The Thirty Years' War and the Peace of Westphalia were a reflection and above all an expression of divisions and tensions in western Latin Christianity which started with the sudden growth in piety during the late Middle Ages and reached its apogee in the confessionalization at the end of the 16th Century and during the 17th Century. Above all, confessionalization was a complex process which - in one way or another - had an impact on nearly all aspects of public and private life and was the cause of far-reaching changes. This is what is meant when historians in recent years have referred to confessionalism as a "fundamental social process" [1]. Naturally, it was first and foremost the Church itself which was affected. The unity of the medieval Church shattered and it split into three modern confessional Churches - the Lutheran Church, the Reformed or Calvinist Church and the Tridentine Church. As each considered themselves to be the true Church of God, they were locked in bitter struggle with each other.

The Tridentine Church was still called the Catholic Church but - like the three modern confessional Churches - had as little in common with the earlier medieval Church as its two competitors which subscribed to the ways of the Reformation. In addition to these there were the chrétiens sans église [2] who interpreted the freedom of the Reformation in such a radical way that they did not want to belong to any of the denominational Churches and were therefore the target of even more acrimonious attacks from all three confessional Churches - Baptists, Antitrinitarians, Spiritualists, Mystics, Familiarists, Libertines and many other groupings. [3]

The influence of confessionalism on the State, in politics, society and social life, on beliefs and standards of behaviour of both individuals and social groups and - last but not least - on culture and even the sciences were no less enduring in their impact. These processes were intensely complex, involving many different facets, and were very frequently inhibited or suppressed by conflicting tendencies. The following outline can only be of an exemplary nature and can only expound on the most important aspects.



I. The Church and Religious Life

The changes in the Churches and the religious life they prescribed, which were so far-reaching in the effect they had on the events of the 16th and 17th Centuries and beyond, can be described as processes which induced conformity, controlled and - thinking of the holders of Church offices - turned the Church into a profession. Conformity and control related first and foremost to teaching and dogma. Each of the three confessional Churches evolved a canon of doctrines and rites which were binding for both the Church hierarchy and for "lay" members. This canon defined to the very last detail what was orthodox. It was therefore easy to monitor whether it had been observed and it was also overseen in practice on a daily basis in a wide variety of ways. Above all, the declarations or confessiones which gave the "confessional" age its name laid down what gave a certain denominational Church its religious identity and how it was delineated vis-à-vis the competing confessional Churches whose teachings were stigmatized as heretical. The most important of these confessiones to which not only the Church's own clergy but also frequently the secular office holders of the confessional States had to swear allegiance were the Confessio Augustana of 1530, further honed in the Konkordienwerk of 1580 on the part of the Lutherans; the Confessiones Helveticae of 1536 and 1566, the Confession de Foi of 1559 by the French Huguenots and the Confessio Belgica of 1561, the resolutions of the Synod of Dordrecht of 1619 and, to a certain extent, also the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563 on the part of the Reformed Church; finally, the tenets of Catholic belief were laid down in the resolutions of the Council of Trent (1545-1563), encapsulated in the professio fidei Tridentina of 1564.

It was their own clergy who the Churches first and foremost wished to reinculcate spiritually and socially with these confessiones. The holders of Church offices - from the parish and pastoral clergy, the Bishops and Superintendents in positions of authority right through to the leadership of the Church in the consistories of the States and nations and the spiritual councils or the Roman Curia - were reorganized and made subject to certain standards of confessional beliefs and behaviour. At the same time, at least a proportion of Church office holders experienced the drive of the modern Churches to make their clergy more professional and prepare them for their vocational roles as pastors and preachers. It is a commonly held view that the improvement in training and the specific preparation of parish priests for their work in and for the parish was an exclusively Protestant phenomenon. This is countered by the fact that the Catholics realized at a very early stage that the Protestants had an advantage over them in the field of education and took steps to close the gap. They were spurred on by no less than Petrus Canisius (1521-1597), the "Second German Apostle", who as early as 1576 complained: "It is really sad that the Catholics in Germany only have a few universities and even these are miserable institutions", and he made every effort to remedy this situation. [4] Training and education were writ large on the banner of Catholic confessionalization. Although this benefitted the laity, it essentially provided the clerics with a better preparation for their vocation. The latest research has also shown that, in reality, the difference between Protestant pastors and Catholic priests was not particularly great and that Catholic confessionalization too definitely produced well-educated parish clergy well able to provide pastoral care and to preach. [5]

