Since the confessional divisions of the sixteenth century it has been characteristic of modern German history that Protestants have lived alongside Catholics and Lutherans alongside Reformed. [1] From the beginning of the Reformation the distribution of these confessions was determined by territorial units within the Empire, a situation which was given legal recognition in the fundamental principle cuius relio eius religio. As the result of decisions made by princes or civic magistrates, Protestant and Catholic identities developed in their territorial states and towns. In turn, these identities have largely defined the way in which Germans have perceived each other. The experience of living alongside neighbours of a different confession has influenced the mentality of German history. Everyday perceptions were often defined by invisible boundaries, by mistrust, ignorance, prejudice and hatred. At the official level, however, there was a marked tendency to provide a legal framework for coexistence, based on parity and equality. This official stance found its way into the laws regulating relations between church and state contained in the Weimar Constitution and in the Basic Law of 1949. These principles had their provenance in the Peace of Westphalia which, as fundamental law of the Empire, was to have lasting impact on the religious make-up of the German lands.

The Holy Roman Empire contained territories and towns which were almost entirely confessionally homogenous, fulfilling the model of the closed confessional state. In addition, however, there were numerous political entities which contained, to varying degrees, a confessionally varied population, and, in some instances, granted official status to these minorities or even provided a constitutional guarantee of confessional parity. At the Peace of Westphalia, the Treaty of Osnabrück determined either directly or indirectly the status of majority and minority confessions and their position within the church order of territory or town. The principal source of this settlement was the determination of a normative year according to which the extent of Catholic and Protestant interests was to be established: this date was set as 1 January 1624. The relationship between Lutheran and Reformed was to be similarly regulated: in this instance the normative date was the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. A formal basis for the regulation of disputes between the confessions had now been established, promising peace and legal security after the confusion created by the Thirty Years War. The impact of this normative year was largely dependent on local circumstance on 1 January 1624. It is, however, possible to discern from within the great variety of territorial states and towns which made up the Empire several configurations based on the coexistence of two or even three confessions. It is these constellations which will be described below.

Closed confessional units as realized by Catholic states such as Spain, Portugal and the Italy states or by the Lutheran Scandinavian kingdoms could not be replicated within the Empire. The Habsburg hereditary lands came closest to this model, as here, according to the Peace of Westphalia, the normative year of 1624 was not to be applied. The Emperor hoped to secure the counter-reformation which had been carried out in these territories in the course of the Thirty Years War. [2] Yet the process of recatholicization implemented under the Habsburgs remained incomplete. Although illegal, numerous Protestant communities survived in secret in the Austrian alpine lands and in more remote rural districts of Bohemia and Moravia. It proved impossible for the ecclesiastical or secular authorities to eradicate this phenomenon. Neither force nor spiritual inducement was successful. Persecuted Protestants were bolstered by written material sent from the Imperial cities of Regensburg and Nuremberg and from Saxony. Even forceful repatriation to Transylvania, where Protestants enjoyed religious freedom, did not solve the problem. When Joseph II altered course in 1781 and granted toleration to his non-Catholic subjects, Protestants, whose very existence had been illegal, came forward in their hundreds and were registered in their religious communities by the authorities. Silesia was the only one of the Habsburg lands to be treated differently under the terms of the settlement of 1648. [3] Under pressure from Saxony and Sweden the Emperor was forced to admit official status to Protestants in Silesia. Those whose faith was associated with the Confession of Augsburg were permitted public worship in the town of Breslau and in the mediate principalities of Liegnitz, Brieg and Wohlau which were still ruled by the local Piast dynasty. Additionally in three places within the Habsburg hereditary duchies - Schweidnitz, Jauer and Glogau - permission was also granted for three new Protestant churches, the so-called >Friedenskirchen'. In practice this settlement did not coincide with the confessional character of the Silesian population. In particular, the Protestant population in Upper Silesia remained in the same illegal position as Protestants in the other Bohemian and Austrian lands. Eventually, in a reassessment of the Peace of Westphalia, the Convention of Altranstädt of 1707 provided a more comprehensive regulation favouring the Protestant population of Silesia, when Charles XII of Sweden forced Emperor Joseph I to concede permission for additional Protestant >grace and favour churches' (Gnadenkirchen).

