Today's contribution from Ute Lotz-Heumann and Stefan Ehrenpreis
(Humboldt Universitaet, Berlin), marks the beginning of H-German's
spring forum on "Confessionalization."

The authors begin our discussion by considering the conceptual strengths
and weaknesses of the concept of confessionalization, as well as the
term's history and future.

On Tuesday and Wednesday we will publish responses to the book, and on
Thursday we will open up discussion to list members. We hope that
members who are not experts in the field will feel free to contribute in
order to meet one of the forum's goals, which is to bridge the gaps
between modernists and early modernists through discussion of a
historical paradigm relevant to both sides of the temporal divide.


For a more complete introduction to the forum and an extensive set of
book reviews related to the topic, see
<http://www.h-net.org/~german/discuss/Confessionalization/
Confess_index.htm>. (Please note that the links often do break and you
will need to cut and paste the link to access the page.)



The Concept of Confessionalization as a Research Tool

By Ute Lotz-Heumann with Stefan Ehrenpreis

_Reformation und konfessionelles Zeitalter_ appeared in 2002 as one of
the first books in a series entitled _Kontroversen um die Geschichte_.
The publisher, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, did not want to
produce overviews of historical periods or subjects in the usual sense,
but a summary of historiographical debates (and not historiography in
general!),mainly for advanced students. The general idea behind the
series is that the readers already have a solid grounding in the history
of the period and are now seeking an overview of discussions and debated
subjects in historiography. Moreover, the books are not meant as
exhaustive treatments of those debates (how could they be, with less
than 120 pages of text?), but as guidelines and starting points to dig
deeper.

_Habent sua fata libelli_: It is indeed curious how books can be
interpreted by others in a way that has no longer anything to do with
the intentions of the authors. We do not mean to dwell on this problem
in detail here. But in view of the fact that we have recently heard our
book--which is, after all, entitled _Reformation und konfessionelles
Zeitalter_--described as "the confessionalization book," we wish to
start out with some remarks regarding the aims and the scope of the
contents of our book.

In geographical scope our book is mostly limited to research on the
Reformation in central Europe and Germany in particular: this is, after
all, what is taught in German universities. England was chosen as one
European example to show a very different case of Reformation history,
which also resulted in very different historiographical controversies.

As opposed to the Oldenbourg series _Enzyklopaedie deutscher
Geschichte_, which has one book on the Reformation and another one on
_Konfessionalisierung im 16. Jahrhundert_, divided by the Peace of
Augsburg,[1] our book brings the age of the Reformation and the age of
the Counter-Reformation together. We have very consciously named the
book _Reformation und konfessionelles Zeitalter_--neither "Reformation
und Gegenreformation" because we had the impression that the term
"Gegenreformation" does no longer adequately describe the state of
historiographical discussion, nor "Reformation und Konfessionalisierung"
because we did not wish the "catchword" for one of the major debates
discussed in the book to be part of the title. "Konfessionelles
Zeitalter," therefore, was meant as a purely chronological term,
describing the time after 1555, when the Reformation period proper is
usually deemed to have come to an end in Germany. Outside of German
research, of course, the term "Reformation" is often used in a much
broader sense, covering a period far into the seventeenth century, and
therefore covering the same time period which we tried to denote with
"Reformation und konfessionelles Zeitalter."

We certainly did not mean the book to be a "confessionalization book" (a
perception that might have to do with the fact that we both work with
Heinz Schilling in Berlin). In our view, confessionalization is one
historiographical approach among others, not a "universal concept" with
which to interpret (and into which to incorporate) all other subjects
and approaches. In our book we meant to put together an overview of the
most important historiographical controversies in the field of
Reformation studies in recent decades. As a consequence, and as space
was limited, omissions were unavoidable. We decided, for example, to
largely exclude the controversies between East German Marxist
historiography and West German social history in the 1970s and 1980s,
especially the discussions about the _fruehbuergerliche Revolution_,
because we felt that these debates were no longer of immediate import
for today's students. Moreover, these discussions have already been
treated in other overviews.[2] We also had to exclude the literature on
Luther with its different debates: that would have been another book.
And because of the concentration on controversies, we had to exclude
much of the rich literature on Catholicism and Catholic reform in early
modern Europe.

