed the logic of the
tolerationist argument towards Catholic toleration.79 The example of
Europe’s multiconfessional polities served their purposes. A New Peti-
tion of the Papists (1641) has been attributed to William Walwyn, but
it could be a Catholic tract. It suggested a new law imposing penalties
on those who “affront or upbraid the other for his Religion”. This was
already the policy in “divers well governed Countries”, such as “Hol-
land, Germanie, France and Polonia”.80 In 1649, another advocate of
toleration for Catholics used the same examples. Introducing himself
as a supporter of the Levellers’ Agreement of the People, he argued
that the liberty of conscience it promised should include Catholics.
After all, in France, Holland, Germany, and Switzerland, “persons of
all Religions are indifferently employed and found faithfull in Offices
and Places of greatest trust”.81
In The Christian Moderator: Or Persecution for Religion Condemned
(1651), the Catholic John Austin also ventriloquized a radical Protes-
tant voice, but he displayed a more detailed knowledge of the practice
of European multiconfessionalism. In Switzerland there was a “union
of hearts, and common interests of State, between the Protestant and
Catholike Cantons”:
. . . very many Churches serve by turns upon the same day, for the exer-
cise of both Religions, dividing every Sunday morning into two parts,

77
For the most recent discussion, see Andrew Hadfield, “Milton and Catholicism”
in Achinstein and Sauer, Milton and Toleration, ch. 10.
78
See N. Carlin, “Toleration for Catholics in the Puritan Revolution” in Ole Grell
and Robert Scribner (eds.), Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation
(Cambridge, UK: 1996), 216–30; John Coffey, ‘Puritanism and Liberty Revisited: The
Case for Toleration in the English Revolution,” Historical Journal 41 (1998): 961–85.
79
Several of these writers (including John Austin) belonged to the idiosyncratic
Catholic circle gathered around Thomas White (alias Blacklo). See Jeffrey R. Collins,
“Thomas Hobbes and the Blackloist Conspiracy of 1649,” Historical Journal 45 (2002):
305–31.
80
A New Petition of the Papists (1649), in The Writings of William Walwyn, 57.
81
No Papist, No Presbyterian (1649), 1–2, 4.
 english toleration controversy 357

and assigning to each about three hours for their devotions, wherein
they are so punctuall to maintain equality, that if the Protestants have
the first three hours one morning, next week they are to have the Last;
and this they continually practise, without enterfering or offending one
another.82
Austin continued by noting that “in many Provinces, and free Towns
in Germany”, adherents of different confessions displayed “fair com-
portment’ towards one another”. But the “most remarkable” case was
that of Holland. Even during the long struggle against Spain, “the
States (then whom none are more vigilant over their true Interest)
have not only with security, but exceeding benefit to their Common-
wealth, tolerated the Catholikes of quiet Conversation, to live freely
amongst them”. As a result, the Catholics, “in gratitude for so favour-
able a treating, have exactly corresponded to the mercy of their mag-
istrates, with a most, constant, sincere, and faithfull obedience”.83
When Austin (in his Protestant guise) compared continental arrange-
ments to the case of the English recusants, he was struck by the stark
contrast and “the unreasonablenesse of our persecution”. If the Swiss,
the Germans, and the Dutch could accommodate religious difference,
why not the English? Christians, Jews, and Turks were “opposite in
belief ”, “yet we see by experience that Jews are not inconsistent with
the Government of Christians, nor Christians with that of the Turks,
no not such Christians as are here in question, Papists”. In France, “the
Papists themselves . . . outgo us in their tender and moderate behav-
iour towards the Protestants of their Country, notwithstanding former
provocations to jealousie in the last civil wars, nay notwithstanding
present provocations by our severity against all of their profession in
England”. Birchley himself (i.e. Austin) had attended many confer-
ences in Paris, where clergy and tradesmen of different confessions
“freely defended” their own opinions, without fear and “with a courte-
ous friendliness and mutuall compassion”. He had often thought that
this was a French fashion worth importing into England. Furthermore,
the French King allowed “a certain number of publike Churches to
Protestants, and as much liberty in private for the exercise of their
consciences as any disagreers from the common belief of the State

82
William Birchley [i.e. John Austin], The Christian Moderator, or Persecution for
Religion Condemned (1651), 16. The practice of sharing churches is vividly illuminated
in Kaplan, Divided by Faith, 198–217.
83
[Austin], The Christian Moderator, 16.
358 john coffey

can reasonably desire”. Even the Spanish Inquisition, “(so universally

abhor’d) practices all imaginable means towards the accused, to reduce
his judgement to theirs, before they pronounce theirs against him, and
upon the conformity immediately acquit him”. The English might “cry
up Liberty of Conscience”, but they still had a lot to learn from their
European neighbours. Yet there was hope—the Presbyterians, those
“cruell torturers of the Conscience” had been defeated, and under its
new Independent rulers, England might yet enact “a generall Act of
Conscience-Indemnity”.84
In the politically chaotic year of 1659, following Oliver Cromwell’s
death, Catholic pamphleteers once again tried to foster sympathy for
their co-religionists by posing as radical Independents and pointing
to European multiconfessionalism. One writer noted that the Kings
of France and Poland entrusted high military office to Protestants, a
policy that evoked gratitude and loyalty among the tolerated minor-
ity. English persecution of Catholics, he claimed, had “made us an
obloquy to all our neighbours, even to our brethren the Hollanders,
whose Christian policy even beyond envy flourisheth at Amsterdam,
and other places, with exemplar piety and freedom”.85 Another pam-
phleteer observed that religious coercion had been condemned by
Catholic monarchs like King Stephen the Wise of Poland, the King
of Bohemia, the Emperor Charles V, and Kings Henry III and IV of
France. English regimes, however, could be worse than “the Spanish
Inquisition it self, which we esteem so odious”. English merchants in
Spain were not “molested or troubled by the Inquisition” (unless for
public disorder), and it had even banished Spaniards who abused Eng-
lishmen as heretics. It was the shame of the English that they had been
“overwitted by the Hollanders, whom yet we consider inferior to us”.
Although the large Catholic minority in the Netherlands did not enjoy
“the publick exercise of their Religion, (which is granted to diverse
other professions), but rather a connivance of private exercise”, they
had proved “most faithful” to the state, and served it even against a
Catholic prince. The “prudent moderation” of the Dutch had “setled
and maintained their Republick, raising it almost from nothing to a
great height and perfection”. The English, however, could settle noth-

84
[Austin], The Christian Moderator, 17, 25–6.
85
T. F., Philanthropia, or a holding forth of Universall immunitie in exercise of Chris-
tian Religion (1659), 5.
 english toleration controversy 359

ing because they insisted on “persecuting one Another for Religion”

which “put the State always a rolling”. They had much to learn from
the Dutch model.86

Jewish Readmission

Besides proving useful to English Catholics, the Dutch example also

served the cause of Jewish readmission. Jews had been expelled from
medieval England, and the country still had no open Jewish commu-
nity when the Amsterdam rabbi Menasseh ben Israel formally peti-
tioned Cromwell and his Council of State about readmission.87 Among
his contacts were philo-semitic Puritan millenarians like the ecumenist
John Dury and the Baptist pastor Henry Jessey.88 These figures expected
the imminent conversion of the Jews as a prelude to the coming rule
of Christ and believed that it would be hastened if Protestant nations
followed the Dutch by allowing the Jews to reside among them. Jew-
ish merchants, for their part, hoped to have as much freedom of wor-
ship and trade in London “as they enjoy in Holland, and did enjoy in
Poland, Prussia and other places”.89
Jessey thought it a scandal that the Jews were “Tolerated by the
POPE, and by the Duke of FLORENCE; by the TURKS, and by the
BARBARIANS”, but not by the English, who could expose them to
the Gospel.90 Another defender of readmission agreed:
We finde Hungaria entertains them, Germany harbours them, Poland
till these wars, and Sweden trades with them, Denmark affords them
habitation and Synagogues, Italy loves them, Holland approves them,
Hamburgh, Lubeck, most of the Imperial Hans-towns invite them In;

86
England’s Settlement upon the Two Solid Foundations of the Peoples Civil and
Religious Liberties (1659), 21–3, 30–2.
87
See David S. Katz, Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England,
1603–1655 (Oxford: 1982); idem, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850
(Oxford: 1994), 107–40; Eliane Glaser, Judaism without Jews: Philosemitism and Chris-
tian Polemic in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: 2007).
88
See Yosef Kaplan, Henry Mechoulan, and Richard H. Popkin (eds.), Mennasseh
ben Israel and his World (Leiden: 1989); Ernestine G. van der Wall, “A philo-semitic
millenarian on the reconciliation of Jews and Christians: Henry Jessey and his ‘The
glory and salvation of Judah and Israel’ ” in David S. Katz and Jonathan I. Israel (eds.),
Sceptics, Millenarians and Jews (Leiden: 1990), 161–84.
89
Henry Jessey, A Narrative of the late Proceeds at White-hall, concerning the Jews
(1656), 10.
90
Jessey, A Narrative, 11.
360 john coffey

and yet in all these Countries and places, who admit them, there is no
disturbance in Government, no Civil or Inbred Commotions, no popular
Insurrections against the Magistrates, about the Admission of the Jews,
nor any the least offence taken at the Jew, but live quietly and peaceably
together, the Magistrate protecting, and the Jews obeying his Orders and
Injunctions.91
When Cromwell convened a conference to discuss readmission at
Whitehall, it produced protracted debate and no consensus. Jewish
readmission was opposed by some English merchants and by anti-
tolerationist Puritans like William Prynne. Yet the episode did reveal
the presence of an underground Sephardic community in London,
and led to its informal recognition. Once again, English tolerationists
had used European examples to imagine a world beyond the confes-
sional state.

Anti-tolerationists

That vision, of course, was shared by only a minority, and it was fiercely
opposed by many of the godly. But opponents of toleration were no
more parochial than their rivals. Both Scottish and English Presbyte-
rians had well established contacts with Dutch Reformed divines and
with expatriate Presbyterian communities. The English heresiographer
Thomas Edwards would end his days (ironically) in the pluralistic city
of Amsterdam, where he was hosted by a staunchly Presbyterian Eng-
lish church. He had already exploited his Dutch contacts in order to
investigate the activity of congregationalist exiles in the 1630s.92 The
militant Covenanter Samuel Rutherford was offered chairs at the uni-
versities of Franeker and Utrecht, and Robert Baillie, another fierce
Covenanter critic of the Independents, kept up a regular correspon-
dence with his cousin who lived in the Netherlands.
Anti-tolerationists claimed that radical Independents were citing
Dutch precedent in order to go beyond it. Baillie informed his cousin

91
D. L., Israels Condition and Cause Pleaded, or Some Arguments for the Jews
Admission into England (1656), 40–1. The same argument is made by reference to
the Dutch experience in Thomas Collier, A Brief Answer to some of the Objections
and Demurs made against the Coming in and inhabiting of the Jews in this Common-
wealth (1656), 10.
92
See Ann Hughes, Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford:
2004), 1–2; Thomas Edwards, Antapologia (1644) and Gangraena (1646).
 english toleration controversy 361

that some of the Independent party were “openly for a full libertie of
conscience to all sects, even Turks, Jews, Papists, and all to be more
openly tolerate than with yow”.93 On Baillie’s account, radical Inde-
pendents were abusing the Dutch model, hiding its limits and their
own ambitions:
Not only they praise your magistrate, who for policie gives some secret
tolerance to diverse religions, wherein, as I conceave, your divines
preaches against them as great sinners; but avows, that by God’s com-
mand, the magistrate is discharged to put the least discourtesie on any
man, Turk, Jew, Papist, Socinian, or whatever, for his religion.94
As these quotations suggest, anti-tolerationists could exploit the lim-
its of Dutch tolerance. Thomas Edwards argued that the successful
containment of the Dutch Arminians demonstrated that magistrates
could suppress heresies, recover “many souls”, and settle “the peace of
Churches and States”. He and other Presbyterians knew that orthodox
Dutch Reformed clergy were critical of the lax policy of their regents.
Franciscus Junius and Gisbertus Voetius could be cited in support of
conventional Calvinist teaching on the religious duties of secular mag-
istrates.95 And in Gangraena, Edwards printed a letter from a Dutch
divine lamenting the spread of sectarianism and heterodoxy in Eng-
land and highlighting the restrictions on them in the Netherlands:
O blessed holy Holland, righteous Amsterdam, heretofore accounted
the sink of Errours and Heresies, but now justified by London. With
us are punished with banishment, or piercing through the tong with a
hot Iron, those that but slanderously speak of the Virgin Mary: Here we
burne the books of the Socinians Errours, and they may not with knowl-
edge be sold in these parts: Here indeed every one is left to enjoy the
freedome of his Conscience in his own Family, but to keep Conventicles
and meetings of divers Families together, Amsterdam it selfe will not
suffer, except in Anabaptists, Lutherans, and Remonstrants. At London
is taught Blasphemy against Christ, God, his Word, Worship, and Sacra-
ments, by Enthusiasts, Antinomians, Libertines, and Seekers: There the
Socinian tricks are new moulded, there all Sects and Hereticks may keep

93
Robert Baillie, Letters and Journals, ed. D. Laing, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1841–42),
ii.181.
94
Baillie, Letters and Journals, ii.184.
95
Thomas Edwards, The Casting Down of the Last and Strongest Hold of Satan, or
a Treatise against Toleration (1647), 56, 185–6.
362 john coffey

their separated, publike and secret Conventicles. Whence is it that you

are so suddenly led away unto another Gospell?96
If Dutch practice could be used to counter radical Independents, it was
still an embarrassment to critics of toleration. They preferred to look
to Geneva. Even a conservative Congregationalist could note that “the
Church and Religion doth prosper better in Geneva and its territory
and among the Helevetian Protestants, where one way of true Religion
is maintained, than in Polonia, such States wherein this mingle-mangle
is tolerated”.97 Less surprisingly, Presbyterians praised Geneva, which
“hath Lawes against Hereticks and other false teachers, and have put
some Hereticks and Blasphemers to death, as Servetus and others, as
is well knowne to those that know any thing of our latter times”. If
other Reformed churches or states had not enacted similar laws, “they
are and have been faulty”.98
Toleration was depicted as a Dutch error—promoted by Anabaptists
and Arminians like Hugo Grotius and Simon Episcopius. Rutherford
defined “Arminian liberty of conscience” as the view “that men in a
Christian Commonwealth, may be of any Religion, and the magistrate
is to behold men as an indifferent spectator, not caring what religion
they bee of, whether they be Papists, Jewes, Pagans, Anabaptists, Socin-
ians, Macedonians”.99 Another Covenanter, George Gillespie, com-
plained that toleration was promoted by “the Socinians, Arminians
and Anabaptists”, but “constantly opposed by all that were sound and
orthodoxe, both Ancient and Moderne”. Sadly, “in Germany, France,
Holland, Poland, yea under the Turkish Tyranny, contrary religions,
and opposite persuasions and practises, have been, and are tolerated
upon State-principles”.100 Thomas Edwards warned that the Dutch
Arminians “at first desired but a toleration. . . . but afterwards that by
the connivance and favour of the Magistrates they were in some Cities
and places (as Amsterdam &c.) grown to a great number, and had a
great power, then they would not . . . tolerate the orthodox Ministers,
but persecuted them . . .” English Independents, like the German Ana-

96
Edwards, The Second Part of Gangraena (1646), 165.
97
A Censure of that Reverend and Learned Man of God Mr John Cotton (1656), 8.
98
A Vindication of a Printed Paper (1646), 22.
99
See Rutherford, A Free Disputation, 216–7, 355. See also Prynne, The Sword of
the Christian Magistrate Supported (1653), 159.
100
[George Gillespie], A Late Dialogue betwixt a Civilian and a Divine (1644), 32, 30.
 english toleration controversy 363

baptist and Dutch Arminians before them, would use toleration as a

stepping stone to repression.101
Dutch pluralism haunted the imagination of anti-tolerationists. As
early as 1641, during a moral panic over the swarm of sectaries, one
writer claimed that London was being “Amsterdamnified by severall
opinions”.102 A royalist pamphleteer, shocked by the recent publication
of the Koran in English translation, warned that if the Independents
had their way, England would soon have “a Medley of Religions”.
“Amsterdam must be beholding to us, as we have been formerly to
them, for new Opinions”.103 Theophilus Brabourne offered a curt reply
to tolerationists: “Why should you make Holland a president for us in
this respect? Are they not the reproach of the world, for maintaining
all Religions, men say, if a man hath lost his Religion, he may find it
in Amsterdam. Let the practise of the Prophets and Apostles be our
president, and not Holland”.104
In Englands Metamorphosis, or a Dialogue between London and
Amsterdam (1647), the parallels between the two cities were fully
developed. London addressed the Dutch town with gushing admira-
tion: “Be thou my president; are not within thee a mixt multitude of
severall nations, worshippers of the true God, of Mahomet, and of no
God; and these occasion no garboiles in thee . . . they tosse not each
others limbs on the swords of their tongues, nor damn each other
with invective oratory, even to the profoundity of abysse”. Amsterdam
confirmed this report, explaining that her tranquil pluralism was due
to the absence of bigoted Presbyterians. London expressed wonder at
Amsterdam’s “order in the midst of disorder”, and the two rejoiced at
London’s metamorphosis. Amsterdam would no longer need to func-
tion as a “city of refuge” for the “thronging Sectaries” expelled from
England. They could now flourish at home. Amsterdam admitted that
she was “wholly estranged from God”, and had gone whoring after
idols. The two cities were like Judah and Samaria, sisters in apostasy.
The dialogue ended with a poetic warning that lamented the sectarian
fragmentation chronicled in Edwards’ Gangraena:

101
Edwards, Antapologia (1644), 279–80.
102
Religions Enemies (1641), 6. On the moral panic of 1641 see David Cressy, Eng-
land on Edge: Crisis and Revolution, 1640–42 (Oxford: 2006), ch. 10.
103
[Dr Richard Holdsworth?], An Answer without a Question: or the Late Schismat-
icall Petition for a Diabolicall Toleration of Seuerall Religions Expounded (1649), 6.
104
Theophilus Brabourne, The Second Part of the Change of Church Discipline
(1654), 63.
364 john coffey

Amazed and amated much I am,

To see this Kingdome turn’d to Amsterdam;
Six years agoe we had of Sects fourscore,
Which are increast now to one hundred more . . .105
Amsterdam was also denounced by opponents of the readmission of
the Jews. William Hughes declared that “Reason of State makes the
Dutch-men tolerate all Religions but the Popish. From whence shall
it not presently be concluded, that all their neighbours should do the
like”.106 William Prynne poured cold water on the millenarian dreams
of Jewish conversion—“learned able Protestant Divines in Holland,
Germany, France, Denmarke’ had been unable to convert the Jews,
so “what hopes have we to do it?”107 For most English Puritans, going
Dutch had limited appeal.

Conclusion

Yet, if the English remained largely sceptical about European models,

the toleration controversy had expanded horizons and placed a ques-
tion mark against Anglo-centric complacency. Contemporary cases of
multiconfessionalism were not at the heart of the dispute, but they had
been widely invoked and debated. It is difficult to assess the impact
of this debate on English attitudes and practice. W. K. Jordan was
being wildly optimistic when he claimed that by 1660 the necessity
of toleration was accepted by “responsible opinion” and “the mass of
men”.108 More recent historians tend towards the opposite extreme. It
does seem clear that tolerationist theory had not fundamentally shifted
public opinion. In 1659, the well-connected young Independent Henry
Stubbe declared that “Those who are for a free Toleration are the lesse
numerous, beyond all proportion”.109 The developments of the 1660s
support his assessment.
We can be more confident about the impact of practice on theory.
For some individuals, the example of peaceful religious coexistence

105
Englands Metamorphosis, or a Dialogue between London and Amsterdam (1647),
1–2, 6.
106
William Hughes, Anglo-Judaeus, or the History of the Jews, whilst here in Eng-
land (1656), sig. Fiir.
107
William Prynne, A Short Demurrer to the Jews (1656), 110.
108
Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration, IV, 9, 467.
109
Stubbe, An Essay in Defence of the Good Old Cause (1659), sig. **8v–**8r.
 english toleration controversy 365

overseas assisted their intellectual shift away from the Augustinian

defence of religious coercion. Tolerationists like Henry Robinson,
Richard Overton, Roger Williams, and John Austin had witnessed
inter-confessional and even inter-faith cooperation in the Netherlands,
France, and America, and this was clearly a factor in their thinking,
perhaps a decisive one. Yet even though these writers recognised the
political origins of religious liberty, their own texts laid relatively little
weight on continental case studies. They chose to fight for toleration
on the high ground of moral and religious principle, not on the low
ground of “worldly policie” and “State necessitie”. That may have been
naïve. But perhaps they were right to think, like Locke and Bayle after
them, that (in the final analysis) the legitimacy of religious coercion
could only be subverted by normative considerations.
 PART SIX

CENTRAL EUROPE
 MULTICONFESSIONALISM IN CENTRAL EUROPE

Howard Louthan

There is an old Hungarian joke that relates the story of a man born
at the beginning of the 20th century. Toward the end of his life, he
is visited by a guest who asks him to highlight the major events of
his life. Clearing his throat with a cough, he begins, “I was born in
the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. In my youth I attended school in
Czechoslovakia but then finished my studies in Hungary. Later I lived
for an extended period in the Soviet Union, and presently in retire-
ment I reside in the Ukraine.” His interlocutor, now intrigued by this
surprisingly peripatetic elderly gentleman, responds by asking him
to describe his travels in greater detail. With a wry smile and slight
shake of the head, the old man replies, “Travels? Who said I ever left
my hometown?” This story, intended to reflect the traumatic political
changes of this region in the 20th century, is equally appropriate for
those who study the religious history of premodern Central Europe.
This is territory where borders move mysteriously, and the scholar
is never precisely sure of his location. In corresponding fashion, any
discussion of confessional developments in Central Europe must begin
then with a serious consideration of its physical, political, and social
topography, for its contested geography has contributed to its prob-
lematic historiography in at least three significant respects.
Most obvious is the matter of boundaries. Where is Central Europe
precisely? In the English language we seem capable of neither naming
this region (central Europe, eastern Europe, east central Europe, cen-
tral and eastern Europe?) nor spelling it (upper-case C, or lower-case
c?). There is of course a significant historiographical debate on this
issue, which need not be repeated here.1 What is particularly relevant
for the religious historian today is the lingering impact of national-
ism on this territory. Historians in the 19th century enlisted religion

1
Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann offers a brief overview in his Court, Cloister and City
(Chicago: 1995), 16–21; for a recent critique of the term as a more unified cultural
space, see R. J. W. Evans, “Central Europe: The History of an Idea,” in his Austria,
Hungary, and the Habsburgs (Oxford: 2006), 293–304.
370 howard louthan

in the grand project of nation building as they frequently conflated

creed with country. In Bohemia, František Palacký saw the Hussite
movement as an expression of Czech proto-nationalism. Ecclesiastical
historians in Hungary cast the story of Calvinism, culminating with
the infamous incident of the galley slaves, as an essential element of
the Magyar struggle against the despotic rule of the Habsburgs,2 while
Catholic scholars in Poland heroically portrayed their church as the
bulwark of Christendom against the triple threat of Mongols, Turks,
and Protestants.3 Though scholars now certainly recognize the multi-
confessional nature of these societies, the effects of nationalism persist.
Histories of the Reformation in countries such as Slovenia, Slovakia,
or Lithuania continue to be formulated within a framework defined by
narrow and anachronistic political boundaries.4
When considering multiconfessionalism in Central Europe, his-
torians must consciously set their work in a territory with wide and
porous borders. The activities of Poland’s most prominent Protestant
reformer, Johannes a Lasco/Jan Łaski (1499–1560), serve as a case in
point. The scion of a prominent noble family, a Lasco crisscrossed
the continent as he emerged as one of the most important leaders
of the international Reformed community. He directed the Strang-
ers’ Church in London and insinuated himself into England’s internal
affairs to become in Diarmaid MacCulloch’s judgment the kingdom’s
first Puritan.5 He was superintendent of the church in East Frisia and
exerted significant influence on the Calvinist movement in the Low
Countries. He ended his career as the founder and organizer of the
Calvinist church of Lesser Poland and Lithuania. As such, there is a
sizable body of literature analyzing a Lasco’s activities from London
to Vilnius. This historiography, however, is divided into two distinct

2
In 1675, Habsburg authorities marched 41 Hungarian Calvinist ministers, who
refused to convert to Catholicism, to Naples where they were sent off in the Spanish
galleys. Liberated by the Dutch the following year, they became great heroes of the
Reformed world, as their release was celebrated across Protestant Europe. Graeme
Murdock, “Responses to Habsburg Persecution of Protestants in Seventeenth-Century
Hungary,” Austrian History Yearbook 40 (2009): 37–52.
3
Norman Davies, God’s Playground (New York: 1982), 159–160.
4
Marjan Dolgan (ed.), Družbena in kulturna podoba slovenske reformacije (Lju-
bljana: 1986); Karl Schwarz and Peter Švorc (eds.), Die Reformation und ihre Wirkungs-
geschichte in der Slowakei: Kirchen- und konfessionsgeschichtliche Beiträge (Vienna:
1996); Antanas Musteikis, The Reformation in Lithuania (Boulder, CO: 1988).
5
Diarmaid MacCulloch, “The importance of Jan Laski in the English Reformation”
in Christoph Strohm (ed.), Johannes a Lasco (1499–1560) (Tübingen: 2000), 345.
 multiconfessionalism in central europe 371

bodies: Polish language material considering his time in that kingdom

and a collection of primarily German and English literature reflecting
on his work elsewhere. There has been little dialogue between these
two camps, and as a result, we do not have a broad synthetic view of
a Lasco and his impact on Central Europe writ large.6 On the Catholic
side, how does one examine what is known in German as the Kelchbe-
wegung, a movement within the church that advocated the lay use of
the chalice at the Eucharist? One recent survey views it principally as
a German phenomenon, but what the author is describing was merely
one part of a broader reform current in 16th-century Central Europe.7
This matter was a critical issue for many Bohemians in particular. The
chalice had been the symbol of their revolt against Rome in the 15th
century, and its celebration at the Eucharist was the great emblem
of Hussite or Utraquist identity. In Poland, too, this was an affair of
some urgency. The kingdom’s most influential Catholic leader, Stanis-
laus Hosius, travelled widely through the region speaking and writing
against this practice. Rome even dispatched him to Vienna in an effort
to bring the wayward Habsburgs back in line on this matter.
A second significant issue concerns the people who lived within
Central Europe’s nebulous boundaries, for the region’s human geogra-
phy was as complex as its physical and political. The 14th century was
a critical turning point, for the lines of local dynasties that had ruled
much of this territory for generations failed. The Arpáds, Piasts, and
Přemysls were replaced by Angevins, Jagiellonians, Luxemburgs, and
Habsburgs. The newcomers, whose family holdings extended across
the continent, brought with them a more cosmopolitan set of sen-
sibilities that had a substantial impact on the evolution of religious
life and the development of a multiconfessional society. The Angevins
kept the Hungarian kingdom embroiled in Italian affairs and as a con-
sequence promoted a rich cultural exchange between the two regions,
setting a pattern that in the 16th and 17th centuries had intriguing
consequences, as radical Italian thinkers contributed to the growth
of anti-Trinitarianism throughout the Hungarian and Polish lands in

6
The standard Polish biography is the new edition of Oskar Bartel, Jan Łaski,
Część I (1499–1556) (Warsaw: 1999); the second part was completed by Halina Kow-
alska and published as Działalność reformatorska Jana Łaskiego w Polsce 1556–1560
(Warsaw: 1999).
7
Marc Forster, Catholic Germany from Reformation to Enlightenment (Basingstoke:
2007), 31–2.
372 howard louthan

particular.8 Poland’s first Jagiellonian monarch, the Lithuanian prince

who was baptized and christened Władysław Jagiełło (r. 1386–1434),
is also a compelling case. This new Christian king had an interesting
pedigree, a former pagan but now Catholic. His mother, though, was
a Ruthenian princess, and his home territory was dominated by an
Orthodox nobility. This curious religious amalgam is reflected aes-
thetically as Władysław encouraged confessional cross-fertilization in
the arts. In Sandomierz and Lublin, he commissioned Orthodox artists
to decorate Catholic churches. The resulting work, among the finest
of late medieval Poland, represents visually the fascinating fusion of
east and west.
In Bohemia the Luxemburg Emperor Charles IV (r. 1346–78) played
an especially critical role, as he brought east and west together in his
own person. His mother was a Přemyslid princess, a member of the
Slavic family who had ruled Bohemia for four centuries. Charles was
born in Prague and actually christened Václav (Wenceslas) in honor of
the kingdom’s most important patron. His father was John of Luxem-
burg who had died fighting the English at Crécy. The son grew up at the
French court, managed the family lands in northern Italy, and eventu-
ally returned to Bohemia in 1333. The cosmopolitan prince oversaw a
remarkable cultural renaissance and transformed Prague into one of
the great cities of late-medieval Europe. Charles left an especially deep
imprint on the religious life of the region. Through his energy and
enterprise he assembled what was purportedly next to Rome the larg-
est relic collection in all of Christendom. With the assistance of Pope
Clement VI, his former tutor, he helped engineer Prague’s promotion
to an archdiocese, and then without missing a beat he commissioned
the celebrated French architect Matthias of Arras to design the city’s
gothic masterpiece, the St. Vitus Cathedral.9
Both Saxon monks and Byzantine missionaries had contributed to
the Christianization of the Bohemian and Moravian lands in the 9th
century, and the emperor recognized this dual legacy as he shaped
his capital city. In a colossal undertaking that had no parallel north
of the Alps, Charles and his architects laid out a new city of Prague
that encompassed nearly 1,000 acres. Critical to the character of New

8
Domenico Caccamo, Eretici italiani in Moravia, Polonia, Transilvania: 1558–1611:
studi e documenti (Florence: 1999).
9
David Mengel, “Emperor Charles IV (1346–78) as the Architect of Local Religion
in Prague,” Austrian History Yearbook 41 (2010): 15–29.
 multiconfessionalism in central europe 373

Town were its religious institutions, nine of them specifically estab-

lished at the emperor’s behest.10 Viewed together, they reflect an impe-
rial program that promoted Charles’s spiritual vision with its distinct
universal pretensions. The exquisite Church of Karlov with its octago-
nal nave was modeled after Charlemagne’s chapel in Aachen.11 Even
more intriguing is the Benedictine Monastery of Our Lady and the
Slavonic Patrons. In this context we see the emperor acting as media-
tor between east and west. Monks were brought in from Dalmatia who
had been given papal permission to practice their Slavonic liturgy and
the Glagolitic language, which had been supposedly developed by Cyril
and Methodius. Here worshippers venerated Přemyslid and Byzantine
saints with highest honor given to St. Jerome, who at that time was
mistakenly credited with the translation of the Bible into Slavonic. In
terms of religious art, Charles patronized a style that brought together
aesthetic and spiritual elements of Latin and Byzantine Christianity,
perhaps best reflected in the stunning Holy Cross Chapel of Karlštejn
Castle, an artistic marvel that has elicited comparisons to architectural
monuments in Constantinople.12
The world of these cosmopolitan elites with their transnational ori-
entation was reflected at the civic level as well and contributed to the
complicated confessional landscape. Central European cities were eth-
nically complex. To understand a place such as Cracow in the 16th
century, we must pay close attention to at least three specific commu-
nities: Poles, Germans, and Italians. In 1500, German was the language
of Cracow’s academic and mercantile elite. The smaller Italian com-
munity made up for lost time through the patronage of Queen Bona
Sforza, and by 1550 they had moved into critical positions at the royal
court or had fanned out across the city working as merchants, crafts-
men, and artists.13 The situation becomes even more complex when

10
Here, see Paul Crossley and Zoë Opačić, “Prague as a new capital” in Barbara
Drake Boehm and Jiří Fajt (eds.), Prague. The Crown of Bohemia, 1347–1447 (New
Haven: 2005), 59–73.
11
Jiří Fajt, “Karl IV—Herrscher zwischen Prag und Aachen. Der Kult Karls des
Grossen und die karolinische Kunst” in Mario Kramp (ed.), Krönungen, Könige in
Aachen. Geschichte und Mythos (Mainz: 2000), 2:489–500.
12
Prague. The Crown of Bohemia, 13.
13
Until 1537 priests preached exclusively in German at St. Mary’s, the city’s major
church. Anne Markham Schulz, Giammaria Mosca called Padovano: A Renaissance
Sculptor in Italy and Poland (State College, PA: 1998), 95; Danuta Quirini-Popławska,
Działalność Włochów w Polsce w 1 połowie XVI wieku na dworze królewskim, w dyplo-
macji, i hierarchii kościelnej (Wrocław: 1973); more generally on cities, see Jaroslav
374 howard louthan

we consider the intellectual forces shaping the religious sensibilities of

the city’s ecclesiastical leaders. The most influential institutions in this
respect were outside Central Europe altogether. In the 16th century
the Polish nobility flocked to the universities of Padua and Bologna.
In this century alone 37 future bishops studied at Padua.14 When intel-
lectuals today, such as the poets Czesław Miłosz and Tomas Venclova,
wax lyrically about a city such as Vilnius and its remarkable cultural
diversity, their musings are not simply wistful reveries for a world that
never really existed.15 The texture of early modern urban life was very
thick indeed. A German visiting Vilnius in the late-16th century noted
with some astonishment:
In addition to the “Martinists” [i.e., Lutherans], the city has also many
sorts of religions and sects, all of whom have their churches and public
exercitia [exercises], such as papists, Calvinists, Jesuits, Ruthenians or
Muscovites, Anabaptists, Zwinglians and Jews, who also have their syna-
gogue and place of gathering. Then there are the heathens, or Tatars,
and all the religions, companies, and sects have libertatem conscientiae,
in which no one is hindered.16
The third issue to consider is in some respects a product of Central
Europe’s complicated political and social geography. Not surprisingly,
the political structures that evolved in a territory of such ambigu-
ous and contested boundaries were characterized by a high degree of
decentralization. This development was one of the most important fac-
tors contributing to the growth of multiconfessionalism, and a brief
survey of the region quickly illustrates that many of the settlements
guaranteeing religious freedom were compromises produced by a
weak central state. In Bohemia the 1609 Letter of Majesty has been
celebrated as an important landmark of religious toleration. This con-
stitutional arrangement was most decidedly a product of political con-
flict. In the late-16th century the growing strength of the kingdom’s
Protestant estates was countered by local Catholic leaders who sought

Miller, Urban Societies in East-Central Europe: 1500–1700 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate,

