J<\/span>oel Harrington and Helmut Walser Smith summarize the interests of research into confessionalization under three headings: \u201cResearch on confessional identity has focused on three processes: the construction of confessional identity as part of early modern state building; the internalization of confessional identity as part of the larger process of the constitution of subjects and citizens; and, in the final period, the instrumentalization of confessional identity and confessional history in the service of a renewed confessionalization (in the case of Catholics) and of an incipient nationalist ideology (in the case of Protestants).\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>They think that undue attention has been paid to the first process, the link between confessionalization and early modern state-building. They note that \u201ccuius regio eius religio<\/i> was a governing principle to which there were many exceptions. Some exceptions, like the free cities of religious parity in which Lutherans and Catholics lived within the same city walls, had already been set in the Peace of Augsburg; others, such as the mixed areas of the Palatine-Electorate, reflected the changing confessional allegiances of rulers; and still others came as a consequence of conquest\u2014the Prussian annexation of Catholic Silesia.\u201d Thus, \u201ca considerable amount of religious mixing occurred throughout the empire.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>They argue that it\u2019s a myth to believe that \u201cthe Reformation represented a radical rupture and restructuring of the medieval Church-State relationship. Indeed, the entire notion of a transnational, unified Christianity being shattered by the Reformation ignores the decentralized nature of medieval ecclesiastical organization and practices and thus of religious identity.\u201d Throughout the medieval period the \u201cgreatest administrative and therefore practical power always remained at the episcopal or regional level\u201d and power at the diocese level was already shifting to secular rulers in the fifteenth century. Though the Reformation \u201caccelerated\u201d the \u201cprocess of secular governmental expansion,\u201d it did not \u201cinitiate\u201d it.<\/p>\n <\/span>Though the Reformation standardized religious belief and practice, that standardization did not \u201cimmediately\u201d or \u201cautomatically\u201d lead to the growth of the state. It was not at all predetermined that Reformation and confessional uniformity would lead to a centralized territorial state. The Swiss and Dutch provided viable models, closer to the \u201cmedieval combination of local particularism and political alliances or confederations.\u201d German city magistrates formed an alliance with territorial princes, and the failure of this alliance, the Schmalkaldic League, as well as the suppression of more \u201cgemeinschaftlich<\/em>\u201d agendas for reform brought the nation-state to the fore as a political model. Nothing inherent in Reformation or confession-making determined this outcome.<\/p>\n <\/span>There are disputes and unanswered questions at many levels. Elites played a role in confessionalization and \u201csocial disciplining,\u201d but historians debate the power of elites to enforce their intentions and have begun to explore the myriad forms of resistance among non-elites. Confessionalization could backfire, intensifying local conflicts and making state-building more difficult. In short, \u201cbrought both centripetal and centrifugal forces to bear on early modern state building.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>With all these qualifications, Harrington and Smith acknowledge a consensus among historians: \u201call would agree that regardless of the individual political or religious circumstances, the intertwining of state building and confessional interests represented a universal phenomenon in all early modem German states.\u201d There is also a consensus that the religious divisions combined with political rivalries to produce the devastation of the Thirty Years War: \u201cdisastrous results of increased confessionalization\u2014foreign policies driven by a combination of religious fervor and dynastic rivalries\u2014are obvious to all historians, for these policies ultimately culminated in one of the most devastating wars ever fought in central Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Even when the war was over, confessionalization had its victims. Used as a tool of cultural homogenization, confessionalization led to \u201cmany instances of \u2018confessional cleansing\u201d: \u201chundreds of thousands of individuals were forced to migrate to more hospitable locations within the empire or elsewhere. In some cases, as in the famous Salzburg emigration of 1731\u201332, the journey involved thousands of people traveling together to a common destination hundreds of miles away.\u201d Confessional boundaries functioned socially as \u201cinvisible barriers\u201d dividing a religiously mixed population. Etienne Francois has studied migration, marriage, and population growth to show how social life followed confessional lines. Lutherans and Catholics formed subsocieties within German society. Even when official confessionalization gave way to toleration, these boundaries had been internalized and remained \u201clargely independent of the institutional preconditions that led to their formation\u201d (Francois).<\/p>\n <\/span>Eventually, the costs proved too high, and state builders opted for toleration instead of confessionalization. It took some time. Hamburg, \u201cknown for its toleration\u201d officially recognized all Christian religions only in 1785, and did not grant parity until 1819.<\/p>\n <\/span>Yet even in this later period, confessional definitions could be used to shape the nation state, to foster the nation as an imagined community. Harrington and Smith cite a study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany that indicates a direct link between confession and national identity. In their summary \u201cNational-religious ideas had three essential components, which, given the legacy of cuius regio eius religio<\/em>, necessarily led to conflict: the assumption that Protestantism defined what it was to be German, the belief that a perfect nation would be religiously homogeneous, and the projection of a future German utopia in which nation and religion would be one.\u201d Ominously, these \u201c\u2019national religious\u2019 assumptions led German Protestants to see Jews not as just another religious group but also, and more portentously, as another people-another Volk.\u201d<\/p>\n (Joel F. Harrington and Helmut Walser Smith, \u201cConfessionalization, Community, and State Building in Germany, 1555\u20131870,\u201d The Journal of Modern History<\/em> 69:1 [1997]: 77\u2013101.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Joel Harrington and Helmut Walser Smith summarize the interests of research into confessionalization under three headings: \u201cResearch on confessional identity has focused on three processes: the construction of confessional identity as part of early modern state building; the internalization of confessional identity as part of the larger process of the constitution of subjects and citizens; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[670,1142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-confessionalization","category-reformation"],"yoast_head":"\n