Whereas these changes in education and social status of Lutheran, Reformed and Catholic clerics and the way in which they perceived themselves and their roles tended to be gradual and take place over generations, the mechanics of exclusion and confrontation of confessionalization had an immediate and direct effect. In the last thirty years of the 16th Century and the early 17th Century the dogmatic differences were expounded right down to the very last detail in libraries, commentaries, explanations and pamphlets and their significance explained in respect of how they would affect daily religious observance in the parish and within families. Some points are still the subject today of treatises on the detailed teachings of a confession, although for a long time now they have been part of an ecumenical process which takes place in a spirit of mutual comprehension and interdenominational understanding. In contrast, in the 16th Century the disputes on the theology of confessions were entirely agonistic, i.e. they wanted the spiritual and, in many cases, also the physical destruction of their opponents.

From the 1570s onwards the theological disputes all over Europe heightened the intellectual and political confrontation among the elite and supplied the propaganda as the European powers organized themselves into military blocs and alliances. The "ideology" of these opposing religious and political opinions was impressed upon the wider population by the preachers and priests in the towns and villages who also became involved in these confessional controversies: they indoctrinated their flock from the pulpit every Sunday on how pleasing their own teaching was in the sight of God and how wicked was the teaching of the other confessions. Pamphlets which accompanied the religious disputes right into the Thirty Years' War contributed to the acrimony, especially when their message was proclaimed in easily remembered verses and songs with powerful melodies. [6] The Catholics and, above all, the Jesuits soon recognized that Luther's songs had won over - or rather, from their point of view, condemned to everlasting hell - more souls than had sermons and pastoral care. They, too, used songs and music to disseminate the truth of their faith among young and old and also to mock their opponents, just as their adversaries had written and composed malicious verses about the Pope and Catholic priests. [7]

The spiritual and emotional arming of the confessional camps was even more effective when the prize was more than the transitory life on this earth but was eternal salvation. This was compounded by the fact that the dogmatic differences, the subtle theological reasoning for which was only understood by a few, was simplified so it could be grasped by the masses and expressed in a tangible form of certain daily rites and symbolic actions. For the renewed form of Catholicism this above all meant the Holy Mass and processions which - in the form in which the Catholics elevated these to embody the identity of their faith and its public manifestation - were ridiculed by the Protestants as excessive show reflecting outdated superstitions. This unholy escalation led to the bloody disputes between the Catholic minority and the Protestant majority in Donauwörth at the St. Mark's Day procession of 1607 and this conflict, news of which spread throughout the Holy Roman Empire, subsequently resulted in the German confessional blocs arming themselves militarily, uniting to form the Protestant Union on 14 May 1608 and the Catholic League on 10 July 1609.

An aspect which made even more impact and was yet more explosive than processions was the differences in their understanding of the Eucharist or the Lord's Supper and again this was clearly and tangibly expressed by the different rites at the Lord's table. This did not only relate to the difference between Protestants and Catholics which was obvious to everybody - the elevation as practised by the Catholics, i.e. the part of the Eucharist which celebrates the consecrated wafers actually being changed into the body of Christ, and the Protestant lay chalice. Even Lutherans and the Reformed Church celebrated Communion in a different way - one by means of a holy ceremony similar to the one celebrated by the Catholics using wafers and the other seated at a table and eating normal bread. Because this was the expression of deep-seated differences in the interpretation of Holy Communion - for the Lutherans it meant "this is my body" and for the Reformed Church it meant "this represents my body" -, derisive slogans were common when confessionalism was at its most fierce: Lutherans were often called "cannibals" whereas, in contrast, the Calvinists were derided as "eaters of bread" who desecrated Lord's Supper as were extreme spiritualist groups who - as part of a tradition handed down from the early Reformation in East Friesland - drank beer from normal glasses instead of wine in a chalice with their consecrated bread.