The situation in the ecclesiastical principalities of Salzburg and Berchtesgaden was similar to that in the neighbouring Austrian alpine lands. Although unable to cite public worship in 1624 as its defense, cryptoprotestantism survived in rural areas. In 1732 when the Prince-Bishop of Salzburg ordered his Protestant subjects to convert or emigrate, the law was on his side. His actions still, however, placed great strain on interconfessional relations in the Empire. [4] In 1648 the Electorate of Bavaria with its territorially uniform Catholicism was far more monolithic than Salzburg and even succeeded in emerging from the negotiations surrounding the Peace of Westphalia with the recatholicisation of the Upper Palatinate, which had taken place during the Thirty Years War, intact. [5] Yet even Catholic Bavaria had to live with the Lutheran enclaves of the Imperial free city of Regensburg and the county of Ortenburg, and with Protestant Franconia and Swabia on the doorstep. According to the terms of the Peace of Westphalia, the confession of such small territorial states or towns was protected from overpowerful neighbours by their status as >immediate' (reichsunmittelbar), ranked directly under the emperor. Such territorial constellations were not unusual in the Empire. The Catholic enclaves of Amöneburg, Neustadt, Naumberg and Fritzlar which belonged to electoral Mainz were situated in the midst of Protestant of Hesse; similarly Eichsfled, which also belonged to Mainz, lay between the Lutheran possessions of the Wettin and the Welf families. [6] The two extremes of multi-confessionality within the Empire are represented by cryptoprotestantism in Austria, Bohemia and Salzburg and by small immediate territories or immediate enclaves which lay in the midst of confessionally uniform territorial states. Silesia demonstrated an additional variation: the minority status of a confession could be ensured by means of external treaty. The situation in Lusatia was similar to that in Silesia, for here the treaties between the emperor and the elector of Saxony ceding Lusatia to the latter, bound the new ruler to uphold the minority status of Catholics. [7] Catholics in Lusatia were also able to cite the normative year set at the Peace of Westphalia in their defense. The situation was also similar in the ecclesiastical principalities of Magdeburg, Halberstadt and Minden, which had all possessed Lutheran majorities since the sixteenth century. By the terms of the Peace of Westphalia these lands were ceded to Brandenburg with the express condition that the existing confessional situation be preserved. [8] In these instances the Catholic minority gathered around ecclesiastical institutions such as the cathedral chapter, collegiate church or monasteries which had been entirely, partly or even only marginally Catholic in the normative year of 1624. This minority position, secured by the normative year, defined the limits of the process of confessionalization which had taken place in proceeding decades. In some instances these boundaries were the result of the stubborn resistance of committed confessional minorities; in others they were purely accidental. In Lutheran territories in the north of the Empire, Catholic cathedral canonries, church foundations and monasteries had held out against the pressures of Lutheran confessionalization, just as the Protestants in Erfurt and in Habsburg Silesia had held out against their Catholic rulers. [9] In the Protestant prince-bishopric of Lübeck four Catholic canonries had even survived within the cathedral chapter. [10] The distribution of confessions in the normative year of 1624 assigned irrefutable boundaries within which each confession could continue to develop, even within individual towns or villages. [11] As a result Catholic church foundations and monasteries survived in a number of Protestant Imperial towns, as did the commenda of the Teutonic Order, which were, in any case, immediate and therefore exempt from the jurisdiction of the magistracy of the Imperial free cities. Examples were to be found in Frankfurt am Main, Nuremberg, Regensburg, Wetzlar, Worms, Dortmund, Ulm and Heilbronn. [12] In Wetzlar the collegiate and parish church of St. Marien was - and indeed still is - used by both confessions; at the end of the seventeenth century the transfer of the Imperial Chamber Court from Speyer to Wetzlar was not unrelated to the confessional coexistence practised in its new home town. The Imperial city of Regensburg was an exceptional case. Here Lutheran citizens lived alongside numerous Catholic institutions ranging from the immediate prince-bishopric of Regensburg and abbey of St. Emmeran to a large number of additional collegiate churches and monasteries over which the town council possessed no authority. [13]

