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The Construction of Confessional Identities in Eighteenth-Century Germany*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Dominique Julia
Dominique Julia*
Affiliation:
Centre de recherches historiques Centre d’anthropologie religieuse européenne
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Abstract

Christophe Duhamelle’s La frontière au village. Une identité catholique allemande au temps des Lumières is part of the rich field of studies devoted to confessionalization in the Holy Roman Empire. The book is, however, innovative on at least three levels. First, it moves away from macrohistorical perspectives favoring an overarching point of view, instead analyzing confessional identity as an interaction and constant tension between attempts at standardization imposed from above and appropriations by communities themselves. Its guiding thread is not the confessional norm, but an exploration of the different ways that individuals establish a sense of membership within a community. Discontinuities and areas of uncertainty persist along the frontiers between Catholics and Lutherans, and confessional identity is characterized by its specular nature, feeding off of what it borrows from its opponents. Second, Duhamelle’s study focuses on the second half of the eighteenth century, in contrast to other studies predominantly dealing with the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Lastly, Eischsfeld, an exclave of the Archbishopric-Electorate of Mainz, was a rural territory, while most studies have essentially been devoted to towns.

Type
Identities
Information
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , Volume 68 , Issue 4 , December 2013 , pp. 797 - 808
Copyright
Copyright © Les Éditions de l’EHESS 2013

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Footnotes

*

On DuhamelleChristophe, La frontière au village. Une identité catholique au temps des Lumières (Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 2010), 325 pages with 6 maps. The work also contains a precise glossary (pp. 301-20) giving definitions of the technical terms needed to understand the situation in the Holy Roman Empire. It is organized into several major sections, and is an extremely useful tool.

References

1. See, however, François, Étienne, Protestants et catholiques en Allemagne. Identités et pluralisme, Augsbourg, 1648-1806 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1993)Google Scholar.

2. Other studies focusing on the rural world include: Marc R. Forster, The Counter-Reformation in the Villages: Religion and Reform in the Bishopric of Speyer, 1560-1720 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992); Heinrich Richard Schmidt, Dorf und Religion. Reformierte Sittenzucht in Berner Landgemeinden der Frühen Neuzeit (Stuttgart: G. Fischer, 1995); Holzem, Andreas, Religion und Lebensformen. Katholische Konfessionalisierung im Sendgericht des Fürstbistums Münster, 1570-1800 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2000)Google Scholar, particularly pp. 285-454.

3. See, for instance: Moeller, Bernd, Imperial Cities and the Reformation: Three Essays, trans. Midelfort, H. C. Erik and Edwards, Mark U. Jr. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972)Google Scholar; Gérald Chaix, “De la cité chrétienne à la métropole catholique: vie religieuse et conscience civique à Cologne au XVIe siècle,” 3 vols. (Professorial thesis, Université de Strasbourg, 1994).

4. Zeeden, Ernst Walter, Die Entstehung der Konfessionen. Grundlagen und Formen der Konfessionsbildung im Zeitalter der Glaubenskämpfe (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1965)Google Scholar; Zeeden, , Konfessionsbildung. Studien zur Reformation, Gegenreformation und Katholischen Reform (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1985)Google Scholar.

5. Schilling, Heinz, “Die Konfessionalisierung im Reich. Religiöser und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Deutschland zwischen 1555 und 1620,” in Ausgewählte Abhandlungen zur europäischen Reformations- und Konfessionsgeschichte, ed. Schom-Schütte, Luise and Mörke, Oplaf (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2002), 504–40 Google Scholar. See also all of Schilling’s articles republished in the final section of this volume: “Konfessionalisierung und nationale Identitäten,” 433-699, especially “Das konfessionelle Europa. Die Konfessionalisierung der europäischen Länder seit Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts und ihre Folgen für Kirche, Staat, Gesellschaft und Kultur,” at 646-99.

6. A bibliography of his works (up to 1998) was published in Reinhard, Wolfgang, Papauté, confessions, modernité, ed. Descimon, Robert (Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 1998), 239–51 Google Scholar. Chapter 7 of this book is a translation into French of Reinhard’s fundamental article “Gegenreformation als Modernisierung? Prolegomena zu einer Theorie des konfessionellen Zeitalters,” which first appeared in Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 68 (1977): 226-52. A bibliography up to 2005 may be found on the website of the Lehrstuhl für Neuere Geschichte at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau.

7. For discussion of the paradigm of confessionalization in the French-language historiography, see Chaix, Gérald, “La ‘confessionnalisation’. Note critique,” Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire du protestantisme français 148 (2002): 851–65 Google Scholar. See also: “La confessionnalisation dans le Saint-Empire, XVIe-XVIIIe siècles,” special issue, Études germaniques 57,

8. For discussion of the relationship between confession and territory, see Schindling, Anton and Ziegler, Walter, eds., Die Territorien des Reichs im Zeitalter der Reformation und Konfessionalisierung. Land und Konfession, 1500-1650, 7 vols. (Münster: Aschendorff, 1989-1997)Google Scholar.

9. See, for instance, the criticisms put forward by Greyerz, Kaspar von, Religion und Kultur. Europa 1500-1800 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 65-89 and 94–110 Google Scholar.