In this situation of all-embracing confrontation experienced on a daily basis, the decades before and after 1600 became a time of eschatological unrest and events on earth were perceived to be very closely linked to the will of God - not only in belief in stars and comets but also in sermons on war and peace. [8] The time when confessionalism was at is height was also the turn of the century: rulers and politicians, colonels, craftsmen or farmers, theologians, lawyers and scientists - all observed the stars intently to look for signs foretelling the future. Although those who had made systematic studies of the stars in earlier generations had known for a long time that comets were not prophetic signs, when a comet appeared in the heavens in 1618 it was however immediately seized upon as a prophetic sign and it was interpreted accordingly to suit the party making the prophesy. Within a few weeks, approximately 120 pamphlets had been published on the comet, prophesying doom and disaster. In the churches sermons were delivered on the comets, urging the congregation to do penance. The theologians cited Isaiah who "foretold that in the final days the wolves would lie down with the sheep". The Calvinists, in particular, interpreted this to mean that it gave them a mission to take more radical action against vices and sectarianism within and also to act against the antichrists in Rome and Madrid. The atmosphere was particularly nervous and tense in the North West of the Holy Roman Empire where the two systems came up against each other: on the Dollart the Dutch-led Calvinist bloc came up against the Catholic power bloc led by Spain until Groningen fell into the hands of the Dutch in 1594. The seeds of destruction lurked everywhere: the picture painted by the Calvinist zealots was that women with child might "be heavy with the devil" if theologians and politicians did not take a decisive stand against "anti-Christian deception" and the confusion between the order of God and that of satan. This situation even led to an upsurge in belief in witches. [9]

However, the confessionalization of Churches and religious life did not only result in blind religious zeal, hate and inquisition, which was practised just as much in the Protestant confessional Church as among the Catholics: it also led to a renewal of pastoral care, spirituality, piety and religious culture in general. It was the age of the religious commentaries, moving funeral sermons and hymns. This applied especially to the Lutherans and, in particular, Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676) whose hymns combined the privations of war and optimism, the desperation and trust in God of that age into wonderful verses with universal meaning which Evangelical Christians are only now - in this time of plenty - beginning to forget. However, no less impressive are the psalms of the Calvinists or the spiritual baroque lyrics of the Catholics, such as "Trutz-Nachtigal or "Geistliches Poetisch Lustwaeldlein" published in 1634 by Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld (1591-1635), a Jesuit from Trier. [10]

At the same time new forms of Christian fellowship emerged. New or reformed orders flourished among the Catholics, in particular the Jesuits but also lay members were fired with enthusiasm for the reorganization in forms such as the Marian Congregations and similar religious communities, committed to new forms of Christian fellowship emphasizing the Christian life of the individual and a deeper understanding of marriage and the family. [11] On a completely different theological and legal basis but showing a great similarity to the increase in Christian activity in daily life, the Calvinists developed their intensive structure of neighbourliness and brotherly or sisterly involvement within congregations organized on presbyterian lines, which took great care to ensure that no sinful and unworthy member should sully the pure community of the saints. [12] The result of these new, higher demands was that - in the Netherlands, for example - only a small proportion of those who lived in towns and villages in those areas which were predominantly Calvinist were actually members of the Calvinist Church: the majority were only loosely affiliated to the Church as "liefhebbers", in other words "devotees" or sympathizers until such as time as they felt themselves to be worthy to become full members. [13]

The active debate among theologians can take some of the credit for overcoming confessionalism. Indeed, just as the way in which the atmosphere changed from war to peace in the 1640s was inconceivable without the ability, described in the introduction, of even the confessional Christian Churches to co-exist peaceably [14], the advent of the new piety would not have been achieved without the debates on confessional orthodoxy. However, irenics and the demand for religious tolerance were initiated and first propagated publicly among the chrétiens sans église and the proponents of the interdenominational ethos of late humanism which was non-confessional. [15] Even before the war these groups published individual pamphlets such as the famous text "Geistlicher Rauffhandel" (Spiritual Combat) which was the source of so many disputes involving Luther, Calvin and the Pope, whereas the pious "Einfalt" (Innocence) prayed: "God help all the lost sheep". [16] The fact that what used to be streams swelled to become a mighty river can be attributed to the confessional Churches themselves - the devoutness of Pietism on the Protestant side and Jansenism correcting the orthodoxy of the official Church among the Catholics. [17] Even the belief in miracles and prodigies referred to, i.e. the belief in portents of good or bad events which had made a considerable contribution to the nervousness and willingness to do battle in the decades around 1600 essentially did not reflect a turning against the Church or a move away from the established Church as a precursor to the Enlightenment: it was overcome by theological specification and differentiation among the confessional Churches themselves. Developments in natural philosophy were of much less importance for the "new image of nature" in the "World of science" which no longer countenanced any miraculous happenings than was the fact that "in the 17th Century authors of all confessions [were becoming] increasingly sceptical in respect of alleged miracles which served to entertain the masses, mocked moral principles, helped to promote the aims and objectives of sects [and] encouraged superstition". [18]