2008).
14
Schulz, Giammaria Mosca called Padovano, 91.
15
Czesław Miłosz and Tomas Venclova, “A Dialogue about a City” in Tomas Ven-
clova, Winter Dialogue (Chicago: 1999), 99–144.
16
Cited in David Frick, “The Bells of Vilnius: Keeping Time in a City of Many Cal-
endars” in Lesley Cormack, et al. (eds.), Making Contact: Maps, Identity, and Travel
(Edmonton: 2003), 25; also see his “Jews and Others in Seventeenth-Century Wilno:
Life in the Neighborhood,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 12 (2005): 8–42.
 multiconfessionalism in central europe 375

to revive their own church and combat the new heresy. In the ensuing
chess game the Protestants took shrewd advantage of the 1604 Bocskay
rebellion in Hungary and the rift between Habsburg brothers, Rudolf
and Matthias. As the price for peace with Bocskay, Archduke Matthias
grudgingly granted Hungarian Protestants a number of important
concessions. With the struggle between the two brothers reaching its
height, Bohemia’s Protestant estates in 1608 agreed to support embat-
tled Emperor Rudolf in exchange for a settlement guaranteeing their
own religious freedom. Even in such dire circumstances, it was only
with great reluctance that Rudolf finally relented and endorsed the
agreement.
The establishment of toleration in Poland was also a product of
weak central government and political impasse. Emboldened by the
accession of Sigismund II Augustus in 1548, Protestants became more
vocal with their demands, as they dominated the Polish Diet between
1552 and 1565. Due to their influence, ecclesiastical jurisdiction was
suspended while the king intended to call a national synod to resolve
the growing confessional crisis. These problems, though, were man-
aged at best in a piecemeal fashion as Protestants and Catholics con-
tinued to spar with each other throughout the reign of Sigismund II
Augustus. It was only during the interregnum that a settlement was
finally reached that was in principle to govern religious affairs for the
next two centuries. With the death of the last Jagiellonian and no clear
successor in sight, the nobles met in 1573 to elect a new king and set
the parameters of his powers. They stipulated that any future mon-
arch must support a provision known as the Warsaw Confederation,
a compact that guaranteed religious freedom of the nobility.17
The situation was in some respects even more complicated in Tran-
sylvania. The state itself operated in a type of political limbo. With the
Turkish advance into central Hungary, the Ottomans endeavored to
undercut Habsburg claims to the region and recognized an autono-
mous Transylvanian polity to their east. Outside the Habsburg orbit,
Protestantism flourished here with distinct Lutheran, Calvinist, and
Unitarian communities emerging by the 1560s. Its Catholic prince,
János Zsigmond Zápolyai, recognizing the difficulties of governing a
multiconfessional state, heeded the advice of his Unitarian physician

17
Stanisław Grzybowski, “The Warsaw Confederation of 1573 and other acts of
religious tolerance in Europe,” Acta Poloniae Historica 40 (1979): 75–96.
376 howard louthan

Ferenc Dávid, and in 1568 issued the short-lived Edict of Turda, which
guaranteed the freedoms of the Catholic, Calvinist, Lutheran, and Uni-
tarian communities.18

Questions of chronology

The problems of geography aside, there is another set of issues that

scholars must address to understand properly Central Europe’s com-
plicated confessional landscape. The matter of chronology is particu-
larly vexing. The Late Middle Ages, for example, have been frequently
cast as a period of decay, decline, and senescence. Many of these meta-
phors derive from the work of Johan Huizinga whose Waning of the
Middle Ages has been one of the most influential studies of the period
and continues to influence the field today.19 Huizinga’s autumnal vision
of the Late Middle Ages has been firmly set in the popular imagina-
tion through other media such as Ingmar Bergman’s starkly beautiful
film, The Seventh Seal. The themes of crisis and decline have had a
significant impact on Central European historiography. Representa-
tive here is the important anthology Europa 1400: Die Krise des Spät-
mittelalters edited by two of Germany’s most eminent premodernists.20
Scholars, however, must be cautious before applying this model across
the region as a whole, particularly in the area of religion. The image of
an old and sclerotic church on the verge of collapse obviously does not
reflect the situation in Lithuania, which had officially remained pagan
until 1389 when Pope Urban VI recognized it as a Roman Catholic
state. Well into the 17th and even 18th centuries, Catholics and Prot-
estants alike struggled to extirpate what they considered as vestiges
of paganism in their respective flocks. In his Cosmographia Sebastian
Münster even included an illustration of Lithuanian rustics worship-

18
Graeme Murdock, Calvinism on the Frontier (Oxford: 2000), 15–6, 19–20, 110.
19
The most recent English edition of Huizinga’s work is more accurately translated
as The Autumn of the Middle Ages (Chicago: 1996); for the broader issue see How-
ard Kaminsky, “From Lateness to Waning to Crisis: the Burden of the Later Middle
Ages,” Journal of Early Modern History 4 (2000): 85–125; John Van Engen, “Multiple
Options: The World of the Fifteenth-Century Church,” Church History 77 (2008):
257–284.
20
Winfried Eberhard, Ferdinand Seibt (eds.), Europa 1400: Die Krise des Spätmit-
telalters (Stuttgart: 1984).
 multiconfessionalism in central europe 377

ping fire and snakes.21 There was never a figure in Poland like Tetzel,
who could personify all the problems of a corrupt and failing institu-
tion that had lost touch with the common person.
The model of decline also distorts by setting a trajectory that forces
a specific conclusion. Crisis and decay must find some type of resolu-
tion. A phoenix always rises from the ashes. For the religious historian
that phoenix has customarily been the Reformation when decline is
reversed and the old restored by youth. With a terminus ad quem at
the Reformation, the confessional developments of the 14th and 15th
centuries are inevitably seen as necessary to the groundbreaking inno-
vations of Luther, Calvin, and Loyola. In western Europe, Waldensi-
ans and Lollards become the familiar “forerunners” of later reform
movements. In Central Europe that role is often filled by the Hussites.
The most recent survey in English on early Hussitism refers to the
movement as Bohemia’s “first Reformation”.22 While certainly there
was a sense in which the efforts of Hus foreshadowed the later work
of Luther, and though there was a branch of this church sympathetic
to Lutheran ideas in the 16th century, ecclesiastical historians have
frequently reduced Utraquism to a pale precursor of Protestantism.
Too often, the confessional complexity of Central Europe before 1500
is artificially adjusted and even simplified to account for the changes
of the Reformation.
If Central Europe’s religious terrain is more variegated than most
scholars allow, how then should we understand the Reformation
itself? The story of the Polish noble, Stanisław Orzechowski (1513–
1566), is particularly instructive here. Born in what is today eastern
Poland, Orzechowski followed a trajectory common to many of the
Polish elite. In his youth he studied in Vienna, Padua, and Witten-
berg. When he returned home, he became a priest but married shortly
thereafter. Did his marriage reflect the influence of Luther or other

21
See, for example, the 1547 catechism of Martynas Mažvydas where the Reformer
condemns the worship of the pagan god Perkunas, cited in Richard Fletcher, The Bar-
barian Conversion (Berkeley: 1999), 508. For the work of the Jesuits who complained
that their flock still worshipped both trees and snakes, see Kazimierz Drzymała, “Praca
jezuitów nad ludnością wiejską w pierwszym stuleciu osiedlenia się zakonu w Rzeczy-
pospolitej,” Nasza Przeszłość 20 (1964): 51–75. For the actual illustration from Mün-
ster, see Laimonas Briedis, Vilnius City of Strangers (Budapest: 2009).
22
Thomas Fudge, The Magnificent Ride: The First Reformation in Hussite Bohemia
(Aldershot, UK: 1998).
378 howard louthan

reformers he encountered on his travels? The answer is a resolute no,

for Orzechowski became a great critic of Protestantism. His model
of reform, in contrast, came from the Orthodox community where
priests could marry and the laity could receive both the bread and
cup at the Eucharist.23 Orzechowski illustrates the necessity of viewing
the religious changes of the 16th and 17th centuries not as a dialogue
between Protestant and Catholic but as a far broader conversation
between a variety of confessional groups. To understand the Refor-
mation aright, scholars must begin by recognizing the multi-polarity
of religious life in this period.
Utraquism provides the perfect example, for this religious move-
ment in its classical sense was certainly not Protestant. The adoration
of the host, the veneration of images and relics, and the belief in the
intercessory power of the saints were all retained. The church hierar-
chy continued to affirm apostolic succession. Even after the split with
Rome, Utraquist leaders sought out sympathetic bishops to ordain
their priests. As with the Orthodox, there were provisions for married
clergy, and of course the practice of receiving the Eucharist in both the
bread and the chalice (sub utraque specie) was the most prominent fea-
ture of its worship. Foreign visitors to Bohemia were often quite con-
fused with what they found in the Utraquist churches they attended
in the 16th century. Lutherans expecting to discover likeminded Prot-
estants were surprised and disappointed by the “papist” character of
these parishes. Conversely, visiting Catholics were frequently bemused
by the odd ecclesiastical rites and rituals they encountered on their
travels.24 This confusion remains today. Though there is a significant
body of recent work on Utraquism in its later period, scholars still
cannot define with any real degree of precision the exact nature of this
church.25 While there was a central consistory in Prague and a limited
set of core beliefs and practices, Utraquism was certainly not mono-
lithic and can in no sense be easily compartmentalized. The religious

23
Most recent on Orzechowski is Krzysztof Koehler, Stanisław Orzechowski i dyle-
maty humanizmu (Cracow: 2004).
24
Jaroslav Pánek, “Čechy, Morava a Lužice v německém cestopisů ze sklonku 16.
století,” Folia Historica Bohemica 13 (1990): 221; Eliška Fučíková (ed.), Tři francouzští
kavalíři v rudolfínské Praze (Prague: 1989), 44–5.
25
Most recently is Zdeněk David, Finding a Middle Way: the Utraquists’ Liberal
Challenge to Rome and Luther (Baltimore: 2003). Though the text should be read with
some caution, David’s work does point to the vitality of traditional Utraquism in the
sixteenth century.
 multiconfessionalism in central europe 379

landscape of late-16th- and early-17th-century Bohemia becomes even

more perplexing when we consider the other confessional groups that
existed alongside the Utraquists. Representative is the travel account
of the Englishman Fynes Moryson who visited the Czech lands in the
1590s and reported:
Generally in the kingdome there was great confusion of Religions,
so as in the same Citty some were Calvinists, some Lutherans, some
Hussites, some Anabaptists, some Picards [Bohemian Brethren], some
Papists . . . Yea the same confusion was in all the villages, and even in
most of the private Familyes, among those who lived at one table, and
rested in one bed together. For I have often seene servants wayte upon
their masters to the Church dore, and then leave them to goe to another
Church.26
Multiconfessionalism, then, was a fundamental characteristic of reli-
gious life in Central Europe throughout the early modern period. But
while we recognize the multi-polarity of the Christian community,
we must also consider another distinguishing feature of this region.
Over time a type of confessional hybridity developed as these groups
interacted with one another. Polish Calvinists, for example, adopted
a number of practices that would have certainly raised eyebrows in
Geneva. They observed days of patron saints and promoted a modest
cult of the Virgin. Their anti-Trinitarian neighbors considered them
little better than Catholics!27 The emergence of smaller groups, such
as the Sabbatarians, reflected an even stranger admixture of belief and
practice. Rejecting Sunday in favor of the Jewish Sabbath, the earliest
Sabbatarians were a radical sect of Anabaptists. A later group emerged
in Hungary towards the end of the 16th century within the Unitarian
community. Influenced by Judaism, they viewed the New Testament
akin to the Talmud, a type of commentary on the law of God revealed
in Hebrew Scripture.28
More typical were the Orthodox communities of Ruthenia. Here
we must deal with two variants of Orthodoxy. Its most hybrid form,
the Uniate church, emerged from the 1596/7 Union of Brest, when

26
Cited in David Holeton, “Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary: A Sixteenth Century
English Traveller’s Observations on Bohemia, its Reformation, and its Liturgy” in
Z. David and D. Holeton (eds.), The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice
vol. 5, no. 2 (Prague, 2005): 390–1.
27
Janusz Tazbir, A State Without Stakes (New York: 1973), 128.
28
The definitive source remains Samuel Kohn, Die Sabbatharier in Siebenbürgen
(Budapest: 1894).
380 howard louthan

its leaders recognized Roman supremacy but retained their Orthodox

rites. There has been significant debate regarding the Uniates. Schol-
arly opinion ranges from those who see the community as an embodi-
ment of a long tradition of ecumenism that had begun at the Council
of Florence in 1439 to those who argue that the church was an artifi-
cial creation, a product more of political necessity than any profound
impulse for ecclesiastical reunion.29 This very contention concerning
the nature of the Kievan church is in itself an illustration of its hybrid-
ity. Though before Brest its allegiance was with the Patriarchate of
Constantinople, this did not exclude the church from participating in
the councils of the west. The hierarchs of Kiev had been involved at
the councils of Lyon (1245), Constance (1415), and, of course, Flor-
ence (1439). While the Orthodox of Muscovy used Florence as an
opportunity to portray themselves as an ecclesiastical community with
a pronounced anti-Latin orientation, the status of the Kievan metro-
politanate after 1439 does not fit into such neat and tidy confessional
categories (Greek-Latin, east-west, Orthodox-Catholic). In true Cen-
tral European fashion, this faith community reflected the influence of
both east and west.30
The other Orthodox community in Ruthenia, the one that refused
union with Rome, is also intriguing. One might assume that this
church, like its Muscovite cousin, responded to the Union of Brest by
defining itself over and against the ecclesiastical culture of the west.
Interestingly, this did not occur. Though there was no agreement with
Rome, there was still a type of confessional permeability that was
relatively rare for Orthodox/Catholic interaction in the premodern
period—something that we certainly do not see happening in Musco-
vy.31 The impulse that led to the Union of Brest also prompted a revival
in the old Orthodox community. Critical here was the reform work
of Kiev’s future metropolitan, Peter Mohyla, whose efforts at reviving
eastern Orthodoxy followed a model that was not Greek and Slavonic

29
Oskar Halecki, From Florence to Brest (1439–1596) (Hamden, CT: 1968); Ihor
Mončak, Florentine Ecumenism in the Kyivan Church (Rome: 1987); Borys Gudziak,
Crisis and Reform: the Kyivan Metropolitanate, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and
the Genesis of the Union of Brest (Cambridge, MA: 1998).
30
Borys Gudziak, “The Union of Florence in the Kievan metropolitanate: Did it
survive until the times of the Union of Brest?,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 17 (1993):
138–48.
31
For a critical point of contrast with Muscovy, see Max Okenfuss, The Rise and
Fall of Latin Humanism in Early Modern Russia (Leiden: 1995).
 multiconfessionalism in central europe 381

but Latin and Polish. For the training of clergy he established one of
the most important theological academies in the Orthodox world, a
school that was very much a hybrid institution.32 As Ihor Ševčenko has
observed, “By combining its Western tinge and its Latino-Polish mes-
sage with Orthodoxy, Mohyla’s collegium performed a double task: it
provided an alternative to the outright Polonization of the Ukrainian
elite, and it delayed its Russification until well after 1686.” Muscovite
reports support this contention. Their representatives complained that
the Orthodox of Ruthenia were far too western in their theological
orientation, for their priests devoted too much time to the Latin texts
of Jerome and Augustine and not enough to the Greek treatises of
Chrysostom and Basil.33

16th-century Poland: A Case Study

At this juncture let us shift our focus to one specific setting for a closer
examination of these more general themes that characterized religious
life in Central Europe. Here we will turn to 16th-century Poland.
English-language historiography of the Polish Reformation remains
remarkably thin and reflects many of the problems already noted. Paul
Foxe’s slim study, The Reformation in Poland (1924), is the last full
monograph dedicated to the subject. A later generation of historians
devoted significant attention to the kingdom’s anti-Trinitarians, whom
they viewed as early champions of religious freedom and tolerance.
More recent scholarship has investigated how the work and writings
of these early figures contributed to the development of Enlighten-
ment thought.34 This exception aside, there has been surprisingly little
interest in the fascinating world of the Polish Reformation. No other

32
P. V. Holobuts’kyi, N. I. Moiseienko, Z. I. Khyzhniak (eds.), Petro Mohyla, 1596–
1647: bibliohrafichnyi pokazhchyk (Kyïv: 2003); M. Korzo, “Prawosławne wyznanie
wiary Piotra Mohyły. Kilka uwag w sprawie wpływów zachodnich na teologię kijowską
XVII w.,” Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce 46 (2002): 141–149; P. Lewin, “A select
bibliography of publications on the Kiev Mohyla Academy by Polish scholars, 1966–
1983,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 8 (1984): 223–8; Téofil Ionescu, La vie et l’oeuvre
de Pierre Movila, Metropolite de Kiev (Paris: 1944).
33
Ihor Ševčenko, Ukraine between East and West (Edmonton: 1996), 145, 184;
more recently, see Liudmila Charipova, Latin Books and the Eastern Orthodox Cleri-
cal Elite in Kiev, 1632–1780 (Manchester: 2006).
34
Earl Morse Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: 1945–
52); G. H. Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: 1962); Martin Mulsow,
Jan Rohls (eds.), Socinianism and Arminianism (Leiden: 2005).
382 howard louthan

region on the continent could match the confessional diversity of the

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Before the 16th century there were
Catholic, Orthodox, Armenian, and Utraquist communities. After-
ward came Calvinists, Lutherans, Anabaptists, the Bohemian Brethren,
an assortment of anti-Trinitarians, and other radical groups. And then
of course there were various non-Christian communities, including
the sizable Jewish population as well as Muslim Tatars. There was even
a Karaite settlement that had grown up around the lakes of the old
Lithuanian capital of Trakai. The 17th-century British traveler, Edwin
Sandys, was hardly exaggerating when he observed “if somebody has
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.”35
The multiconfessional nature of Polish society in the Reformation
era was a product of factors already discussed. Most significant among
them was the region’s political decentralization. A weak king and a
strong but divided nobility helped create the space where a variety of
Christian groups could co-exist. Indeed, any discussion of the Refor-
mation here must begin with the nobility, for in this respect Poland
truly stood apart from its neighbors. Though cities such as Cracow
and Danzig contributed in their own way to the spread of Protestant
ideas, the Reformation in Poland was not an urban event as it was
in Germany. At the same time it never became a popular movement
in the sense of mass peasant support and rural discontent.36 Though
Sigismund the Old (1506–48) was theologically engaged, and his son
Sigismund II Augustus (1548–72) purportedly had a servant read aloud
from Calvin’s Institutes before retiring to bed, the Polish Reformation
cannot truly be considered a courtly phenomenon, for it never received
royal sanction as in England. It was first and foremost a debate among
the region’s elites. It was a discussion of ideas or as one scholar has

35
From Edwin Sandys, A Relation of the State of Religion (London: 1605), cited
in Paweł Kras, “Religious Tolerance in the Jagiellonian Policy during the Age of the
Reformation (The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth)” in Dietmar Popp and Robert
Suckale (eds.), Die Jagiellonen: Kunst und Kultur einer europäischen Dynastie an der
Wende zur Neuzeit (Nuremberg: 2002), 131.
36
For a discussion of the peasants, see Tomasz Wiślicz, Zarobić na duszne zbawie-
nie. Religijność chłopów małopolskich od połowy XVI do końca XVIII wieku (Warsaw,
2001).
 multiconfessionalism in central europe 383

recently put it “a grand intellectual adventure”.37 The structural dis-

tinctiveness of Poland’s Reformation thus offers the historian a unique
vantage point from which to view confessional change in 16th-century
Central Europe. Though the German Peasants War, the Henrican
Revolution in England, or the Wars of Religion in France illustrate
the extent to which religious reform was so closely intertwined with
broader political, social, and cultural phenomena, the situation was
somewhat different in Poland. I do not claim, of course, that the Pol-
ish gentry had no desire to use religion for political gain, but I would
contend that the Reformation here was primarily ideological, as reli-
gious leaders of all stripes argued and disputed key theological issues
of the era. Poland, in fact, was home to the most creative and inventive
discussions on the Trinity since the Christological controversies of the
patristic period.38
The massive controversial literature these reformers produced in
their hard-fought battles over Scripture, the sacraments, and eccle-
siastical authority is invaluable for historians tracking the confes-
sional evolution not just of Central Europe but the continent itself,
for it offers us one of the clearest and least obscured views of religious
change in the 16th century. Jerzy Kłoczowski has reminded us how
young Christianity was in late 15th-century Poland, while it must not
be forgotten that Lithuania had only officially exchanged its pagan
gods and sacred groves for the Trinity and the cathedral a century
earlier.39 Now under the spell of humanism, leaders in both church
and state turned to the future flush with optimism as they engaged
new ideas of reform. The individual who had the greatest impact shap-
ing this fresh outlook on religion and society was the arch-humanist
himself, Desiderius Erasmus. When Erasmus wrote Bishop Warham
in 1524, “Polonia mea est,” he was making no idle boast. In the early-
16th century, he exercised considerable influence at the royal court,
the university, the episcopal palace, and with many of the country’s
great magnates. There are 95 extant letters between Erasmus and a

37
See the jacket of Janusz Tazbir, Reformacja-kontrreformacja-tolerancja (Wrocław:
1997).
38
George Williams, “Strains in the Christology of the Emerging Polish Brethren”
in S. Fiszman (ed.), The Polish Renaissance in its European Context (Bloomington, IN:
1988), 61–95.
39
Jerzy Kłoczowski, Młodsza Europa: Europa Środkowo-Wschodnia w kręgu
cywilizacji chrześcijańskiej średniowiecza (Warsaw: 1998).
384 howard louthan

Polish interlocutor.40 It should not be surprising, then, that the king-

dom’s three most important reformers all began their careers as com-
mitted Erasmians. Their subsequent trajectories, however, were very
different. A brief comparison offers revealing insights into the growth
and development of Poland’s multiconfessional society.

Johannes a Lasco (1499–1560)

Of all the major leaders of the Reformation, none came from a more
privileged background than Johannes a Lasco (Łaski).41 His uncle was
a close ally of King Sigismund and served both as royal chancellor and
primate of Poland. The uncle kept a close eye on his young nephew
and made sure that Johannes received an education fitting for his sta-
tion. He studied four years in Bologna and Padua before returning to
Poland, where he was ordained in 1521 and then appointed a secre-
tary in the royal chancellery. He later accompanied his two brothers
on diplomatic missions to the west where he continued his studies
in Paris and was introduced to the court of Marguerite of Navarre.
It was in Basel, however, that he had the most significant encounter
of his life. Here a Lasco met Desiderius Erasmus with whom he lived
for several months. It is difficult to underestimate Erasmus’s influ-
ence on the impressionable Polish noble. A Lasco wrote years later
that it was during this period that Erasmus taught him the meaning
of “true religion”. He facilitated Erasmus’ contact with other Polish
nobles, including King Sigismund, and helped negotiate the sale of the
Dutchman’s extensive library that was to be shipped to Poland upon
his death.42 A Lasco returned to Poland in 1526. His future looked
bright, and he may have gone on to rival his uncle’s success, were it
not for a disastrous political decision his family made following the

40
P. S. Allen (ed.), Opus epistolarum Desiderii Erasmi Roterdami (Oxford: 1906–58),
5: #1488, 535; George Williams, “Erasmianism in Poland,” Polish Review, 22 (1977):
3–50; Maria Cytowska (ed.), Korespondencja Erazma z Rotterdamu z Polakami (Warsaw:
1965).
41
The historiography on a Lasco is extensive, complicated and generally fractured
along national lines. For a representative sampling of recent scholarship, see the edited
volume, Christoph Strohm (ed.), Johannes a Lasco (1499–1560).
42
Ambroise Jobert, De Luther à Mohila (Paris: 1974), 97–8; Konstanty Zantuan,
“Erasmus and the Cracow Humanists: The Purchase of his Library by Laski,” Polish
Review 10 (1965): 3–36.
 multiconfessionalism in central europe 385

battle of Mohács, when the Turks routed a Hungarian army and killed
its last Jagiellonian king. Following the disaster, the brothers actively
supported the claim of János Zsigmond Zápolyai for the Hungarian
throne. Polish King Sigismund, who favored his ally Ferdinand, the
Habsburg candidate, was not pleased, and it quickly became appar-
ent that a Lasco’s prospects for advancement in Central Europe were
limited. Denied a career within Poland, he travelled abroad where his
religious views continued to evolve as he was slowly drawn towards
the Reformed church. He had his first great success when Countess
Anna von Oldenburg appointed him superintendant of the church
of East Frisia in 1543. Seven years later Edward VI invited him to
organize a church for the many Protestant refugees who had come to
London for safe haven. After Edward’s death he travelled back to the
continent and a brief stay in Germany before his final call to Poland
in 1556, where he established the Calvinist church in Lesser Poland
and Lithuania.
The activity of Johannes a Lasco reflects the eclectic nature of Pol-
ish Protestantism. A late convert to the new faith, a Lasco’s theologi-
cal views developed slowly and were shaped by extensive interaction
with a broad range of interlocutors. His list of friends and mentors
reads like a Who’s Who of the Protestant Reformation. Ulrich Zwingli,
Johannes Oecolampadius, Martin Bucer, Hermann von Wied, Philip
Melanchthon, Thomas Cranmer, John Calvin, and Heinrich Bullinger
all exercised some influence on his thought. In this respect he was
ideally suited to deal with the multi-polar world of Polish Protestant-
ism. It was Erasmus, of course, who had the greatest impact on his
understanding of Christianity. Some might even argue that a Lasco is
what Erasmus would have looked like had the Dutchman eventually
converted. Whatever the case, a Lasco represents the most ecumenical
wing of the Reformed tradition. As one of the great leaders of inter-
national Calvinism, he was remarkably non-theological. Like Eras-
mus, he believed that a simple rule of faith was sufficient and the best
way to guard the church’s purity and integrity. There was no need to
develop more complicated confessional standards when the Bible and
the Apostles’ Creed were used. On issues such as free will, original sin,
and Christology, a Lasco was actually closer to Erasmus than Calvin.
It is significant that his few ventures into theology were not successful.
His Summary of the Doctrine of the Church of East Frisia (1544) was
received critically by Bullinger and Melanchthon. Later, he engaged in
386 howard louthan

a heated debate with the Swabian Reformer Johannes Brenz concern-

ing the Eucharist. Most judged that a Lasco came out the loser.
It was not on doctrinal matters that a Lasco left his mark but on
issues of order and discipline. Here his legacy within the Reformed
tradition is frankly unrivalled. It can be argued that by the time of his
death in 1560, it was not Calvin but a Lasco who was most responsible
for the dramatic geographical expansion of Reformed Protestantism.
Ever pragmatic, a Lasco effectively sized up a situation and developed
practical and effective solutions to the problems he faced. His first
great challenge came organizing the church of East Frisia. Individual
congregations had significant power and independence. A Lasco was
able to impose a more ordered system without alienating the churches.
He instituted the coetus, a weekly meeting of the clergy, which helped
bring the various congregations together while still allowing a range of
theological views to exist within the church.43 His assignment in Lon-
don was more difficult. As the city filled with religious refugees from
France and the Low Countries, there was a pressing need to establish a
church for this population. Edward VI established such a body in 1550
and called a Lasco to lead it. The Pole faced challenges on two fronts.
He had to defend the church from without, for the Bishop of London,
Nicholas Ridley, had opposed it from the onset, arguing that this con-
gregation should fall under his jurisdiction and follow the English rite.
Internally, a Lasco had to devise a church order that could satisfy a
range of theological positions. The resulting statement, The Form and
Manner of Ecclesiastical Ministry, was one of his greatest triumphs,
reflecting a simple Biblicism on doctrinal matters while adapting a
flexible but democratic structure of church governance.44 It was this
pragmatic spirit that a Lasco brought with him when he returned to
Poland to organize the Protestant church. Though his work was cut
short by his death in 1560, he endeavored to bring the kingdom’s
major Protestant groups into a broad union. A decade later this ideal
was realized when the kingdom’s Lutheran, Reformed, and Brethren
communities came together through the Consensus of Sandomierz.

43
Best here is Henning P. Jürgens, Johannes a Lasco in Ostfriesland (Tübingen:
2002).
44
Michael Springer, Restoring Christ’s Church: John a Lasco and the Forma ac ratio
(Aldershot, UK: 2007).
 multiconfessionalism in central europe 387

Stanislaus Hosius (1504–1579)

Though five years younger than Johannes a Lasco, his Protestant spar-
ring partner, Stanislaus Hosius was a product of a similar intellectual
environment. His social origins, however, were significantly different.
His father Ulrich was a German artisan who found employment tend-
ing the grounds of the royal castle in Vilnius, where Stanislaus passed
his childhood.45 A precocious student, he began his studies at the Jag-
iellonian University in Cracow in 1519. Like a Lasco, Hosius quickly
fell under the spell of Erasmus. At the university he heard lectures
from the Englishman Leonard Coxe who first introduced Erasmus to a
Polish audience. Distinguishing himself in his studies, Hosius attracted
the attention of Piotr Tomicki, bishop of Cracow and vice-chancellor
of the kingdom. Attached now to the episcopal court, Hosius enjoyed
the patronage of the powerful Tomicki and was an active member of
an Erasmian circle in Cracow through the 1520s. In 1527 he wrote a
preface to a letter Erasmus had written King Sigismund, which was
then published in the Polish capital.46 The climax of Hosius’s humanist
phase came in the early 1530s, when Tomicki sent his young charge to
Bologna and Padua to round out his formal education. According to
his first biographer, Stanislaus Rescius, Hosius had hoped to end his
travels abroad with a visit to Erasmus. The meeting never occurred,
for Hosius was robbed enroute, an event that Rescius claimed was a
clear act of divine providence!47 The encounter that never took place
was an important parting of the ways for a Lasco and Hosius. As
they entered their mature years, they developed alternative strategies
for managing the challenges of multiconfessionalism. While a Lasco
believed that union could be achieved through broad doctrinal state-
ments combined with a well-ordered plan of ecclesiastical discipline,
Hosius was decidedly more skeptical. His views were far closer to
those of a 16th-century visitor, travelling through Poland, who when
confronted with such a broad spectrum of religious beliefs noted “the
collission of dyvers opinions (are) easely corrupting, if not altogeather

45
For a biographical overview, see G. H. Williams, “Stanislas Hosius” in Jill Raitt
(ed.), Shapers of Religious Traditions in Germany, Switzerland and Poland 1560–1600
(New Haven: 1981), 157–174.
46
Des. Erasmi Roterodami Epistola ad inclytum Sigismundum regem Poloniae
(Cracow: 1527).
47
S. Rescius, D. Stanislai Hosii . . . vita, in F. Hipler and V. Zakrzewski (eds.), Acta
historica res gestas Poloniae illustranti (Cracow: 1879), 4:x.
388 howard louthan

extinguishing the religious affection of mans mynde.”48 For Hosius,

the problems of multiconfessionalism demanded a firmer and more
robust response.
In contrast to a Lasco, who presumed that a range of religious belief
and practice could harmoniously co-exist within a broad Protestant
alliance, Hosius contended that such an attitude was both naïve and
dangerous. One of his early tracts addressed three of the most common
issues raised by Protestant reformers: marriage of the clergy, commu-
nion in two kinds, and the use of the vernacular during worship. On
all three of these matters Hosius vigorously supported the church’s
traditional position.49 He was convinced that variation in such prac-
tices eventually led to doctrinal confusion and ultimately ecclesiastical
chaos. In similar fashion he noted that new translations of Scripture
have “turned not only strapmakers, porters, bakers, tailors, and cob-
blers, but even their wives, into Apostles, Prophets, and doctors and
has removed all order from the Church of God.”50 For Hosius the great
catastrophe precipitated by Luther and Calvin was first and foremost
a crisis of authority. The church could only recover its former health
by confronting this problem directly. Of all Catholic reformers, it may
have been Hosius who was most keenly attuned to this issue due to his
own experience in Poland, and throughout his multi-faceted career he
worked to strengthen and reinforce the church’s hierarchical structure
of authority. As bishop in Poland, cardinal in Rome, papal legate in
Vienna, and president at the Council of Trent, Hosius consistently
sought ways to buttress the power of the pope and the rights and pre-
rogatives that then flowed down to the bishops. Hosius’s remarkably
broad career also reminds us that the multiconfessional world of Cen-
tral Europe is best understood from a transnational perspective. Grow-
ing up in a bi-lingual household helped prepare him for the challenges
of a multi-ethnic society. The diocese of Warmia, which he eventually
oversaw, was in fact predominantly German. Hosius believed that reli-
gious reform had to be addressed outside a national context. In his
Confessio Catholicae fidei Christiana (1551), an eloquent summary of

48
Cited in Waldemar Kowalski, “From the ‘Land of Diverse Sects’ to National Reli-
gion” in A. Pettegree (ed.), The Reformation (London: 2004), 4:321.
49
S. Hosius, Dialogus de eo, num calicem laicis, et uxores sacerdotibus permitti
(Dillingen: 1559).
50
Cited in David Frick, Polish Sacred Philology in the Reformation and the Counter-
Reformation (Berkeley: 1989), 39.
 multiconfessionalism in central europe 389

Catholic doctrine, he simply stated, “Faith is not Polish, not Lithu-

anian, not German.”51

Andreas Fricius Modrevius (1503–1572)

Unlike Hosius and a Lasco, who have an international reputation

in scholarly circles today, our final figure is not well known out-
side Poland. But within his native land, Andreas Fricius Modrevius
is traditionally viewed as a central figure of the Polish Renaissance.52
Modrevius’s family came from a village in Greater Poland. His father
held the hereditary title of mayor. He sent his son off to Cracow where
he entered the university in 1517. There he first made the acquain-
tance of Stanislaus Hosius. Their paths would cross many times in the
future, climaxing with a lengthy exchange of polemical literature in the
middle of the century. Modrevius’s first official post came at the court
of primate Jan Łaski, Johannes a Lasco’s learned uncle. At his death
Modrevius transferred his services to nephew Johannes and his two
other brothers, Jerome and Stanislaus. It was through these brothers
that Modrevius was introduced to the world of German Protestantism.
Serving as an emissary of the a Lasco family abroad, Modrevius set up
a base in Wittenberg where he lived with Melanchthon. Though sym-
pathetic to many Reformation ideas, he did not convert. After Eras-
mus’s death in 1536, it was Modrevius who organized the transport of
his library to Poland. Modrevius eventually attracted royal attention as
well. The height of his influence came during the reign of Sigismund II
Augustus who used him as both a diplomat and an advisor.
While both Hosius and a Lasco eventually found a career in the
church, Modrevius did not, which may explain why his view of
reform was markedly broader than both of his peers. Of all three, he
remained most committed to a humanist agenda as reflected in a fig-
ure like Erasmus. Modrevius envisioned a general reformation of his
world, one that affected all branches of society including the church.
His first published work, Lascius sive de poena homicidii oratio prima

51
Cited in H. D. Wojtyska, “Stanislaus Hosius (1504–1579)” in E. Iserloh (ed.),
Katholische Theologen der Reformationszeit (Münster: 1988), 150.
52
The fullest assessment of Modrevius and his works is offered in A. Séguenny and
W. Urban, Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski, (Bibliotheca dissidentium) 18 (Baden-Baden:
1997).
390 howard louthan

(Cracow, 1543), was a blistering critique of a Polish legal system that

meted out punishments on the basis of social rank. Two year later he
wrote a short treatise defending the property rights of townspeople.
His most important work Commentariorum de Republica emendanda
libri quinque (Basel, 1554) was a massive and far-reaching reflec-
tion on society, government, law, and religion. It was this final work
that brought him fame. The text was translated into Polish, German,
French, and Spanish and elicited praise and criticism from the likes of
Jean Bodin, Johannes Althusius, Hugo Grotius, and Pierre Bayle.
Modrevius first published on ecclesiastical matters in 1546 with a
tract on the Council of Trent. King Sigismund had actually appointed
him to attend the council, though in the end a Polish delegation never
arrived. Nevertheless, Modrevius’s brief treatise represents the high-
point of a strong conciliarist tradition in Poland. He appealed to the
memory of the Council of Basel (1431–1449), where Poles played a
significant role at the convocation.53 He feared that Trent was mere
window-dressing, with the church publicly proclaiming what it had
decided long beforehand. “Those who are to be sent to the council,” he
averred, “should truly debate and discuss.”54 This was the first salvo in
what turned into a protracted polemical feud with Hosius. Modrevius
followed up this initial blast with a series of tracts, promoting a typical
humanist agenda of church reform: abolition of clerical celibacy, com-
munion in two kinds, and use of the vernacular. With his emphasis on
education, the authority of Scripture, and an optimistic view of human
nature that bordered on Pelagianism, Modrevius remained closest in
spirit to Erasmus throughout his career. He focused consistently on
issues of morality while seeking to minimize theological difference.
He often claimed that Protestants and Catholics were closer than they
realized on matters of doctrine. He was convinced that agreement
could be found on questions of sin, salvation, and Christology. Ideal-
istic and naïve, Modrevius quickly found his way blocked by Hosius
and his allies within the church. Out maneuvered by his opponent in
Cracow, he had to publish his commentary on the church (book four

53
Thomas Wünsch, Konziliarismus und Polen (Paderborn: 1998); Paul Knoll, “The
university of Cracow and the conciliar movement” in J. Kittelson and P. Transue
(eds.), Rebirth, Reform and Resilience: Universities in Transition, 1300–1700 (Colum-
bus, OH: 1984), 190–212.
54
A.F. Modrevius, De legatis ad concilium mittendis, vol. 2 in C. Kumaniecki (ed.),
Andreae Fricii Modrevii opera omnia (Warsaw: 1954), 181.
 multiconfessionalism in central europe 391

of the Commentarium) in Basel. Now facing the wrath of Rome as

well, Modrevius slowly withdrew from public life. He continued writ-
ing from his rural home, where his criticism of the church became
ever more vigorous. He grew bolder as he attacked purgatory, prayers
for the dead, and transubstantiation. But for all that, he never left the
church. He wrote, “I remain a citizen of the Commonwealth, though
I cannot approve of many of its laws; . . . similarly, I have not ceased
being a member of the Church, though I cannot embrace its rites or
teachings in their entirety.”55 It was his great hope that Sigismund
II Augustus would call a national council, but unlike Trent, which
he saw as a sham, this gathering would truly be inclusive and demo-
cratic. Reflecting on the multiconfessional nature of his homeland,
he dreamed of a council that would bring together members of the
kingdom’s different Christian communities in a spirit of charity and
harmony.