As a result, the book focuses on some of the major debates in the
historiography on the German Reformation: the periodization of the
Reformation, the urban Reformation, the rural Reformation and the
concept of _Kommunalismus_, the radical Reformation and the Anabaptists,
the Reformation and cultural change, especially iconoclasm and the
media, and the research on women and gender in the Reformation. In
addition, there is one chapter on the debate on confessionalization as a
concept and another on the question of the periodization of the second
half of the sixteenth century in the Empire, i.e. on the terms
"Zeitalter der Konfessionalisierung," "Gegenreformation" and "Zweite
Reformation". (Lastly, there is the above-mentioned chapter on England.)
As Olaf Moerke in his book on the Reformation in the _Enzyklopaedie
deutscher Geschichte_ has only recently identified much the same major
controversies in Reformation history, and as the EDG series has devoted
an entire volume to confessionalization,[3] our choices seem to reflect
a certain consensus as to which debates are considered prominent.

The debate on confessionalization has certainly been one of the major
debates in recent German historiography on the extended Reformation
period. The scene was set, so to speak, with Wolfgang Reinhard's and
Heinz Schilling's programmatic articles and books in the late 1970s and
early 1980s[4] as well as the three volumes on Reformed, Lutheran and
Catholic confessionalization, which appeared between 1986 and 1995.[5]
Criticism of the concept grew over time: one could perhaps say that in
the manner of Thomas Kuhn's scientific revolutions, confessionalization
became a paradigm which was then criticized by a mostly younger
generation of scholars. Criticism of the concept is of course closely
connected with the development from social history
(_Gesellschaftsgeschichte_) and structural history toward microhistory
and cultural history. We have already summarized the concept of
confessionalization and the major critiques of the concept in our book.
Therefore, in the following, we will, first, discuss the limits and
possibilities which we see in the concept and second, we will suggest
areas of research in which the concept of confessionalization could, in
our opinion, prove helpful in the future.

What are the limits of the concept of confessionalization? In our view,
they are two-fold and taking these limits seriously certainly changes
the scope of the original concept dramatically. First, there is the
thesis that confessionalization was a fundamental process of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which divided society down to its
smallest units--households and families--along confessional lines and
resulted in a "Zwang zur Konfessionalisierung."[6] It has in recent
years been variously shown that this thesis cannot hold. There is, in
fact, a broad consensus among historians of different specialties that
confessionalization was not a fundamental process: from historians
studying the law and the state to historians with a microhistorical
approach, from historians working on the early modern republic of
letters and the universities to historians studying church discipline.

Second, the concept of confessionalization as defined by Reinhard and
Schilling is closely associated with the modernization thesis. When we
consider the time when the concept was developed--in the context of
German _Gesellschaftsgeschichte_--it is not surprising that a concept of
early modern history which wanted to inscribe religion into a discourse
dominated by social and economic history had at the same time to "offer"
something to that discourse. Confessionalization was thus interpreted as
part of the long-term process of modernization, in particular of state
formation and social disciplining.

The connection between confessionalization and modernization was
challenged very early on by Winfried Schulze who insisted that
modernization proceeded not from confessionalization but from other
developments of the early modern period, notably secularization. Since,
the modernization thesis derived from Weber has been replaced by a
theory of multiple modernities, in which western civilization--be it
confessionalized or secularized--no longer plays a leading role. A
younger generation of scholars, therefore, is more skeptical about the
long-term implications of processes in early modern church, state and
society and more inclined to concentrate on the period and its
characteristics as such.