II. State and Society

State, politics and society which, in the old Europe, were always closely interlocked with religion and Churches were changed in many different ways as a result of confessionalization. As a direct process for Protestantism but indirectly and as a complicated interaction with the universal Church for the Catholics, the State assumed important administrative powers over each of the national and State Churches and at the same time gained new powers which used to be the prerogative of the Church, particularly in respect of Church property and what were termed res mixtae or matters which fell between religion and politics such as marriage, the upbringing of children and education as well as care of the poor and sick and social welfare. Society was drawn into this powerful process of change: At the same time as the social, political and institutional parameters of early modern States were being formed, society was confronted with the credal, behaviourial and Christian social forms of the confessional Churches which gave spiritual and ecclesiastical legitimization to the new political order and the way in which this concentrated on unification, conformity and standardization.

The move towards conformity in both the State and Society was a process which would take generations and the part played in this by confessionalization varied greatly from country to country and over different periods in time. On the eve of the Thirty Years' War and during this war, the drive towards social, spiritual and political conformity as defined by confessionalism was of prime importance. The imposition of spiritual, institutional and sometimes even physical conformity of officials, the Court, Armies and subjects involved in many other activities in a State took place at the same time and using methods which were very similar to those already mentioned for the streamlining and reorganization of Church personnel and Christian parishes. Cohesion in terms of time and materials became apparent, for instance, among the mercenary armies of early modern times who took on a modern form in the course of European confessionalization through an oath, drill, social controls and disciplines, an espirit de corps among the officers and commitment to a religious confessional ethos. "San Jago España; Sante Jorge Imperio" was the cry uttered by the Spanish troops of the Holy Roman Empire when they attacked the leaders of German Protestantism on 24 April 1547 at Mühlberg on the River Elbe [19] and at the Battle of the White Mountain on 8 November 1620, the first encounter of the Thirty Years' War, a large ivory crucifix was carried before the Catholic troops and their motto was "Santa Maria". [20] Although Protestant mercenary leaders from the North German lower aristocracy were for a long time attracted by the financial power of Catholic Spain, they did not want to be "used against God's word in any way". Colonel Hilmar von Münchhausen even insisted on a formal clause in his contract of service that he should "not in any way be obliged to serve against the pure teachings of the Augsburg Confession". [21] The same process took place in the army as it had earlier among the clergy: as the army became more professional it too became subject to social and spiritual-ideological conformity. This was particularly pronounced in the reform of the Dutch armies at the start of the 16th Century which created a well-organized and effective professional army in the Calvinist Dutch Republic.

However, it was not only the armies, politicians and the elite at Court who were drawn into the confessional confrontation. Their rulers too increasingly sought advice from leading professors of theology or - in the case of the Catholics - from their confessors, who were usually Jesuits. This was particularly evident in the case of Maximilian I, Duke and then Elector of Bavaria, and Adam Contzen, SJ, and Emperor Ferdinand II and the Jesuit William Lamormaini who, as the Emperor's confessor, had a crucial influence on determining the Habsburgs' policy on matters of Church and State from 1624 onwards. [22]

Confessionalism even affected time: in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII introduced a new calendar with the Papal Bull "Inter gravissimas". The purpose of this was to correct an error in the way time was calculated which had crept into the old Julian calendar dating back to the time of Caesar where the calculation used for a year was slightly shorter than the tropical year. To balance out the pluses and minuses which had accumulated over the centuries, the Pope omitted ten days in his new calendar and decreed that 4 October 1582 should be followed by 15 October 1582. This reform met objective needs. It was determined by science and not religion. Also, the fact that the Pope took charge of this was not unusual: the calculation of time was a matter which transcended individual States and the Pope was the only supranational power in Europe at that time.