Conclusion

The intertwined lives of Modrevius, a Lasco, and Hosius reveal much

about multiconfessionalism, most directly in Poland but also in the
wider world of Central Europe. Modrevius represents a humanist
approach to religious reform, a position common to many church lead-
ers in the early-16th century.56 But as the decades wore on, Modrevius
found himself increasingly isolated and his views progressively scorned.
Not only did he provoke the great controversy with Hosius, but his
once friendly relations with a Lasco also became strained. When he
waded into the early Christological controversies to mediate a grow-
ing rift within the Reformed camp, Calvin came out openly against
him. Ironically, his last work, a humanist consideration of the Trin-
ity, where he carefully worked through Scripture and the debates of
the early church, was published posthumously with the assistance of
Poland’s most marginal Christian community, the anti-Trinitarian

55
Cited in Adam Ulam, “Andreas Fricius Modrevius—A Polish Political Theorist
of the Sixteenth Century,” The American Political Science Review 40 (1946): 487.
56
John D’Amico, “Humanism and Pre-Reformation Theology” in A. Rabil (ed.),
Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms and Legacy (Philadelphia: 1988), 3:349–
379.
392 howard louthan

Polish Brethren.57 The career of Johannes a Lasco highlights a fun-

damental dilemma of Protestantism in Central Europe. This was a
multi-polar world where confessional divisions were not always clearly
demarcated. As such, it was a region where ecumenism flourished,
where agreements could be negotiated even between unlikely part-
ners, such as the fascinating attempt at Vilnius in 1599 to bring the
Orthodox and Calvinists together.58 But this lack of theological clarity
was also a liability, leaving some communities without a clear sense
of identity. Those who converted to Protestantism could just as easily
convert back to Catholicism, and many did. A Lasco’s vaunted skills of
organization were not enough to create a well-disciplined and united
Protestant front.
In the end it may have been Stanislaus Hosius who best understood
the psychology of religious life in Central Europe. He had long asserted
that Protestant demands such as the Eucharist in two kinds were mere
pretexts for division, and throughout his career he pointed to what he
perceived as this community’s most troubling weakness, a congenital
tendency to fissure and split into ever smaller subgroups. He believed
that Modrevius’s reform program threatened the church, for its demo-
cratic constitution would dilute authority and create greater confusion
in the minds of ordinary believers. Hosius’s greatest strength was his
ability to clarify. His Confessio was a remarkable distillation of Catholic
teaching, and in all his writings he consistently emphasized the impor-
tance of hierarchy and authority. It was this vision of ecclesiastical
order that finally carried the day. Its organization and discipline were
most congenial to the needs of the early modern state, and Protestants,
too, eventually adapted structural elements of this model. Though the
region’s multiconfessional character persisted into the 17th century,
the great era of religious diversity slowly faded as the state and church
reshaped their relationship to meet the challenges of a new political
and social environment.

57
Andreae Fricii Modrevii Secretarii Regii Sylvae Quattor (Cracow: 1590).
58
Marian Bendza, “Orthodox-protestantische Unionstendenzen im 16. Jahrhun-
dert in Polen,” Ostkirchliche Studien 34 (1986): 3–16.
 MULTICONFESSIONALISM IN TRANSYLVANIA

Graeme Murdock

Writing about the political and social consequences of the Reforma-

tion has often focussed on the violence which followed the breakdown
of religious uniformity across much of Europe. The international con-
flicts and civil wars of the 16th and 17th centuries have been seen as
marking out a confessional age during which religious passions exac-
erbated struggles for power both between different states and within
states. Monarchs fought abroad alongside co-religionists against reli-
gious and dynastic rivals, while rulers tried at home to eradicate any
outbreaks of religious dissent. Ordinary people also became actively
engaged at least as enthusiastic supporters of, as well as sometimes
participants in, the violent persecution of religious minorities. Offi-
cial and popular anxiety about the dangers posed to society by any
diversity of religious beliefs and practices frequently resulted in the
brutal treatment of heretics.1 However, across many parts of Europe
even the most determined attempts to restore religious unity ended in
failure. Many members of minority communities stubbornly resisted
the appeals of official preachers and of printed propaganda. Even her-
esy trials, executions, pogroms, and forced exile were only partially
successful in subduing dissent. Policies of religious persecution could
also prove counter-productive, as alienated minorities were driven to
outright political resistance against their rightful rulers. Civil conflict
broke out in some territories, as normal patterns of obedience to law-
ful authorities were overwhelmed by rival religious loyalties.
Despite the disruptive results of policies of religious persecution,
many monarchs and magistrates remained more concerned about the
perceived spiritual, social, and political dangers of sanctioning her-
esy. Secular authorities in many parts of the Continent continued to

1
Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Rites of Violence: Religious Riots in 16th-Century
France,” Past and Present 59 (1973): 51–91; John Elliott, Europe Divided 1559–1598
(London: 1968); Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, 1490–
1700 (London: 2003); Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis 1598–1648 (Oxford: 2001);
David Sturdy, Fractured Europe, 1600–1721 (Oxford: 2002).
394 graeme murdock

work with clergy from official churches to promote orthodoxy and

tried to eradicate religious diversity.2 However, some rulers who faced
entrenched, determined, and substantial minority churches reluctantly
adopted policies which sanctioned religious pluralism. Legal accep-
tance of confessional diversity within a state generally emerged from
negotiated settlements between rulers and some of their most pow-
erful subjects. In some territories compromises over religious rights
were only reached after periods of conflict. In the Empire in 1555
and in the French monarchy from the early 1560s, rulers hoped to
restore political stability by conceding specific and limited legal rights
to Lutherans and Calvinists respectively. Elsewhere courts and nobles
reached agreements in order to try to maintain order and peace. Dur-
ing the 1570s, legal rights were offered to a range of churches in the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and in the lands of the Bohemian
crown. The conversion of significant numbers of nobles and urban
magistrates to Evangelical, Reformed and anti-Trinitarian churches
was decisive in convincing monarchs of the necessity of offering some
legal rights to non-Catholic churches. While these different multicon-
fessional regimes responded to political divisions and social instability,
they also had the capacity to sustain and even inflame such divisions
and instability.3
State recognition of confessional pluralism required rulers to have
become convinced of the political necessity of accepting the existence
of some minority religions. Multiconfessional states were built on
grudging and hard-fought compromises. These settlements included
some elements which may seem in tune with modern notions of reli-
gious liberty, but they operated alongside other elements which now

2
Kaspar von Greyerz, Religion and Culture in Early Modern Europe 1500–1800
(Oxford: 2008); John Headley, Hans Hillberbrand, and Anthony Papalas (eds.), Con-
fessionalization in Europe, 1550–1700: Essays in honor and memory of Bodo Nischan
(Aldershot: 2004); Wolfgang Reinhard, “Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the
Early Modern State. A Reassessment,” Catholic Historical Review 75 (1989): 383–404;
Heinz Schilling, “Confessional Europe” in Thomas Brady, Heiko Oberman, Jim Tracy
(eds.), Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and
Reformation, vol. 2 (Leiden: 1994–5), 641–81.
3
Keith Cameron and Mark Greengrass (eds.), The Adventure of Religious Plural-
ism in Early Modern France (Bern: 2000); Joel Harrington and Helmut Smith, “Con-
fessionalization, Community, and State- building in Germany, 1555–1870,” Journal
of Modern History 69 (1997): 77–101; Heinz Schilling, “Die Konfessionalisierung im
Reich. Religiöser und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Deutschland zwischen 1555 und
1620,” Historische Zeitschrift 246 (1988): 1–45.
 multiconfessionalism in transylvania 395

seem restrictive and unattractive.4 Although multiconfessional states

permitted some degree of religious diversity, they retained a strong
culture which favoured conformity to a dominant church. Multicon-
fessional states extended legal rights and offered social inclusion to
some religious groups but at the same time granted more restricted
rights or gave no legal guarantees at all to other groups. For example,
in the Empire Evangelical churches benefited from legal recognition
under Lutheran princes after 1555, but no provision was made dur-
ing the 16th century for Reformed princes and their churches lacked
any legal protection. In France, legal restrictions stipulated where
Reformed communities could and could not gain access to sites for
public worship.5
Religious life and processes of religious reform were also pro-
foundly influenced by multiconfessional environments. Consideration
of whether or not to offer rights to minority churches often occurred
during periods of religious fluidity. State recognition tended to ossify
the nascent character of churches, and clerical hierarchies opposed any
later internal impulses for further reform which might jeopardize hard-
won legal privileges. Multiconfessional environments also affected the
developing character of churches in other ways. Confessional competi-
tion changed the form in which clergy articulated doctrine, whether or
not their church had won any legal liberties. In some contexts attempts
to gain state recognition directly altered the doctrine adopted by differ-
ent churches. For example, in 1575, rights were offered to Utraquist,
Evangelical, and Bohemian Brethren nobles to practice their religion
in Bohemia. However, the aristocratic patrons of these churches had
first encouraged clergy to subscribe to a shared confession in order to
advance negotiations with the Habsburg court.6

4
Michael Walzer, On Toleration (New Haven: 1997), 1–7.
5
For disputes over control of sites of worship in France, see: Jérémie Foa, “An
unequal apportionment: The conflict over space between Protestants and Catholics
at the beginning of the war of religion,” French History 20 (2006): 369–86; Penny
Roberts, “Contesting sacred space: burial disputes in 16th-century France” in Bruce
Gordon and Peter Marshall (eds.), The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in
late medieval and early modern Europe (Cambridge, UK: 2000), 131–48.
6
František Kavka, “Bohemia” in Robert Scribner, Roy Porter, and Mikulás Teich
(eds.), The Reformation in National Context (Cambridge, UK: 1994), 131–54; Jaroslav
Pánek, “The Question of Tolerance in Bohemia and Moravia in the Age of the Refor-
mation” in Ole Peter Grell and Robert Scribner (eds.), Tolerance and Intolerance in
the European Reformation (Cambridge, UK: 1996), 262–81.
396 graeme murdock

This chapter will examine these key features of multiconfessional

states by analysing the case-study of the Transylvanian principality. It
will discuss the development and character of Transylvania as a mul-
ticonfessional state and society from the middle decades of the 16th
century. It will focus first on how a series of political compromises
were reached which offered different rights to a range of religions, and
on how the state attempted to deal with the practical consequences
for communities of sharing space between different churches. This
chapter will then turn to consider the impact of this multiconfessional
context on religious life. It will analyse the nature of multiconfession-
alism in Transylvania by considering the emergence and development
of the Unitarian or anti-Trinitarian church and its relations with other
churches in the principality.
Transylvania was a fledgling state during the era of Reformation.
After the collapse of the medieval Hungarian kingdom in 1526, the
province of Transylvania along with the so-called Partium counties of
the eastern Hungarian plain remained outside the area occupied by
Ottoman armies.7 The diet of this eastern remnant of the Hungarian
kingdom elected a native noble, János Szapolyai, as their new mon-
arch. Szapolyai’s power was challenged by Ferdinand Habsburg who
was elected as king by a rival diet of nobles from northern and western
Hungarian counties. In 1528, Szapolyai sought the protection of the
Sultan to prevent any Habsburg invasion of his eastern kingdom. In
1538, a treaty, agreed between Ferdinand and Szapolyai, envisaged the
unification of Christian Hungary under Habsburg control. However,
in 1541, the eastern diet elected the infant János Zsigmond Szapolyai
as their king and paid annual tribute to the Sultan in return for recog-
nition of Szapolyai’s authority. In 1551, Ferdinand was able to secure
agreement for Szapolyai’s abdication. This success for Habsburg policy
proved short-lived as Ottoman armies advanced further north in 1552.
In 1556, the diet of the eastern Hungarian lands including Transylva-
nia once again recognised János Zsigmond Szapolyai as their elected
king.8

7
The label Partium (partium regni Hungariae) refers to counties to the west of
Transylvania proper which came under the authority of Transylvania’s rulers during
this period.
8
Robert J. W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550–1700: an Inter-
pretation (Oxford: 1979); Márta Fata, Ungarn, das Reich, der Stephanskrone, im Zeit-
alter der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung. Multiethnizität, Land und Konfession
 multiconfessionalism in transylvania 397

Unstable relations continued between these rival states during the

middle decades of the 16th century, as ideas in favor of religious reform
spread among German- and Hungarian-speakers. In 1568, the Otto-
man Empire and Habsburg monarchy agreed on terms for peace at
Adrianople, and Maximilian then revived efforts to re-unite Christian
Hungary under Habsburg authority. Maximilian and János Zsigmond
Szapolyai reached an agreement in 1570, by which Szapolyai renounced
any claim on the Hungarian royal title in return for recognition from
Maximilian of his rule as prince over Transylvania. The same agree-
ment proposed the unification of Christian Hungary after the death
of the childless Szapolyai. However, when Szapolyai died in 1571, the
diet in Transylvania elected the Catholic noble István Báthory as their
ruler. Báthory left Transylvania for the Polish-Lithuanian Common-
wealth after his election as king in 1575 and subsequently appointed
his relatives as governors of Transylvania. Zsigmond Báthory was
elected as prince on István’s death in 1587.
The resumption of war with the Ottomans during the 1590s brought
renewed instability to the region. Zsigmond Báthory’s pro-Habsburg
policy and erratic behaviour both proved disastrous for Transylvania
which was invaded by Ottoman and Habsburg armies. Transylvanian
autonomy was secured after a rebellion of eastern Hungarian nobles and
militarized peasant bands led by the Reformed noble István Bocskai. Boc-
skai sought to defend traditional liberties and to prevent any extension
of Habsburg power in the region. In 1605, he was elected prince by
the Transylvanian diet, having already received recognition from the
Porte. By the terms of the 1606 Vienna peace Rudolf II acknowledged
him as prince of Transylvania and the counties of the Partium. Bocskai
was the first in a series of Reformed nobles then elected by the diet to
govern the Transylvanian principality during the 17th century.9
The Transylvanian principality emerged from, and survived, a series
of political and military crises between the 1520s and early 1600s. It
inherited a political culture which owed much to the traditions of the
medieval Hungarian kingdom along with features which developed

1500 bis 1700. (Katholisches Leben und Kirchenreform im Zeitalter der Glaubensspal-
tung) 60 (Münster: 2000).
9
David Daniel, “The Fifteen Years’ War and Protestant Responses to Habsburg
Absolutism in Hungary,” East Central Europe 8 (1981): 38–51; László Makkai, “István
Bocskai’s Insurrectionary Army” in János Bak and Béla Király (eds.), From Hunyadi
to Rákóczi. War and Society in Late Medieval and Early Modern Hungary (Brooklyn
MA: 1982), 275–97.
398 graeme murdock

during the 16th century. For example, the principality’s single-chamber

diet had its origins in a 1459 pact between Transylvania’s Hungarian-
speaking nobles, German-speaking urban magistrates, and the lords
of militarized Szekler communities. These so-called “nations” united
to defend their interests against peasant rebels and external threats.
The three “nations” formed a provincial diet which sent representa-
tives to the Hungarian royal diet. From the 1520s this provincial diet
provided the basis for the diet of the eastern Hungarian kingdom and
then of the Transylvanian principality. From the 1540s, nobles from
the Partium counties also attended the diet, as did court officials and
invited “regalists”, drawn from leading noble families. As we have
seen, claimants for royal and princely power sought election from
this diet, a practice which reflected contemporary noble understand-
ing of the reciprocal relationship between Hungary’s monarchs and
its estates.10 The role of the diet was further enhanced in 1566 when
János Zsigmond Szapolyai obtained the Sultan’s agreement that the
diet should hold elections to decide their ruler. The political power
of the diet also extended during the 1550s and 1560s into negotiating
with princes over, and passing laws about, matters of religion. This
meant that Transylvania’s diet became engaged in shaping religious
policy just as Evangelical, Reformed, and anti-Trinitarian preachers
were gaining support for their ideas among Hungarian-speaking aris-
tocrats and in Hungarian- and German-speaking towns.11

10
Graeme Murdock, “ ‘Freely elected in fear’: Princely Elections and Political Power
in Early Seventeenth-century Transylvania,” Journal of Early Modern History 7 (2003):
213–44; Zsolt Trócsányi, Az erdélyi fejedelemség korának országgyűlései (Adalék az erdé-
lyi rendiség történetéhez) (Budapest: 1976); Mihály Zsilinszky, A magyar országgyűlések
vallásügyi tárgyalásai a reformátiotól kezdve, 4 vols. (Budapest: 1880–97).
11
For some context about the Reformation in the region see: Mihály Bucsay, Der
Protestantismus in Ungarn, 1521–1978. Ungarns Reformationskirchen in Geschichte
und Gegenwart. 1. Im Zeitalter der Reformation, Gegenreformation und katholischen
Reform (Vienna: 1977); Maria Crăciun, Ovidiu Ghitta, and Graeme Murdock, “Reli-
gious Reform, Printed Books and Confessional Identity” in Maria Crăciun, Ovidiu
Ghitta, and Graeme Murdock (eds.), Confessional Identity in East-Central Europe
(Aldershot: 2002); Robert J. W. Evans, “Calvinism in East Central Europe: Hungary
and Her Neighbours” in Menna Prestwich (ed.), International Calvinism, 1541–1715
(Oxford: 1985), 167–97; Graeme Murdock, “Eastern Europe” in Andrew Pettegree
(ed.), The Reformation World (London: 2000), 190–210; Andrew Pettegree and Karin
Maag, “The Reformation in Eastern and Central Europe” in Karin Maag (ed.), The
Reformation in Eastern and Central Europe (Aldershot: 1997), 1–18; 1–30. István
Keul, Early Modern Religious Communities in East-Central Europe. Ethnic Diversity,
Denominational Plurality, and Corporative Politics in the Principality of Transylvania
(1526–1691) (Leiden: 2009).
 multiconfessionalism in transylvania 399

Transylvania had long been not only a multi-lingual and multi-

ethnic political community but also a multiconfessional society. The
principality straddled the border between Latin and Eastern Christi-
anity, and Romanian-speaking peasants mostly remained loyal to the
Orthodox Church throughout this period. Rural Orthodox communi-
ties were particularly numerous in parts of southern and southwest-
ern Transylvania, which was of long-term significance to the religious
culture of those regions. Religious diversity was thus far from a nov-
elty for many Transylvanian communities during the 16th century.
However, there were few Romanian-speaking landowners and no
Romanian-speaking “nation” represented in the diet. The free practice
of Orthodoxy was only permitted as a privilege granted by successive
kings and princes. The limited rights given to the Orthodox Church
allowed both Evangelical and Reformed clergy to sponsor reform ini-
tiatives among Romanian-speakers. Protestants looked to have pliant
Orthodox bishops and metropolitans appointed who would introduce
reform measures, alter styles of ritual, and change points of doctrine.
During the 1560s and 1570s, Orthodox clergy whose form of religion
was not thought to be based on the Bible were threatened with expul-
sion from the country. However, attempts to disrupt the practice of
Orthodoxy proved largely ineffective, with only very limited success
in building a small Romanian-speaking Reformed church. There were
also some later advances in the legal rights offered to Orthodoxy clergy
in Transylvania. In 1609, prince Gábor Báthory lifted duties of serf-
dom from priests, enabling them to move more freely between their
communities.12
Two other religious groups gained privileges to form specific settle-
ments in Transylvania during the early-17th century. Prince Gábor
Bethlen was motivated by the potential economic advantages of invit-
ing a productive community of Anabaptist artisans to settle in the
principality in 1621. He followed the same policy in 1623, when he
offered a Jewish community the opportunity to move north from
Ottoman-held lands. Bethlen attempted to attract Jewish settlers by
promising that there would be no requirement to wear distinctive

12
For the decisions taken by Transylvania’s diet see: Sándor Szilágyi (ed.), Monu-
menta Comitialia Regni Transylvaniae. Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek. Magyar Törté-
nelmi Emlékek Harmadik Osztály, 21 vols. (Budapest: 1875–1898), especially vol. 3,
118, 140, 240 [hereafter Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek]; Krista Zach, Orthodoxe Kirche
und rumänisches Volksbewusstsein im 15. bis 18. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: 1977).
400 graeme murdock

clothing which might distinguish the community from its Christian

neighbors and lead to possible social tension.13 This law also reflected
decades of regulatory experience in Transylvania, trying to accommo-
date religious diversity while attempting to restrict any potential for
inter-communal violence.
Across much of Europe political settlements which gave legal sanc-
tion to some religious diversity only followed periods of conflict. In
Transylvania moves towards providing a legal basis for a multicon-
fessional society aimed to pre-empt any violent consequences arising
from religious divisions. The potential threat of either an Ottoman
invasion or a Habsburg take-over seems to have focussed attention
among the elite on the importance of reaching a settlement between
the competing rights of rival churches. The external political context
of the fledgling state apparently impressed upon the Catholic court
and upon Protestant nobles and urban magistrates the need to make
compromises over religious matters. Transylvania’s political culture,
the diverse character of the estates, and the relative weakness of the
court were also important in determining responses to the spread of
different ideas in favour of religious reform.14 There was also political
opportunism among the elite, which both responded to, and acceler-
ated, the declining fortunes of the Catholic church. In 1556, the estates
and the Catholic regent for János Zsigmond Szapolyai agreed on the
expropriation of all episcopal and monastic lands. Having Catholic
property at its disposal bolstered the power of the regency council and
encouraged nobles to support the Szapolyai court. Catholic institu-
tional power was left gravely weakened after 1556, and many nobles
who gained church lands thereafter had a direct interest in advocating
the cause of reform.15
Alongside such political and practical considerations, many nobles
and urban magistrates also provided apparently sincere support for the
ideas promoted by reform-minded preachers. Despite the passage of
heresy legislation against Lutherans during the 1520s, the observance
of Evangelical religion quickly came to dominate the German-speaking

13
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 8, 143–5; E. Jakab, “Erdély és az anabaptisták
a xvii.–xviii. században,” Keresztény Magvető 11 (1876): 1–14.
14
Ludwig Binder, Grundlagen und Formen der Toleranz in Siebenbürgen bis zur
Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts (Vienna: 1976); Katalin Péter, “Tolerance and Intolerance
in 16th-century Hungary” in Grell and Scribner, Tolerance and Intolerance in the
European Reformation, 249–61.
15
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 2, 64–5.
 multiconfessionalism in transylvania 401

or so-called Saxon towns. German-speaking ministers adopted the

Augsburg Confession, and religious life in Saxon towns was re-organised
under regulations published by Johannes Honter in 1547. Lutheran-
ism also gained support among Hungarian-speaking nobles during the
1550s.16 In 1553, the diet granted the right to worship according to
Evangelical rites. In 1557, a final, and perhaps pious, effort was made
to encourage Catholic and Evangelical clergy to reconcile their views.
The diet called for a synod to consider divisions over controversial
points of doctrine. Until this synod reached some conclusion the diet
allowed communities across the principality to worship either accord-
ing to the ceremonies of the old church or according to those of the
reformers.17 This appeal for clergy to overcome their doctrinal differ-
ences was soon dropped. At its 1558 meeting the diet accepted an
autonomous Lutheran church within the state. Once appeals for unity
failed, the diet quickly decided to bolster political stability by permit-
ting limited religious diversity. It also tried to restrict the process of
reform to Evangelical religion and, in 1558, issued a strict prohibition
against a sect named as “sacramentarians”.18
Any hope that these decisions would be the last required to accom-
modate religious diversity proved short-lived. Among some Hun-
garian-speaking nobles and especially in the towns of the Partium
support grew from the late 1550s for Reformed ideas about the sac-
raments. In 1564, the diet suggested that Evangelical and Reformed
clergy should hold a debate to reconcile their differences. However,
it quickly became clear that there was no likelihood of reaching any
agreement between competing ideas about the form of Christ’s pres-
ence in the elements of Communion. In June 1564, the diet decided to
act to preserve “the peace of the realm” by offering legal recognition to
two separate Protestant churches. In its resolution the diet described
one of these churches as that of the Saxon ministers of Sibiu (Her-
mannstadt), while the other was to be for the Hungarian ministers of
Cluj (Kolozsvár). After 1564, Reformed religion gained more support
among Hungarian-speaking communities in Transylvania, although

16
Johannes Honter, Kirchenordnungen aller Deutschen in Sybenbürgen (Kronstadt:
1547). Access to printed texts from the Reformation period is available from Graeme
Murdock (adv. ed.), The Hungarian Reformation. Books from the National Széchényi
Library, Hungary (Leiden: 2009).
17
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 2, 78.
18
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 2, 93.
402 graeme murdock

some Hungarian-speakers remained in the Evangelical church along-

side their German-speaking co-religionists.19
Transylvania’s religious landscape continued to be unstable during
the 1560s. Only a small minority of landowners remained loyal to the
Catholic church, which brought the legal rights of Catholic priests into
question. In 1566, the diet decided that any clergy who continued to
practice idolatry or who maintained “the Pope’s learning” should be
expelled from the country.20 At the same time controversy erupted
among Reformed ministers about the nature of God and the doctrine
of the Trinity. Anti-Trinitarian ideas received an audience at the court
of János Zsigmond Szapolyai, partly thanks to the influence of Ferenc
Dávid. Dávid had been the superintendent of the Hungarian-speaking
Evangelical church and then became superintendent of the Reformed
church, but, by the late 1560s, he was the most prominent domes-
tic figure in an emerging Unitarian church. We will return below to
examine the emergence of anti-Trinitarianism in Transylvania and the
impact on the church’s development of the principality’s multiconfes-
sional environment.
In 1568, the diet considered how to settle a pattern of religious rights
in this fluid and complex environment. The diet was divided among
supporters of Evangelical, Reformed, and Unitarian churches, and its
deliberations were informed by a strongly anti-Catholic perspective. It
decided that the only legitimate forms of Christianity were those that
were based upon study of the Bible. A new law explained that legal
protection would be granted only to ministers who “preach the Gospel
according to their understanding of it”, and concluded that true “faith
is a gift from God which comes from listening to the word of God”.
The practical impact of this law confirmed the rights already granted
to the Evangelical and Reformed churches. It also extended legal pro-
tection to anti-Trinitarian clergy whose doctrine was understood to be
based on their interpretation of the Bible. At the same time the diet
upheld its earlier decision to exclude Catholic clergy who were deemed
not to preach God’s word.21
During the 1560s, a degree of religious diversity had been sanctioned
by the state authorities for those ministers whose teaching was identi-

19
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 2, 226–7, 231–2.
20
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 2, 302–3.
21
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 2, 343.
 multiconfessionalism in transylvania 403

fied as being based on study of the Bible. This allowed for a variety of
interpretations over how God related to the faithful through the sac-
raments and for different views among ministers about the nature of
God. At the same time this multiconfessional settlement emphasized
the dangers posed to society by idolatry. During the 1570s laws on reli-
gion also stressed the need to prevent the spread of any further doctri-
nal innovation. This anxiety about new heresies and blasphemies was
particularly directed against some anti-Trinitarian clergy who began to
question Christ’s divinity. The diet warned church superintendents to
be vigilant about any preaching which might bring divine wrath down
upon the principality. In 1572, the new Catholic ruler István Báthory
confirmed the laws on religion that had been passed during the reign
of his predecessor. Further resolutions by the diet stressed the need for
stability within the Evangelical, Reformed, and Unitarian churches, and
the importance of preventing further confessional changes or any new
religious movements. If superintendents failed to act against internal
dissent, then the secular authorities were empowered to imprison or
execute any clergy who promoted doctrinal “innovation”, as well as to
punish those who supported them.22
Under the Báthory princes, the court also took initiatives to pro-
mote the rights of Transylvania’s remaining Catholics. Measures that
offered some rights to Catholics were, however, contested by the diet.
In 1579, Jesuits were permitted to enter the principality in order to
teach Catholic children, but they were strictly prohibited by the diet
from undertaking any missionary activities. In 1581, the diet agreed
that Catholic priests could also return to serve their communities and
that Jesuits could set up residences in the capital and at two other
sites.23 Prince Zsigmond Báthory’s strong support for the Catholic
cause prompted a political crisis. The court invited more Jesuits into
Transylvania until, in 1588, the diet refused to pass any taxes into law
unless all Jesuits were expelled. The diet reminded their prince that
Catholic property had been permanently expropriated in 1556 and
that priests and religious orders had been thrown out of the country
in 1566. The diet was willing to concede that the prince and Catholic
nobles could retain one priest each, but suggested that allowing any

22
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 2, 368, 374, 534, 541.
23
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 3, 143, 157.
404 graeme murdock

more Catholic clergy into the country would disturb the freedoms of
the three “received religions”.24
Despite the terms of this agreement, Zsigmond Báthory invited more
Jesuits and priests into Transylvania. In 1591, the diet conceded a little
more ground, accepting that their prince could have Jesuits and other
Catholic clergy at his court and other residences.25 Báthory’s support
for the Catholic cause achieved further success during years of conflict
between the Ottomans and Habsburgs. In 1595, Báthory agreed to an
alliance with Rudolf II, which the diet ratified. The diet also agreed
that there were now not three but four “received religions” in Tran-
sylvania; the Evangelical, Reformed, Unitarian, and Roman Catholic
churches. Zsigmond Báthory had a Catholic bishop installed at his
capital in 1597, but this proved a step too far for Protestant landown-
ers and urban magistrates. Perhaps motivated by spiritual concerns
and certainly by anxiety that a resident bishop might seek to regain
control over secularised church lands, the diet expelled him in 1601.
The Jesuits, who continued to be viewed with particular suspicion,
were expelled in 1607 and again in 1610.26
Transylvania endured chronic political instability and conflict dur-
ing the late 1590s and early 1600s, until István Bocskai gained broad
support for his 1604 rebellion against Habsburg and Catholic claims to
power in the region. In ever sharper contrast to the political and reli-
gious culture of Habsburg Hungary, Bocskai and successive Reformed
princes represented Transylvania as a haven in which the traditional
rights of nobles and the estates were respected. These rights included
religious liberties, and the four “received religions” continued to enjoy
legal protection throughout the 17th century. Each prince promised
upon election to protect the “received religions” of the estates. The
rights of the four churches were restated in the 1653 codification of
the principality’s customary laws. However, some of the “received reli-
gions” enjoyed greater liberties than others. For example, state law
recognised the authority of superintendents to lead the Evangelical,
Reformed, and Unitarian churches but only allowed for an appointed
vicarius to oversee the Catholic church in the principality. The pro-
hibition against any doctrinal innovation continued to be confirmed

24
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 3, 238–40.
25
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 3, 384–5.
26
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 3, 472; A. Jakab, “Az erdélyi római katolikus
püspöki szék betöltésének vitája a xvii. században,” Erdélyi Múzeum 49 (1944): 5–20.
 multiconfessionalism in transylvania 405

which affected the Unitarian church in particular, as we shall see.