Although the civic corporation of Regensburg remained Protestant for as long as the Empire existed, as a result of immigration the majority of the population was again Catholic within only a few decades of the Peace of Westphalia. By contrast, in other Imperial cites which contained a legally recognized Catholic presence, Catholics never even provided close to half, let along the majority, of the population. Many larger Imperial towns did, however, receive an influx of immigrants of a different confession. In the Protestant Imperial cities this ranged from Catholic servants to Italian Catholic merchants. If these incomers remained for some years, they usually received the legal right of residence, but only very rarely did they become citizens. An example of this process was provided by Italian merchants who began to settle in the Lutheran Imperial free city of Frankfurt am Main shortly after the Peace of Westphalia. It is evident that Catholic migration into Protestant towns was aided by the prior existence of Catholic institutions such as the Catholic churches and monasteries in Frankfurt. In several of the larger autonomous territorial towns arrangements were similar to those in Protestant Imperial free cities. Typical examples were provided by the town of Soest, which initially belonged to Cleves and then passed to Brandenburg, the episcopal seats of Hildesheim and Minden, Silesian Breslau which was under Habsburg authority and Erfurt which belonged to Mainz. Although the Reformation had been adopted in all these towns, Catholic foundations survived, guaranteeing the long term presence of a Catholic minority.

The Peace of Westphalia was silent on the question of immigration by adherents of a different confession. It did, however, provide dissidents with the right to emigrate if they did not wish to adopt the local confession established by the normative year of 1624; they were permitted to move to a territorial state or town of their own confession, without being deprived of their possessions. This ius emigrandi was intended to bolster the confessional homogeneity of each territory, as indeed happened in 1732 when all (secret) Protestants were banished from Salzburg. On the other hand, however, a number of towns and territories in the Empire permitted the immigration of Christians who were not of members of the established confession on economic grounds. (The immigration of Jews on similar economic grounds is not under consideration here.) The Lutheran merchant cities of Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg are renowned examples of multi-confessionality which resulted from immigration: Catholics and Calvinists - as residents, not citizens - were able to live and to trade in both cities. [14] Public worship was more problematic, unless the normative year provided compelling grounds in favour of the minority confession, as was the case for Catholics in Frankfurt. The Count of Schaumburg-Pinneberg and, subsequently, the King of Denmark both exploited the situation in Hamburg and granted religious toleration in neighbouring Altona (1592/94, 1640). This included Christian groups, such as the Mennonites, which had not been granted any form of toleration in the Imperial religious law contained in the Peace of Westphalia. Such confessional coexistence which went well beyond the letter of the law was, however, for the time being, the exception, not the rule. In Schleswig-Holstein it was also evident at an early stage in the establishment of the towns of Glückstadt (1616/1617) and Friedrichstadt (1621). [15]

The large waves of immigration within the Empire which followed the Peace of Westphalia, retained their confessional character for many years. This is illustrated by immigration into the Palatinate, which had been badly affected by the war, and into Pfalz-Zweibrücken, Württemberg, Hesse, Brandenburg-Prussia and Hungary. Reformed Swiss and Waldensians were integrated into the Palatinate and into the territorial church of Württemberg; Huguenots strengthened the Reformed confession of territorial rulers of Brandenburg-Prussia, Hessen-Kassel, Hessen-Homburg and the Wetterau county of Ysenburg; in East Prussia Salzburg emigrants found a new home which had adopted a distinct Lutheran identity; initially only Catholics from the Swabian Danubian lands were invited to resettle in Hungary. Although the century which followed the Peace of Westphalia saw numerous vigorous waves of emigration, the confessional map of Germany which had been drawn up in 1648 saw, at most, only local reconfiguration - the most substantial reworkings were in the Palatinate and in Pfalz-Zweibrücken, two territories which were initially Reformed, but, as the result of Lutheran and Catholic immigration in the second half of the seventeenth century, became tri-confessional. [16] The upsurge of Catholicism in the Palatinate, the heart of German Calvinism in the years before the Thirty Years War, was a result of the arrival of a new ruling dynasty: in 1685 the Reformed Simmern line of the Palatine Wittelsbach family was succeeded by the Catholic line of Pfalz-Neuburg, who enforced the recatholicization of the Palatinate, circumventing the terms of the Peace of Westphalia and achieving some degree of success. This policy of recatholicization in the Palatinate was made possible by a working alliance with France, which was incorporated in the Rijswick Clause of 1697, part of the peace treaty which concluded the war of succession in the Palatinate. This guaranteed public Catholic worship in those areas which had been occupied by French troops during the war. Although extensive confessional wrangling broken out in the Palatinate as a result of this agreement and initially put great strain on interconfessional relations amongst the Imperial estates, the fire was dampened down before it could spread further by mechanisms within the Imperial constitution which were designed to regulate such disputes. Similar subsequent local conflicts elsewhere in the Empire also failed to ignite more widespread conflict. In many churches in the Palatinate a wall was erected so that the choir could be used by Catholics while Reformed worship took place in the nave. Lutherans, who had participated in the wave of immigration into the Palatinate alongside Catholics, were also granted churches in which they were permitted to hold public worship. In the case of the town of Oppenheim this had indeed been stipulated at the Peace of Westphalia, which thus initiated the development of confessional coexistence in the Palatinate after the Thirty Years War.