However, conflict was unavoidable when confessionalism was at its height. The Protestants inevitably viewed the Gregorian Calendar as being "Catholic" and it was quite inconceivable that they would implement it. This meant that Europe was also split in two as regards the calculation of time. Henceforth the Catholics were ten days ahead of the Protestants and the day of the week was different for each group. The year began on a different date: for the Catholics it began on 1 January but Protestant countries kept to 1 March of the Julian calendar. In Germany, where Catholics and Protestants lived in such close proximity, this caused huge complications and agitation, even resulting in actual violence during an argument about the calendar in the Free Imperial City of Augsburg where both confessions were represented. There was a veritable uprising of Protestants in May 1584 when the Protestant Pastor Mylius von St. Anna was threatened with expulsion from the town because of his opposition to the Magistrates' decree that the Gregorian Calendar should be introduced in the city. When, in 1586, the Magistrates eventually imposed their will after extremely difficult negotiations and managed to introduce the Gregorian Calendar in the town, the Protestants did not wholeheartedly accept this calendar and were frequently caught working on what were Sundays in the new calendar or were seen leaving the city on working days to attend services in the surrounding countryside because it was a Sunday according to the Julian calendar. When the Swedish troops captured Augsburg during the Thirty Years' War, the Protestants immediately reverted to the Julian calendar. The old calendar was even retained in the majority of Protestant towns and territories of the Holy Roman Empire after the Peace of Westphalia and the religious compromise achieved with this treaty. A further half century of deconfessionalization was necessary before Protestant Germany introduced the new calendar in 1700 and then it was - nominally, at least - not in the form of the "Gregorian" calendar but the "improved" calendar.

The dispute about the calendar, the days of the week and the start of the year involved large sections of the population and made them acutely aware of the confessional differences. The same applied to the sermons they heard every Sunday, the mass of printed sheets, pamphlets and popular polemical writings which lined up all sections of believers according to the established spiritual-religious and political fronts. Tales of atrocities committed by the Spaniards on their missions to South America were particularly effective, and these were used in many pamphlets as propaganda by the staunchly Calvinist fraction in the Low Countries' struggle for independence. The legenda negra, the "black legend" - remembered even today - ascribes every conceivable act of cruelty and vileness to the Spaniards and appeals to all opponents of Spain to put up determined resistance. The argument about Church and Religion, which was always the basis for this propaganda figure, soon took on a life of its own as an actual imaginable figure, aimed particularly at the Inquisition. It gradually intensified and in the 1580s was a powerful boost to confessionalism. In addition to the Dutch propaganda, English pamphlets embodied Spain as the enemy of the English nation and the eschatological opponent of "godly Christians", in other words, good reformed Protestants who believed in the true faith. In particular, the triumph over the Armada in 1588 increased awareness in England but also in Protestant - particularly Calvinist - Europe that they "like Israel" were engaged in a holy war against Spain "to beat down this devilish pride and falsehood of the Antichristian band, all true Christians ... ought to go on courageously and cheerfully to tread the wine press of the Lord's wrath". [23]

Confessional conformity and mobilization of the public became more intense in the 1590s. It was especially on the Dollart in Friesland, the interface between the two power blocs and ideologies already mentioned, that the Calvinist pamphleteers developed a confessional view of the world in which the conflicts between the European powers and alliances were interpreted as an eschatological struggle between the "godly Christians" and the Antichrists, the children of light against the forces of darkness and eternal damnation. In the words of these pamphlets, they had to fight against the expansive, imperialist "Monarchy of the Spaniards who wanted to become masters of all of Christendom, as the 'Regnabit ubique' in the lands of the (Spanish) Leone Belgico demonstrated". However, for the Calvinist pamphleteers this was only the outward, worldly manifestation. For the Protestants in Europe the threat of subversion by the hated Jesuits and "the Papist tyranny of Rome" was omnipresent. The Calvinists were in agreement that "the Spaniards and their retinue have as their sole objective the reimposition of Papist idolatry, the suppression of liberty, and the establishment of a barbaric 'servitut cum absoluta oboedientia'". Even in instances where diplomats and politicians made objective reports, such as Pieter van Brederode, the first Ambassador sent by the Netherlands to Germany, when he reported to The Hague in spring 1603 the use of confessional labels in relation to foreign policy was quite normal - the "partye van de gereformeerden" opposed the "Baptistischen", the Spaniards' policy was not only physical tyranny but is also spiritual tyranny. [24]