Finally, the Orthodox Church remained reliant on privileges granted
by princes and was never offered the status of a “received religion”.
Its limited legal rights enabled Reformed clergy, with the support of
the court, to try to introduce reforms into the practice of Orthodoxy.
However, these Reformed initiatives made very little impact on Ortho-
dox communities in the principality.27
The Reformed church acquired a dominant position in the princi-
pality during the early-17th century, thanks in particular to the support
and patronage of Transylvania’s princes. Reformed princes intervened
in favour of their co-religionists in disputes over access to church
buildings and promoted the establishment of a Reformed college and
the development of new schools. They backed some student ministers
to travel to attend foreign Reformed universities. They were advised
by their court chaplains as well as other leading Reformed clergy and
supported the publication of Reformed texts at the capital’s printing-
press. In addition, Reformed princes joined co-religionists and others
in anti-Habsburg alliances during the Thirty Years’ War. This era of
Reformed dominance certainly altered the character of Transylvanian
political and religious life. While princes were committed to support
the Reformed church, Transylvania nevertheless remained a multicon-
fessional state. Princes and the diet continued to support the accom-
modation of religious diversity in the principality in order to advance
political and social stability.28
Turning to examine how local religious life was organized, there is a
limited range of evidence to analyse how individuals and communities
initially responded to a multiconfessional environment. However, we
can at least infer a good deal about the difficulties of managing religious
diversity across the country from measures introduced by the diet.
While the diet’s decisions were intended to promote domestic politi-
cal stability, there was also concern about the potentially dangerous

27
“Approbatae Constitutione (1653)” in Sándor Kolozsvári, Kelemen Óvári, Dezső
Márkus (eds.), Magyar Törvénytár. 1500–1848 évi erdélyi törvények (Budapest: 1900),
section 1/1, articles 2–3; Kálmán Benda, “Habsburg Absolutism and the Resistance
of the Hungarian Estates of the 16th and 17th Centuries” in Robert J.W. Evans and
Trevor Thomas (eds.), Crown, Church and Estates. Central European Politics in the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London: 1991), 123–8.
28
Graeme Murdock, Calvinism on the Frontier, 1600–1660. International Calvinism
and the Reformed Church in Hungary and Transylvania (Oxford: 2000). Jenő Zoványi,
A magyarországi protestántizmus 1565-től (Budapest: 1977).
406 graeme murdock

consequences caused by religious divisions. Although we now know

that there were no outbreaks of violence among the different confes-
sional communities, this was far from obvious at the time. A frequent
refrain in the diet’s pronouncements on religious affairs was that all
clergy must avoid using inflammatory language when talking about
their confessional rivals. In 1557, the diet insisted that clergy must
avoid insulting each other. In 1564, the diet warned that Reformed
ministers who gained control of churches at the expense of Lutherans
must not publicly ridicule their ousted rivals. In 1595, the diet insisted
that Catholic clergy who moved into parishes must avoid provoking
disputes with, or giving offence to, other ministers.29 It was not only
the language and behaviour of clergy which were identified as poten-
tial threats to social peace. In 1563 and 1564, the diet received news
of church services being disrupted by members of rival confessions
and of interruptions during the celebration of the sacraments. The diet
threatened severe punishment for anyone who disturbed church ser-
vices or threatened public order in their communities.30
The diet also paid a good deal of attention to the difficult matter of
access to sites of worship. In the countryside it seems clear that the con-
fessional loyalties of landowners often decided the practice of religion
in local communities. In many villages and also in the Saxon towns a
uniform pattern of religious life was established. However, many other
towns and some village communities faced the need to make practical
arrangements to deal with competing religious groups. The diet put
forward a number of solutions to try to maintain peace. For towns and
villages with only one church building, the diet suggested in 1564 that
while one group used the church their neighbours could wait quietly in
the churchyard for their turn to worship. Practices of church-sharing
seem to have developed between Lutheran and Catholic communities
particularly in some towns in southeastern and southwestern Tran-
sylvania. In one town the two communities were instructed to use
the church building on alternate Sundays. These arrangements seem
likely to have given rise to problems, not least when both communities
wanted to celebrate key festivals on the same day.31

29
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 2, 78, 231–2; vol. 3, 472.
30
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 2, 218.
31
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 2, 226–7.
 multiconfessionalism in transylvania 407

During the 1560s, the context for the shared use of church build-
ings shifted to cope with the rival claims of Evangelical, Reformed,
and Unitarian communities. Evangelicals had required rather lim-
ited changes to be made to the visual and material culture of church
buildings. The insistence of both Reformed and Unitarian ministers
on plain surroundings for worship raised new difficulties for shar-
ing churches. There are later examples of the shared use of church
buildings, but these mostly occurred between Reformed and Unitar-
ian communities. With the spread of Reformed ideas, there were also
some outbreaks of iconoclasm, as ordinary people claimed space for
worship with their own hands. However, it was more common for
material objects associated with idolatry to be removed in an orderly
way by church patrons.32
Most church buildings in Transylvania came under the control of a
single minister. Laws agreed during the 1560s required that whichever
confession had the support of the parish should have exclusive rights
to worship in the local church. However, it was not made clear in
what way the collective opinion of communities would be ascertained.
Church patrons and members of the social elite certainly retained a
significant voice in deciding local confessional allegiances. Be that as
it may, the diet consistently supported the rights of communities to
determine the practice of religion in their locality. In 1564, the diet
instructed each parish to decide whether they wanted to retain an
Evangelical minister or to accept a Reformed minister. In 1568, the
diet agreed that ministers could only preach where their understand-
ing of the Bible was “pleasing to the community”.33 At the same time
the diet was anxious to avoid any individual being compelled to con-
vert to a different church against his will. In 1568 and 1571, the diet
demanded that no one should be abused or harmed on account of his
or her faith, so long as it was consistent with the confession of one of
the state-recognized churches.34
This freedom of conscience for members of “received religions” did
not extend to a right of public worship anywhere in the principality.
State law came to strongly support the rights of local majorities to
use church buildings. This was partly in order to protect the rights

32
Murdock, Calvinism on the Frontier, 1600–1660, 119–22.
33
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 2, 231–2, 343.
34
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 2, 343, 374.
408 graeme murdock

of non-Catholic communities in circumstances where the local land-

owner converted to Catholicism. When the diet conceded that Catho-
lic priests could return to Transylvania in 1581 this was permitted
only where they had the support of the local community. The diet’s
resolution added that, if there were only a small number of Catho-
lics in any town or village, then this was an insufficient cause for a
priest to be resident.35 It reacted to news of some churches falling into
Catholic hands by suggesting that local people must have been forced
to convert. Biconfessional commissions were organized to determine
which religion actually held the support of a majority of people in
such communities, and to decide who should gain possession of the
church. Some concessions were later offered to minority Catholic pop-
ulations in Protestant towns. For example, the diet allowed Catholic
residents in one town to call for a priest to visit should they become
gravely ill. In 1600, the diet also conceded that nobles could have
priests appointed to communities where they lived, but it confirmed
that elsewhere priests could only be introduced with the agreement of
a majority of the local congregation.36
Transylvania’s princes and laws guaranteed rights of conscience and
some rights of worship to a range of religious communities during
the early modern period. All of the state-sanctioned churches jostled
for precedence and advantage within this multiconfessional system.
The changing fortunes of the churches are in part reflected by the
labels applied to them in the diet’s laws. The Evangelical church had a
relatively stable identity which was associated with the local German-
speaking community and with German-speakers elsewhere. The diet
described it in 1558, as a church of “Lutherans”, in 1564, as the church
of “the Saxon ministers”, in 1595, as “Lutheran” again, and in 1653, as
the “Lutheran or Augsburg” religion. The Catholic church lost support
during the middle decades of the 16th century, and Catholics were
labelled as “Papists” in 1558. In 1595, the church gained the status of a
received religion and was described as the “Catholic or Roman” church.
In the 1653 codification of Transylvanian law under the Reformed
prince György II Rákóczi it was named the “Roman-Catholic” church.
The Reformed church had been first described by state law as a “sacra-
mentarian” sect, and then as the church “of the Hungarian ministers

35
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 3, 203, 213.
36
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 4, 196–7, 551.
 multiconfessionalism in transylvania 409

of Kolozsvár”. In 1567, a Reformed synod held at Debrecen adopted

Heinrich Bullinger’s Second Helvetic Confession, and the church was
thereafter sometimes described as “of the Swiss confession”. In 1595,
the diet made a different external connection when offering rights to
a “Calvinistic” church. After decades of Reformed princely rule, the
1653 law offered the church the more authoritative label of the “Evan-
gelical Reformed (or Calvinist)” church.37
Among the four “received religions” the identity of the Unitarian
church remained the most contested and uncertain. This was due
partly to its origins following a split among Reformed clergy during
the 1560s, partly to the fact that anti-Trinitarians only enjoyed a very
short period of princely patronage before 1571, and partly to the fact
that the Unitarian church lacked the support of any substantial exter-
nal community of co-religionists. Ministers in the Unitarian church
were described in a 1576 law as those “of Ferenc Dávid’s confession”,
while, in 1595, the estates offered recognition to “Arians”. Various
other polemic labels were used by opponents to describe the church,
including Socinians and Samosatenians. In 1653, state law settled on
the label of “Unitarian or Antitrinitarian” church.38 The remainder of
this chapter will highlight some of the ways in which a multiconfes-
sional context affected the development of this Unitarian church. It will
focus on polemic battles around the emergence of the anti-Trinitarian
movement and consider how state recognition affected the develop-
ment of anti-Trinitarian ideas and the Unitarian church.39
The Unitarian church emerged very quickly amid stormy theologi-
cal debates during the 1560s. Discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity
began during the late 1550s when Ferenc Dávid, then superintendent
of the Evangelical church, published a denunciation of anti-Trinitarian
ideas advanced by Francesco Stancaro.40 Other Trinitarian Protestants
also devoted attention to attacking anti-Trinitarian views, and Péter

37
“Approbatae Constitutiones” (1653), article 1/1/2; Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek,
vol. 2, 93, 226–7; vol. 3, 472.
38
“Approbatae Constitutiones” (1653), article 1/1/2; Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek,
vol. 3, 108, 472.
39
Mihály Balázs, Az erdélyi antitrinitarizmus az 1560–as évek végén (Budapest:
1988); Earl Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism in Transylvania, England and America
(Cambridge, MA: 1952).
40
Ferenc Dávid, Apologia adversus maledicentiam et calumnias Francisci Stancari,
iussu et voluntate omnium docentium coelestem doctrinam incorrupte in ecclesiis Tran-
sylvanicis conscripta (Kolozsvár: 1558).
410 graeme murdock

Méliusz Juhász published a disputation against Arianism in 1562.41

Hungarian-speaking Reformed clergy began to divide into distinct
camps over their understanding of the Trinity during the mid-1560s.
Both the Trinitarian and anti-Trinitarian parties were profoundly
affected by this split. Trinitarian ministers gathered at synods to artic-
ulate their understanding of Christ’s nature and their conception of
God. They stressed the validity of the Apostles’ Creed as a Bible-based
confession of the early Church and defended their belief in “the true
and holy Trinity” on the grounds of their understanding of Scrip-
ture. A Reformed synod concluded that it was unwise to speculate
about “the great mystery of God” beyond what was made clear in the
Bible and that “it is enough for us to know that God was in Christ
and that God appeared in the flesh as the Scriptures say”. Trinitarian
Reformed ministers also rejected any suggestion that they agreed with
Catholics on this issue. The “articles of Christian concord”, agreed by
Reformed ministers in May 1566, stressed that their church relied only
on what the Bible taught, and had been cleansed of any influence from
“the Pope, the true Antichrist and his whole disgusting empire”. This
included a rejection of the Roman church’s “idolatry of a monstrous
god of four persons” and its “corrupted knowledge of the true and
always blessed Trinity”.42
Anti-Trinitarian ideas were advanced in a number of texts published
during the final years of János Zsigmond Szapolyai’s rule as prince.
These texts included an account of a 1568 debate held at court about
the Trinity and the nature of Christ composed by Ferenc Dávid, who
by then had emerged as the leading spokesman for the anti-Trinitarian
cause.43 Another text published in 1568 set out anti-Trinitarian ideas
in more depth. It included a series of images which portrayed the
“dreadful characterizations of God” supported by Trinitarians. These
illustrations were intended to depict all sorts of false ideas which the
anti-Christian power of Rome had long tried to enforce on the faith-
ful. The images included a three-headed god, a two-headed figure of

41
Péter Méliusz Juhász, Az Aran Tamas hamis es eretnec tevelgesinec es egyeb soc
tevelgéseknec (Debrecen: 1562).
42
For the decisions of Reformed synods during the 16th century see Áron Kiss
(ed.), A xvi. században tartott magyar református zsinatok végzései (Budapest: 1882),
455–8.
43
Ferenc Dávid, Brevis enarratio disputationis Albanae de Deo trino et Christo
duplici coram Serenissimo Principe, et tota Ecclesia decem diebus habita (Gyulafe-
hérvár: 1568).
 multiconfessionalism in transylvania 411

Christ, three separate gods, and Christ descending from heaven not
born of Mary.44 A polemic battle developed in print between Ferenc
Dávid and Péter Méliusz Juhász as the main spokesmen for their rival
parties. In another 1568 tract Dávid juxtaposed the doctrine “of minis-
ters of the crucified Christ” against his portrayal of the views advanced
by Méliusz about the Trinity. Dávid explained that “the ministers of
Christ” believed that “Jesus Christ is the only-begotten Son of God,
conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born of Mary”. He suggested that
Méliusz believed that “Christ was not the only-begotten son of God
the Father, but the son of the first person of God”.45
In 1568, the diet permitted preachers to explain the Gospel “accord-
ing to their understanding of it”. Ferenc Dávid became the first
superintendent of the new Unitarian church and in 1569 published
a collection of his sermons “to build up God’s people”. The Unitar-
ian church controlled some schools in urban centers, and ministers
used printed catechisms to teach their congregations. Unitarian com-
munities also flourished in some rural communities particularly in
eastern and southeastern counties.46 Trinitarian and anti-Trinitarian
writers continued to battle over which group could claim the correct
understanding of the nature of God. In a 1571 tract Dávid reflected
on the intensity of opposition which he had faced from his Trinitarian
opponents. He suggested that Péter Méliusz Juhász and his Reformed
colleagues were “adventurous companions of the Pope”, since they
supported false doctrine and participated in idolatrous forms of wor-
ship. He explained that all Trinitarians had always shown hostility
towards “servants of the crucified Jesus Christ”, and concluded that
the anger directed towards him provided clear evidence that “I am on
the way of truth”.47
During the 1570s, the “way of truth” being pursued by Dávid and
some of his colleagues caused them to reflect further on what the
Bible taught about the person of Christ. They began to express doubts

44
De falsa et vera unius Dei patris, filii et spiritus sancti cognitione libr duo. Authori-
bus ministris ecclesiarum consentientium in Sarmatia et Transylvania (Gyulafehérvár:
1568), e3r–f3r.
45
Ferenc Dávid, Demonstratio falsitatis doctrinae Petri Melii (Gyulafehérvár: 1568),
biir.
46
Ferenc Dávid, Első resze az Szent Irasnac külen külen reszeyböl vöt predicaciocnac
az atya Istenröl (Gyulafehérvár: 1569).
47
Ferenc Dávid, Az egy ö magatol valo felséges Istenröl es az ö igaz Fiarol, a nazareti
Iesusrol, az igaz Messiasrol (Kolozsvár: 1571), a3r–b3r.
412 graeme murdock

about whether Christ ought to be an object of adoration by the faith-

ful. The changing content of Dávid’s sermons and internal discussion
among Unitarian ministers about further reforms led to heightened
anxiety among Trinitarians in the diet. The diet denounced doctrinal
innovation, and expressed particular concerned about “distinct and
new things” being taught by some Unitarian ministers. The diet then
imposed some restrictions on the rights of the Unitarian church to
try to prevent any further changes to the confessional landscape in
Transylvania. In 1576, Unitarians were only permitted to hold their
synods in two nominated towns. In 1577, the diet limited the rights of
senior clergy to visit Unitarian parishes. Meanwhile the diet permit-
ted the Reformed superintendent to instruct clergy in both Reformed
and Unitarian parishes so long as he did not use force.48 The issue of
“non-adorantism” of Christ reached a crisis-point in 1579. At the diet
Demeter Hunyadi led a group of Unitarian clergy who supported the
adoration of Christ in worship. Ferenc Dávid defended his views about
Christ’s nature and was subsequently arrested on charges of doctrinal
innovation under the 1572 law. By the time he died in prison later
that year a Unitarian synod had already appointed Demeter Hunyadi
as their new superintendent. All ministers who took part at this synod
were obliged to confirm that they agreed with the adoration of Christ
as a legitimate and appropriate form of the worship of God.49
During the latter decades of the 16th century, Unitarian superinten-
dents and synods prohibited any further public debate about the nature
of Christ. The Unitarian church’s legal status was dependent upon
acceptance of the limits imposed by the law against doctrinal inno-
vation. However, varieties of “non-adorantist” ideas persisted among
some Unitarian clergy and laity. Radical ideas about Christ re-surfaced
during the early decades of the 17th century among a group known as
Sabbatarians. Sabbatarians recognized the divine inspiration of the Old
Testament and lived by its laws as they awaited the arrival of Christ
the Messiah. We are reliant on evidence from opponents for much of
our understanding about the religious practices adopted by Sabbatar-
ian communities. They seem to have abandoned worship on Sundays

48
Erdélyi Országgyűlési Emlékek, vol. 3, 108, 122–3, 125, 142.
49
Róbert Dán and Antal Pirnát (eds), Antitrinitarianism in the Second Half of
the 16th Century (Budapest: 1982); Mihály Balázs and Gizella Keserű (eds.), György
Enyedi and Central European Unitarianism in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
(Budapest: 2000).
 multiconfessionalism in transylvania 413

and probably to have abandoned the celebration of any sacraments.50

Sabbatarian groups could be prosecuted by state authorities under the
1572 law against doctrinal innovation. In 1610, some Sabbatarians
were arrested, and, in 1618, the Reformed prince Gábor Bethlen led
a search for any Sabbatarian communities. This followed the prince’s
attendance at a theological debate where he was apparently shocked
on hearing what anti-Trinitarians believed. Reformed minister István
Melotai Nyilas dedicated a 1622 text to Bethlen, reminding the prince
of his reaction to learning about anti-Trinitarianism. Melotai called for
action against Sabbatarian groups and argued against any legal pro-
tection for “Arians” and “Samosatenians”. He further suggested that
anti-Trinitarianism had been offered the status of a “received religion”
during a period of political instability and that it was now time to join
the rest of Christian Europe in condemning Unitarians as atheists.51
A Reformed chorus of complaint about Sabbatarianism grew dur-
ing the 1630s. The Reformed synod requested that prince György I
Rákóczi set up a commission of inquiry to investigate the form of reli-
gion adopted by some Szekler communities where landowners were
believed to be protecting Sabbatarians. It hoped for firm action by the
authorities against a sect that it suggested the prince “was not bound
to tolerate”. In 1638, the diet launched an inquiry into the possible
spread of Sabbatarianism in the principality. Since Sabbatarians out-
wardly declared themselves to be Unitarians, there were also profound
implications from these investigations for the Unitarian church. In
1638, the diet demanded that the Unitarian superintendent provide
evidence to demonstrate that the doctrine and practices of his church
had not been infected by the novel opinions of radical groups. It asked
the church leadership to compose a confession of faith that explicitly
acknowledged that Christ as God was to be worshipped and adored.
The diet also demanded that the Unitarian church draw up a new cat-
echism under the supervision of the Reformed superintendent. This
catechism supported the adoration of Christ and confirmed that Uni-
tarians should be baptised and receive Communion.52

50
S. Kohn, A szombatosok történetük, dogmatikájuk és irodalmok (Budapest:
1890).
51
István Melotai Nyilas, Speculum Trinitatis (Debrecen: 1622), 6.
52
Sándor Szilágyi and B. Orbán, “Az unitáriusok 1638-diki üldöztetéseinek s a
deési complanatiónak történetéhez,” Keresztény Magvető 9 (1874): 150–62.
414 graeme murdock

Individuals who would not accept this form of adorantist and sac-
ramental anti-Trinitarianism were arrested as religious innovators.
Some landowners caught up in this investigation had their property
confiscated, and others were imprisoned. One execution on grounds
of heresy was carried out against the son of a former Unitarian super-
intendent. The authorities offered those they imprisoned the chance
for freedom only on condition of accepting Reformed articles of faith.
Many Sabbatarians accepted this offer, which directly benefited the
interests of the Reformed church in some areas. Parishes, which had
previously been controlled by the Unitarian church, were transformed
into majority Reformed communities after these forced conversions.
The Reformed church gained control over church buildings in these
communities under the law which protected the rights of public wor-
ship for local confessional majorities.
There is some evidence of the continued secret practice of Sabbatar-
ianism at least into the 1640s. Reformed clergy certainly persisted with
their attacks against Sabbatarianism. In 1645, the Reformed superin-
tendent István Geleji Katona published a defence of the doctrine of
the Trinity in which he suggested that all forms of anti-Trinitarianism
pointed towards the “judaising atheism” of the “dangerous sect” of
Sabbatarians. Geleji also argued that use of the name Unitarian pro-
vided evidence that all anti-Trinitarians did not worship Christ as God.
Geleji therefore concluded that the Unitarian church had forfeited any
right to state recognition.53
The Unitarian church retained its rights as a “received religion”,
but these rights did not prevent the church from being subjected
to external interference. Princes worked in collaboration with the
Reformed church to undermine Unitarian communities. For example,
at the beginning of the 17th century, the Unitarian-dominated town
of Cluj had only a small minority Reformed congregation. Princely
backing enabled the Reformed church to gain possession of a larger
church and to open a school. By the 1640s the Reformed community
had broken Unitarian control of the town council.54 Another centre
of Unitarian strength lay in the towns and villages of southeastern

53
István Geleji Katona, Titkok Titka (Gyulafehérvár: 1645). See the introduction
for Geleji’s attack on the status of the Unitarian church.
54
Carmen Florea, “Shaping Transylvanian Anti-Trinitarian Identity in an Urban
Context” in Crăciun et al., Confessional Identity in East-Central Europe (2002),
64–80.
 multiconfessionalism in transylvania 415

Transylvania. Unitarian and Reformed congregations in this remote

region were joined in an administrative union at the beginning of the
17th century. Some churches were held by the Reformed church in
theory but in practice they were served by Unitarian ministers. The
Reformed clergy hierarchy succeeded in using this situation to their
advantage. After conducting a visitation of local parishes in 1622, the
Reformed superintendent expelled around 60 Unitarian clergy from
notionally-Reformed parishes. Thereafter, Unitarian ministers were
prohibited from moving to any parishes which were supposed to be
Reformed, although Reformed ministers continued to have the right
to preach in Unitarian churches across the region. At Cristuru Secui-
esc (Székelykeresztúr) the local Reformed community lost control of
the church building when Unitarians gained majority support in the
town. In such situations the new majority community was supposed to
build a place of worship for the displaced minority to use. In 1631, the
Reformed synod complained to the prince that Unitarians had failed
to provide anywhere for their community to worship. The prince sug-
gested that the two communities might share the building, but such
solutions no longer appealed to a confident Reformed church. By the
mid-1640s the Reformed community at Cristuru Secuiesc had regained
control of the church building thanks to the efforts of local Reformed
landowners.55
This case-study of the Transylvania principality suggests that mul-
ticonfessionalism describes a set of pragmatic rather than ideological
responses to the changing character of European states and societies
after the Reformation. Multiconfessional communities were not built
upon, and did not exhibit, religious tolerance according to any mod-
ern definition of the concept.56 The stability of multiconfessional soci-
eties did not rely on any mutual respect between adherents of different
faiths. Rather, detailed regulations about the rights that were being
extended to religious communities were thought necessary precisely in
order to prevent social disturbances and outbreaks of violence. Most

55
István Juhász, A székelyföldi református egyházmegyék (Kolozsvár: 1947), 49;
J. Koncz, “Az erdélyi ev. ref. egyház vallássárelmei 1631-ben, beterjesztve I. Rákóczi
György fejedelemhez orvoslás végett,” Erdélyi Protestáns Közlöny (1882): 380–1, 422–3.
56
Recent studies on tolerance include: Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith. Reli-
gious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA:
2007); John Laursen and Cary Nederman (eds.), Beyond the Persecuting Society: Reli-
gious Toleration before the Enlightenment (Philadelphia: 1998); Alex Walsham, Chari-
table Hatred. Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–1700 (Manchester: 2006).
416 graeme murdock

people continued to hope that regulations that permitted some degree

of religious diversity would only need to be temporary measures until
unity was restored. However, the consistent application of laws that
sanctioned religious diversity could lead over time to peaceful co-
existence between different confessional communities. Meanwhile
sharp religious polemic continued to be a feature of relations between
clergy in multiconfessional states. Indeed, the venomous nature of
clerical attacks on the beliefs of their rivals was perhaps only intensi-
fied by a sense of frustration about a lack of capacity for firm action
against heresy. Multiconfessional states also retained a strong culture
in favour of a dominant church. During the early-17th century, the
Reformed community in Transylvania, with support from the court,
was able to restrict the liberty of Unitarian consciences and deny
rights of public worship to Unitarian congregations. However, the
hard-fought legal settlements between the four “received religions”
were maintained in the 17th century. Transylvania’s difficult interna-
tional position between the Habsburg monarchy and Ottoman empire,
the balance of internal politics between the court and estates, and the
patchwork of religious loyalties across the principality all ensured
that confessional pluralism continued to be seen as the best means to
advance Transylvania’s stability and social peace.
 FIVE CONFESSIONS IN ONE CITY:
MULTICONFESSIONALISM IN EARLY MODERN WILNO

David Frick

To say that early modern Wilno (Vilnius) was a multiconfessional city

risks understating the variety of competing and overlapping demands
that religions, cultures, languages, and ties of ethnicity made upon
individual Vilnans; it also obscures the means by which co-existence
in the city was made feasible. Here I wish to locate Wilno on the map
of confessional Europe: to assess the range of its multiconfessional-
ism; to reveal some of the manners and mechanisms its citizens devel-
oped for encouraging, facilitating, and sometimes imposing toleration
among its inhabitants; to attempt a measuring of levels of confessional
zeal; and to place the city on a spectrum of the solutions found in con-
temporary European communities—from exclusion at one extreme
to types of inclusion at the other—for addressing the problems that
arose when members of more than one confession attempted to live in
one city.1

The Setting

Wilno—by the early 14th century the capital of the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania—had been a mixed city even before the formal Christian-
ization of that large state in 1386 under the sponsorship of the Pol-
ish Roman Catholic Church. At that point, it was inhabited by pagan
Lithuanians, Orthodox Ruthenians2 (who had moved to the city after
what had once been Kievan Rus’ began to come under Lithuanian
rule in the 13th and 14th centuries, following the Mongol invasion
and sacking of Kiev in 1240), and Catholic Germans (who had been

1
This essay draws on, and seeks to summarize, some of the arguments and con-
clusions of a book-in-progress devoted to relations between people of various confes-
sions, cultures, and religions in 17th-century Wilno.
2
The adjective ruthenus in Latin, ruski in Polish and Ruthenian, and related eth-
nonyms, referred to Orthodox (later Orthodox and Uniate) Christians of the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth, ancestors of Ukrainians and Belarusians. It was distinct
from “Muscovite/Russian” in early modern usage.
418 david frick
 five confessions in one city 419

invited as merchants by the pagan grand dukes). Some have located

the origins of Wilno’s traditions of practical toleration in these pat-
terns established in the pre-conversion period.3
The late-14th century also marked the arrival in the area of Wilno
of numbers of Tatars and Karaim. The Tatars had no legal right to
live within the walls of Wilno; they settled, however, with a wooden
mosque and a school, in the adjacent suburb of Łukiszki (Lukiškės)
and were thus a part of the daily life of the city.4 Karaim (members of

3
In the view of Marceli Kosman (Protestanci i kontrreformacja. Z dziejów tolerancji
w Rzeczypospolitej XVI–XVIII wieku [Wrocław: 1978], 44), “the Grand Duchy was
then [in 1385, the year of the Union of Krewo that led to Jagiełło’s conversion, his
marriage with Queen Jadwiga of Poland, and the federation between the two states] a
multiethnic and multiconfessional state, in which the question of tolerance had been
shaped favorably for more than a century.” See also Marceli Kosman, “Konflikty wyz-
naniowe w Wilnie. (Schyłek XVI–XVII w.),” Kwartalnik Historyczny 79 (1972): 3–23;
idem, Reformacja i kontrreformacja w Wielkim Księstwie Litewskim w świetle propa-
gandy wyznaniowej (Wrocław: 1973). Among handbooks treating early Lithuanian
history, see Jerzy Ochmański, Historia Litwy (Wrocław: 1990); Zigmantas Kiaupa,
Jūratė Kiaupienė, and Albinas Kuncevičius, Lietuvos istorija iki 1795 metų (Vilnius:
1995) and its English version in idem, The History of Lithuania before 1795 (Vil-
nius: 2000); Edvardas Gudavičius, Lietuvos istorija nuo seniausių laikų iki 1569 metų
(Vilnius: 1999). For histories of Wilno in the late medieval and early modern peri-
ods, see Michał Baliński, Historia miasta Wilna, 2 vols. (Vilnius: 1837); Józef Ignacy
Kraszewski, Wilno od początków jego do roku 1750, 4 vols. (Vilnius: 1840–1842); Ju.
Kračkovskij’s introduction to vol. 20 of Akty, izdavaemye Vilenskoju arxeografičeskoju
komissieju, 39 vols. (Vilnius: 1865–1915) [hereafter AVAK]; V.G. Vasil’evskij, “Očerk
istorii goroda Vil’ny,” in P.N. Batjuškov (ed.), Pamjatniki russkoj stariny v zapadnych
gubernijach imperii, vols. 5–6 (St. Petersburg: 1872–1874); Maria Łowmiańska, Wilno
przed najazdem moskiewskim 1655 roku (Bibljoteczka wileńska) 3 (Vilnius: 1929),
now re-edited in idem, “Wilno przed najazdem moskiewskim 1655 roku” in Rafał
Witkowski (ed.), Dwa Doktoraty z Uniwersytetu Stefana Batorego w Wilnie (Poznań:
2005), 149–331; Władysław Kowalenko, “Geneza udziału stołecznego miasta Wilna
w sejmach Rzeczypospolitej,” Ateneum Wileńskie 2 (1925–1926): 327–73, 3 (1927):
79–137; and J. Jurginis, V. Merkys, and A. Tautavičius, Vilniaus miesto istorija nuo
seniausių laikų iki Spalio revoliucijos (Vilnius: 1968). Of crucial importance for the
history of the Wilno magistracy and the local elite in the 17th century are the recent
works of Aivas Ragauskas, among which his “collective biography of the ruling elite”
occupies the most prominent position: Aivas Ragauskas, Vilniaus miesto valdantysis
elitas XVII a. antrojoje pusėje (1662–1702 m.) (Vilnius: 2002).
4
On Lithuanian Tatars in the early modern period, see Piotr Borawski, “O sytuacji
wyznaniowej ludności tatarskiej w Wielkim Księstwie Litewskim i w Polsce (XVI–
XVIII w.),” Euhemer. Przegląd religioznawczy 24, no. 118 (1980): 43–54; idem, “Toler-
ancja religijna wobec ludności tatarskiej w Wielkim Księstwie Litewskim (XVI–XVIII
wiek),” Przegląd humanistyczny 25, no. 3 (1981): 51–66; idem, “Sytuacja prawna
ludności tatarskiej w Wielkim Księstwie Litewskim (XVI–XVIII w.),” Acta Baltico-
Slavica 15 (1983): 55–76; idem, “Asymilacja kulturowa Tatarów w Wielkim Księstwie
Litewskim,” Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce 36 (1992): 163–92; idem and Witold
Stankiewicz, “Chrystianizacja Tatarów w Wielkim Księstwie Litewskim,” Odrodzenie i
Reformacja w Polsce 34 (1989): 87–114; A. Muchliński (ed.), “Zdanie sprawy o Tatarach
420 david frick

a Scripture-based medieval Jewish sect that had rejected rabbinical tra-

ditions and the Talmud) found a home in Troki (Trakai), a day’s walk
away, and they would play a certain role in the life of Wilno’s Jew-
ish community; they thus belong to the margins of the story in early
modern Wilno.5 Jews were slower to gain legal footing in Wilno than
in other cities of Lithuania. In 1551 the Sejm (parliament) exempted
the Wilno houses of the grand duke’s council from the jurisdiction of
the magistracy, thus preparing the way for Jews to rent those noble
houses within the city walls, and eventually to buy them. The first syn-
agogue came into being in the center of the city in 1573, and in 1593,
in the wake of anti-Jewish riots, King Zygmunt III Waza gave the Jews
of Wilno their foundational privilege to live in certain streets and to
engage in certain occupations “especially since we already found [the
Jews living in Wilno] on Our happy arrival here to these domains, the
Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.”6

litewskich przez jednego z tych Tatarów złożone Sułtanowi Sulejmanowi w r. 1558,”

Teka wileńska 4 (1858): 241–72, 5 (1858): 121–79, and 6 (1858): 139–83; Jacek Sobczak,
Położenie prawne ludności tatarskiej w Wielkim Księstwie Litewskim (Poznańskie
Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Nauk, Wydział Historii i Nauk Społecznych, Prace Komisji
Historycznej) vol. 38 (Poznań: 1984); Simon Szyszman, “Osadnictwo karaimskie i
tatarskie na ziemiach Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego,” Myśl karaimska 10 (1933):
29–36; Leon Kryczyński, “Historia meczetu w Wilnie. (Próba monografii.),” Przegląd
islamski 6 (1937): 7–33; Andrzej B. Zakrzewski, “Osadnictwo tatarskie w Wielkim
Księstwie Litewskim—aspekty wyznaniowe,” Acta Baltico-Slavica 20 (1989): 137–53;
idem, “O asymilacji Tatarów w Rzeczypospolitej w XVI–XVIII w,” in Maria Bogucka
(ed.), Tryumfy i porażki. Studia z dziejów kultury polskiej XVI–XVIII w. (Warsaw:
1989), 75–96; idem, “Niektóre aspekty położenia kulturalnego Tatarów Litewskich w
XVI–XVIII w.” in Wilno—Wileńszczyzna jako krajobraz i środowisko wielu kultur,
vol. 2 (Białystok: 1992), 107–28; Jan Tyszkiewicz, Tatarzy na Litwie i w Polsce. Studia
z dziejów XIII–XVIII w. (Warsaw: 1989).
5
On Lithuanian Karaim, see Szyszman “Osadnictwo”; idem, Le Karïsme. Ses
doctrines et son histoire (Lausanne: 1980); A. Geiger, Isaak Troki. Ein Apologet des
Iudenthums am Ende des sechszehnten Jahrhunderts (Wrocław: 1853); Jacob Mann,
Texts and Studies in Jewish History and Literature, vol. 2, Karaitica (Philadelphia:
1935); and, most recently, Stefan Gąsiorowski, Karaimi w Koronie i na Litwie w XV–
XVIII wieku (Cracow: 2008).
6
Cited from the Metryka Litewska 78, (Rossijskij Gosudarstvennyj Arxiv Drevnix
Aktov [Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, Moscow] 389.78), f. 250v. On the Jews
of Wilno, see S.A. Beršadskij, “Istorija vilenskoj evrejskoj obščiny. 1593–1649 g. Na
osnovaniju neizdavannych istočnikov,” Vosxod 6, no. 10 (1886): 125–38, 6, no. 11
(1886): 145–54, 7 no. 3 (1887): 81–98, 7 no. 4 (1887): 65–78, 7 no. 5 (1887): 16–32,
7 no. 6 (1887): 58–73, 7 no. 8 (1887): 97–110; Israel Klausner, Vilnah, Yerushalayim
de-Lita: dorot rishonim 1495–1881 (Tel Aviv: 1988); Israel Cohen, Vilna (Philadephia:
1992, a facsimile reprint of the edition of 1943). For the earlier period, Klausner and
Cohen drew on Beršadskij, whose study was based on primary sources, some appar-
ently no longer extant.
 five confessions in one city 421