In the light of recent research, therefore, it is no longer possible to
see confessionalization as an all-enveloping process and as a
modernizing force. This leaves us with a much more limited scope of the
concept. One could argue, as has sometimes been done in recent years,
that we can consequently do away with the concept altogether. However,
one should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. We find that,
stripped of its macro-historical claims and implications, the concept of
confessionalization serves as a fruitful research tool.

In the following, we would like to sketch our view of
confessionalization as a research tool as well as give some hints as to
future areas of research. Even if the implications of the concept of
confessionalization are limited to the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, two major objections have been raised against it: first, its
alleged emphasis on the functional similarities of the confessional
churches and resulting neglect of the _propria_ of the confessional
churches and cultures; second, its statist focus or top-to-bottom
approach. In this context, we would like to stress two points: first, we
will take a closer look at the relationship between confessionalization
and confessional cultures; second, we would like to bring to the fore
one aspect of the concept which was part of the original definition, but
received little attention since.

First: It has been argued that we can do away with the concept of
confessionalization altogether and return to the concept of confession
building (_Konfessionsbildung_) propounded by Ernst Walter Zeeden, which
concentrates on the formation of confessional churches.[7] Thomas
Kaufmann has suggested the concept of _Konfessionskulturen_ as an
alternative concept, concentrating on the specific confessional cultures
that developed in the early modern period.[8] Nevertheless, we believe
that the concept of confessionalization can function as a research tool
which encompasses a broader view than is provided by
_Konfessionsbildung_ and _Konfessionskulturen_. In our opinion, one of
the major advantages of the concept of confessionalization is that it
integrates the discussion of political, social and cultural developments
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, thus enabling us to see
possible connections between these different spheres.

In addition, confessionalization has the advantage of being defined as a
process. Thus, confessionalization is not the same as "confessionalism"
(as it is sometimes translated into English). "Confessionalization"
draws our attention to the developments which led to confession building
and the construction of confessional cultures. For example, confessional
identities were not simply "there"; rather, they were constructed and
perhaps then diffused in society. Moreover, the concept of
confessionalization-although it was criticized for neglecting
characteristics unique to the individual confessions and focusing too
much on functional similarities and parallels--has always maintained the
fundamental differences between the confessional churches. For, the
development of confessional _propria_, of different confessional
cultures, was an essential ingredient of confessionalization as a
process of confessional differentiation. Applying the concept of
confessionalization therefore means analyzing parallels between as well
as specifics of the early modern confessional churches: Parallel
strategies could be effected by different means, for example.

Second: One of the first comprehensive definitions of
confessionalization by Heinz Schilling refers to the fact that
confessionalization and state formation were not necessarily parallel
processes.[9] This aspect of the concept of confessionalization needs to
be stressed, examined further and, in fact, its scope extended. Research
on territories in early modern Germany as well as on other European
countries[10] has shown that the interaction between state formation and
confession building was much more complicated than has been implied in
some of the definitions of confessionalization by Reinhard and
Schilling.[11]

Not only do we now see that opposition to centralized state building and
confessionalization "from above" was wide-spread, possibly even
universal, in early modern Europe. We have also come to realize that
confessional conflicts and confessional cultures could be the result of
local and regional developments rather than of state influence "from
above." As a consequence, the relationship between state formation and
confession building as part of the concept of confessionalization must
be construed much more flexibly and with different degrees of state
influence (and effectiveness) in mind. First, opposition and resistance
to measures by state and church must be taken into account. Second, we
must ask whether even those measures "from above" that were not
effective did in fact have unintended effects: even if they remained
declarations of intent, such measures were perceived as potentials
and/or threats to which people may have reacted in some way. Third, we
will have to look away from the state toward society and the role of
different groups in society. Social formations like confessional
churches, confessional cultures or confessional identities could only
come into being and continue to exist if they were reinforced again and
again through interaction. Fourth, these issues raise the question of
self-confessionalization, about which we know very little so far. It is
clear that elites played an important role in the process, but it is so
far largely unknown how confessional identities and confessional
cultures (on the eventual existence of which current research seems to
agree) came into being.