The normative year set by the Peace of Westphalia prevented rulers from forcing their own confessional allegiances or personal conversion onto their subjects. Although the Peace of Westphalia explicitly confirmed the ius reformandi in the hands of the ruler and, therefore, the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, it also implicitly abandoned this principle by giving precedence to the normative year. The conversion of the ruler from Lutheranism to Catholicism, which happened in several cases after 1648, resulted in various degrees of coexistence of Lutheran and Catholic within Lutheran territories. Catholic communities were founded and encouraged, contravening the boundaries set by the normative year and testing the limits of the Peace of Westphalia. In Hessen-Rheinfels, which was ruled by the minor branch of the family, the conversion of Landgrave Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels enabled the re-establishment of Catholic communities. In the small principality of Pfalz-Sulzbach in the Upper Palatinate the Count Palatine Christian August introduced interconfessional institutions in support of his new Catholic co-religionists. [17] In Hanover under Duke Johann Friedrich, in Schwerin under Duke Christian Louis and in Dresden since the reign of Augustus the Strong Catholicism was restricted to court circles which formed around the prince and his family. This situation was replicated in Württemberg and in Hessen-Kassel in the eighteenth century following the conversion of their respective rulers. Catholic immigration into Pfalz-Zweibrücken, which had been so badly destroyed by the war, had started well before the succession passed into Catholic hands. [18] Catholic communities which gathered around the princely court in Protestant territories in the age of the baroque were marked by their close association with the ruler. These communities were remarkable for their frequent inclusion of large numbers of court artists, who illustrated a particular form of vocational immigration with a strong confessional character. The model of conformity which had accompanied confessionalization was therefore abandoned at a large number of German courts, and in many of the larger trading centres, from the second half of the seventeenth century. Confessional politics in Brandenburg-Prussia have often been cited as a >regal route' to toleration in German history, in marked contrast to events in Austria and other larger territorial states in the Empire. It must, however, be acknowledged more readily than has often been the case, that the Peace of Westphalia designated limits by which the elector in Berlin was bound to abide. [19] Since the conversion of Elector John Sigismund to Calvinism in 1613 a particular form of innerprotestant dual-confessionality had developed in Brandenburg: the country had remained Lutheran, as the Elector had been forced to confirm by treaty with the Estates in 1615, but the dynasty, court, court officials and state university at Frankfurt an der Oder had, by contrast, become Calvinist. Calvinism in Brandenburg-Prussia was clearly defined as the religion of the court and the bureaucracy. In other reformed territories such as the Palatinate, Nassau-Dillenburg, Wittgenstein, Bentheim-Tecklenburg, Lippe, Anhalt and East Friesland the Reformed church encompassed the whole territory or at least a majority of the state. Although Reformed and Lutheran continued to coexist in East Friesland, Lippe and Anhalt, only in Brandenburg-Prussia did the Reformed Church adopt such a pronounced character as the religious community of ruler and elite functionary. [20] Under the Great Elector this identity was reinforced by the resettlement of Huguenots banished from France who became a privileged immigrant group with strong connections to the state. The conversion of leading East Prussian noble families such as the Counts von Dohna and von Finckenstein also provided a element of this Calvinist minority and would have great significance for the development of the Prussian state.