Catholic propaganda had naturally also developed its own eschatological images and mindset, probably the most impressive and effective of which were the large sculptures, paintings and copperplate engravings of St. Michael, the Archangel. A huge statue of this apocalyptic angel could be seen in nearly every Jesuit church and rulers such as the Emperor had their portraits painted in the guise of this scourge of devils. An example of this is Ferdinand, Archduke of Inner Austria - as Emperor Ferdinand II, victor over the Protestants in the initial phase of the Thirty Years' War - in a painting by Giovanni Pietro de Pomis' in Graz. [25]

At the start of the 16th Century a dual system of Protestant and Catholic powers - or rather the blocs controlled by Catholic and Protestant rulers - evolved on the basis of this eschatological view of the world disseminated within all three confessions and confessional cultures: for many years researchers have been aware of what is termed "Calvinist Internationalism" which - particularly after the shock of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in France (1572) - became politicized in order to oppose what seemed to be the unstoppable flood of the Counter-Reformation. The Netherlands and the Palatinate were the leaders of this Protestant bloc: Catholic France was initially sympathetic to their cause because of its traditional enmity with Spain, although it subsequently joined the alliance. Other important members were England, the Bohemian Estates, Denmark and later Sweden. This Calvinist internationalism was equivalent to the internationalism of the Counter-Reformation or Catholicism which was, in fact, its precursor. The leadership and impetus came from Spain and the Austrian Habsburgs. The aim as far as power politics was concerned was to encircle the Holy Roman Empire through an alliance of Catholic powers in order to eradicate heresy here in their dynastic lands at the heart of Europe and at the same time to establish Spanish hegemony in Europe and the absolute power of the Emperor in the Holy Roman Empire. When, in the 1590s, Poland joined this Catholic bloc under its Catholic King Sigismund III Vasa (1587-1632) it gave rise to a realistic hope to extend this iron ring of Catholic powers from Spain via Italy, Austria, Bohemia and Poland as far as Sweden where Sigismund had a claim to the crown and, finally, even to join up with the Danish territory of Norway, where a few Jesuit missionaries had great hopes of a religious and political overthrow in favour of Catholicism. [26]

Naturally, there was never complete convergence between confessional solidarity and the interests of the State. Mention has already been made of the involvement of Catholic France on the Protestant side. In the case of those Protestant neighbours, Sweden and Denmark, the confessional alliance too was frequently undermined by the much older and long-term aims of conflicting political interests in their struggle for supremacy over the Baltic. A similar situation occurred in the Catholic camp between Austria and Bavaria as a result of the areas of friction relating to the Estates and territories in the Holy Roman Empire.

The result of the political and confessional propaganda prevalent in the period around 1600 was that, for the first time, collective identities in respect of territory or the nation state evolved as a precursor to what would later become a national identity. This embodied political, cultural and confessional awareness of what was a citizen's own environment and what was foreign and became a powerful force engendering a feeling of "us" - the Catholic identity in the case of Spain or Bavaria corresponded to the Protestant identity of England or Sweden, just to mention the most obvious aspects. [27]

Confessionalization of Church, society and politics released powerful dynamic forces. These were positive in as far as they released those concentrating and organizing energies which bring about modern change in bureaucracy, the economy and, to a certain extent, even in education and science. The negative side was that this exacerbated conflicts within the State and society and, for the first time, the continent was exposed to a pan-European war for reasons of power and religion. With the Peace of Westphalia, the political and societal dynamism of confessionalization was largely held in check and rendered harmless. [28] It says much in its favour that the most durable effects of this massive upheaval which - even today - has implications are not to be found in politics and the State but in culture and the attitudes of individuals, although these influences have long become secular and can therefore only be understood in their historical context.



III. Mentality and Attitude

There is no dispute that, what this initially meant for human behaviour was that all the confessional Churches of the early modern age as well as some of the dissenting religious groups such as Baptists developed detailed ecclesiastical laws and established institutions or mechanisms to exercise these and oversee their compliance. [29] The way in which these standards were actually enforced differed - the Calvinists followed the route of institutionalized Church discipline, the Catholics confession and the Inquisition, and the Lutherans visitations and exhortations in sermons and religious writings, just to name the most important instruments. There were differences in content too which were particularly pronounced as regards the articles of faith, although differences in ethics and standards of behaviour tended to be very minor. In contrast, the function and the aim of Church discipline and control were the same for all confessional Churches. This was the practice and, if necessary, the imposition of orthodox "permitted" belief and thinking as well as "correct" Christian behaviour which, for the first time, defined this to the very last detail and brought it within an agreed system of ethics and moral standards, for instance in relation to sexuality which from henceforth was to be strictly limited to within marriage.