After a few false starts, the Reformation became a long-term part

of the life of Wilno from the second half of the 16th century. Per-
manent fixtures in the confessional landscape were the Lutherans
and the Calvinists. The Lutheran church, with spire and bells, school
and hospital, established ca. 1555 on German Street, where it was to
remain, was largely non-gentry, composed of members of the city rul-
ing elite (until a ban in 1666), plus professionals, merchants, and arti-
sans, from the more exalted (doctors, lawyers, and goldsmiths) to the
dirtier trades (tanners and furriers). Its two congregations, a German-
speaking majority and a Polish-speaking minority, shared the same
building and, sometimes, the same bilingual ministers. The Calvinists
worshipped at first in private residences, beginning in the 1560s, but
by 1577 they had begun to build their church complex across the street
from the Bernardines’ Church of St. Michael. After an anti-Calvinist
tumult in 1639, a royal decree of 1640 would remove them to the site
of their old cemetery just outside the walls, where they too remained.7
The Lithuanian Reformed Church was largely noble, although some
burghers did appear in its midst, especially, of course, in an urban set-
ting like Wilno. Here it had a Polish-speaking majority and a German-
speaking minority (and it was also home to a group of Scots).
In 1596, as a result of the Union of Brest, the majority of the Ruthe-
nian Orthodox Church hierarchy agreed to enter into communion
with Rome, forming what was known as the Uniate (later called Greek
Catholic) Church. Much of the Ruthenian flock and lesser clergy, how-
ever, rejected the move; they thus, in their view, remained truly Ortho-
dox and therefore heirs to all rights and privileges conferred upon
the “Greeks” of the city and the Commonwealth. All the churches of
Wilno that were Orthodox in 1595 were eventually turned over to the
Uniates. In 1598, the Orthodox began establishing a new center in the
Holy Spirit church, monastery, hospital, and brotherhood, just across
the street from what would now become the leading Uniate complex
at the Church of the Holy Trinity (both of them clustered, together
with the Discalced Carmelites’ Church of St. Teresa, around the Sharp

7
On the events of 1639–1640, see Bogumił Zwolski, Sprawa Zboru ewangelicko-
reformowanego w Wilnie w latach 1639–41, (Bibljoteczka wileńska) 6 (Vilnius:
1936); Henryk Wisner, “Likwidacja zboru ewangelickiego w Wilnie (1639–1646). Z
dziejów walki z inaczej wierzącymi,” Odrodzenie i Reformacja w Polsce 37 (1993):
89–102; Urszula Augustyniak, “Jeszcze raz w sprawie tumultu wileńskiego 1639 i jego
następstwach,” Odrodzenie i reformacja w Polsce 50 (2006): 169–89.
422 david frick

Gate). When the Orthodox hierarchy was “illegally” reestablished in

1620, Wilno became the first scene of the debate over the status of
those bishops and their flocks.8
By 1650, then, this modestly sized conurbation9 was peopled by
Poles, Lithuanians, Germans, Ruthenians, Jews, and Tatars (in addi-
tion to some numbers of Scots, Italians, and other immigrants); these
peoples worshipped in some 23 Catholic, nine Uniate, one Orthodox,
one Calvinist, and one Lutheran church, one chief synagogue, and one
mosque; they spoke Polish, Ruthenian, German, Yiddish, Lithuanian,
and some Tatar;10 and they prayed or wrote learned treatises also in
Latin, Church Slavonic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and a little Arabic. Polish
was certainly at the least the city’s lingua franca, and all the Christians
were feeling (although many ignored) pressures and enticements to
conform to a certain Polish and Roman Catholic norm, which was one
path to social advancement. The walls of the city of Wilno stretched

8
On the Christian confessions in early modern Wilno and their interrelations, see
Adam Ferdynand Adamowicz, Kościół augsburski w Wilnie. Kronika (Vilnius: 1855);
Gottfried Schramm, “Protestantismus und städtische Gesellschaft in Wilna (16.–17.
Jahrhundert),” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 17 (1969): 187–214; Kosman,
“Konflikty wyznianiowe”; idem, Reformacja i kontrreformacja; idem, Protestanci i
kontrreformacja; Ragauskas, Vilniaus miesto valdantysis elitas (on the “religious affili-
ation” of the members of the ruling elite, especially 153–69). Borys A. Gudziak, Crisis
and Reform: The Kyivan Metropolitanate, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the
Genesis of the Union of Brest (Cambridge, MA: 1998) and David A. Frick, Meletij
Smotryc’kyj (Cambridge, MA: 1995) can serve as places to start a study of the Union
of Brest and the polemics in Wilno. For the texts of Jesuit satires directed against
the Wilno Lutherans, see Zbigniew Nowak, Kontrreformacyjna satyra obyczajowa w
Polsce XVII wieku, (Gdańskie Towarzystwo Naukowe, Wydział I Nauk Społecznych i
Humanistycznych, Seria Źródeł) 9 (Gdańsk: 1968). On them, see also Aivas Ragaus-
kas, “XVII a. pirmosios pusės Vilniaus liuteronų subkultūros atspindžiai jėzuitų saty-
roje,” in Lokalios bendrijos tarpdalykiniu požiūriu. Straipsnių rinkinys (Vilnius: 2004),
45–53.
9
Demographic sources are few and difficult to evaluate, and estimates have dif-
fered radically—between 14,000 inhabitants ca. 1650 (Łowmiańska, Wilno [1929 edi-
tion], 77/Łowmiańska, Wilno [2005 edition], 223) and 38,000 to 40,000 (A. Tamulynas,
“Vilniaus gyventojų skaičiaus XVII a. viduryje klausimu” Jaunųjų istorikų darbai 6
[1982]: 113–6). All have agreed—again, with few sources to support their claims—
that the Muscovite siege and occupation of the city in 1655 cut the number in half,
and that the rest of the 17th century was a period of slow and incomplete rebuilding
before the next urban crisis during the Great Northern War at the beginning of the
18th century.
10
On the decline in the use of the Tatar language among Lithuanian Tatars, see
Hadży Seraja Szapszal, “O zatraceniu języka ojczystego przez Tatarów w Polsce,” Rocz-
nik Tatarski 1 (1932): 34–48; Andrzej Drozd, Arabskie teksty liturgiczne w przekładzie
na język polski XVII wieku (Warsaw: 1999), 30–9.
 five confessions in one city 423

for 2.9 km (Cracow’s walls—3.1 km), and they enclosed an area of

0.8 km2 (Cracow—0.6 km2).11

Mechanisms and Manners of Coexistence: In the Magistracy

Wilno received Magdeburg law in 1387, and members of all the Chris-
tian confessions would eventually be eligible for citizenship. In 1536,
after a city council had been elected that was 100 percent Ruthenian
or “Greek” (that is to say, Orthodox), the “Lachs”—a term that usually
meant Poles, but here signified all Catholics, including Lithuanians
and Germans—obtained from King Zygmunt I a privilege that decreed
an equal division between “Greeks” and “Romans” in all future elec-
tions to the city magistracy: benchers (ławnicy, scabini), councilors,
and burgomasters.12 At this point (i.e., before the Reformation and
before the Union of Brest), the terms Roman and Greek exhausted
the range of Christian confessions represented in city government,
although each term might cover more than one ethnic group. With
the increasing fragmentation of Roman and Greek Christianity in the
course of the 16th century, more and more groups would compete for
seats under the Roman and Greek quotas. By the beginning of the 17th
century, a “Roman” Vilnan might be Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist,
and a “Greek” Vilnan—Uniate or Orthodox.13
In 1666 King Jan Kazimierz Waza passed three restrictive decrees
(“ad instar [after the fashion of] Cracow”) limiting the Roman seats

11
Łowmiańska, Wilno (1929 edition), 17/Łowmiańska, Wilno (2005 edition),
164–5.
12
See Kowalenko, “Geneza udziału,” 369; Schramm, “Protestantismus und
städtische Gesellschaft,” 202–204; Zbiór dawnych dyplomatów i aktów miast: Wilna,
Kowna, Trok, prawosławnych monasterów, cerkwi i w różnych sprawach, part 1 (Vil-
nius: 1843), 53; Piotr Dubiński (ed.), Zbiór praw i przywilejów miastu stołecznemu
W.X.L. Wilnowi nadanych. Na żądaniu wielu miast koronnych, jako też Wielkiego
Księstwa Litewskiego ułożony i wydany (Vilnius: 1788), 54. The career of a member of
the ruling elite progressed along that road—from service in the court of the bench, to
the wider council, and finally to the annual council composed of four councilors and
two annual burgomasters. A very few would reach the pinnacle of urban power, the
office of the wójt (from the German Vogt), which was reserved for Roman Catholics.
Parity between Greeks and Romans remained in force at every level below that of the
wójt. On the structure and function of the Wilno magistracy, see Ragauskas, Vilniaus
miesto valdantysis elitas, 43–102.
13
This was generally the case, although Ragauskas (ibid., 166–69) notes a few iso-
lated instances where Lutherans and Calvinists occupied Greek seats in the magistracy.
424 david frick

in the magistracy to Roman Catholics and the Greek seats to Uniates.

The reference to Cracow was, in fact, not entirely apt. In contrast to
the old capital of the Polish Crown, where the power in city govern-
ment was entirely limited to Roman Catholics by the end of the 16th
century, the Wilno magistracy would remain divided between Romans
and Greeks. In spite of pressure to conform to a Polonized and Catho-
lic norm, the elite “Greeks” (even if they were Uniates) were still an
important presence; and these Uniates often looked to Greek Ortho-
dox circles, rather than Roman Catholic, in forming family and more
extended human networks.

At Work

The types of parity arrangements worked out for the magistracy were
reflected in a wide range of secular consortia throughout the city.
Here the royal intervention of 1666, limiting seats held by Romans
and Greeks to those in communion with Rome, had no direct bear-
ing. One paradoxical result of the adherence to Roman-Greek parity
in the magistracy was that, even in its more restrictive post-1666 form,
it could continue to serve as a model for much broader multiconfes-
sionalism in other city corporations.
These arrangements began at the top of the social scale, just below
the ruling elite, with the Communitas mercatoria, a representative
body of Wilno’s merchants who practiced wholesale trade on an inter-
national scale and from which individuals and families often launched
careers in the magistracy. Established in 1602, its annually elected sex-
agintavirate (“60-man ruling body”) was divided equally into Greek
and Roman “sides.”14 No further specification of confession or ethnic-
ity within those broad categories was offered, but conditions in the
city’s guilds, about which we know considerably more, suggest that
members of all five recognized confessions could compete for seats
under Greek and Roman quotas throughout the period.

14
On the Communitas mercatoria, see Maria Łowmiańska, “Udział communita-
tis mercatoriae w samorządzie wileńskim,” Lituano-Slavica Posnaniensia 9 (2003):
75–108 and Kowalenko, “Geneza udziału.” Kowalenko provided a transcript of the
names constituting the first sexagintavirate from 1602; it is now the sole extant list,
the old record books having been lost in World War II.
 five confessions in one city 425

A few echoes of the imposition of confessional limits upon Greek

and Roman seats in the magistracy were heard in guild statutes and
other acta beginning soon after 1666, on occasion couched explicitly
as an imitation of the royal decree from that year. The most sweep-
ing attempt at a clergy-led, top-down imposition of confessional order
upon the workplace came in a decree promulgated by King Michał
Korybut Wiśniowiecki sometime before 10 November 1673. At the
request of the Uniate Metropolitan of Rus’, Gabriel Kolenda, the king
called for a stiff fine—1,000 zł15—to be imposed upon any guild in
Wilno that dared elect to its highest office, that of “annual elder,” a
dissident or a disuniate. That document invoked the model of the
magistracy: “just as by now ( już) in the Roman and Ruthenian bench
no disuniate or dissident may take office, so let no disuniate be elected
to the eldership in the guilds of the city of Wilno.”16
Unlike in the magistracy, however, this appears to have been wish-
ful thinking on the part of the confessionalizers and was not imple-
mented. Parity arrangements in the guilds had grown up following the
reform of the magistracy in 1536. At first they imitated the practice of
that body quite closely, and later, as the confessional spectrum became
more complicated, they would continue to use the magistracy’s divi-
sion of offices between Greeks and Romans as a general model. For
instance, the maltsters and the cobblers, who had their separate arti-
cles approved by King Zygmunt II August on 9 December 1552, called
for the annual election of four or six elders in the first case, six in the
second, in each guild with equal numbers “ex Romana fide” [“from the
Roman faith”] and “ex Graeco ritu” [from the Greek rite”].17 This was
just before the Reformation was to gain footing in the city and well
before the Union of Brest (1596), thus the terms were likely unambigu-
ous in identifying the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox confessions,
although certainly more than one ethnicity might have been included
under the heading “Roman.”

15
Local documents used both Polish currency (1 złoty [zł] = 30 groszy [gr]) and
Lithuanian (1 Lithuanian kopa [k; “schock” or “unit of 60”] = 60 Lithuanian gr). By
royal decree of 1572, 2 Lithuanian gr = 2.5 Polish gr. In 1673 the municipal trum-
peter of Lwów made 4 zł a week or 208 zł per year. See Stanisław Hoszowski, Ceny
we Lwowie w XVI i XVII wieku, Badania z dziejów społecznych i gospodarczych, fasc.
4 (Lwów: 1928), 223.
16
Henryk Łowmiański and Maria Łowmiańska, Akta cechów wileńskich, vol. 1
(Vilnius: 1939) [hereafter ACW], 382; AVAK 8, 144.
17
ACW, 42, 45.
426 david frick

Twenty-seven years later, in articles approved by King Stefan Batory

on 1 July 1579, the cobblers gave greater articulation to their arrange-
ments. They were to elect six annual elders, two “from the Catholics”
(ex catholicis), two “of the Greek or Ruthenian rite” (ritus Graeci seu
Ruthenici), and two “from the German faith” (ex Germanicae fidei).18
By now, the term German in guild statutes quite clearly signified adher-
ents of the Lutheran confession; Catholic Germans—they remained a
presence in Wilno and were still seen as German—would have com-
peted for power under the Polish or Lithuanian rubric.
Other guilds followed suit, with greater and lesser precision as to
ethnicity and confession. Just two examples from the many: the lock-
smiths (before 1663) called for the election of three annual elders,
two “from Lithuania,” and the third a “German.”19 The opposition
was clearly between “locals” and “foreigners,” but it was also between
Roman Catholics (including Poles and Polonized people) and Luther-
ans, many of whom among the latter would have been in Wilno for
a generation or more and had citizenship. And on 9 July 1689, the
cobblers called for three annual elders, one each among the Romans,
Ruthenians, and Germans. The articles later referred to these group-
ings alternately (and interchangeably in some instances) as “religions”
(religie) or “faiths” (wiary), but also as “nations” (narody).20
There is some evidence of tension within the guilds arising along
ethno-confessional fault lines.21 But far more frequently the complaints
that reached the magistracy targeted guild members who refused to be
subject to discipline and engaged in acts of disrespect and, sometimes,
violence that had no apparent connection with confession. (That the
magistracy heard these cases means that they—and no doubt many
more—had already been raised in closed guild sessions, inaccessible to
us now.) In 1689 the annual elders of the haberdashers’ guild, “Tomasz
Krumbeich” and “Henricus von Bengin” brought a case before the
magistracy against “famatus Michael Angel” for the greatest of all acts

18
ACW, 80.
19
ACW, 277.
20
ACW, 374, 452–3.
21
For example, in 1666, a Roman Catholic goldsmith named Jan Rohaczewicz
brought a complaint against Lutheran elder Mateusz Grejter for “favoring the dis-
sidents” (the guild was heavily Lutheran) by blocking access to power in the guild to
anyone but the Lutherans. See ACW, 343–4.
 five confessions in one city 427

of license: practicing the trade without belonging to the guild.22 The

offering rolls for the Lutheran church tell us that one of the plain-
tiffs, Tobias Krumbein (this was the more “correct” form of his name,
judging by the frequency of this form in other, Polish-language docu-
ments), as well as the accused, Michel Engel, were both of the Augs-
burg Confession; von Bengin’s name is missing in the Lutheran rolls.23
Thus we see here that the guild, silently honoring the practice of giving
power to multiple confessions in a parity arrangement (well after the
attempted ban in 1673!), had sent one Lutheran and (in all likelihood)
one Roman Catholic elder (even if apparently also German) to the
magistracy to complain about the behavior of a Lutheran, but without
any reference whatsoever to the confession of the interested parties,
because that was immaterial.
The central problem that the mixed guilds—and they were almost
all mixed in Wilno in the 17th century—had to address was the fact
that they were structured in part like religious brotherhoods, to the
extent that they undertook a number of acts of Church service, typi-
cally through support of a guild altar and participation in public pro-
cessions, not only of the secular sort (reception of dignitaries upon
their arrival in town), but also of the religious.24 The altar in question
was almost always Roman Catholic, as was the chief public religious
procession, the annual Corpus Christi celebration introduced toward
the end of the 16th century by the local Jesuits. This latter event divided
Vilnans in at least two ways: Catholics from Protestants over doctrine
on the divine presence in the Host; and western from eastern rites
over the calendar, at the very least—neither Orthodox nor Uniates had
Corpus Christi celebrations of their own.
The same sorts of variations on a general pattern found in the rules
for selecting annual elders shaped the range of strategies adopted in
reconciling multiconfessional “brotherhood” with nearly exclusively
Roman Catholic religious obligations. In many cases (though not all ),
a system of “buying out” was established, whereby a guild member

22
ACW, 460.
23
For Tobias Krumbeich, see ACW, 443, 449; Lietuvos Valstybės Istorijos Archyvas
(Lithuanian State Historical Archive, Vilnius) [hereafter LVIA] 1008.1.42, 266r, 286r,
306r. For Michel Engel, see LVIA 1008.1.42, 258v, 306r.
24
On the religious obligations of the guilds, see Józef Morzy, “Geneza i rozwój cechów
wileńskich do końca XVII w,” Zeszyty naukowe Uniwersytetu im. A. Mickiewicza,
Seria Historia, (Poznań: 1959), 90–1.
428 david frick

who did not wish to attend services at the Roman Catholic guild altar
could pay a fee to the guild box (usually earmarked at least in part for
the upkeep of that altar). I cite two examples from the many. In 1636
the goldsmiths (a heavily Lutheran guild) reiterated a provision of 1627
allowing “those of various religion” to buy out of their obligations to
the guild altar at the Jesuits’ Church of St. John. The fee remained 3 zł.25
In articles approved by the magistracy on 28 May 1639, the weavers,
who in 1604 had simply imposed a penalty upon all for absence from
the guild Mass, now adopted the institution of buying out for masters,
their wives, and their journeymen “of a different religion”: the price
was 1 zł per quarter for the master and 12 gr for a journeyman (it is
unclear what the price was to be for the master’s wife).26
In this last instance, we encounter a limitation that would be placed
time and again upon the practice of buying out: a guild member might
absent himself from various religious observances connected with the
brotherhood’s altar, but he was required to participate in funeral ser-
vices for a brother, and the penalties—there was no provision for buy-
ing out here—could be severe. The capmakers’ guild, for instance, had
enacted a statute on 3 December 1636, in which they shared power
equally between those of the “Roman” and those of the “Greek” reli-
gion. Only the Romans were required to participate in Corpus Christi
processions, and only the Romans were to attend to the guild altar
at the Bernardines, but all were to take part in the funerals of guild
members, or at least of their masters:
When any of the masters of the cap- and hatmakers’ craft should die, the
younger brethren will be obliged to dig the hole and put the body in the
hole and carry it on the bier, and others are to accompany the body with
honor, all together, both Greeks and Romans to the [Roman] church, as
also from the Roman side to the [Greek] church, and bury it fittingly.
And if anyone should be absent from the funeral, he is to pay four gr to
the guild as a penalty, and if he should not be there a second time, he is
to give eight gr, and for the third time he is to give 16 gr, and if he should
not come a fourth time, he is to be punished by imprisonment by the
magistracy at the request of the elders until he makes satisfaction.27

25
ACW, 173, 215.
26
ACW, 219.
27
ACW, 212.
 five confessions in one city 429

And other guilds—hatmakers, glaziers, coopers, fishermen, wheel-

wrights, white-leather tanners, masons—made other requirements
that, at the least, would have brought non-Catholics into Roman Cath-
olic funeral services, and perhaps also vice versa.28
Similar considerations sometimes governed negotiations between
Christian and Jewish practitioners of the same trade. In one case,
Christian and Jewish artisans agreed upon a sort of limited, carefully
structured coexistence under one guild statute. On 22 April 1673, rep-
resentatives of the Christian needle makers’ and tinsmiths’ guild came
before the magistracy, together with two named Jews (Kałman Arano-
wicz and Ulf Józefowicz), as well as two other Jews whose names were
not recorded. They together signed a “voluntary letter of concord.” The
provisions came in response to “the ancient great harm” the Christian
guild had suffered from Jewish competition. They granted four Jewish
tinsmiths—“and no more”—a kind of adjunct guild membership. The
Jewish artisans would pay 30 zł as a group—or 7 zł, 30 gr each, the
contract allowed either solution—to the guild for the upkeep of its
altar at the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Trinity. The Jewish
tinsmiths were to be granted the right to sell door to door. It further
freed them from the obligation to join in the guild’s public proces-
sions, both secular (greeting the arrival of the king or other dignitar-
ies) and religious (Corpus Christi).29

At Home and in the Neighborhoods

Many—perhaps most—of Wilno’s artisans worked at home, thus

questions of co-existence in the workplace of necessity spilled over
into questions of shared living spaces. A conflict between Christian
and Jewish butchers raised the issue of cohabitation of rooms between
members not only of various confessions, but even of various reli-
gions. In the course of the lengthy court battle, among other charges,
the Christian side alleged that “they [the Jewish butchers] entice to
themselves Christian apprentices (czeladź), who, having caused not

28
See the articles for: hatmakers etc., 1582 (ACW, 94); weavers, 1639 (ACW, 219);
glaziers, 1663 (ACW, 267); coopers, 1664 (ACW, 290); fishermen, 1664 (ACW, 295);
tanners, 1672 (ACW, 375); wheelwrights, 1674 (ACW, 384); white-leather tanners,
1680 (ACW, 402); masons, 1687 (ACW, 434).
29
AVAK 29, 37–8.
430 david frick

inconsiderable harm to their masters, and having incurred debt with

them, depart from them; and they [the Jewish butchers] receive them
and maintain them [i onych przechowywają; my emphasis].”30 The
allegation would imply that Christian apprentices were living with
Jewish master butchers. The 1663 statute of Wilno’s Christian glaziers
declared in article 47 that “those apprentices, who up to now have
spent their years in study with Jews . . . just as those who had been with
a ‘bungler’ [partacz—an artisan working outside guild structures and
discipline]” would have to complete the required service with a Chris-
tian master before they would be admitted to the guild.31 The fear was
of economic competition from the Jewish artisan and the Christian
“bungler,” but the point remains: Christians served apprenticeships
with Jewish masters, and in Jewish quarters. Provisions (here, from the
cobblers’ guild in 1689) for the reception of “wandering journeymen of
whatever religion (jakiejkolwiek religjej) who have come to Wilno,” so
long as they produce documents proving “free and honorable birth,”
and “completion of an apprenticeship” (wyzwolenie), points to a more
widespread cohabitation of rooms by co-professionals of the various
Christian confessions.32
But where were those rooms? Did property owners and the heads
of households who rented dwellings in them form neighborhoods
delimited by confession and religion? A reading of surveys done
by the Royal Quartermaster in preparation for the arrival of King
Władysław IV Waza in 1636 and 1639, coupled with other documents
that reveal confessional allegiances, suggests that owners of houses
in Wilno congregated in streets and neighborhoods that were heav-
ily Lutheran, Calvinist, Roman Catholic, or Ruthenian (Uniate and
Orthodox largely together), although there were documented excep-
tions to the rules in every instance.33 We find members of the Lutheran
elite in upper Castle Street (especially the left, western side between

30
AVAK 28, 408.
31
See ACW, 275.
32
ACW, 454.
33
The surveys, which are at the base of my study of neighborhoods and networks
in early modern Wilno, are to be found at Biblioteka Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
(Library of the Jagiellonian University, Cracow), Berlińskie Zbiory (manuscripts from
the Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz) [hereafter BUJ, B Slav.] F. 12
and F. 15. The first one (that for 1636) is now published in Polish transcription with an
annotated Lithuanian translation in Mindaugas Paknys, Vilniaus miestas ir miestiečiai
1636 m.: namai, gyventojai, svečiai (Vilnius: 2006), where entries from the second
manuscript (for 1639) are also provided when they differ dramatically from the first.
 five confessions in one city 431

Skop Street and St. John Street) and in German Street; the middling
sort of merchant and artisan in and around Glass Street; and more
modest artisans, especially “white-leather tanners” on both sides of
the little tributary of the Wilenka, near the Royal Mill below that limit,
and in the Szerejkiszki suburb above it. Calvinists gathered in modest
numbers across from their Lutheran cousins (often literally!) on the
right, eastern side of upper Castle Street. Ruthenians seem to have
occupied at one time much of the eastern side of the city, to the right
of the Castle Street-Market Square-Rudniki Street axis, where a thick
network of their churches (cerkwie) was once to be found. By the 17th
century the number of their churches had declined somewhat, but
they were still congregated on the eastern side of the Market Square
and below, on both sides of Sharp Street. Roman Catholics could now
be met throughout the city, nobles in German Street, Castle Street,
and especially in Dominican and Troki Streets. By the 17th century,
Catholic churches could been found throughout the city, but they were
the only places of worship in this last neighborhood, forming a dense
network along and to the northwest of the St. John Street-Dominican
Street-Troki Street axis, and to the north and west toward the walls,
where Catholic burghers were predominant. Poorer Catholics occu-
pied the houses of the Chapter Jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic
Church in and around Skop and Bernardine Streets. Suburbs beyond
the various gates seem to have mirrored the intramural streets lead-
ing up to them, with, for instance, some numbers of Ruthenians out-
side Subocz and Sharp Gates, Catholics in the suburbs beyond Troki
and Wilia Gates, Lutherans in the Antokol and Szerejkiszki suburbs
beyond Castle Gate, etc. Tatar Gate, in turn, led to the Tatar settlement
in the Łukiszki suburb.
But, again, these were only concentrations, nothing like monocon-
fessional neighborhoods, to say nothing of ghettos, and numerous
exceptions can be documented for every rule. Peculiarities of the vari-
ous surveys conducted of Wilno houses during the 17th century allow
us to make this pattern especially clear in the case of Jewish settle-
ment.34 The Jewish community of Wilno differed from those of Cracow
and Warsaw (to choose two other capital cities of royal residence) in

34
On Jewish settlement patterns in Wilno, see David Frick, “Jews and Others in
Seventeenth-Century Wilno: Life in the Neighborhood,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 12
(2005): 8–42.
432 david frick

two crucial regards. First, settlement was established much later here
than in Cracow and Warsaw, where Jewish immigrants began to arrive
in some numbers from Germany and Bohemia in the later-14th and
15th centuries. Indeed, Wilno was late by the standards of the Grand
Duchy of Lithuania, where Brest, Grodno, and Pińsk first comprised
the Lithuanian Va’ad or “Council of the Chief Communities.” The
Va’ad was established as a body of self-governance separate from the
Jewish Council of the Chief Communities of the Polish Crown lands
in 1622/1623. Wilno would be named one of the “chief communities”
only 30 years later, in 1652. Second, unlike Cracow or Warsaw, where
the Jews were banned from residing within the walls of the old cities
(in 1495 and 1483 respectively), Jews would establish themselves in the
heart of Wilno and were thus more of a constant presence for their
Christian neighbors.35
Although it is certainly possible to discern the outlines of a Wilno
neighborhood in which Jews were preponderant, the neighborhood
was never—at least in the 17th century—uniquely Jewish. The triangu-
lar section of the city (German Street-Jewish Street-Meat Shop Street)
that had been proposed for Jewish occupation behind gates became
largely Jewish, but not entirely so, and it was left ungated. And St.
Nicholas Street, which also belonged to the official Jewish “quarter,”
was a kind of dangling appendage across German Street and could not
be gated effectively. To get to it from the “Jewish Triangle,” you had
to cross German Street, which—although Jews lived there legally (in
two houses only) and illegally—was still a street in which Christians
(primarily Lutherans and Catholics) occupied some of the city’s better
houses.
What is more, many Jews continued to live elsewhere in the city
and suburbs. Surveys conducted in 1636, 1639, 1676, and 169036 tell
us two things: that Jews continued throughout the 17th century to

35
On patterns of Jewish settlement in Poland-Lithuania in general, see Gershon
David Hundert, “Jewish Urban Residence in the Polish Commonwealth in the Early
Modern Period,” The Jewish Journal of Sociology 26 (1984): 25–34.
36
The third was a census conducted by Jewish elders of Jews living in the Castle
Court jurisdiction in Wilno, which was the forum for nobles, Jews, and Tatars. It
is to be found at LVIA SA 4691, ff. 476r–v/David Frick, Wilnianie. Żywoty siedem-
nastowieczne (Warsaw: 2008), 313. The fourth set stemmed from the separate hearth
tax surveys done in 1690 for houses subject to the Magdeburg jursidiction and the
synagogue, transcribed in Andrzej Rachuba (ed.), Metryka Litewska. Rejestry podym-
nego Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego. Województwo wileńskie 1690 r. (Warsaw: 1989),
25–62.
 five confessions in one city 433

live scattered in Wilno’s various Christian neighborhoods (although,

curiously, not among the Ruthenians),37 here as renters of dwellings
in Christian houses (and together with the Christian landlord and
his Christian renters); and that Christians dwelled in Jewish-owned
houses in the “Jewish neighborhood.”
The situation with the Christian “neighbors” (sąsiad, pl. sąsiedzi—in
many forensic genres a technical term for renters of dwelling spaces
within one house) is more difficult to assess, since those who con-
ducted (and read) these surveys were entirely uninterested in confes-
sional distinctions among Christians, and the “neighbors” have largely
remained anonymous in our sources. Still, one document makes it
absolutely clear that the “neighbors” of one house might well represent
a range of confessions.
In response to allegations in 1646 that—in spite of their removal
extra muros in 1640—the Calvinists were continuing to meet and to
hold religious services and synods at their old seat near the Bernar-
dines, officials canvassed the “neighbors” in one house to discover
what they had seen and heard:
And first of all, when Mr. Daniel Hanke, a citizen and merchant of
Wilno, was questioned, he testified sub conscientia [by his faith] that
here, where we have been living for several years, there have never been
any church services or congresses or commotions. Then we went to a
weaver by the name of Jan Tum, a German, and we asked him about the
above mentioned things. And he also testified by his word that he and
his journeymen had neither seen nor heard any of those things. Then we
went to a tailor by the name of Hendrych Heyn, asking him whether any
congresses or church services of the Evangelical religion had taken place
since the above mentioned time. He, too, testified by his word that there
had never been any of the aforementioned things. Then we went to a
second weaver by the name of Piotr Kant. He, too, witnessed by his word
the same as the others. Finally we went to Iwan Bielski, tailor, also liv-
ing there in the very gate to the estate, and he testified to the same thing
by his word—that there had been neither commotions, nor any sort of
congresses, nor Evangelical church services. All the above-mentioned

37
On the “high degree of violence that both sides originated, which [characterized
Orthodox-Jewish relations, but] was not typical of relations between the Jews and the
Catholic and Uniate Churches,” see Judith Kalik, “The Orthodox Church and the Jews
in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,” Jewish History 17 (2003): 229, 231, 232.
434 david frick

artisans are citizens of Wilno and guild members, some of the Catholic
religion, some of the Saxon, others of the Ruthenian Uniate religion.38
This is a unique forensic document, in that it identifies Christian citi-
zens of Wilno by their confession. It is obvious to what end the inves-
tigators made an exception to the rule in this instance: the fact that
“neighbors” of a variety of confessions—none of them Calvinist—all
agreed on the matter lent added weight to their testimony exonerating
the Calvinists. But what is important for us is that the document sug-
gests that, for instance, a Catholic-owned house in a neghborhood of
predominately Catholic proprietors may have given shelter to otherwise
anonymous “neighbors” of a variety of confessions. Most noteworthy,
in this instance, is the presence of Lutherans. This was a neighborhood
where there was not a single Lutheran property owner in 1636 and
1639, and far from neighborhoods of concentrated Lutheran settle-
ment, and yet, a chance document reveals a Lutheran “neighbor.”
Christians of all confessions also lived in close proximity to Tatars in
the Łukiszki suburb, where we find second, extramural houses, manors,
and gardens of the city’s ruling elite, as well as the sole residences of
more modest Vilnans. In 1639 a mysterious “Obduła”—apparently an
unbaptized Tatar named Abdullah—owned a house of three chambers
just inside Troki Gate, an exception to the rule on Tatar settlement.
That year, during the king’s stay in town, he was providing quarters
to “[a member/members of] the infantry of His Lordly Grace, Crown
Under-Chancellor [Jerzy Ossoliński].”39
Houses of that time and place were not designed for privacy. No
city dweller was ever totally alone before the changes in attitudes and
architectures of the 18th century. Inventories indicate that the core of
a dwelling space for one family unit was the heated chamber (izba),
which might be somehow conjoined to a vestibule (sień), an alcove
(komora), perhaps also a kitchen. But there were no shared corridors
providing access to “private” apartments. “Neighbors” often had to

38
From the “Official Report” (Kwit relacyjny) of “generals” Stefan Gromacki and
Krzysztof Towżyn, found in Lietuvos Nacionalinė Martyno Mažvydo Biblioteka (Mar-
tynas Mažvydas Lithuanian National Library, Vilnius) [hereafter LNMB] F93–1714,
ff. 3r–v/Frick, Wilnianie, 488–9. A “general” (generał) was a “general bailiff ” for the
nobles’ Castle Court. In the usage of early modern Poland-Lithuania, “evangelical”
referred to Evangelical Reformed Christians, elsewhere known as Calvinists; Luther-
ans were called “Saxons” or “Christians of the Augsburg Confession” in Wilno.
39
BUJ, B Slav. F. 15, f. 37r/Paknys, Vilniaus miestas, 160, 257.
 five confessions in one city 435

walk through each other’s rooms to get “home.” At best they might
enter their own space by way of the wooden galleries perched around
an internal courtyard at the level of every floor beginning with the
second. A series of outdoor stairwells connected the ground with the
galleries. But even this architectural feature—of limited use for access
to interior rooms and alcoves—could not provide what we think of as
privacy. Neighbors using the galleries as their path home would con-
stantly see, hear, and smell what was going on in the other neighbors’
spaces as they walked past the courtyard windows.40 Think, at a mini-
mum, of the olfactory sensations in the spring as the new-calendar
Vilnans (all the Romans—Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists) were
feasting, and their old-calendar neighbors (the Greeks—both Uniate
and Orthodox) were still fasting.41

Levels of Allegiance: Between Zealotry and Indifference

It is a fairly simple matter to marshal, on the one hand, strictures of

priests and pastors (no doubt of rabbis and mullahs, if we had the
documents for Wilno at this time) against commingling with the
various and several “others” in a range of life situations, from bap-
tism to burial; and, on the other hand, to demonstrate that Vilnans
regularly ignored these prohibitions. More difficult is an assessment
of attitudes, of levels of intensity in allegiance to the various confes-
sions. Evidence can be mustered that points in both directions. Lay
Vilnans represented a spectrum of attitudes, from the most exclusive
to the most inclusive. A couple examples from each extreme will have
to suffice here.