In addition to this Lutheran-Reformed coexistence, from an early date the electors of Brandenburg had been under pressure to grant toleration to Catholic subjects. This stemmed from their inheritance in 1609/1614 of territories on the Lower Rhine and in Westphalia belonging to Jülich-Cleves. Influenced by Erasmian ideals, the dukes of Cleves had ignored pressure to enforce confessional uniformity and had permitted instead the unfettered development of all three confessions, leading to various degrees of tri-confessionality in Jülich, Berg, Cleves, Mark and Ravensberg. [21] The treaties of succession between Pfalz-Neuburg and Brandenburg which delineated the division of the lands belonging to Cleves also guaranteed the continued inclusion of all three confessions. Although these treaties were not cited in the Peace of Westphalia, the ruling on the normative year was clearly valid, even through it was also disputed whether a date earlier than 1624 should be provide the base line in these territories. Throughout the continuing friction between Brandenburg and Pfalz-Neuburg the fundamental principle that a tri-confessional policy of toleration was to be applied in the five territories which formed the lands of Jülich-Cleves was never questioned. The Hohenzollern were additionally bound by the Peace of Westphalia to guarantee the position of the Catholic minority in the former ecclesiastical principalities of Magdeburg, Halberstadt and Minden, which were secularized and passed to Brandenburg in 1648 in compensation for Further Pommerania. From 1648 at the latest, and in its territories which lay to the west of the Elbe, Brandenburg-Prussia was legally bound to a multi-confessional pro-minority policy which was more broadly defined than in almost any other territorial state or town in the Empire. In the eighteenth century such pragmatic tolerance, with its origins in Imperial law, was also legitimized by the theory of the state developed in natural law and in the Enlightenment, securing a advantage over the Habsburg monarchy and over other territories in the Empire in the race for modernity.

The Peace of Westphalia also had an impact on the territories of the so-called Second Reformation by securing Lutheran-Reformed coexistence. The Protestant normative year of 1648 ensured, for example, that despite their own Reformed allegiances, the landgraves of Hessen-Kassel were bound to guarantee the Lutheran confession of their subjects in the Upper Hessian lands around Marburg, [22] in those parts of the county of Schaumburg which they ruled and in the University of Rinteln. It also determined that the Reformed counts of Lippe were forbidden from interfering with the Lutheran confession of the territorial town of Lemgo, just as the Reformed counts of Schaumburg-Lippe had to limit their confession to the castle chapel, leaving the Lutheran territorial church untouched. [23] In East Friesland the existing confessional division between Lutherans and Reformed was given additional weight by the Peace of Westphalia. On the other hand, bitter confessional dispute erupted in the second half of the seventeenth century in the county of Lingen, which belonged to the house of Orange-Nassau, between the Reformed ruling house and the Catholic majority of their subjects and it was debated whether the normative year contained in the Peace of Westphalia should be applied. [24] The immediate Reformed enclave of Burgsteinfurt which lay in the middle of the Catholic Münsterland was able to hold its ground against the recatholicization attempted by Bishop Christopher Bernhard von Galen, although von Galen was successful in encouraging the conversion of one of the counts of Bentheim. As throughout the Empire, the normative year provided a well fortified bulwark against attack by the opposing confession. This confessional definition which was so evident after 1648 had, however, only gradually come into being. In the period between the Peace of Augsburg and the Thirty Years War confessionalization in the territories and towns of the Holy Roman Empire had consistently accompanied the development of a confessional identity and the new formulation of established practice. It was a lengthy process, gaining momentum with each generation, in which pressure from above and acceptance below joined forces. Leaving aside the heartlands of the Reformation such as Saxony, Hesse and ducal Prussia and the towns which rapidly became Protestant such as Nuremberg, Strassburg and Hamburg, the cultivation of a collective Protestant or Catholic mentality, with its broad implications, was a long drawn out process. Many regions contained a hybrid creation comprising elements of both old church and new faith, or were >confessional no man's lands', as the historian Volker Press characterized the situation on the estates of the Imperial knights and amongst their families.