The real success of the discipline in respect of teaching and morals of these confessional Churches naturally cannot be precisely defined in scientific terms. This is why sceptics cast doubt on it having any impact. This opinion is countered by others who point out that information on changes in behaviour such as greater awareness of reliability, punctuality, honesty, non-aggression and restrained sexual behaviour can be identified from long-term analyses such as the archives of the Calvinists on Church discipline between the 16th and 19th Centuries. [30] Such a far-reaching impact is assumed by the English author Doris Lessing when she sees that - even today - Catholics and Protestants are influenced by deep psychological factors which have evolved from the different disciplinary systems of these two confessional Churches in early modern times. Set in Italy, her love story between Judith, an English tourist, and Luigi, an Italian, is ultimately unhappy because the two lovers are so very different. Doris Lessing portrays Luigi, who is naturally a practising Catholic, as someone who has "no sense of guilt, but a sense of sin" whereas the reverse applies to Judith, who is descended from northern Puritans, and that is she "has no sense of sin: but she has guilt" - a difference to which the author gives greater emphasis by remarking that the Catholic Southern European Luigi who is conscious of sin is "very healthy, and not neurotic". [31] It would be interesting to pursue the question whether the difference postulated here between the Catholic sense of sin and the Protestant sense of guilt applied in the years immediately prior to and during the Thirty Years' War in respect of both the decisions and actions of the rulers, politicians and theologians and among other people who generally were only passive witnesses and suffered as a result of the events but nevertheless had to cope psychologically with afflictions so immeasurably greater.



IV. Confessional Cultures

The long-term effects of confessionalization on culture can be experienced by anyone with a sharp eye who travels through the continent of Europe. One of the contributory factors which has shaped the many different landscapes of modern Europe is the result of the various modes of expression, the literature, music, painting and architecture within the three confessional Churches. All combined together were the product of the control exercised by State and Church to supervise, discipline and guide. Popular culture and all other forms of knowledge in a pre-scientific age such as folk medicine and magic practices were either disparaged and persecuted or they were supervised and subsumed in the new confessional culture, a factor which was particularly applicable to Catholicism after the Council of Trent, although this could sometimes also be said of Lutheranism.

As a result, culture was split in line with the confessional power blocs and the different confessional mentalities. However, it also made for diversity and variety - in Europe generally but above all in the confessionally polymorphic German Empire where henceforth a contrast existed between the colourful Catholics in the South and West who went in pursuit of heaven with ardour and the sober expressions of culture and religion in the Protestant landscapes of the North and East. [32] The variety this entails cannot, however, really be dismissed as the usual contrasts between the Protestant culture of words and music on the one hand and the Catholic culture of images and symbols on the other: those involved in both the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation were masters of the written word. Luther is well-known for this skill but it can equally well be applied to Canisius and many other Jesuits, as was demonstrated compellingly by the 1997 "Rome in Bavaria" exhibition which set out the last room of exhibits in the form of a Jesuit's study and finally presented to the visitor rows of original, reproduced and translated writings, all of which came from the pen of Petrus Canisius. [33] The literature of Opitz and Shakespeare is mirrored by the works of van den Vondel, Cervantes and Calderón de la Barca. Bach, that great composer of Protestant sacred music, is complemented by Palestrina as an innovator and moderniser of Catholic church music. Painting with its vividness and passion is not only the domain of Rubens, Reni or Velázquez but also of Cranach, Rembrandt and Vermeer.

The differences are most apparent in architecture and town planning. These are the most politicized arts which represent the different worlds - ad maiorem Domini gloriam, to the greater glory of God - as understood by the confession concerned. They also allowed the Princes and Monarchs above all but also the nobility, prelates and rich patricians to emphasize their own power and earthly riches. In this way the confessional architecture of the early modern age left its mark on innumerable towns and landscapes in the closing years of the 16th Century.