40
See Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans.
Robert Baldick (New York: 1962), 398–9 for a classic statement of the fact that, before
the architectural innovations of the 18th century, no one was ever alone. For consid-
erations of the lack of specializations of rooms, the lack of corridors, and the sleep-
ing and eating arrangements necessitated by the layout of 17th-century houses, see
Jean-Louis Flandrin, Families in Former Times: Kinship, Household and Sexuality in
Early Modern France, trans. Richard Southern (Cambridge, UK: 1979), 92–7, 98–102,
102–10.
41
On the calendars of early modern Wilno, see David Frick, “The Bells of Vilnius:
Keeping Time in a City of Many Calendars,” in Lesley Cormack, Natalia Pylypiuk,
Glenn Berger, and Jonathan Hart (eds.), Making Contact: Maps, Identity, and Travel
(Edmonton: 2003), 23–59.
436 david frick

One place to look for evidence is in testamentary bequests. We

find some Vilnans who gave only within their own confession. One
of them placed special emphasis on this fact. This was Orthodox mer-
chant Paweł Kossobucki, who, in his will of 2 July 1689, stipulated that
his grants to Ruthenian institutions throughout the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania were to be limited to those that were “Orthodox, not being
in the Union.”42 He was, in fact, unusual in both regards: most gave to
more than one confession, and most limited their giving to Wilno and
its suburbs. Other cases, somewhat more typical, can be found where
Vilnans gave, for instance, to a range of Roman Catholic institutions,
and only that confession, but all of them of Wilno.43
Unlike Kossobucki, others of the Greek rite—my impression from
reading the extant sources is that this was the more frequent pat-
tern—saw themselves as belonging to a very much local, Vilnan, pan-
Ruthenian world. Whether they were themselves Uniate or Orthodox,
they often gave to institutions from both Ruthenian confessions, and
excluded both the Protestants and the Roman Catholics. This is one
of the more surprising results of fleshing out neighborhoods and
networks in 17th-century Wilno. Contrary to the descriptions of the
confessional polemicists—some of whom lived, wrote, and printed in
Wilno, and sometimes described local events in the struggle between
the Uniate and the Orthodox Churches after 1596—Ruthenian Viln-
ans were more than happy to unite the two warring camps.
Orthodox merchant Siemion Jakubowicz Czapliński had been a
member of the first merchant sexagintavirate on the Greek side in
1602.44 He lived in a house on the eastern side of the Market Square
where we still find a Ruthenian presence in 1636 and 1639. He drew
up his last will and testament on 3 June 1630, which means that his
adult life had played itself out against the backdrop of the introduction
of the Union of Brest, the Uniate confiscation of Orthodox churches
in Wilno, the establishment of the new Orthodox Holy Spirit mon-
astery and church, the altercations between Orthodox burghers and
the Uniate Metropolitan of all Rus’, Hipacy Pociej, the tensions over
the “illegal” reestablishment of the Orthodox hierarchy in 1620, and

42
LVIA 610.3.103, ff. 3v–4r/Frick, Wilnianie, 158–9.
43
See, for example, the testament of royal secretary and burgomaster Stefan Karaś
at LVIA SA 5339, ff. 18v–19r/Frick, Wilnianie, 215–6.
44
Kowalenko, “Geneza udziału,” 136.
 five confessions in one city 437

the battle of the pamphlets in the early 1620s that were initiated from
the Wilno presses.45 He died shortly before King Władysław IV recog-
nized the Orthodox hierarchy and imposed a relatively peaceful coex-
istence of Uniate and Orthodox hierarchies.
And yet, his deathbed bequests were to both “Greek” religious com-
munities. He asked to be buried “according to Christian custom in the
[Orthodox] Church of the Holy Spirit.” He bequeathed sums of money
to the fathers (100 zł) and to the nuns (50 zł) at that same church.
He also gave 20 Lithuanian k to the hospital at that church, as well
as 10 zł to the altar of St. Constantine “where our crypt is . . . at the
Church of the Holy Spirit.” But his gifts to the Uniates were equally
impressive, if not even more generous. He gave 400 Lithuanian k to
the Uniate Church of the Holy Spirit against the house in which he
was living, “under this condition, that the fathers of the Holy Trinity
are never to take this sum, rather they are to take the interest on this
sum, 40 k every year, and pray to God for my soul constantly, pub-
lice [publicly] and privately.” Further, he gave 20 k to the nuns at the
Uniate Holy Trinity; and he gave various sums to Uniate hospitals—
10 k to the Holy Trinity, five k to the Holy Most Pure, and five k to
St. George in the Rossa Suburb.46
Lutheran wills sometimes revealed a sense of local German solidar-
ity that reached across the Lutheran-Catholic divide. Chamois-tanner
Hanus Meler, who lived in the Szerejkiszki suburb signed his will on
7 November 1648. He asked to be buried “fittingly, not sparing the
necessary cost, according to the Christian custom of the rite of the
Augsburg Confession in the customary place.” His bequests were quite
specific, and the amounts, and their ordering, are revealing: 200 zł
to the Saxon church; 25 zł to the Saxon hospital; 25 zł to the “Ger-
man hospital of the Roman religion”; 5 Lithuanian k to the hospitals
at the Roman Catholic Churches of Mary Magdalene, SS. Joseph and
Nicodemus, St. Stephen, and the Holy Trinity.47 And there were those
who gave an indiscriminate alm to “all the hospitals that are in Wilno
at this time, both in the city and in the suburbs”—this from the will

45
The literature on the conflict between the Orthodox and the Uniates is large.
For a biography of one of the main local participants—Meletij Smotryc’kyj, onetime
Orthodox archbishop of Połock and archimandrite of the influential monastery at the
Wilno Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit—see Frick, Meletij Smotryc’kyj.
46
LVIA SA 5335, ff. 308r–v.
47
LVIA SA 5361, ff. 251r–v/Frick, Wilnianie, 456.
438 david frick

of Lutheran swordsmith Melchior Ilis, but examples among the other

confessions can also be found.48
Other phenomena—the use of non-Catholic godparents for Catho-
lic babies, and without comment by the recording priest,49 as well as
the frequency of mixed marriages—also suggest a willingness on the
part of some, including perhaps parish clergy, to cross confessional
boundaries, to make accommodations with neighbors of other con-
fessions in a wide range of life moments. Or, at the least, to look the
other way when others did so. Some constellations of human networks
and shared neighborhoods were more readily formed than others—
Lutheran-Calvinist, Orthodox-Uniate—but tokens of all possible per-
mutations can be found.
This was not exactly the same thing as the “indifferentism” that
some revisionists have sought to establish as a corrective to, and in
some cases in opposition to, the top-down etatism of confessionaliza-
tion paradigms.50 How, for instance, are we to interpret the following
case? A Uniate salt merchant by the name of Afanas Otroszkiewicz
was willing to marry an Orthodox burghess by the name of Katarzyna
Kuryłowiczówna and to share a house with her in the suburb out-
side Sharp Gate; but when it came time, shortly before their deaths in
the spring and fall of 1666 respectively, for the two to draw up their
wills (for which they clearly drew on the same notarial help), the one
wished to rest eternally in the hallowed ground of the Uniate Church
of the Holy Trinity, and the other chose the Orthodox Church of the
Holy Spirit just across the street.51 The two establishments had been

48
LVIA SA 5333, ff. 320r, 321r-v/Frick, Wilnianie, 291–2.
49
See David Frick, “Buchner at the Font: Godparenting and Network Building in
Seventeenth-Century Wilno,” in Christopher Ocker, Michael Printy, Peter Starenko,
and Peter Wallace (eds.), Politics and Reformations: Communities, Politics, Nations,
and Empires. Essays in Honor of Thomas A. Brady, Jr. (Leiden: 2007), 205–27.
50
See, in particular, the articles by Nicole Grochowina, “Grenzen der Konfessional-
isierung. Dissidententum und konfessionelle Indifferenz im Ostfriesland des 16. Und
17. Jahrhunderts”, Frauke Volkland, “Konfession, Konversion und soziales Drama.
Ein Plädoyer für die Ablösung des Paradigmas der ‘konfessionellen Identität’”, and
Martin Mulsow, “Mehrfachkonversion, politische Religion und Opportunismus im
17. Jahrhundert—Ein Pläydoyer für eine Indifferentismusforschung” in Kaspar von
Greyerz, Manfred Jakubowski-Tiessen, Thomas Kaufmann, and Hartmut Lehmann
(eds.), Interkonfessionalität—Transkonfessionalität—binnenkonfessionelle Pluralität.
Neue Forschungen zur Konfessionalisierungsthese (Schriften des Vereins für Reforma-
tionsgeschichte) 201 (Heidelberg: 2003), 48–72, 91–104, and, 132–50.
51
LVIA SA 5335, ff. 80v–82v/Frick, Wilnianie, 246–8; LVIA SA 5335, ff. 215v–217v/
Frick, Wilnianie, 248–51.
 five confessions in one city 439

the focal points of the intense confessional-political debate between

Uniates and Orthodox in the city, the pamphlet wars on occasion
spilling over into alleged physical violence. Does their case bespeak
confessional indifferentism? Or zeal? Or are we dealing with types of
allegiances and accommodations that are not adequately described in
such terms?

How It Worked; or, Tolerating the Intolerable

The picture that has taken shape over the course of my work on Wilno
emphasizes collaboration, coexistence, syncretisms, crossings of con-
fessional, sometimes even religious, boundaries—in short, a general
sameness. Part of this is due to the rhetorical uniformity of the sources
that are my window on this world. But another part, an essential
aspect, I would argue, lies in the consensus of some important seg-
ment of all the confessions and religions that certain compromises
were required, “if only” for the sake of peace and prosperity. Being
right about religion would have to yield some of its absoluteness to
the common civic weal. This is not a story of precocious ecumeni-
cism, of the tolerance only imagined by a few contemporary think-
ers and which would become a central topic of more general debate
only with the Enlightenment. This is a story of toleration, of finding
a set of practices—some of them implicated in violence, or at least in
adversarial relationships—that allowed individuals and communities
to co-exist, sometimes cheek by jowl with people who were hated, or,
at the very least, held for incorrigibly pig-headed.
Violence was a constant in this society, where everyone carried a
sword or a knife or a stick, or could pick up a rock or a brick, and
where complaints against drunken neighbors were common. Larger
outbreaks of violence, those directed against one group of people (typi-
cally Jews, Calvinists, or Orthodox) were sporadic, and—a fact that has
been overlooked by most students—they were highly scripted in terms
of their dramatis personae, stage settings in the town and suburbs, and
time (with most occurring during Carnival or Lent).52
The picture that emerges here is a version of what David Nirenberg
has called “communities of violence.” He argues in that path-breaking

52
The exception is Urzula Augustyniak’s recent reassessment of the anti-Calvinist
riots of 1639. See Augustyniak, “Jeszcze raz.”
440 david frick

study of the persecution of minorities—in his case, Jews and Muslims

in 14th-century France and the Crown of Aragon—that there is “no
reason why convivencia need designate only harmonious coexistence.”
Writing against both the “lachrymose” and the “optimistic” historio-
graphic schools, he notes that “violence was a central and systemic
aspect of the coexistence of majority and minorities.” In short, “convi-
vencia was predicated upon violence; it was not its peaceful antithesis.
Violence drew its meaning from coexistence, not in opposition to it.”
As in late medieval France and Aragon, so, too, in 17th-century Wilno,
“the majority of altercations took place within religious communities,
not across them.” Those that did occur across the boundaries of reli-
gious communities regularly took the form of “ritualized aggression.”
One central aspect to this constant “background static of violence” was
recourse to violent words—name calling, and its rule-based extension
and culmination in litigation.53
In most cases, we know of the events of violence to person, property,
and honor only because the wronged individuals and groups came
themselves or sent representatives before the various legal jurisdictions
of Wilno in order to bring charges against the alleged perpetrators of
that violence. Early modern Poland-Lithuania was a highly litigious
place, and—although all who could afford going to court could, and
probably most did, seek the legal advice of notaries or lawyers—some
knowledge of the law and of the rhetorical expectations of various
forensic genres seems to have been widespread.54 People went to court
to defend honor as often as health and property. The nobles may have
felt otherwise, but the broad recourse to the courts by burghers of
all social strata, as well as by Jews and Tatars, suggests that nearly
everyone in 17th-century Wilno felt he had honor to defend or lose,
in addition to property and “health.”55 In this regard, Jews and Tatars,
although clearly identified as such, were just as much Vilnans as were

53
For the quotes, see David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of
Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: 1998), 8, 9, 245, 32, 210, 229, 127, 30–31.
54
Not all could afford it. Oswald Balzer notes (Studia nad prawem polskiem [Poznań:
1889], 331–2) that in 1726 the fee for filing a complaint in court in Lithuania was one
zł per sheet of paper, plus other associated fees. My reading of the Wilno court cases
suggests that access was easier and cheaper in some of the smaller jurisdictions such
as those of the Roman Catholic Chapter.
55
For a discussion of the place of litigation over honor in early modern Musco-
vite society, with extensive literature on Muscovy and Western Europe, see Nancy
Shields Kollmann, By Honor Bound: State and Society in Early Modern Russia (Ithaca:
1999).
 five confessions in one city 441

the Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, Orthodox, and Uniates

when they pressed their claims, side by side with the others, before
the Wilno courts. They were all engaged in what has been called “con-
tinuous litigation,” a process that, so Edward Muir has argued, helped
build civil society in early modern northern Italy. It was one of the
mechanisms of integration that allowed a place as diverse as Wilno to
function in relative peace.56
It is time to highlight a few of the distinguishing features of con-
fessional coexistence in Wilno and briefly to suggest points of com-
parison with contemporary European cities elsewhere on the spectrum
between exclusivity and inclusivity.57
No member of the five recognized Christian confessions was forced
to make do with private or domestic religious services; all had a pub-
lic place of worship with a church spire and bells. Before 1640, none
were made to practice Auslauf, the system of “toleration,” whereby
the tolerated lived within the city walls, but were obliged to practice
their religion elsewhere, either openly, by proceeding en masse, per-
haps singing hymns as they went, or clandestinely, slipping one by one
through the gates to open places of worship in the suburbs or nearby
estates.58 Only the Tatars lacked a place of worship within the walls for
the whole period. The case of the Calvinists after 1640 approachs that
of Auslauf but with some qualifications. They relocated just outside
the walls, which in Wilno were never very imposing and had little
legal significance. Calvinists who lived in the suburbs were subject to
the Town Hall, just as their intramural cousins. Calvinist ministers
might continue to visit the sick within the walls, although they were
now required to wear clothing that could not be confused with that of
a priest, and funeral processions were to proceed without singing of
hymns until they reached the suburbs.59

56
On the importance of notarial culture and the habit of continuous litigation for
creating social cohesion, see Edward Muir, “The Sources of Civil Society in Italy,”
Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29 (1999): 379–406, especially 392–400.
57
Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith. Religious Conflict and the Practice of Tolera-
tion in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: 2007) offers a nice set of examples
which can serve as a point of departure for such a comparative study.
58
For examples of Auslauf, see Kaplan, Divided by Faith, 87, 145–9, 161–71, 176–7,
203, 208, 250. A classic example is provided by Hamburg and Altona. See Joachim
Whaley, Religious Toleration and Social Change in Hamburg 1529–1819 (Cambridge,
UK: 1985).
59
See documents at Lietuvos Mokslų Akademijos Biblioteka (Library of the Lithu-
anian Academy of Sciences, Vilnius) F40–1136, 116; LNMB F93–1713, f. 1r.
442 david frick

Wilno’s multiconfessionalism predated not only the Reformation

but even the introduction of Roman Christianity as a sort of state
religion in the Grand Duchy in 1386. Its system of Greek-Roman par-
ity, introduced in 1536, also preceded the establishment of the first
open Protestant congregations. This system came to accommodate the
entire range of five confessions, and even after participation in the
magistracy was limited to Catholics and Uniates in 1666 it continued
to serve as a model for other secular corporations.
What makes Wilno unusual is the open inclusion of four “other”
confessions, in spite of pretensions on the part of Roman Catholics
to dominance. Not “two confessions in one city” (the title, of course,
of Paul Warmbrunn’s classic 1983 study of four imperial parity cit-
ies) but five, members of which must have been adept at negotiating
a landscape of subtly and constantly shifting oppositions.60 No doubt
Jews and Tatars were aware of articulations in the local Christian
world, which must have added complexities to the Christian-Jewish
and Christian-Muslim opposition that was otherwise so clear cut.
Wilno, and perhaps other cities of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
(as Stefan Rohdewald’s study of Połock suggests),61 stand in stark con-
trast even to those of the Polish Crown, often portrayed as a bastion
of tolerance on the European stage. Even a city like Lwów (L’viv), the
multiconfessional, multiethnic capital of Red Ruthenia (subject to the
Polish Crown since 1349) represented something quite different. Here,
Roman Catholics, most of them Polish immigrants managed—almost
until the First Partition of Poland, which brought the city into the
Hapsburg realm—to maintain a monopoly of power in the magistracy
and in the guilds, forcing the Orthodox, and later Uniates, as well as
the large Armenian Christian population, to focus its religious and

60
For studies of “two confessions in one city,” see Paul Warmbrunn, Zwei Konfes-
sionen in einer Stadt. Das Zusammenleben von Katholiken und Protestanten in den
paritätischen Reichsstädten Augsburg, Biberach, Ravensburg und Dinkelsbühl, 1548 bis
1648 (Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Europäische Geschichte Mainz) 111 (Wies-
baden: 1983); Etienne François, Die unsichtbare Grenze. Protestanten und Katholiken
in Augsburg 1648–1806 (Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg) 33 (Sig-
maringen: 1991); Benjamin J. Kaplan, Calvinists and Libertines: Confession and Com-
munity in Utrecht, 1578–1620 (Oxford: 1995).
61
Stefan Rohdewald, “Vom Polocker Venedig.” Kollektives Handeln sozialer Gruppen
einer Stadt zwischen Ost- und Mitteleuropa (Mittelalter, frühe Neuzeit, 19. Jh. bis 1914)
(Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des östlichen Europa) 70 (Stuttgart: 2005).
 five confessions in one city 443

cultural activities in separate corporations granted limited autonomies

and privileges.62
One imagines the surprise of a visitor from outside, even from as
nearby as the Polish Crown lands, perhaps that of the Royal Quarter-
master himself, as he registered the cacophony of the bells; the com-
peting and intersecting religious and secular processions; the variety
of dress, grooming, and speech patterns, and the occasional, more and
less gentle, mutual derision; the simultaneity of feasting and fasting;
the sense of passing from neighborhood to neighborhood, in each of
which one set of customs might predominate, but tokens of all variet-
ies might be present, at times in the same family; and above all the
sense that all this variety could be expressed publicly and in all corners
of the city. A Lutheran visitor from Ulm marveled in 1585 at a city
where “all the religions, companies, and sects have libertatem consci-
entiae [freedom of conscience], in which no one is hindered.”63 He
would likely still have experienced a sense of wonder had he returned
there a century later, in spite of—or perhaps precisely because of—all
the steps taken during that period in the “re-Catholicization” of the
Polish-Lithuanian elites.

62
See Myron Kapral’, Nacional’ni hromady L’vova XVI–XVIII st. (Social’no-pravovi
vzajemyny) (L’viv: 2003).
63
Cited in Edmund Klinkowski, “Grodno, Wilna und das Posener Land in einem
deutschen Reisebericht vom Jahre 1586,” Deutsche wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift für
Polen 30 (1936): 135.
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 INDEX

a Lasco, Johannes (Jan Łaski), 370–371, Anglicans/Anglican Church, 8, 215,

384–386, 387, 389, 391, 392 289, 295, 298, 308, 313, 314, 317,
The Form and Manner of Ecclesiastical 344–345
Ministry, 386 Angoulême (France), 281
Summary of the Doctrine of the Anne of Denmark (Queen of England,
Church of East Frisia, 385 Ireland and Scotland, 1589–1619),
Aachen, 59n49, 373 291, 315
Abercorn, Earl of, 321 Annonay (France), 228, 241, 248
Accord of 2 September 1566 (Antwerp), annus mirabilis (1566–67), 76–81
77–79, 89, 97, 101, 104 Anti-Trinitarians/Anti-Trinitarian
Acts of Uniformity (England, 1558/ Church. See Unitarians
Ireland, 1560), 317 Antinomian Controversy, 344
Adrianople, Peace of (1568), 397 Antrim (Ireland), 321, 324, 339
“age of confessions” (Wolfgang Antwerp (Brabant), 15, 114. See also
Reinhardt), 9, 12, 25 Calvinists; Catholics; Lutherans
Agreement of the People (Levellers Accord of 2 September 1566, 77–79,
movement), 296, 356 89, 97, 101, 104
Alais, Peace of (1629), 223 churches in, 78–79, 87, 90, 92
Albert (Archduke of Austria, civic militia in, 81, 85–86, 87, 90, 101,
1598–1621), 55, 63, 64 107
Albrecht V (Duke of Bavaria, 1550–79), coexistence in, 75–76, 78, 79, 87–88,
141 92, 93–94, 115
Alkmaar (Holland), 52–53 economic importance of, 16–17, 74,
Alsace, 181, 188, 196, 198–202. See also 95, 96–97
Colmar conflicts in, 79–80
Althusius, Johannes, 390 Counter-Reformation in, 96, 97
Alva, Fernando Alvarez de Toledo local government and politics, 13, 75,
(Governor of Spanish Netherlands, 76, 81, 89, 92, 94, 96
1567–73), 80, 81, 103 Broad Council, 86, 88, 90, 91, 93,
Amboise, Edict of (1563), 247, 251, 255, 95, 97
259 multiconfessionalism in, 76–81
Amboise (France), 280 Religious Peaces (1578/1579), 83–89,
America, 29, 347, 365 90–95, 97, 105–108
Amersfoort (Utrecht), 65, 71 repression and persecution in, 75,
Amiens (France), 255, 260 81, 83
Amsterdam (Holland), 52, 65, 70, 105, shooting companies in, 81, 87, 90
118, 123, 350, 358 toleration in, 95–96
toleration in, 352, 354, 360, 363 Apostles’ Creed, 38, 385, 410
Anabaptists/Anabaptist Church, 27, 33, Argentat (France), 229
35, 38–39, 41 Arians/Arianism (Transylvania), 409,
in Central Europe, 374, 379, 382, 410, 413
399 Armagh (Ireland), 332
in Dutch Republic/Low Countries/ Armenians, 382, 442
Spanish Netherlands, 53, 75, 78, 88, Arminians/Arminian Church
92, 103, 349, 361, 362 in Dutch Republic, 64, 350, 361, 362,
in Holy Roman Empire, 154 363
Angevin dynasty, 371 in England, 294
478 index

arms, carrying of (France), 220, 223, Basel, Council of (1431–49), 390

279–282, 283, 284 Baunach (Holy Roman Empire),
Arnhem (Gelderland), 67, 117 174–175
Arpad dynasty, 371 Bauquemare, Jacques, 248, 252, 253
Arras, Union of (1579), 93 Bautzen (Holy Roman Empire), 146
articles of faith. See Confessions Bavaria, 138, 141, 144, 162n14
Artois (Spanish Netherlands), 83, 105, Bayeux (France), 277
107, 110 Bayle, Pierre, 365, 390
Augsburg, 5–7, 10–11, 13, 106, 119, 149, Bayonne (France), 280
153, 156, 199 Beaulieu (France), 228–229
Augsburg, Diets of (1530/1555), 27, 29, Beguines (Dutch Republic), 52, 71
33, 133–134, 160 Bekker, Balthasar, 60
Augsburg, Peace of (1555), 134–137, Belgic Confession, 24, 28, 29, 30, 32,
143, 144, 317 36, 42
and Antwerp, 84, 88 Bellings, Richard, 320
and Colmar (Alsace), 183, 202, 203 bells, church, 184–185, 195, 272–273,
and Imperial Knights, 159, 161, 167, 443
174, 178 Ben Israel, Menasseh, 359
recognition of Augsburg Confession, Benedict, Philip, 217, 221
31, 135, 145, 148 Berendrecht (Spanish Netherlands), 63
Augsburg Confession, 28, 29, 30, 34, 38, Berg, Duchy of (Holy Roman Empire),
42, 88, 102n6, 133, 135–136, 401 59
and Colmar, 185, 202, 203 Berge (Holy Roman Empire), 129–130
points of doctrine, 35–36 Bergen op Zoom (States Brabant), 57,
recognition of, 31–32, 33, 41, 145, 148 58, 62, 63, 68, 112
Augustine, Saint, 381 Bergh, Maria Elisabeth II van den
Confessions, 29 (Marchioness, States Brabant), 68
Augustinians (Colmar), 182, 200 Bergsma, Wiebe, 53, 60
Auslaufen (“walking out”), 145, 441 Beza, Theodore, 214
Austin, John (William Birchley), 365 Biberach (Swabia), 149
The Christian Moderator, 356, 357 biconfessionalism. See also coexistence,
confessional; multiconfessionalism;
Baarle-Hertog (enclave, States Brabant), toleration
67 in Colmar (Alsace), 179, 191, 192,
Bacon, Sir Francis, 344 193, 203
Baden-Durlach, Margraviate of, 144, 151 definition, 100, 130n4
Baillie, Robert, 361 in Dutch Republic/Low Countries/
Ballybay (Ireland), 339 Spanish Netherlands, 58, 84, 101,
Bamberg, Prince-Bishopric of, 15, 17, 103, 104, 109, 118, 119–125
167, 168 in France, 101, 217, 223, 238, 283, 284
Imperial knights in, 165, 166, 169, in Holy Roman Empire, 101, 135,
170, 172, 174, 175 146, 147
baptism, 35, 36, 38, 41, 153, 226, 302, in Transylvania, 408
413, 438 Biddle, John, 304
Baptists/Baptist Church (Britain), 304, Bill of Rights (1689), 314
307, 309, 346, 349, 353, 354 Bischofszell (Swiss Confederation),
General Baptists, 298, 305 11–12
Particular Baptists, 297, 305 Blackwood, Christopher, 346, 353
places of worship of, 299, 300, 301, Blasphemy Act (1650), 297
302 Blessed Sacrement, confraternities of
public functions of, 305, 312 (France), 211
Barre-des-Cévennes (France), 243 Blois (France), 261, 280
Barrier Treaty, 119 Bockskay Rebellion (1605), 375
Basel, 186, 187, 190, 191, 193, 384 Bodin, Jean, 390
 index 479

Bohemia, 106, 176, 317, 358, 370, 394 Calvin, John, 23, 211, 214, 215, 377, 385,
Hussites in, 370, 371, 372, 377 386, 388, 391
toleration in, 374–375 Institutes of the Christian Religion,
Utraquists in, 371, 378, 395 210, 382
Bohemian Brethrens/Bohemian Brethren Calvinists/Calvinist Church. See also
Church, 1 Presbyterians; Reformed Church
in Bohemia, 379, 395 in Alsace, Colmar, 186, 187–188, 189,
in Czech Republic, 29 191, 193, 194, 204
in Poland, 382, 386 in Bohemia, 379
Bologna (Italy), 374, 384, 387 in Dutch Republic/Low Countries/
Bona Sforza (Queen of Poland, Spanish Netherlands, 47, 49,
1518–57), 373 104–105, 370
Book of Concord, 31, 42 Antwerp, 75, 82, 91, 95, 96
Book of Consecration, 39 expansion of, 79, 86, 89, 97
Boom, H. ten, 52 in local government, 81, 90, 94
Bordeaux (France), 274, 281, 282 proposing religious peace, 84–85
border towns, 59, 62–65, 145, 277, public worship by, 76–77, 79, 80,
277–278, 280 82, 86, 87, 92
boundaries recognition of, 77–79
confessional, 12, 131–132, 147–149, tensions with Lutherans,
152, 153, 180 79–80, 94
political, 62–68, 73 border crossing by, 63–64, 145
Bourgneuf, René de, 251n41, 253 Brabant/States Brabant, 82, 84, 96
Brabant, 81, 82, 105, 110, 112, 116. enclaves, 66
See also States Brabant Friesland, 53
Brabourne, Theophilus, 363 Gelderland, 100, 117, 122
Brandenburg, Prince-Bishopric of, 147, Groningen, 50
149, 150n89, 151, 176n69 Holland, 52–54, 103, 105, 108
Breda, Declaration of (1660), 308 Limburg/States Limburg, 58–59,
Breda (States Brabant), 57, 67, 94, 112 100, 119–122
Breitenfeld, Battle of (1631), 176 opposition by, 111, 114, 115, 116
Brenz, Johannes, 386 Overijssel, 51, 117
Brest, Union of (1596–97), 379–380, and pacification, 89, 105–106
421, 425, 436 public worship by, 71
Brethrens. See Bohemian Brethrens Zeeland, 105, 108
Briçonnet, Guillaume (Bishop of in France. See Huguenots
Meaux), 210 in Holy Roman Empire, 7, 64, 138,
Britain, 8, 14, 19. See also 145, 147, 151, 394
Commonwealth of England; England; Rhenish Calvinism, 186, 187, 188
Ireland; Scotland in Hungary, 370, 370n2
Brittanny, 222, 227 in Lithuania, 370, 385
Brussels, 89, 96, 118 Wilno, 374, 392, 421, 423, 430, 431,
Bucer, Martin, 385 433, 435, 438, 439, 441
Buchelius, Arnoldus, 61 in Poland, 379, 382, 385
Bullinger, Heinrich, 30, 41, 385, 409 in Transylvania, 375, 376, 409
Buob, Michael, 179, 183, 187, 202 Canne, John, 303
Burgundy (France), 280, 282 Capuchins (France/Alsace), 189, 193,
Burnet, Gilbert, 349 200, 234, 237
Butler, James (Duke of Ormond), Cassan, Michel, 229, 230
307, 323 Casteljaloux (France), 243
Byzantines (Bohemia), 372, 373 Castellio, Sebastian, 214, 341
Castelmoron (France), 232
Caen (France), 228, 241, 243, 245, 248 castle churches (Dutch Republic), 67, 71
Calignon (peace commissioner), 279 Castres (France), 221, 227–228, 276
480 index

Catherine de Medici (Queen of France, public functions of, 290, 305–306,

1547–59), 214, 215, 216, 239 309, 312
Catholic Federation (Ireland), 321 public worship by, 295, 296, 297,
Catholic League, 15, 157, 171, 172–173, 311
174, 177, 218 repression and persecution of, 289,
Catholics/Catholic Church, 41, 136, 390 290–291, 293, 306, 310, 314, 358
Catholic Reformation, 54, 55–56, taxation of, 315
99, 156n3, 157. See also Counter- toleration of, 292, 298, 311, 351
Reformation tolerationists, 356–359
in Central Europe, 371 in France, 257, 270, 348
Bohemia, 317, 374–375, 378 control of communal space,
Lithuania, 376 270–279
Wilno, 417, 419, 422, 423–424, and disarmament, 279–282, 283
425, 426, 427, 430, 431, 434, local coexistence with Huguenots,
435, 436, 441 14, 224–228, 283–284
Poland, 370, 372, 375, 379, 382 in local government, 261–262
Red Ruthania, 442–443 and pacification, 216, 218–223, 236,
Transylvania, 376, 400, 401, 402, 240–245, 258–260
403–404, 406, 408, 410 processions, 233, 271
in Dutch Republic/Low Countries/ public worship by, 272
Spanish Netherlands, 52–56, 62–63 violence between Huguenots and,
border crossing by, 62–63, 64–65 209, 211, 212–213, 218, 221–222,
Brabant/States Brabant, 57–58, 71, 229–231, 233–238, 241, 244,
111, 112, 116, 123 271, 273
Antwerp, 75 in Holy Roman Empire, 64, 64–65,
in local government, 95, 105 129, 139, 141, 142, 164
opposition by, 79 Colmar, 179, 184, 189–190, 191,
processions, 90, 91 193, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199,
public worship by, 92, 94, 200–201, 204
113–114 Imperial Knights and, 156, 157,
repression and persecution of, 161, 162
93, 109 local coexistence with Lutherans,
and Spaniards, 81, 93, 97 142, 146, 149, 152–153
enclaves, 66–67 processions, 138, 200
equal rights of, 48–49, 109, 118, public functions of, 10, 189–190,
123–124 191, 193, 196, 197, 198
Flanders/States Flanders, 55, 57, 89, public worship by, 10, 145, 146,
116, 123 149, 151, 152–153, 204
Friesland, 53 in Ireland, 290, 322, 323, 324, 327,
Gelderland/Upper Gelderland, 54, 328, 329, 333–334, 338–339
67, 71, 100, 111, 117, 122, 123 laws against, 319–320, 335
Generality Lands, 57–58, 65, 123 public functions of, 312, 320,
Holland, 54, 71, 85, 104, 107, 108 331–332
Amsterdam, 52, 65, 72, 123, 350 repression and persecution of, 307,
laws against, 50 314
Limburg/States Limburg, 58–59, Ulster, 307, 310, 314, 321, 324, 337
100, 120–122 Nicene Creed, 28, 33, 38, 39–40, 55
Overijssel, 117, 123 in Scotland, 310, 311
public worship by, 69–70, 100, 358 Tridentine, 162, 163, 177, 330, 347
Utrecht, 52, 53, 65, 67, 71, 117, 123 Cellarius, Johannes, 183
violence against, 105, 108 cemeteries (France), 221, 231–232, 233,
Zeeland, 54, 85, 107, 108 235, 267, 271
in England Central Europe, 5, 8, 343, 369–371,
laws against, 292, 294, 309, 312, 319 376–381
 index 481