Confessional uncertainty was common amongst the Imperial nobility who preferred to keep their options open, in particular when male and female members of their family held benefices in cathedral chapters in the Imperial church and in female foundations. In these instances a decision in favour of Protestantism could herald the loss of such benefices. Many families amongst the lower nobility - both imperial [25] and territorial - only adopted a stable confessional identity in the seventeenth century. As a corporate body the Imperial knights avoided confessional commitment. So too did local associations such as the Knights' Circles (Ritterkreise) and Knights' Cantons (Ritterkantone) in Franconia, Swabia and on the Rhine, where the families and subjects of the majority of members were also confessionally diverse. Imperial knights were free to choose between those confessions which were legally recognized within the Empire and they designated individually the confession of their subjects. It was not surprising in a body so closely associated with the institutions of the Empire that after 1648 the normative years were strictly observed. The orders of knights spiritual, the Teutonic Order and the Knights of St. John, within which the lower nobility were strongly represented, were predominantly Catholic but also included Protestant elements: the Hesse Commandery of the Teutonic Order in Marburg had Reformed, Lutheran and Catholic members. [26] It proved impossible to provide the structures of the Empire with a solid confessional identity through the Imperial knights, or through the Imperial corporations of counts or free cities. The constitution of the Empire remained impervious to demands by one confessional party. On the religious map of the Empire numerous gaps opened up between the competing confessions.

It was not just areas controlled by Imperial knights which were confessional no man's lands. Some condominia were held by two or more rulers of differing confessions, such as those under the margraves of Baden, [27] and the electors of Mainz and the Palatinate. In many such condominia religious freedom was granted to subjects who adhered to the confession of one of the competing rulers, although after 1648 the Peace of Westphalia regulated the use of local churches according to the normative year of 1624. In the small world of the condominia belonging to Baden, the Palatinate and Mainz, in the Black Forest, in the Hunsrück and in the Taunus, a distinctive form of coexistence developed in everyday life from which singular customs emerged. In Tigerfeld on the Swabian Alb, a village shared by Württemberg and an Imperial knight, a farm house had been divided according to confession; depending on the part of the house in which they were born, children were baptized in either the Catholic church of the imperial knight or the Protestant church of Württemberg. In Eppstein, a condominium in the Taunus mountains which belonged to Mainz and Hesse, it was traditional in the case of mixed marriages that the wedding took place in one church and the baptism of the children in the other. These families lived, literally, between confessions. The situation in such condominia illuminated the practical limitations of confessionalization which was based on the unit of the territorial state. In some condominia, as on the estates of Imperial knights who had converted, there was certainly also evidence of a strong correlation between confession, peasant ownership and the social structure of the village, in particular in instances when immigration after the Thirty Years War introduced a confession for which the normative year did not provide. It must be stressed that the religious history of the condominia and lands held by Imperial knights has received little attention and is a lucrative field for future research. The frequency and nature of mixed marriages by both estate owner and his subjects is deserving of particular attention.

In many cases the situation in the >confessional no man's lands' and amongst the faithful was only regulated after 1648. Various cultures of remembrance with distinct confessional identities developed, often with particular reference to the Thirty Years War and the Peace of Westphalia. There emerged pilgrimages, devotional days and festivals in celebration of peace. The definitive delineation of the external forms of each confession was, on the whole, only achieved after 1648. It was not only in the prince-bishopric of Osnabrück - of which we will hear more later - that the boundaries between Lutheran and Catholic liturgy and ecclesiastical practice remained fluid until well into the seventeenth century. This was particularly evident in territorial churches in north and east Germany. In its external forms Lutheranism in Brandenburg and Silesia retained very evident pre-reformation traditions. Despite the theological rift, altars and paintings in churches, the German Mass, the use of traditional liturgical vestments, visits to dying parishioners and the celebration of traditional holy days all evinced continuity. In the Welf territories monasteries and convents endured within an evangelical monastic tradition. [28] To the eyes of the simple folk who experienced such territorial churches, the transition must have seemed very smooth and not an abrupt change of direction.