This applied particularly to the Catholic landscapes exemplified by the religious architecture which embellished the valley of the River Main between Bamberg and Würzburg; in Munich where the Jesuits' college with the mighty St. Michael's church built in the decades preceding the Thirty Years' War "imposed itself on Gothic fabric of the town with all the force of a meteorite" (Reinhold Baumstark) and thus fundamentally changed and modernized Sandt's ++ layout of the town which Duke Albrecht V had only recently intended would remain as a benchmark for future generations [34]; at the start of the 17th Century in Antwerp the modernness of the new age's urban architecture imposed itself on the Gothic layout of the town in the form of the huge baroque structure of the Jesuit Sint Carolus Kerk with its convent and school. Naturally, this applied first and foremost to Rome itself where a generation earlier the Jesuits built their Il Jesù church, a much copied example of early modern religious architecture in the Renaissance style, and where St. Peter's, which had been planned as a replacement for the old Lateran basilica in the late Middle Ages, had only now been erected as a gesture and symbol of the claim the Catholic confession laid to the town and the world, as - of course - modern Rome is the creation of Sixtus IV, the Counter-Reformation Pope, who developed the city in its post-antique form with the wide vistas inherent in its street pattern. In other areas, too, the building trade flourished in Catholic towns during the late 16th and 17th Centuries. Everywhere new buildings were springing up in the Renaissance or Baroque style - not only large Jesuit churches but first and foremost churches built for parishes, the Court or to celebrate triumphs such as the Karlskirche in Vienna which provided a high-profile monument in the city to celebrate the victory of St. Charles Borromeo over heretics during the Counter-Reformation. Schools, hospitals and centres of numerous holy orders were also built.

In contrast, Protestant urban architecture remained restrained and even subdued. Buildings were only erected where growth in the population or the economy made it necessary to build new urban areas - in Amsterdam, London and a few German towns such as Hamburg and Emden - and religious buildings were designed for sermons, as "lecture rooms" devoid of decoration so that those attending the service would not be distracted from God's word. A feature generally much in evidence is the front of the organ which had the task of transporting the singing of the congregation heavenwards. The large majority of Protestant towns, the Free Imperial Towns in southern Germany as well as the Hanseatic towns of the north - such as Greifswald with its three brick churches of St. Mary, St. Nicholas and St. James which, even today, dominate the urban landscape - saw hardly any building activity because the space the medieval churches provided for the church services in the parish was more than adequate. A substantial number of churches or convent buildings were even put to secular or partly secular uses such as grammar schools or universities as in Gdansk, Helmstedt or Marburg, libraries or archives as in Zurich or Göttingen or as homes for old people and orphans, as occurred in many towns of the Dutch Republic. Viewed overall, the majority of Lutheran or reformed towns in Switzerland, Central Europe and Scandinavia remained strangely medieval in appearance, whereas the architecture and topography of the Catholic towns were modernized.

The result of this situation was that every time there was a shift in the ownership of land between Catholic and Protestant powers the appearance of the European landscape changed. When under King Sigismund III Vasa Poland changed from predominantly Protestant multi-confessionalism to the Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation, there too from the early 17th Century onwards it unleashed a boom in the construction of baroque religious buildings so that "the emphasis of architecture and topography shifted from the Town Hall to the church and the palatial urban residences of the magnates". [35] Prague did not become the Golden City of the Baroque until after the Protestants were defeated at the Battle of the White Mountain and the Catholicism of the Habsburgs triumphed; in Austria, too, the pietas Austriaca [36] was only able to play a key role in influencing culture because the Protestant Estates were defeated right at the start of the Thirty Years' War and subsequently, at the negotiations in Münster, the Habsburgs were successful in excluding their dynastic territories from all restitution clauses in favour of Protestants, with the exception of a few Duchies in Silesia and three so-called "Churches of Peace" outside the towns of Glogów, Jawor and Swidnica. [37] In Hungary, where Protestantism - benefitting from the Turkish occupation - was able to hold its ground even after the Thirty Years' War, the pietas Austriaca and Catholic Baroque architecture did not actually play a role until the end of the 17th Century when, after the Turks were driven out, the Catholic faith of the Habsburg Empire could be imposed and the townscapes of Sopron, Györ, Esztergom, Budapest and Székesfehérvár were transformed by the late introduction of the Catholic confession including the church buildings in the striking Copf architecture of the 18th Century. This is particularly impressive in Székesfehérvár, the venerable seat of coronation of the Kings of Hungary, where the medieval basilica of St. Stephen used for the ceremony survived the Turkish occupation undamaged externally and did not have to yield to the Catholics' zeal for modernization until 1689 after the Turkish occupation had ended to make way for a late Baroque cathedral and its Bishop's Palace which was not built until the start of the 18th Century.

FOOTNOTES