Central Europe (cont.) Cloet, Michel, 55, 56

government and politics in, 371–375, Cluj (Transylvania), 401, 414
373 coequal multiconfessional regimes (Holy
legal system, 394 Roman Empire), 145–146, 149, 151,
multiconfessionalism in, 8, 14, 19, 179, 196, 204, 205
370, 374, 379 coetus, 386
toleration in, 343 coexistence, confessional, 18–19, 121,
Chadwick, Owen, 343 222. See also biconfessionalism;
chalices, 141, 371, 378 multiconfessionalism; toleration
Châlon-sur-Saône (France), 241, 244, at workplace, 429–430
246, 249 in Colmar (Alsace), 181–182, 184,
Charles I (King of England, Scotland 188–189, 194
and Ireland, 1625–49), 289, 291–294, in Dutch Republic/Low Countries/
296 Spanish Netherlands, 47–48, 54–57,
Charles II (King of England, Scotland 60–61, 69, 85
and Ireland, 1649–51/1660–85), 289, Antwerp, 75–76, 78, 79, 87–88, 92,
308–309, 310, 317, 318 93–94
Charles IV (Luxemburg Emperor, economic importance of, 16–17,
1346–78), 372 74, 95, 96–97
Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor, Friesland, 51, 53
1519–56), 75, 101, 133, 155n2, 358 Gelderland/Upper Gelderland, 50,
Charles IX (King of France, 1560–74), 54, 111, 122–123
214, 239, 240, 241, 247, 250, 255 Generality Lands, 57–59, 122
Chillenden, Edmund, 299, 304 Holland, 51, 52–53, 107
Christ, nature of, 411–412 Limburg/States Limburg, 58–59,
Christian Concord, Articles of (1566), 111
410 Utrecht, 51, 53
Christin, Olivier, 241, 255 Zeeland, 50, 54, 107
Christophe von Stadion (Bishop of in France, 106, 209, 214, 222,
Augsburg), 5–6 224–228, 234, 237, 260
Church of England, 8, 215, 289, 295, in guilds, 424–429
298, 308, 313, 314, 317, 344–345 in Holy Roman Empire, 19, 106, 129,
Church of Ireland, 307, 317, 321, 326, 130
329, 333, 334, 337, 339 in Wilno (Lithuania), 424–429, 441
Church of Our Lady (Antwerp), 90, 92 Coligny, Louise de, 68
churches Collegium Germanicum (1552), 163,
building and rebuilding of, 55, 78 164–165
church bells, 184–185, 195, 272–273, Colmar (Alsace), 13, 15, 16, 191,
443 193. See also Calvinists; Catholics;
clandestine, 52, 63, 69–72, 100, 125 Evangelicals; Lutherans
Huguenot, 255–257 biconfessionalism in, 179, 184, 187,
peace churches, 149 191, 192, 193, 203, 204
sharing. See simultanea coexistence in, 181–182, 184,
Cicero 188–189, 194
De Amitia, 247 French rule of, 180, 192, 193, 194,
citizenship vs religion, 217–218, 195, 196–202, 203, 204–205
219–220, 237, 248 guilds in, 180–181, 182, 183, 189, 194,
civic militia (Antwerp), 81, 85, 86, 90, 196, 199
101, 107 immigrants in, 188, 194, 195–196,
Clarendon Code (1661–1665), 308 198
Clement VI, Pope, 372 ius reformandi in, 183, 184, 191,
Clement VIII, Pope, 291 204
Cleves, Duchy of (Holy Roman Empire), local government and politics, 181,
64–65 184, 187, 190, 193, 194, 196–197
482 index

Colmar (cont.) Dordrecht Confession of Mennonites

merchants in, 188, 195 (1632), 34, 42
reformation and Counter- Eleven Articles (1559–60), 30, 34
Reformation in, 179, 182, 183–194, Fidei ratio (1530), 24
196, 199–202, 203, 204 First Confession of Basel (1534), 34
simultanea in, 202, 205 First Helvetic Confession (1536), 34,
Swedish rule of, 191, 193, 200, 202, 36
203, 204 Forty-Two Articles (1553), 30, 34
taxation in, 184, 188–189, 191, 194, French Confession (1559/71), 28, 29,
195, 198, 201 30, 34–35, 36, 37, 102n6, 211
tensions in, 185–186, 192, 195 Geneva Confession (1536), 34, 36, 37,
Cologne, Peace Conference of (1579), 93 38
Cologne (Holy Roman Empire), 64, 117, parallels and differences, 24, 27, 28,
163 34–35, 36, 40–41, 129, 141–143
commissioners (France). See peace Schleitheim Confession (1527), 29, 33,
commissioners 34, 35, 41
Commonwealth of England (1649–60), Schwabach Articles (1529), 30
26, 298, 302, 306, 307 Scots Confession (1560), 28, 30, 32, 34,
Communion, 36, 134, 141, 183, 215, 36, 37–38
293, 314, 388, 390, 401, 413 Second Helvetic Confession (1566),
Communitas mercatoria (Wilno), 424 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38,
Comprehension and Toleration Bills 42, 409
(England), 309, 313 Six Articles (1543), 30, 34
Compromise of Nobles (1566), 76 Sixty-Seven Articles (1523), 24, 27,
concentric multiconfessional regimes 30, 43
(Holy Roman Empire), 146–147, Tetrapolitan Confession (1530), 27, 29,
149, 179 32, 34
Concord, Formula of, 185 Thirteen Articles (1538), 30, 34
condominia, 58, 119–120 Thirty-Nine Articles of England (1563),
Confederates (Ireland), 307 28, 30, 32, 33, 34, 38–39, 42
confession, 4, 9, 10, 12, 26 Torgau Articles (1530), 30
Confession of Faith (1525, Hans Denck), Tridentine Profession of Faith (1564),
24,27,30 30, 42, 55, 97, 162
confessional choice, 10, 325–329, 336 Westminster Confession (1647), 28,
confessional coexistence. See 34, 42
coexistence, confessional conflicts, religious. See also wars
confessional identification, 11, 12, in Antwerp, 79–80
16–17, 129, 153 in France, 154, 254, 261
confessional states, 14, 99 in Holy Roman Empire, 137, 153,
Bohemia, 317 154, 156, 162, 167–168, 174, 176,
England, 289, 290, 311, 344 178
Ireland, 317, 317–318, 319, 320, 323, Congregationalists/Congregationalist
324, 325, 338 Church (England), 299, 301, 305, 312,
confessionalization, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 362. See also Independents
25–26, 329 Connacht (Ireland), 321, 324
Confessions conscience, freedom of, 100, 102–103,
Augsburg Confession, 28, 29, 30, 31, 216, 223, 407, 408, 443
33, 34, 35–36, 38, 41, 42, 88, 102n6, Constance, Council of (1415), 380
133, 135–136, 185, 202, 203, 401 Constantinople (Ottoman Empire), 373,
Belgic Confession (1561), 24, 28, 29, 380
30, 32, 34, 36, 42 Conventicle Acts (England), 319
Confession of Faith (1525, Hans conversion
Denck), 24, 27, 30 to Catholicism, 56, 95, 96, 149–150,
definitions in and of, 23–24, 41–43 156, 164, 223, 237, 337
 index 483

conversion (cont.) Dell, Wilhelm, 352

forced, 95, 96, 135, 156, 164, 169, 223, Den Bosch (States Brabant), 57, 62, 71,
237, 414 111
to Reformed Church, 162, 414 Denck, Hans
Cook, John, 305, 336 Confession of Faith, 24, 27, 30
Coppin, Richard, 304 Deventer (Overijssel), 51, 117
Cork (Ireland), 325, 329 Diefendorf, Barbara, 212, 213
Corpus Christi, 185, 200, 258, 427, 428 Dieppe (France), 281
corpus evangelicorum, 148, 150, 152 Dijon (France), 248, 272, 276, 279
Cossé, Marshal, 248 Dinkelsbühl (Holy Roman Empire),
Council of State (England), 299, 301, 149
302, 303, 359 dissenters
Council of State (Low Countries), 83, in Britain, 289, 295, 309, 310, 313,
84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 106 314, 315, 322, 323, 338, 349
Council of Troubles, 80 in Dutch Republic/Low Countries/
Counter-Reformation, 211 Spanish Netherlands, 48, 49, 51, 53,
in Antwerp, 96, 97 56, 66, 68, 69, 71, 101, 123, 125
in Colmar (Alsace), 180, 189–191, Holy Roman Empire, 145
196, 199–202, 203, 204 Dominicans/Dominican Church
in Holy Roman Republic, 151, 153, in Antwerp, 87–88
156, 163, 166, 167, 168, 169, 176, in Colmar (Alsace), 182, 189, 200,
177–178 201
Covenanters (England), 343, 360, 362 Donauwörth Affair (1608), 138
Coxe, Leonard, 387 Dordrecht, Synod of (1578), 84
Cracow (Poland), 373, 382, 387, 389, Dordrecht Confession of Mennonites
390, 423–424, 432 (1632), 34, 42
Cranmer, Thomas, 30, 34, 38, 385 Dordrecht (Holland), 53, 84, 104
Crécy (France), 372 Dorren, Gabrielle, 61
Cristuru Secuiesc (Transylvania), 415 Dort, Synod of (1618–19), 27, 29, 64,
Crofton, Zachary, 302–303 109, 350
Cromwell, Henry, 307 Dortmund, Treaty of (1609), 146
Cromwell, Oliver, 8, 289, 295, 297, 299, Drenthe, 108
301, 305, 306, 307, 358, 359, 360 Dublin, 307, 318, 321, 324, 327, 334,
Cromwell, Richard, 306 338, 339
Crouzet, Denis, 212, 213 Duivenvoorde, Hendrika van, 68
Crypto-Calvinists, 192 Dury, John, 359
Crypto-Protestants, 142–143 Dutch Reformed Church, 5, 7, 18, 29,
cuius regio, eius religio, 84, 135, 144, 32, 41, 47, 49, 60, 100, 123, 351. See
147, 217, 317 also Calvinists
Dutch Republic (1581–1795), 15,
Dalhem (States Limburg), 58, 120 91, 109, 126ill. See also Antwerp;
Damville (Henry de Montmorency), Calvinists; Catholics; Low Countries;
249 Lutherans; Spanish Netherlands
Danzig (Poland), 382 biconfessionalism in, 7, 49, 101, 117,
Dávid, Ferenc, 376, 402, 409, 410–412 119, 121–122
Davis, Natalie Z., 212, 271 clandestine churches in, 69–72
The Sacred and the Body Social, 270 coexistence in, 13, 47, 50, 51, 60–61,
De Rijp (Holland), 54 69, 85, 100
Debrecen (Transylvania), 409 conflicts and violence in, 117, 121
Decapolis, 180 and France, 112, 114, 116, 117–118,
Declaratio Ferdinandea, 135, 136 121, 124
Deklarationsschrift (Andreas Sandherr), official church of, 7, 48, 100, 116, 123
185–186, 187, 204 political boundaries, 62–68
Delft (Holland), 53 public worship in, 69–71
484 index

Dutch Republic (cont.) in Holy Roman Empire, 144–145, 167

repression and persecution in, 113 England, 297. See also Catholics;
and Spain, 116, 124, 350 dissenters; Independents;
States-General, 111, 113, 118, 119 Presbyterians; Protestants
toleration in, 18, 61–62, 72, 343, 346, confessional state in, 289, 290, 294,
347, 349–355, 356, 361, 361–364, 295, 311, 314, 344
362, 365 conflicts and violence in, 315
wars, 48, 59, 109, 110–112, 114, 116, freedom of religion in, 295, 296, 297,
353 311, 313
Dutch Revolt (1568–1609), 93, 100, 101, Glorious Revolution (1688), 313
105, 110, 350 government and politics, 289,
294–295, 296, 297, 298–299, 301,
East Frisia (Holy Roman Empire), 370, 309, 311–312
385, 386 legal system, 317, 318, 319
East Indies, 115, 346 multiconfessionalism in, 289,
Eberhard, Winfried 295–296, 304–305, 310, 314
Europa 1400: Die Krise des repression and persecution in,
Spätmittelalters, 376 308–309, 310, 314, 358
Ecclesiastical Reservation, 135, 156, 157, Restoration (1660), 289, 290, 303, 308,
163, 166, 175, 176, 178 310, 317
economy simultanea in, 301–303
confessional coexistence and, 75, 94, toleration in, 306, 309, 311, 313,
96–97 342–364
edicts of pacification, 239, 247–249. wars, 289, 290, 292, 293, 294, 353
See also peace commissioners England, Church of, 8, 215, 289, 295,
Edict of Amboise (1563), 247, 251, 313, 317, 344–345
255, 259 Englands Metamorphosis, or a Dialogue
Edict of January (1962), 247, 251, 266 between London and Amsterdam,
Edict of Longjumeau (1568), 247, 363–364
251n41 Enkhuizen (Holland), 53, 352
Edict of Nantes (1598), 199, 218–223, Ensisheim (Alsace), 180, 182, 189, 190
224, 228, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, entrenched multiconfessional regimes
236, 237 (Holy Roman Empire), 143–144, 179,
Edict of Restitution (1629), 156 190
Edict of Saint Germain (1570), 216, episcopacy, 294, 296, 298, 310
217, 247, 248, 249, 251, 255 Episcopalians/Episcopal Church
Edict of Turda (1568), 376 (Britain), 290, 296, 298, 300, 306, 310,
Reunion of Charges (1692), 197 313–314
Edward VI (King of England, 1547–53), Episcopius, Simon, 362
39, 385, 386 Erasmus, Desiderius, 3, 158, 217, 224,
Edwards, Thomas, 295, 360, 361, 363 383–384, 385, 387, 389, 390
Grangraena, 361 Ernst von Mengersdorf (Prince-Bishop
Eichstätt, Prince-Bishopric of, 156, 168, of Bamberg), 165, 166
170, 171 Essex (England), 308, 318
Eighty Years’ War, 59, 109, 110–112, Eucharist, 1, 36–37, 38, 371, 378, 386,
114, 116 392
Eleven Articles (1559–60), 30, 34 Europa 1400: Die Krise des
Elizabeth I (Queen of England, Spätmittelalters (Winfried Eberhard,
1558–1603), 289, 290, 297, 299, 327 Ferdinand Seibt), 376
Elster, Jon, 257 Evangelicals/Evangelical Church
Emden (East Frisia), 64 in Central Europe, 394
enclaves Bohemia, 395
in Dutch Republic/Low Countries, Transylvania, 398, 399, 400, 401,
65–67, 119 402, 403, 404, 407, 408
 index 485

Evangelicals/Evangelical Church (cont.) repression and persecution in, 210,

in Colmar (Alsace), 184, 185, 189, 211
190, 191, 194, 198, 203 separation of citizenship and religion
in Holy Roman Empire, 10–11, 199, in, 217–218, 219–220, 237
395 toleration in, 214, 343, 346, 347, 348,
351, 356, 357, 358, 362, 365
Family of Love, 103 wars, 102, 154, 212, 218, 220, 222,
Farnese, Alexander, 95, 110 223, 228, 233, 240, 244, 250, 260,
Ferdinand I of Bavaria (Prince-Bishop 261, 265
of Münster), 129–130 Franciscans, 2
Ferdinand I (Holy Roman Emperor in Colmar (Alsace), 181, 202
1558–64), 137n28, 155n2, 159, 385, in Dutch Republic/Low Countries/
396 Spanish Netherlands, 62, 70, 79,
Ferdinand II (Holy Roman Emperor, 87, 120
1619–37), 189, 203 in France, 210
Fidei ratio (Huldrych Zwingli), 24 in Ireland, 322–323
First Confession of Basel (1534), 34 François I (King of France, 1515–47),
First Helvetic Confession (1536), 34, 36 210, 211
Fisher, James, 301 François II (King of France, 1559–60),
Five Mile Act (England, 1665), 319 211
Flacius, Matthias, 79 François, Etienne, 153
Flanders, 55, 81, 82, 105, 110, 111, 116. The unsichtbare Grenze: Protestanten
See also States Flanders und Katholiken in Augsburg, 10
Florence, Council of, 380 Franconia, Prince-Bishopric of, 144,
Foa, Jérémie, 213, 270, 271 155, 161, 167, 168, 171, 172, 173, 174,
forgiveness, politics of, 258–260 175
Forty-Two Articles (1553), 30, 34 Frankfurt an der Oder, 147
Foucault, Michel, 254 Frederick III of Simmern (Elector
Fox, George, 304 Palatinate), 30, 31, 135
Foxe, Paul Frederick V (King of Bohemia,
The Reformation in Poland, 381 1619–20), 173
France. See also Catholics; Colmar; Frederick Augustus I (Elector of Saxony,
Huguenots 1694–1733), 150
access to communal space in, 270–279 Frederick Wilhelm I (King of Prussia,
biconfessionalism in, 101, 217, 223, 1730–40), 152
238, 283, 284 Frederik Hendrik (Stadholder of Dutch
coexistence in, 19, 106, 209, 214, 222, Republic, 1625–47), 100, 110–111,
224–228, 234, 237, 260 114–115, 119, 124, 125
confessional identification in, 17 freedom of conscience, 100, 102–103,
conflicts and violence, 7–8, 154, 209, 216, 223, 407, 408, 443
211, 212–213, 214, 218, 221–222, freedom of religion, 341
229–231, 233–237, 238, 261. in Britain, 289, 295, 296, 297, 298,
See also Saint Bartholomew’s Day 299, 306–307, 313
Massacre in Germany, 106
control of communal space in, in Ireland, 307
270–279 in Low Countries, 83, 84, 85, 91
and Dutch Republic, 114–115, 116, in Poland, 375, 381
117–118, 121, 124 freedom of worship, 82, 109
freedom of conscience in, 216, 223 in Central Europe, 401, 441
government and politics, 13–14, 284 in Dutch Republic, 109, 113–114, 116
legal system, 394, 395 in England, 296, 297, 311
pacification in, 15, 84, 239, 240. in France, 283
See also edicts of pacification; French Confession (1559/71), 28, 29, 30,
Friendship Pacts 34–35, 36, 37, 102n6, 211
486 index

French Reformed Church, 32, 41, 209, Goodwin, John, 344, 346, 347, 351, 353
238. See also Huguenots Gouda (Holland), 52, 70, 71, 104
French Revolution (1789–99), 179, 197, Graft (Holland), 53–54
203 Grand Remonstrance (1641), 294
French Wars of Religion (1562–98), 212, Grangraena (Thomas Edwards), 361, 363
218, 228, 239, 240, 244, 250, 260, 265, Grave (Brabant), 110, 112
383 Great Assembly (1651), 109
Fresne (Normandy, France), 232 Great Yarmouth (England), 305, 309,
Friedenskirchen (peace churches), 149 312
Friendship Pacts (France), 240–247, “Greeks” (Wilno), 423–424, 425, 428,
248–250, 263–264, 268–269 435, 436, 437, 442
Friesland, 51, 53, 60, 67, 107, 108 Greene, Thomas, 26
Fronde (France), 223 Gregorian calender, 185, 200
Fulda (Holy Roman Empire), 144 Greyerz, Kaspar von, 183, 185, 187
funerals (Wilno), 428–429 Groningen (Dutch Republic), 50, 107,
Furly, Benjamin, 349 108
Grotius, Hugo, 350, 362, 390
Gábor Báthory (Prince of Transylvania, guilds
1608–13), 399 in Colmar (Alsace), 180, 182, 183,
Gábor Bethlen (Prince of Transylvania, 189, 194, 196, 199
1613–29), 399, 413 in Ireland, 338
Gallicanism, 215, 223 in Wilno (Lithuania), 424–429, 430
Galway (Ireland), 324, 337 Guise, Duke of, 212, 218
Ganges (France), 226 Gunpowder Plot (1605), 291, 319
gates, town (France), 273, 275–276 Güntzer, Augustin, 188, 190, 192
Gebürg (Holy Roman Empire), 174–175 Gustavus Adolphus (King of Sweden,
Geertz, Clifford, 12 1611–32), 176
Gelderland, 15, 50, 54, 67. See also States Guttenberg-family, 166, 170
Upper Gelderland György I Rákóczi (Prince of
Geleij Katona, István, 414 Transylvania, 1630–48), 413
Gemert (enclave, States Brabant), 66 György II Rákóczi (Prince of
General Baptists (England), 298, 305 Transylvania, 1648–60), 408
Generality Lands (Dutch Republic),
57–59, 66–67, 122 Haag, Imperial County of (Holy Roman
Geneva Confession (1536), 34, 36, 37, 38 Republic), 144
Geneva (Swiss Confederation), 210, 352, Haarlem (Holland), 52, 61, 89, 104, 105,
362, 379 107, 108
George I (King of Great Britain and Habsburg dynasty, 48, 148, 155n2,
Ireland, 1714–27), 315 162n14, 176n69, 371
Germans/German-speakers and Alsace, 180, 183, 188, 189–191,
in Lithuania, 421, 426, 437 193
in Poland, 373 and Hungary, 370, 375, 385
in Transylvania, 397, 398, 400–401, and Ottoman Empire, 375, 397, 404
408 and Transylvania, 395, 400, 416
Germany, 106, 346, 356, 357, 362, 382. Haecht, Godevaert van, 80
See also Holy Roman Empire Haguenau (Alsace), 180, 183, 189, 194
Ghent, Pacification of, 81, 83, 84, 105 Hainaut (Spanish Netherlands), 83, 105,
Ghent (Flanders), 82, 89, 96 107
Gijswijt-Hofstra, Marijke, 65–66 Halberstadt (Holy Roman Empire), 146,
Glorious Revolution (1688), 313 149
God, nature of, 402, 403, 410–411 Hamburg (Holy Roman Empire), 145,
God and the king, 320 151
Golden v Hales (legal case, 1686), 311 Handel, Our Lady of (Gemert), 65, 66,
Goll, Hans, 179, 183, 187, 202 125
 index 487

Hanlon, Gregory, 221 wars, 131, 138, 139, 150, 160, 173,
Hannover (Holy Roman Empire), 150, 176, 178, 189, 405
151 Honter, Johannes, 401
Hartlib Circle, 344 Hooker, Richard, 344
The Heads of the Proposals, 295 Horbourg (Alsace), 182, 183, 186
hedge sermons (Low Countries), 76, 101 Horbourg-Riquewihr (Alsace), 180, 185,
Heidelberg, 151, 187 186, 194, 204
Heidelberg Catechism, 30 Hosius, Stanislaus, 371, 387–389, 390,
Henri II (King of France, 1547–59), 211 391, 392
Henri III (King of France, 1574–89), Confessio Catholicae fidei Christiana,
218, 358 388–389, 392
Henri IV (King of France, 1589–1610), Hotchkiss, Valerie, 4, 27, 29
112, 218, 222, 223, 230, 233, 240, 281, House of Commons (England), 296,
329, 358 297, 308, 309, 344
Henrican Revolution (England), 383 House of Lords (England), 296, 305,
Henrietta Maria (Queen of England, 309, 313
Ireland and Scotland, 1625–49), Hughes, William, 364
292–293 Huguenots (France). See also Saint
Henry Frederick (Prince of Wales), Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
291 access to communal space, 267,
Henslin, Beat, 187 270–279
heresy, 2, 212, 290, 375, 416 carrying of arms by, 220, 223,
placards, 75, 76, 81, 83, 101, 103, 108, 279–282, 281, 283, 284
113 conflicts and violence between
repression of, 56, 75, 105, 294, 400 Catholics and, 6, 209, 211, 212, 213,
trials, 210, 211, 393, 414 218, 221–222, 229–231, 238, 241,
’s-Hertogenbosch (States Brabant), 57, 244, 273
62, 71, 111 legal status of, 236, 237, 394
’s-Hertogenrade (States Limburg), 58, local coexistence with Catholics, 14,
120 224–228, 233–237, 270–271
Hessen-Kassel (Holy Roman Empire), in local government, 220, 221–222,
150 261–262
Hohenzollern dynasty, 175 obedience to Crown, 278, 283, 284
Holland, 99 and pacification, 216, 218–223, 233,
ban on Catholic worship in, 67, 104 234, 235, 239, 240, 259
coexistence in, 51, 52–53, 107 places of worship of, 211, 219, 222,
pacification in, 81, 89, 95, 105, 108 230, 231, 236–237, 255–257, 267,
toleration in, 18, 99, 103, 350 269, 271–279, 284
Holland Mission, 62, 64, 68 toleration of, 348
Holt, Mack, 212 Huizinga, Johan
Holy Roman Empire, 64–65, 217. See Waning of the Middle Ages, 376
also Catholics; Lutherans Hull (England), 303
coexistence in, 19, 106, 130, 131–132 The Humble Petition and Advice (second
conflicts and violence in, 154 constitution of England, 1657), 297,
enclaves in, 144–145 305
ius reformandi in, 131, 134–135 Hungarian-speakers (Transylvania), 397,
legal system, 132, 134, 135, 136, 398, 401, 402, 410
136–137, 138, 394, 395 Hungary, 106, 370, 371, 375, 379, 396,
multiconfessionalism in, 7, 83, 101, 397, 398, 404
131, 154 Hunyadi, Demeter, 412
pacification in, 83. See also Augsburg, Hus, Jan, 1, 3, 377
Peace of; Westphalia, Peace of Hussites/Hussite Church, 1, 2, 370, 371,
politics in, 13, 132, 144 377, 379. See also Utraquists
toleration in, 346 Hutten, Ulrich von, 6
488 index

hybrid multiconfessional regimes (Holy intellectual freedom, 341

Roman Empire), 140–142, 147, 152, Interim of 1548 (Holy Roman Empire),
179, 192, 204 141
intra-confessional disputes, 78–80, 94,
iconoclasm, 3 187, 188, 192
in France, 212, 222, 229, 270 Ireland, 15, 17, 314, 330. See also
in Holy Roman Empire, 185 Catholics; Protestants
in Low Countries, 55, 76, 77, 79, 101, confessional choice in, 325–329
108 confessional state in, 14, 294,
immigrants, 188, 194, 195–196, 198, 422 317–318, 319, 320, 323, 324, 325,
Imperial Aulic Council (Reichshofrat), 337, 338
137n28, 190 conflicts and violence in, 319, 337
Imperial Chamber Court legal system in, 317, 318, 319–320,
(Reichskammergericht), 132, 134, 135, 322, 323, 331–333
136, 138, 148 multiconfessionalism in, 8, 289–290,
Imperial Church, 156, 158, 159, 162, 163 319, 323–325, 329, 335, 338, 339
Imperial cities, 135, 145, 146, 151, 181, parish structure in, 318, 333–334
191, 193, 196, 199 plantation of Ulster, 318, 321, 331
Imperial commissions, 183, 184, 187, repression and persecution in, 310,
189, 204 312
Imperial Diet (Reichstag), 132, 137, 147, social order in, 317, 327, 329, 330,
155, 162 338, 339
Imperial garrison, 190, 191, 193, 203 taxation in, 324
Imperial Knights toleration in, 340
and Catholic League, 156, 157, 171, wars, 320, 321, 330, 331, 335
172–173, 174, 177 Ireland, Church of, 307, 317, 321, 326
ius reformandi for, 13, 161, 166–167, Irish Rebellion (1641), 320, 330, 331,
172, 176 335
protecting Ecclesiastical Reservation, Isabella of Austria (Archduchess), 55,
156, 157, 163, 166, 175, 176 63, 64
and Protestant Union, 171, 172, Israel, Jonathan, 109
173–175, 177, 187 István Báthory (Prince of Transylvania,
recognition of, 156, 158–159, 160, 161 1571–86/King of Poland, 1576–86),
role and position in principalities, 358, 397, 403, 426
157, 158, 161, 163, 164–166, István Bockskai (Prince of Transylvania,
169–170, 176–177, 178 1605–6), 397, 404
role in religious conflicts, 156, 162, Italy, 347, 355, 371, 373
167–168, 174, 176, 178 itio in partes, 148
Independents/Independent Church. See ius reformandi, 148
also Congregationalists for Imperial Knights, 161, 166–167,
in Britain, 296, 297, 305, 306, 307, 172, 176
344, 348, 353, 364 for individual estates of Holy Roman
and Presbyterians, 295, 351 Empire, 131, 134–135, 137, 139,
public roles of, 301, 305, 309 148, 152, 183, 184, 191, 204
in Ireland, 307
places of worship, 301, 309 Jagiellonian dynasty, 371, 372, 375, 385
and toleration, 351, 353, 356, James I (King of England, 1603–25),
360–361, 362–363, 364 327
Indulgence, Declarations of (England, James II (King of England, Scotland
1672/1687), 309, 311, 318 and Ireland, 1685–88), 289, 292, 309,
Institutes of the Christian Religion (John 310–312, 313, 326
Calvin), 210, 382 James VI (King of Scotland, 1567–1625,
The Instrument of Government James I of England after 1603),
(constitution of England), 297, 298, 307 291–292, 293
 index 489

Jan Kazimierz Waza (King of Poland- Jülich-Kleve-Berg, Duchy of, 141–142,

Lithuania, 1648–60), 424 146, 171
János Szapolyai (King of Hungary, Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn (Prince-
1526–40), 396 Bishop of Würzberg), 163, 165, 168,
János Zsigmond Szapolyai (King 174, 175
of Hungary, 1540–70/Prince of Junius, Franciscus, 103, 361
Transylvania, 1570–71), 375, 385, 396,
397, 398, 400, 402, 410 Kampen (Overijssel), 50, 51
Janssen, Geert, 64 Kaplan, Ben, 265
January, Edict of (1562), 247, 251, 266 Karaim (Wilno), 419–420
Jeannin, Pierre, 113 Karaites (Poland), 382
Jerome, Saint, 373, 381 Karl Alexander (Duke of Württemberg,
Jessey, Henry, 359 1733–37), 150
Jesuits, 87 Karl III Philipp (Elector of the
in Alsace, 163–164, 177 Palatinate, 1716–42), 151
Colmar, 189, 193, 200, 201 Karlšteyn Castle (Bohemia), 373
in Dutch Republic/Low Countries/ Kelchbewegung, 371
Spanish Netherlands, 62, 79, 81, Kerry (Ireland), 324, 336
97, 120 Kevelaer, Our Lady of (Cleves), 64, 65,
in France, 227, 230, 232, 237 125
in Ireland, 321, 338 Kiev, 380, 417
in Lithuania, 427 Kiffin, William, 297, 301, 305, 312
in Transylvania, 403–404 Kildare (Ireland), 324, 335, 336
Jews, 346, 357, 362 Kłoczowski, Jerzy, 383
in Central Europe, 379 Knights’ Revolt (1522), 155, 164
Poland, 359, 382 Knox, John, 36
Transylvania, 399–400 Kolenda, Gabriel (Uniate Metropolitan
Wilno (Lithuania), 374, 420, 422, of Rus’, 1653–74), 425
429, 430, 431–433, 439, 440, 442 Konfessionsbildung, 4, 10, 11, 13
in Dutch Republic, 125, 354, 359, 361, Koran, 363
364 Kosman, Marceli, 419n3
in England, 298, 306, 314, 351, 354, Kraichgau (Swabia), 173, 174
359–360 Kronburg, Hartmut von, 164, 170
in France, 440 Kulmbach, Margrave of, 171, 174
in Prussia, 359
in Rome, 84, 106 La Boétie, Étienne de, 215
Johann Georg I (Elector of Saxony, La Guesle, Jehan, 258
1611–56), 138 La Madeleine (peace commissioner),
Johann Gottfried von Aschhausen 248, 261
(Prince-Bishop of Bamberg and La Rochelle (France), 220, 248, 272
Würzburg), 170, 174 Lalaing, George de, 108
Johann Philipp von Schönborn (Prince- Land of Maas and Waal (Gelderland),
Bishop of Würzberg), 170, 176, 178 54
Johann Sigismund (Elector of Languedoc (France), 220
Brandenburg), 147 Laon (France), 282
Johann Wilhelm von Pfalz-Neuburg Laski, Jan. See a Lasco, Johannes
(Elector of the Palatinate), 150, 153 Łaski-family, 389
Johannes Christophe von Westerstetten Latillé (Poitou, France), 235
(Prince-Bishop of Eichstätt), 171 Layrac (Agenais), 221
John of Luxemburg (King of Bohemia, Lectoure (Languedoc, France), 281
1310–46), 372 Lefèbvre d’Étaples, Jacques, 210
Jordan, W.K., 364 Leiden (Holland), 65, 103, 104
Jouanna, Arlette, 239 Leigh, Sir James, 326, 327
Juan of Austria, Don, 81, 84 Leinster (Ireland), 324, 325, 336
490 index

Lenthall, William, 297 Luria, Keith, 271

Leopold Anton von Firmian Luther, Martin, 6, 23, 31, 41, 130, 209,
(Archbishop of Salzburg), 152 377, 388
Lesser Poland, 370, 385 Lutherans/Lutheran Church, 4, 31–32,
Letter of Majesty (Bohemia, 1609), 374 41, 136
Leuven (Brabant), 62 in Colmar (Alsace), 179, 185, 188,
Leveller movement (England), 295, 296, 198, 204
297, 343, 344, 345, 356 in guilds, 196, 199
L’Hospital, Michel de, 214, 215, 217, 224 in local government, 187, 191–192,
Liberty of Conscience Asserted, 346 193–195, 196–197, 200
Liège, Prince-Bishop of, 58, 66, 119 places of worship of, 183, 200, 201,
Limburg, 58–59 202, 203, 205
Limburg Capitulation Treaty, 121 in Central Europe, 377
liminal multiconfessional regimes (Holy Bohemia, 378, 379
Roman Empire), 144–145, 147, 149, Poland, 382, 386
179, 182, 186, 204 Transylvania, 375, 376, 400, 401,
Limoges (France), 229–230, 245 406, 408
Linck von Thurnburg, Sebastian, 179, Wilno (Lithuania), 374, 434, 435,
183, 186, 187, 202–203 437, 438, 441
Lisieux (France), 244, 258 in guilds, 426, 427
Lithuania, 152, 370, 376, 382, 383, 385, in local government, 423
440. See also Wilno places of worship of, 421, 422,
Locke, John, 349, 365 430–431
Lollards, 377 in Dutch Republic/Low Countries/
London, 294, 297, 299, 314, 318, 360, Spanish Netherlands, 66
363, 370, 385, 386 Brabant/States Brabant, 89, 96
places of worship in, 301, 302, 303, Antwerp
310, 311 economic importance of, 75,
Longjumeau, Edict of (1568), 247, 94
251n41 official recognition of, 77–79
Lord’s Supper, 37–38, 79, 185, 302 and pacification, 87, 88, 89
Loriol (France), 282 public worship by, 76, 77, 79,
Lorraine, Charles de, 215 80, 87, 91, 92
Loudon (France), 225, 235 tensions with Calvinists,
Louis XIII (King of France, 1610–43), 79–80, 94
202, 220, 223, 233–234 toleration of, 95–96
Louis XIV (King of France, 1643–1715), Flanders/States Flanders, 96
116–117, 118, 180, 196, 199–202, 223, Holland, 52, 72
237 Limburg/States Limburg, 58, 59
Louis XV (King of France, 1715–74), places of worship, 63–64, 69–70,
198 125
Low Countries. See also Dutch Republic; Utrecht, 53
Spanish Netherlands Woerden, 52, 66n75
confessional arrangements in, 48, 101 in Holy Roman Empire, 141, 143,
Council of State, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 154, 394
88, 106 Imperial Knights, 156, 160, 161,
enclaves in, 65–67 164, 165, 169
political boundaries in, 62–68 places of worship of, 129, 144, 146,
States-General, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 149, 152–153
86, 87, 88, 106, 110 public worship by, 144
toleration in, 105, 348 tensions with Calvinists, 138
Wonderyear, 76–81 Orthodox, 185, 187, 203, 204
Lublin (Poland), 372 Philippist, 185, 203, 204
Luebke, David, 179, 204 Luxemburg dynasty, 371, 372
Łukiszki (Wilno, Lithuania), 419, 434 Lyon, Council of (1245), 380
 index 491