At the conclusion of this overview of dual and multi-confessional constellations within the Empire we must turn to the question of parity. At the Peace of Westphalia, parity was the second cornerstone, alongside the normative year, on which religious peace was to be erected. The Peace of Osnabrück designed parity as >Aequalitas exacta mutuaque' and it specified two models of confessional equality within the Empire: on the one hand the four Swabian Imperial free cities of Augsburg, Biberach, Dinkelsbühl and Ravensburg and, on the other, the prince-bishopric of Osnabrück. All these territories had experienced serious confessional disorder, both before and during the Thirty Years War. In Osnabrück and in the four Swabian towns, in Augsburg in particular, the opposing Catholic and Lutheran camps were of similar size and possessed similar political influence. At various points during the Thirty Years War, depending on the fortunes of the armies of Emperor, Catholic League and Sweden, each party used the opportunity to gain the upper hand over its opponents, engendering further antagonism on each occasion. Only by placing this confessional coexistence within a legal framework did it seem possible to defuse the situation; this would also secure the political future of these Imperial estates. The Peace of Osnabrück applied two different forms of parity: in the Swabian Imperial cities [29] strict equality in office holding was designed to ensure cooperation between Catholics and Protestants and was to be achieved through shared occupancy of civic offices; in the prince-bishopric of Osnabrück [30] procedural parity in the episcopal seat was to be realized by the so-called >alternative succession' of Catholic and Lutheran prince-bishops. In Augsburg it was not just civic offices which were to be shared; parishes and parish churches were also paired. Catholic and Lutheran parish churches and hospitals were sited side by side; each party also had its own financial assets and educational system, including its own high school, the Protestant Gymnasium St. Anna and the Jesuit Gymnasium St. Salvator. Henceforth an >invisible boundary' would run through the town. The position of Catholics in Augsburg was strongly buttressed by the prince-bishop, even though he lived outside the city in Dillingen, and by the Fugger family, which had risen up the ranks from leading merchant and financial house to become counts of the Empire and now held landed wealth outside the city. Augsburg Protestants did not have such influential patrons in the town itself, but they were supported by the rather more distant Protestant Imperial estates. In gratitude for their relief from the confessional extremities of the Thirty Year War the Protestants initiated the annual >festival of peace'. Initially this was purely a Protestant festival of thanksgiving - only in the nineteenth century did it become an ecumenical civic celebration. Institutional parity analogous to that in Augsburg was established in Biberach, Dinkelsbühl and Ravensburg. In Biberach the old town parish church was used by both confessions at the same time. Although Kaufbeuren was not named in the Peace of Osnabrück, this Imperial free town, which also lay in East Swabia and was confessionally mixed, followed the example of these four towns. Augsburg was the most important of the Imperial free cities to embrace parity after 1648. On the one hand this resulted in hardened fronts between the confessions in daily coexistence, through the consolidation of confessional identities and by the lack of association between the confessions: mixed marriages and conversion were both very rare in the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. [31] On the other hand, there was also a range of mutual contacts. Religious art was a particularly striking example, as Augsburg affirmed its status as a transregional centre for artistic production. The workshops of Protestant goldsmiths produced numerous magnificent baroque Catholic monstrances. In Osnabrück the solution to the complexities of the alternative succession was found in the ruling house. Protestant demands at the Westphalian negotiations for the secularization of the prince-bishopric, in which almost half the population was Catholic, were not met; at the same time, however, this territorial accrual satisfied the Welf family which had been rather short changed by the terms of the Peace. The cathedral chapter of Osnabrück, which had three Protestant cathedral canonries, was overwhelmingly Catholic and was supposed, according to canonical practice, to elect the Catholic prince-bishop for every second term of office. The Lutheran prince-bishops, who were to alternate with this Catholic ruler, were to come from the Calenberg line - the Hanoverian branch - of the House of Welf. When the seat was held by a Protestant, the archbishop of Cologne was also to act as spiritual leader of Catholics in Osnabrück; during Catholic possession Lutherans were placed under the jurisdiction of Hanover. The churches and parishes in the town and territory of Osnabrück were distributed between Catholics and Lutherans according to the normative date 1 January 1624. Protestants were numerically dominant within the town, Catholics within parts of the wider territory. The complex question of apportionment was regulated by the Capitulatio Perpetua of 1650 which became basic law in Osnabrück. This established, according to the application of the normative year, the confession of the parish priest and the nature of public worship held in each church. Until the Thirty Years War the prince-bishopric of Osnabrück had been a particularly confused confessional no man's land. In the course of the visitation carried out by Lucenius in the 1620s, the parish clergy in Osnabrück had been found to be uncertain on the whole as to the differences between Catholicism and Lutheranism. Mixed forms such as the use of the lay chalice and hymns by Luther during Mass and the marriage of clergy were justified as traditional Osnabrück practice. The thrust of confessionalization had not yet reached Osnabrück; after the Peace of Westphalia, however, the Capitulatio Perpetua, rapidly made up for lost time. [32] Although subjects could choose between Catholicism and Lutheranism, for all official ecclesiastical functions they were required to attend their local parish church. The distribution of parishes was not infrequently unjust, in that often the confession of the parish priest, as determined by the normative year, did not coincide with the confession of the majority of his congregation and numerous local disputes ensued. Two extreme cases were resolved only in 1786 when a new church was founded for each confession, the Catholic church in Schledehausen and the Protestant church in Fürstenau. A decisive role in this settlement was played by the renowned statesman and Enlightened thinker Justus Möser. Despite this complex, and at times muddled, regulation of coexistence, remarkably stable confessional identities developed in the town and territory of Osnabrück. Interconfessional daily life was marked by mistrust and by numerous minor disputes and instances of harassment, but at the same time a degree of pragmatic cooperation was deemed necessary. In matters of faith and worship Lutheran and Catholic forms had been mixed together until well into the Thirty Years War; similarly, even after 1648, when clearly defined confessional practices and identities had been established, it was taken for granted that a single artist could contribute to the baroque ornamentation of both Catholic and Protestant churches.