10. See Forclaz, Bertrand, ed., L’expérience de la différence religieuse dans l’Europe moderne, XVIe-XVIIIe siècles (Neuchâtel: Éd. Alphil, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, particularly the chapters by Frijhoff, Willem, “Chrétienté, christianismes ou communautés chrétiennes? Jalons pour la perception de l’expérience d’unité, de division et d’identité de l’Europe chrétienne à l’époque moderne,” at 17-43, and Mathilde Monge, “Dans la couronne d’épines...: communautés et individus à Cologne (v.1550-v.1615),” at 117–36 Google Scholar.

11. For France, see Nordman, Daniel, Frontières de France. De l’espace au territoire, XVIe-XIXe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1998)Google Scholar. The literature for the Holy Roman Empire is extensive, but reference must be made at least to the inventive book by Motsch, Christoph, Grenzgesellschaft und frühmoderner Staat. Die Starostei Draheim zwischen Hinterpommern, der Neumark und Grosspolen (1575-1805) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001)Google Scholar, which rejects the idea of a linear history and shows how the frontier was permanently being constructed as a result of localized conflicts, in which the inhabitants were adept at playing off the various sovereignties. See too François, Étienne, Seifarth, Jörg, and Struck, Bernhard, eds., Die Grenze als Raum, Erfahrung und Konstruktion. Deutschland, Frankreich und Polen vom 17. bis zum 20 Jahrhundert (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2007)Google Scholar, which refers to the extremely abundant and insightful recent literature on the theme.

12. Duhamelle, La frontière au village, 12.

13. Ibid., 13.

14. Ibid., 14-17.

15. Ibid. The reference to Pierre Bourdieu is explicit.

16. Ibid., 17-18.

17. Ibid., 56.

18. Ibid., 76.

19. Ibid., 96.

20. Montaigne, Michel de, “Diary of a Journey,” in The Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne, trans. Hazlitt, William (New York: Worthington, 1889), 565 Google Scholar: “those who there hold the Catholic faith are made more strict and devotional by the existence of the rival religion.”

21. Duhamelle, La frontière au village, 144.

22. Similar remarks are made by Jalabert, Laurent in Catholiques et protestants sur la rive gauche du Rhin. Droits, confessions et coexistence religieuse de 1648 à 1789 (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2009), 416–29 Google Scholar.

23. Duhamelle, La frontière au village, map on p. 158.

24. On the Walldürn pilgrimage see Brückner, Wolfgang, Die Verehrung des Heiligen Blutes in Walldürn. Volkskundlich-soziologische Untersuchungen zum Strukturwandel barocken Wall-fahrtens (Aschaffenburg: P. Pattloch, 1958)Google Scholar. For discussion of pilgrimages in the Holy Roman Empire as a means of progressively appropriating confessional distinctions and their subsequent expansion into all areas of social life, see the stimulating synthesis by Christophe Duhamelle, “Le pèlerinage dans le Saint-Empire au XVIIIe siècle. Pratiques dévotionnelles et identités collectives,” in “Frühe Neuzeit-Revolution-Empire 1500-1815,” special issue, Francia 33, no. 2 (2006): 69-96.

25. A similar feeling of exaltation on crossing the border occurred during Dutch Catholic pilgrimages to Kevelaer: see Wingens, Marc, “Franchir la frontière. Le pèlerinage des catholiques néerlandais aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” in Rendre ses vœux. Les identités pèlerines dans l’Europe moderne, XVIe-XVIIIe siècle, ed. Boutry, Philippe, Fabre, Pierre-Antoine, and Julia, Dominique (Paris: Éd. de l’EHESS, 2000), 75–85.Google Scholar

26. Christophe Duhamelle, “Konfessionelle Identität als Streitprozess. Der Gesangbuchstreit in Wendehausen (Eichsfeld), 1792-1800,” Historische Anthropologie 11, no. 3 (2003): 397-414.

27. Duhamelle, La frontière au village, 189.

28. Dupront, Alphonse, Du Sacré. Croisades et pèlerinages. Images et langages (Paris: Gallimard, 1987), 343 and 406.Google Scholar

29. By way of comparison see Motsch, Grenzgesellschaft und frühmoderner Staat, especially 140-54.

30. One such temporal discontinuity was the different calendar used by the Corpus Catholicorum and the Corpus Evangelicorum. The two were harmonized by a decree issued by the Imperial Diet on February 18, 1700, but this did not amount to a victory of one camp over the other, and the “Reformed Julian” calendar used by the Protestants continued to differ from the Gregorian calendar up until 1776 (though in fact the dates nearly always coincided). See Duhamelle, Christophe, “Une frontière abolie? Le rapprochement des calendriers catholique et protestant du Saint-Empire en 1700,” in Forclaz, , L’expérience de la différence religieuse, 99–114.Google Scholar

31. For a similar case, see Robert, Michèle, “L’image des rapports supraconfessionnels dans les régions rurales de Neuchâtel par le biais de leur répression consistoriale,” in Forclaz, , L’expérience de la différence religieuse, 231–48 Google Scholar.

32. Duhamelle, La frontière au village, 14.

33. Ibid., 259.

34. Sottocasa, Valérie, Mémoires affrontées. Protestants et catholiques face à la Révolution dans les montagnes du Languedoc (Rennes: PUR, 2004), 275–346 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.