Lyon (France), 215, 249, 253, 258, 260, Maximillian II (Holy Roman Emperor,
261, 270, 271, 274, 279, 280 1564–76), 82, 145, 183, 397
Maximillian of Bavaria (Duke of
Maas Campaign (1632), 111, 115 Bavaria, 1597–1651), 171
Maas and Waal, Land of (Gelderland), Mazarin, Cardinal, 223
67, 71, 100 Meaux (France), 210, 275
Maastricht (Limburg of the States), 58, Mechelen Provincial Council (1607), 55
100, 111, 119–120, 121, 122, 123, Mechelen (Spanish Netherlands), 55,
124 62, 96
MacCulloch, Diarmaid, 370 Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 150
Mâcon (France), 283 meeting houses (Britain), 309, 310, 311,
Magdeburg, 149 313, 314, 315
Magdeburg Law, 423 Melanchton, Philipp, 30–31, 41, 385,
magistrates, 49, 99 389
in Antwerp, 81 Melchior Otto Voit von Salzburg
in Colmar (Alsace), 181, 184–185, (Prince-Bishop of Bamberg), 176
187, 193–194, 196, 197 Melchior Zobel von Giebelstadt (Prince-
in Transylvania, 398, 400 Bishop of Würzberg), 160
in Wilno (Lithuania), 423–425, Méliusz Juhász, Péter, 410, 411
426–427, 429, 442 Melle (France), 225
Magnus, Johann Georg, 185, 186, 187 Melotai Nyilas, István, 413
Maier, Hans Memorandum on the critical state of the
Die Ältere deutsche Staats- Low Countries and the means to cure
und Verwaltungslehre them (William of Orange, 1566), 102
(Polizeiwissenschaft), 254 Mennonites/Mennonite Church, 34, 41
Mainz, Prince-Bishopric of, 156, 158, in Dutch Republic, 48–49, 50, 51,
163, 164, 165, 170 52–54, 58, 59, 69, 70, 72, 100
Marans (France), 232 in Holy Roman Empire, 64, 151
Marcourt, Antoine, 210 Mentzer, Raymond, 246
Margaret of Parma (Governor of merchants, 188, 195, 424
Spanish Netherlands, 1559–67), 76, Mesmes, Jean Jacques de, 258
77, 79, 80, 101 Metz (France), 277–278
Marguerite of Navarre (Queen of Meulan (France), 276
Navarre, 1492–1549), 384 Michal Korybut Wiśniowiecki (King of
Maria Anna of Spain (Infanta of Spain), Poland-Lithuania, 1669–73), 425
291–292 Millau (France), 241, 243, 245, 247, 248,
Marnix of St Aldegonde, Philip of, 95, 261
96, 103 Millenarianism (England), 359, 364
marriage Miłosz, Czesław, 374
of clergy, 377, 378, 388 Milton, John, 347, 349, 356
mixed, 153, 168, 175, 225–226, 290, Minden (Holy Roman Empire), 143,
292–293, 330, 438 146, 149, 151
Marseille (France), 280 Modrevius, Andreas Fricius
Mary II (Queen of England, Scotland Andreae Fricci Secretarii Regii Sylvae
and Ireland, 1689–94), 313 Quattor, 391–392
Mary Tudor (Mary I, Queen of England Commentariorum de Republica
and Ireland, 1553–58), 290 emendanda libri quinque, 390, 391
Maspaurraulte, Pierre de, 253 Lascius sive de poena homicidii oratio
Mass, 319, 333, 335–337, 338 prima, 389–390
Matthias of Arras, 372 Mohács, Battle of, 385
Matthias of Austria (Archduke of Mohyla, Peter, 380–381
Austria, 1608–19), 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, Molyneux, William
89, 90, 96–97, 106, 375 Case of Ireland . . . stated, 320
Maurits of Nassau (Prince of Orange, Monaghan (Ireland), 326, 336, 337, 339
1618–25), 110, 112 Monluc, Jean de, (Bishop, France), 215
492 index

Monmouth Rebellion (1685), 310 Nantes, Edict of (1598), 15, 199,

Montaigne, Michel de, 215, 347 218–223, 224, 228, 231, 232, 233, 234,
Montauban (France), 221, 260 235, 236, 237
Montélimar (France), 228, 248 Nantes (France), 256, 269, 275, 276, 282
Montferrand (France), 244 Nassau, Charlotte of, 229
Mooij, Charles de, 58 nationalism, 369–370
Moravia, 1, 372 Nayler, James, 298, 346
Morocco, 106 Nedham, Marchamont, 354
Moryson, Fynes, 379 Neercassel, Johannes van, 118
mosques (Wilno), 419, 422 neighborhoods (Wilno), 431–435, 438
moyenneurs, 215 neighborliness, 244–245, 337, 433–435
Muir, Edward, 441 Neithard von Thüngen (Prince-Bishop
Mulhouse (Alsace), 190, 191 of Bamberg), 166, 167–168
Müller, E.F. Karl New Model Army (England), 295, 342,
Die Bekenntnisschriften der 353
reformierten Kirche, 27 New Testament, 26, 379
Müller, Hektor, 5 Newcastle (England), 294, 303–304, 312
multiconfessional regimes, 180 Newcomen, Matthew, 345
coequal, 145–146, 147, 149, 151, 179, Nicene Creed, 28, 33, 38, 39–40, 55
196, 204, 205 Nijmegen (Gelderland), 50, 101, 117
concentric, 146–147, 149, 179 Nîmes (France), 221, 226, 227, 243,
entrenched, 143–144, 179, 190 248–249, 261
hybrid, 140–142, 147, 152, 179, 192, Nineteen Propositions (England, 1642),
204 294
liminal, 144–145, 147, 149, 179, 182, Niort (Poitou, France), 226, 232,
186, 204 233–234, 236–237
subcutaneous, 142–143, 152, 179, 191, Nivernais (France), 281
204 nobility
multiconfessional states, 14, 289, 317, in Central Europe, 374, 375, 382, 394,
375, 394–395, 396, 416 398, 400, 404, 408, 440
multiconfessionalism. See also in France, 211
biconfessionalism; coexistence, in Germany, 155, 158, 162–163. See
confessional; toleration also Imperial Knights
in Antwerp, 76–81 “Nürnberg Standstill”, 134
in Britain, 289–290, 295–296, Nyons (France), 225
304–305, 310, 314
in Central Europe, 370, 374, 375, 379, oaths, 242, 243, 246, 248
382, 384, 399, 403, 405, 416–417, Occasional Conformity (England),
442 314–315
definition of, 7, 100 Oecolampadius, Johannes, 6, 385
Ireland, 289–290, 319, 323–325, 329, Oirschot (States Brabant), 64
335, 338, 339 Old Testament, 26, 343, 412
Münster, Prince-Bishop of, 117, Oldenburg, Anna von (Regent of East
129–130, 145 Frisia, 1540–61), 385
Münster, Sebastian Oosterweel (Brabant), 80
Cosmographia, 376 Oppenheim (Rhineland), 149, 153
Münster, Treaty of (1648), 48, 57, 59, 67 Orange, House of, 66–67. See also
Munster (Ireland), 321, 324 William of Orange
Muscovy, 380 Orange (France), 228
Muslims, 8, 440 Orléans (France), 249, 270, 275, 280,
Myron, Gabriel, 253 282
Ormond, Duke of (James Butler), 307,
Namur (Spanish Netherlands), 118 323
Nant (France), 241, 247 Ortenburg, Imperial County of, 144
 index 493

Orthodox/Orthodox Church, 372, 378, in France, 240–245, 250, 258–263,

380–381, 382 265, 266, 269–270, 284. See also
in Wilno (Lithuania), 392, 417, edicts of pacification; Friendship
421–422, 423, 425, 430, 435, Pacts
436–437, 438, 439, 441 peace commissioners (France), 224, 232,
in Ruthenia, 379–381, 417, 442 239–240, 248–249, 250–251, 257, 265
in Transylvania, 399, 405 general assemblies, 253–254, 255,
Ortlieb, Conrad, 190, 193 258–259, 261, 274
Orzechowski, Stanislaw, 377 overview of, 252–253
Osnabrück, Prince-Bishopric of, politics of forgiveness, 258–260
129–130, 152–153 selection and role of, 250–251, 263
Ossoliński, Jerzy (Crown Under- peace treaties. See under place name of
Chancellor of Poland), 434 treaty
Ottoman Empire, 106, 137, 346, 347, Pelagianism, 390
375, 396, 397, 400, 404, 416 Pelikan, Jaroslav, 4, 27, 29
oubliance, 221, 222 penal laws (Britain), 309, 311, 312, 319
Outer Austria, 180, 184, 189 persecution, 84, 139
Overijssel, 50, 51, 108 in Britain, 289, 290, 291, 300, 307,
Overmaas, Lands of (States Limburg), 308–309, 310, 311
58, 59, 100, 119, 120–121, 122, 123, in France, 216, 234
125 in Transylvania, 393
Overton, Richard, 345, 349, 365 Perth, Articles of (1618), 293
Oxford (England), 298, 312, 314 Peter, Hugh, 349, 353
Peter Waldo, 1, 3
Pacification of Ghent (1576), 81, 83, 84, petitions, 253–254, 255
105, 107, 110 Petty, William, 322, 329
Packer, Major-General, 346–347 Pfalz-Neuburg, 150
Paderborn (Holy Roman Empire), 144 Pfalz-Sulzbach, 150
Padua (Italy), 374, 377, 384, 387 Philip II (King of Spain, 1556–98), 77,
Pagans/Paganism (Lithuania), 376, 383, 101, 103, 104, 109
417 Philip III (King of Spain and Portugal,
pamphlet literature, 6, 113, 116, 137, 1598–1621), 109
192, 255, 343, 345, 363, 437, 439 Piast dynasty, 371
Papal States, 106 Piers, Sir Henry, 326, 327
Papists, 255, 291, 408 pilgrimage (Low Countries), 63, 65, 71,
Paris, 213, 219, 227, 229, 267, 357, 384 125
Paris, Parlement of, 210, 216, 217 pillarization (Dutch Republic), 60
parish structure, 333–334 Plunkett, Oliver (Archbishop of
Parker, Charles, 18, 63 Armagh), 310
Parlementarians (England), 344 Pociej, Hipacy (Uniate Metropolitan of
Parliament (England), 294–295, 296, Rus’, 1599–1613), 436
297, 298, 309 Poissy, Colloquy of (1561), 211, 214, 216
Parthenay (France), 230–231 Poitiers (France), 230, 274
Particular Baptists (England), 297, 305 Poland, 106, 370, 371, 375, 377, 379, 382
Partition Treaty (Dutch Republic/Spain, freedom of religion in, 83, 381
1661), 120, 121 legal system, 390
Partium countries (Hungary), 395, 397, major Reformers in, 384–392
398, 401 multiconfessionalism in, 383, 384
Passau, Peace of (1552), 167 toleration in, 346, 347, 349, 351, 356,
peace, religious, 214 358, 359, 362, 375, 381, 442
in Britain, 312, 335 Poland-Lithuania, 19, 382, 394
in Dutch Republic/Low Countries/ polarization
Spanish Netherlands, 82–95, 97, in Dutch Republic, 90, 93, 97, 108, 124
105–108, 109 in Holy Roman Empire, 138, 178
494 index

Poles/Polish-speakers (Wilno), 423, 426, in Holy Roman Empire, 138, 145,

443 150, 185, 200
Polish Diet, 375 in Wilno (Lithuania), 427, 428
political fragmentation, 4–5, 7, 8, 28, Profession of Faith, 28, 33, 39–40, 55
144, 374, 382 Protestant Coup (Lyon, 1562), 270
politics Protestant Union (Holy Roman
of confession, 13 Empire), 171, 172, 173–175, 177, 178
and confessional choice, 10, 329, 338 Protestants/Protestant Church, 390.
conflicting with religion, 3, 81, 93, 94, See also Calvinists; Evangelicals;
96, 260 Lutherans
intertwining with religion, 76–80, 383 in Britain, 290, 307, 309, 313, 319,
Politiques, 218 342–356, 385, 386
Pollmann, Judith, 61, 341 in Central Europe, 392
Pont-Saint-Esprit (France), 249 Bohemia, 317, 374–376
Pot de Chemault (peace commissioner), Lithuania, 152, 376, 427, 436
261 Poland, 370, 375, 382, 386
Prague, 372–373, 378 Transylvania, 375, 399, 400, 401,
Prague, Peace of (1635), 146 408, 409
prayer-book, English, 293, 295, 296, 306 conversion to Catholicism, 156
preaching, 76–77, 79, 86, 101 in Dutch Republic/Low Countries/
Přemysl dynasty, 371, 372, 373 Spanish Netherlands, 63–64, 101
Presbyterians/Presbyterian Church, 29, Brabant, 80, 105
351, 353, 361, 362 Flanders, 56, 105
in Dutch Republic, 352, 360, 363 Gelderland/States Upper
in England, 293, 295, 296, 297, 304, Gelderland, 101, 122, 123
345, 348, 358, 360 Utrecht, 101
places of worship of, 298, 302, 303, Walloon provinces, 105
309 in France. See Huguenots
in Ireland, 307, 314, 318, 322, 323, in Holy Roman Empire, 132, 139,
327, 334, 337, 339 142–143, 144, 145–146, 149, 150,
in Scotland, 290, 293, 294, 307, 310, 152, 153, 154, 389
311, 313, 347, 360 in Ireland, 307, 318–319, 322, 323,
prince-bishoprics (Holy Roman 324, 327, 328, 330, 331, 332,
Empire), 131, 134–135, 137, 139, 148, 335–337, 336–337, 338
152 in Switzerland, 362
princes, 149–150, 155, 156, 158, 160, “Protesters” (Presbyterians), 306, 310
162, 171 Prynne, William, 360, 364
principalities, ecclesiastical, 157, 158, public worship, 86, 99. See also
161, 162, 163, 164–166, 169–170, 175, preaching; worship, places of
176–177 in Dutch Republic, 69–71, 82, 103,
Prinsenhage (enclave, States Brabant), 107, 118
66–67 in England, 295, 309
printing press, 27–28, 327 in France, 219, 231, 283
private worship, 99 in Holy Roman Empire, 148, 151, 179
in Dutch Republic/Low Countries/ in Transylvania, 407, 408, 416
Spanish Netherlands, 69–72, 100, in Wilno (Lithuania), 421, 422, 441
114, 116, 119 Puritan Revolution, 342
in France, 271–272 Puritans, 52, 345, 348, 352, 359, 360,
in Holy Roman Empire, 148, 189, 364, 370
200 Pütter, Johann Stephan, 150
in Wilno (Lithuania), 441
processions Quakers (Britain), 297, 298, 299–300,
in Antwerp, 90, 91, 92 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 311,
in France, 211, 222, 229, 233, 258, 271 334, 346
 index 495

Quelain, Michel, 253 Reuil, Treaty of (1635), 192, 202

Quincieu (peace commissioner), 258 Reunion of Charges (1692), 197
Rhegius, Urbanus, 6
Ravensburg (Holy Roman Empire), 149 Rhineland, 144, 155, 172, 173, 188
Ravenstein, Land of (enclave, States Rhön-Werra (Holy Roman Empire),
Brabant), 66 174–175
Rawls, John, 354 Richelieu, Cardinal, 114, 221, 235
Reformation, 1–3, 4, 19, 155, 158, 377. Rijswijk, Treaty of (1697), 118, 150
See also Counter-Reformation Riquewihr (Alsace), 183, 190
in Central Europe, 370 Roberts, Penny, 216, 218
in Colmar (Alsace), 179, 182, Robinson, Henry, 344, 346, 347, 348,
183–189, 191–194, 200, 202, 203 349, 350, 354, 355, 365
in Poland, 381–384 Rochester, Earl of, 312
Reformed Church, 29, 30, 32, 148. Roermond (States Upper Gelderland),
See also Calvinists; Evangelicals; 62, 111, 122
Huguenots; Lutherans Rohan conflicts, 220, 223
in Central Europe, 29, 386, 394 Rohdewald, Stefan, 442
in Dutch Republic, 5, 7, 18, 29, 32, 41, Roman Catholics. See Catholics
47, 49, 60, 100, 123, 351 “Romans” (Wilno), 423–424, 425, 428,
in France, 32, 41, 238 435, 442
in Holy Roman Empire, 395 Rome, 84, 141, 162, 215, 380, 391, 421
in Transylvania, 398, 399, 401, 402, Root and Branch petition (1640), 294
403, 404, 405, 407, 408–409, 410, Rotenhan, Hans Sebastian von, 175–176
414–415, 416 Rotterdam (Holland), 52
Regensburg, Prince-Bishopric of, Rubys, Claude de, 258
145–146, 151, 162n14 Rudolf II (Holy Roman Emperor,
Reichshofrat (Imperial Aulic Council), 1576–1612), 82, 145, 375, 397, 404
137n28, 190 Rueil, Treaty of (1635), 192, 202
Reichskammergericht (Imperial Chamber Ruthenia, 372, 379–381, 442–443
Court), 132, 134, 135, 136, 138, 148 Ruthenians (Wilno), 374, 417, 421–422,
Reichstag (Imperial Diet), 132, 137, 147, 423, 426, 430, 431, 433, 436
155, 162 Rutherford, Samuel, 360, 362
Reinhard, Wolfgang, 9, 10, 25 A Free Disputation against Pretended
“Religionsfried”, 82, 83n23 Liberty of Conscience, 343
religious freedom. See freedom of
religion Sabbatarians, 379, 412–414
Religious Peaces of 1578/79 (Antwerp), Sacheverell, Henry, 315
83–89, 90–95, 91, 92, 97, 105–108, Sacramental Test (Ireland, 1704), 320
109 sacraments, 37–38, 401, 403, 413
Remonstrant Brotherhood (Dutch Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
Republic), 50, 52, 64, 68, 69, 350 (1572), 212, 213, 218, 229, 241, 244,
Rennes (France), 222 247, 258, 273, 284
repression Saint Germain (1570), Edict of, 216,
in Britain, 308–309, 310, 313 217, 247, 248, 249, 251, 255
in Dutch Republic/Low Countries/ St. Martin’s (Colmar), 182, 183,
Spanish Netherlands, 75, 80, 121, 184–185, 191, 195, 200, 202
350, 363 St. Peter’s (Colmar), 181–182, 185, 195,
in France, 210, 211, 238 200
in Holy Roman Empire, 142 St. Vitus Cathedral (Prague), 372
Rescius, Stanislaus, 387 Saint-Affrique (France), 241, 243, 247
“Resolutioners” (Presbyterians), 306, 307 Saint-Laurent-des-Arbres (France), 225,
Restitution, Edict of (1629), 156 245
Restoration (England, 1660), 8, 289, 290, Saint-Maixent (Poitou, France),
303, 308, 310, 317 32–233, 234, 259
496 index

Salzburg, 152 Siegen (Holy Roman Empire), 150

Samosatenians, 409, 413. See also Sigismund II Augustus (King of Poland,
Unitarians 1548–72), 375, 382, 389, 391
Sandherr, Andreas Sigismund the Old (King of Poland,
Deklarationsschrift, 185–186, 187, 204 1506–48), 382, 384, 385, 387, 390
Sandherr, Niclaus, 190, 191, 193 Silesia, Duchy of, 144
Sandomierz Consensus (1570), 386 Simpson, John, 302–303
Sandomierz (Poland), 372 simultanea (sharing of sacred spaces)
Sandys, Edwin, 382 in Alsace, 202
Sattler, Michael, 41 in Dutch Republic/Low Countries/
Saumur (France), 227 Spanish Netherlands, 59, 88, 121,
Saxon visitation (1526), 140–141 122
Saxony, 150, 401, 406 in England, 301–303
Scherpenheuvel (Brabant), 63 in Holy Roman Empire, 146, 150,
Schilling, Anton, 7 153, 205
Schilling, Heinz, 9, 10, 25 in Transylvania, 406–407, 415
Schindling, Anton, 146–147 Six Articles (1543), 30, 34
Schism Act (1714), 315 Sixty-Seven Articles (1523), 24, 27, 30, 42
Schleitheim Confession (1527), 29, 33, Sneek (Friesland), 53
34, 35, 41 social order (Ireland), 317, 327, 329,
Schmidt, Johannes, 191, 192 330, 338, 339
Schott, Anton, 190, 191 Socinians, 314, 362, 409. See also
schuilkerken (clandestine churches, Unitarians
Dutch Republic), 69–72, 100, 125 Solemn League and Convenant
Schwabach Articles (1529), 30 (England, 1644), 294, 306, 351
Scotland, 293, 317. See also Sorbonne (Paris), 209, 210
Presbyterians South Holland, Reformed Synod of,
episcopacy in, 290, 313 106
multiconfessionalism in, 8, 289–290 Southern, Richard, 2
religious freedom in, 306–307 Southwark (England), 301, 303
repression and persecution in, 310 Spain, 292
Scotland and England, Union of (1707), peace with Dutch Republic, 105, 109,
313 116
Scots Confession (1560), 28, 30, 32, 34, toleration in, 347, 355
36, 37–38 wars, 110–112, 114, 116, 124, 290,
Sea Beggars (Dutch Republic), 103, 104 350, 357
Second Helvetic Confession (1566, Spanish Inquisition, 76, 358
Heinrich Bullinger), 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, Spanish Netherlands (1549–1713),
35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 42, 409 62–68. See also Dutch Republic; Low
Seibt, Ferdinand Countries
Europa 1400: Die Krise des confessional coexistence in, 54–57
Spätmittelalters, 376 war with Dutch Republic, 48, 55
separatists (England), 295, 297, Speyer (Holy Roman Republic), 156, 174
298, 299, 300, 301, 348. See also Spicer, Andrew, 270, 271
Congregationalists; Independents Spiritual Virgins (Geestelijke Maagden),
Serinus, Christian, 185, 187 71
Sharp, James (Archbishop of St. Stancaro, Francesco, 409
Andrews), 310 States Brabant (Generality Lands),
Shaw, John, 303 57–58, 63–64, 66–67, 83, 85, 86, 88.
shooting companies (Antwerp), 81, 86, See also Antwerp; Brabant
91 States Flanders (Generality Lands), 57,
shrines (Low Countries), 63, 65, 71 123
Sibiu (Transylvania), 401 States Limburg (Generality Lands),
Sickingen, Franz von, 155, 164 58–59
 index 497

States Upper Gelderland (Generality Thin, Floris, 108

Lands), 59, 100, 119, 122–123, 124, Thirteen Articles (1538), 30, 34
125. See also Gelderland Thirty Years’ War, 131, 138, 139, 160,
States-General (Dutch Republic), 111, 173, 176, 178, 189, 405
113, 118, 119 Thirty-Nine Articles of England (1563),
States-General (Low Countries), 78, 81, 28, 30, 32, 33, 34, 38–39, 42
82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 106, 108, Thompson, Humphrey, 339
110 Tielt (Flanders), 55, 56
Steigerwald (Holy Roman Empire), toleration, 17–19, 65, 99–100, 341,
174–175 343. See also biconfessionalism;
Stevensweert (States Upper Gelderland), multiconfessionalism
122 in Bohemia, 374–375
Stewart, Adam, 346 de facto by connivance, 96, 100, 104,
Stralen, Jan van, 86, 88 109, 144, 295
Strasbourg (Alsace), 185, 186, 190, 191, de jure, 100, 109, 122, 295
196 Declaratio Ferdinandea, 135, 136
Stubbe, Henry, 364 in Dutch Republic/Low Countries/
subcutaneous multiconfessional regimes Spanish Netherlands, 47–48, 61–62,
(Holy Roman Empire), 142–143, 152, 69, 72, 95–96, 109, 122, 342–355,
179, 191, 204 356, 361–364, 365
“Submissions-Agnitions-Rezeβ” (1615), in England, 285, 291, 297, 306, 309,
171 311, 313
Sully (Maximilien de Béthune), 233 tolerationists and anti-
Sunderland, Earl of, 312 tolerationists, 342–359, 360–364
Swabia, 144, 149, 155, 161, 172, 173, in France, 113, 214, 266, 343, 346,
174 348, 351, 356, 357, 358, 362, 365
Sweden, 176, 178, 190 in Holy Roman Empire, 144, 154,
rule of Colmar, 191, 192, 193, 200, 346, 347, 357, 362
202, 203, 204 in Ireland, 310, 340
Swiss Confederation, 8–9, 114, 187, 188, in Lithuania, 419, 439, 441
195, 198, 346, 356–357 in Ottoman Empire, 346, 347
synagogues, 84, 106, 125, 420, 422 in Poland, 346, 347, 349, 351, 356,
Szeklers (Transylvania), 398, 413 358, 362, 375, 381, 442
in Spain, 347
Tallon, Alain, 215 in Swiss Confederation, 346, 356–357,
Tambonneau, Jehan de, 248 362
Tatars, 374, 382, 419, 422, 431, 434, 440, in Transylvania, 349
441, 442 in Turkey, 362
taxation Toleration Bill (1689), 313
in Britain, 315, 324 Tomicki, Piotr (Bishop of Cracow),
in Colmar (Alsace), 184, 188–189, 387
191, 194, 195, 198, 201 Torgau Articles (1530), 30
in Transylvania, 403 Tories (England), 289, 309, 311, 314,
Taylor, Jeremy, 348 315
temples (Huguenots), 219, 222, 230, 231, Toulon (France), 280
236–237 Toulouse, Parlement of, 227, 282–283
Ten Commandments, 23 Tournai (Spanish Netherlands), 119
Test Act (Scotland, 1681), 310 Tours (France), 255, 274, 280
Test Acts (England, 1673/1678), 309, Trakai (Troki, Lithuania), 382, 420
311, 319 Transylvania, 15
Tetrapolitan Confession (1530), 27, 29, coexistence in, 19, 401
32, 34 doctrinal innovation in, 402, 403, 404,
Teuschnitz (Holy Roman Empire), 169, 412, 413
170 international position of, 416
498 index

Transylvania (cont.) Utraquists/Utraquist Church, 377,

invasion by Ottomans and Habsburgs, 378–379. See also Hussites
397, 400 in Bohemia, 371, 378, 395
legal system, 400, 401, 402–403, 404, in Poland, 382
408–409, 413 Utrecht, Union of (1579), 92, 100, 108
multiconfessionalism in, 375, 396, Utrecht (city), 53, 65, 67, 68, 101, 108,
399, 403, 405, 408, 415–416 117, 350, 360
“nations/received religions” of, 398, Utrecht (province), 51, 53, 67, 108, 118
399, 404, 413, 416
politics in, 14, 397, 398, 403, 404 Va’ad (Council of the Chief
public worship in, 407, 408, 416 Communities, Wilno), 432
repression and persecution in, 414 Vaals (States Limburg), 59n49, 121, 122
simultanea in, 406–407, 415 Valkenburg (States Limburg), 58, 120
taxation in, 403 Valkenisse, Maria Margaretha van,
toleration in, 349 62–63
Trent, Council of, 33, 39, 41, 55, 137, Vane, Sir Henry, 344, 347
162, 163, 388, 390, 391 Vassy (France), 211
triconfessionalism, 130n4, 135, 146, 147, Venclova, Tomas, 374
153 Venlo (States Upper Gelderland), 111,
Tridentine Profession of Faith (1564), 30, 122, 123
42, 55, 97, 162 Verhult, Adam, 90
Trier, Archbishop of, 155, 156, 158 Vernon, John, 354
Trinity, 402, 409–410, 411 verzuiling (pillarization), 60
Troyes (France), 260, 276 Vieilleville, Marshal of, 248
Turda, Edict of (1568), 376 Vienna, 145, 371, 377, 388
Turkey, 347, 362 Vienna, Peace of (1660), 397
Turks, 346, 357, 361, 370, 385 Vienne (France), 228, 261
Twelve-Years Truce (1609–12), 57 Villars, Marquess of, 248
Villiers, Pierre Loyseleur de, 106
Ubachs, P.J.H., 58, 89 Vilnius. See Wilno
Uden (Land of Ravenstein), 66, 125 Vio, Giacomo de, 6
Ulm (Holy Roman Empire)106, 443 Viole, Jacques, 258
Ulster (Ireland), 307, 310, 314, 322, 323, violence, 3, 393. See also Saint
324, 325, 333, 336, 337 Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
plantation of, 318, 321, 331, 332 in Britain, 315, 319, 337
Uniates/Uniate Church in Dutch Republic/Low Countries/
in Ruthenia, 379–380, 442 Spanish Netherlands, 90, 91, 105,
in Wilno (Lithuania), 421–422, 423, 108, 117, 121, 124
424, 430, 435, 436–437, 438, 441 in France, 209, 211, 212–213, 218,
Uniformity Acts (England, Ireland), 317 221–222, 229–231, 238
Unitarians/Unitarian Church in Holy Roman Empire, 150, 152
in England, 306, 314 in Lithuania, 439–440
in Hungary, 371, 379 in Transylvania, 406
in Poland, 371, 379, 381, 382 Vitré (Brittanny, France), 222, 227
in Transylvania, 375, 376, 394, 396, Voetius, Gisbertus, 361
398, 402, 403, 404, 405, 407, Volkland, Frauke, 11–12
409–415, 416 Voltaire, 341
United Provinces. See Dutch Republic On Toleration, 154
Upper Gelderland, States (Generality Vosmeer, Sasbout, 64, 68
Lands), 59, 100, 119, 122–123, 124,
125. See also Gelderland Waldensian movement, 1, 2, 377
Upper Lusatia, Margraviate of, 146 Wales, 305, 308
Urban VI, Pope, 376 “walking out” (Auslaufen), 145, 441
 index 499

Wallonia (Spanish Netherlands), 89, and Accord of 2 September 1566,

105, 110 77–79, 101, 104
Walsham, Alexandra, 341n2 Memorandum on the critical state of
Walwyn, William, 343, 344, 347, 353 the Low Countries and the means to
A New Petition of the Papists, 356 cure them (1566), 102
Warmia (Poland), 388 and Religious Peaces of 1578/1579,
wars, 3, 102, 393 83, 84, 87, 89, 92, 105–108, 109
Anglo-Dutch War (1652–54), 353 supporting biconfessionalism, 100,
Anglo-French War (1627–29), 293, 102–103, 124
295 Williams, George H., 4
Anglo-Spanish Wars (1585–1604/ Williams, Roger, 344, 345, 346, 347,
1625–30), 290, 292 349–350, 352, 353, 365
Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648), 59, The Bloudy Tenent Yet More Bloudy,
109, 110–112, 114, 116 350–351
English Civil War (1642–51), 289, 294 The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, 342
French Wars of Religion (1562–98), wills, 339, 436–438
212, 218, 228, 239, 240, 244, 250, Wilno (Vilnius, Lithuania), 15, 16, 17,
260, 265, 383 370, 374, 387, 392, 418ill.
German Peasants War (1524–26), 383 churches in, 421, 428, 429, 436, 437
Great Northern War (1700–21), coexistence in, 441
422n9 guilds, 424–429, 430
Irish Rebellion (1641–42), 320, 330, legal system, 423, 440–441
331, 335 local government and politics, 14,
Nine Years’ War (1688–97), 150 423–424
Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), 131, multiconfessionalism in, 417, 442
138, 139, 160, 173, 176, 189, 405 neighborhoods, 431–435, 438
War of the Spanish Succession public worship in, 421, 422, 441
(1701–14), 122 toleration in, 419, 439, 441, 443
Warsaw Confederation, 375 violence in, 439–440
Waterford (Ireland), 324, 336 Wingens, Marc, 62, 65
Weber, Max, 19 Wittenberg (Holy Roman Empire), 141,
Weesp (Holland), 53 377, 389
Wesel (Holy Roman Republic), 64, 72, Władysław IV Waza (King of Poland-
141 Lithuania, 1632–48), 430, 437
Westminster Assembly, 295 Władysław Jagiełło (King of Poland,
Westminster Confession (1647), 28, 34, 1386–1434), 372, 419n3
42 Woerden (Utrecht), 52, 66n75
Westphalia, Peace of (1648), 32, 119, Wolfgang Wilhelm (Count Palatine of
131, 147, 149, 150, 153, 154, 176, 192, Neuburg and Duke of Jülich/Berg),
199, 203, 204 171, 172
normative year (1624), 148, 152, 193 women, 62–63, 67–68
Westphalia (Holy Roman Empire), Wonderyear (1566–67), 76–81
162–163 Worms (Holy Roman Empire), 106, 156
Wetzlar (Holy Roman Empire), 146 worship, freedom of. See freedom of
Wexford (Ireland), 327, 336 worship
White Mountain, Battle of (1620), 173 worship, places of. See also churches;
Whitehall Conference (1655), 360 simultanea
Whitehall Debates (1648), 342, 353 in Britain, 299, 300, 301, 314
Wied, Hermann von, 385 in France, 267, 271–279, 283, 284
Wijk aan Zee (Holland), 53 in Lithuania, 441
William III (King of England), 289, 313 in Transylvania, 406–407
William of Orange (Prince of Orange, Württemberg, 150, 180, 182, 185, 186
1544–84), 13, 80, 81, 82, 90 Würzburg, Hans Veit von, 168–169, 175
500 index

Würzburg, Prince-Bishopric of, 149, Zsigmond Báthory (Prince of

156, 163, 167, 168, 172 Transylvania, 1581/86–98), 397, 403,
Würzburg-family, 169, 170 404
Zwingli, Huldrych, 385
Xanten, Treaty of (1614), 146 Fidei ratio, 24
Sixty-Seven Articles, 24, 27, 30, 43
Ypres (Spanish Netherlands), 118 Zygmunt II August (King of Poland-
Lithuania, 1548–72), 425
Zeeden, Ernst Walter, 4, 10 Zygmunt III Waza (King of Poland-
Die Entstehung der Konfessionen, 25 Lithuania, 1587–1632), 420
Zeeland (Dutch Republic), 50, 54, 81,
85, 89, 95, 103, 105, 107, 108, 109