As in other dual-confessional towns such as Hildesheim, Regensburg, and Breslau, and, naturally, Osnabrück, education in Augsburg was also marked by confessional parity: the Lutheran town school stood opposite the cathedral school, the Catholic Carolinium. Yet parity also led to a mentality of jealous protectionism as society in town and territory became inflexible and largely incapable of innovation. The welfare system, including poor relief, in Osnabrück is only one example. Any initiative which went beyond an embroidery of the existing system was paralyzed by the constant need to consider a highly suspicious rival. Parity in office-holding in Augsburg led to similar stupefaction. In Osnabrück, as in Augsburg, it was only when the system of parity with all its limitations was demolished by secularization and mediatization that the development of the modern state could commence. Even then the parity decreed by the Peace of Westphalia left its mark on both cities until well into the twentieth century. In many ways the coexistence achieved in Augsburg and Osnabrück through equal treatment of the confessions was a pioneering model which the Peace of Westphalia had prepared for the solution of confessional conflict. The principle of parity was the polar opposite to the suppression of a minority confession, typified by the Habsburg lands where, as mentioned above, cryptoprotestantism was forced underground. Between these two extremes there stretched out a range of forms of coexistence by two or three confessions, each with its own character. The following configurations emerged from the Peace of Westphalia and each could be applied to a single territorial state or town:

- a Catholic minority in the midst of a Protestant majority but supported by Catholic institutions,

- an enclave immediately under the emperor in the midst of a homogenous territory or town of a differing confession,

- a Protestant community protected from its Catholic ruler by application of the normative year,

- the system of Protestant >Friedenskirchen' and >Gnadenkirchen' in Silesia which was guaranteed by external treaty,

- the fluid confessional boundaries in several condominia,

- the tolerant coexistence of Lutherans and Reformed,

- the tolerant coexistence of all three confessions which were legally recognized within the Empire,

- finally, institutionalized parity.

Confessional coexistence was enshrined in law, be it the Imperial law of the Peace of Westphalia, local territorial laws or external treaties guaranteeing protection for minorities. This legal framework could be explicit yet multifaceted. Existing research has identified the outlines of this legal question, although there is still further work to be done, in particular on the implications of the law and on the various grades of parity. Far less attention has been given to the social backdrop against which confessional coexistence was played out. Dual and tri-confessionality also brought to the fore social tensions and disparities, often these accompanied and resulted from confessional migration. Numerous local and regional studies are necessary before light will be thrown on this issue. And finally, the question of the impact of confessional splintering and coexistence on mentality and culture unveils a broad and exiting new field of research. For example, did coexistence promote or prevent conflict? Did this conflict take specific forms and were there ritualized forms of social interaction designed to avoid such conflict? What impact did the confessions have on each other? Were these communities immune from each other despite their close vicinity or was there interaction between them? Did dual-confessionality and multi-confessionality leave their mark on the German national character? In the long term, did the tendency to use legal means to prevent confessional conflict, as typified by the Peace of Westphalia, promote or retard attempts at irenic rapprochement? To what extent did this legal codification create a specifically German understanding of church and confession and of the role of the state? This last question also raises the issue of the nature of the relationship between church and state in the particular German tradition, an issue which remains as explosive as ever; it also calls into question the early role of the state in shaping social and cultural life. In the territorial states and towns of the Empire the Peace of Westphalia was both an important milestone and a new point of departure.

FOOTNOTES