Research into the creation of confessional cultures and identities can
thus profit from using confessionalization as a research tool because
the concept offers a wide approach: it integrates political, social and
cultural developments, analyzing their interaction; and it is a
developmental concept, thereby focusing on processes of cultural
construction and gradual diffusion in society. As a consequence, we
could then ask questions like "what is the relationship between
confessionalization and secularization?" again, but from a different
angle: not as a macro-historical thesis, but as a research problem which
looks in detail at the processes through which religious and secular
meaning was constructed in the early modern period.[12]

Notes:

[1] See Olaf Moerke, _Die Reformation. Voraussetzungen und Durchsetzung_
(Munich: Oldenbourg, 2005); Heinrich Richard Schmidt,
_Konfessionalisierung im 16. Jahrhundert_ (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1992_.

[2] Luise Schorn-Schuette, _Die Reformation: Vorgeschichte, Verlauf,
Wirkung_ (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1996_; Rainer Wohlfeil, _Einfuehrung in
die Geschichte der deutschen Reformation_ (Munich:. C.H. Beck, 1982).

[3] See note 1 above.

[4] See, for example, Wolfgang Reinhard, "Gegenreformation als
Modernisierung? Prolegomena zu einer Theorie des konfessionellen
Zeitalters," _Archiv fuer Reformationsgeschichte_ 68 (1977), pp.
226-252; idem, "Konfession und Konfessionalisierung in Europa," in idem,
ed., _Bekenntnis und Geschichte. Die Confessio Augustana im historischen
Zusammenhang_ (Munich: Voegel, 1981), pp. 165-189; idem, "Zwang zur
Konfessionalisierung? Prolegomena zu einer Theorie des konfessionellen
Zeitalters," _Zeitschrift fuer historische Forschung_ 10 (1983), pp.
257-277; Heinz Schilling, _Konfessionskonflikt und Staatsbildung. Eine
Fallstudie ueber das Verhaeltnis von religioesem und sozialem Wandel in
der Fruehneuzeit am Beispiel der Grafschaft Lippe_ (Guetersloh:
Guetersloher Verlagshaus, 1981); idem, "Die Konfessionalisierung im
Reich: Religioeser und gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Deutschland zwischen
1555 und 1620," _Historische Zeitschrift_ 246 (1988), pp. 1-45 (English
translation: idem, "Confessionalization in the Empire. Religious and
Societal Change in Germany between 1555 and 1620," in idem, _Religion,
Political Culture and the Emergence of Early Modern Society: Essays in
German and Dutch History_ (Leiden, New York, Cologne: Brill, 1992, pp.
205-245).

[5] See Heinz Schilling, ed., _Die reformierte Konfessionalisierung in
Deutschland_ (Guetersloh: Guetersloher Verlagshaus, 1986);
Hans-Christoph Rublack, ed., _Die lutherische Konfessionalisierung in
Deutschland_ (Guetersloh: Guetersloher Verlagshaus, 1992); Wolfgang
Reinhard and Heinz Schilling, eds., _Die katholische
Konfessionalisierung_ (Guetersloh: Guetersloher Verlagshaus, 1995).

[6] The phrase is from Wolfgang Reinhard: see note 4 above.

[7] See Ernst Walter Zeeden, "Grundlagen und Wege der Konfessionsbildung
im Zeitalter der Glaubenskaempfe," _Historische Zeitschrift_ 185 (1958),
pp. 249-299; idem, _Die Entstehung der Konfessionen. Grundlagen und
Formen der Konfessionsbildung im Zeitalter der Glaubenskaempfe_ (Munich,
Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1965).

[8] See Thomas Kaufmann, _Dreissigjaehriger Krieg und Westfaelischer
Friede. Kirchengeschichtliche Studien zur lutherischen
Konfessionskultur_ (Tuebingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998).

[9] See Schilling, "Die Konfessionalisierung im Reich" (note 4), p. 6;
English translation: idem, "Confessionalization in the Empire" (note 4),
p. 209.

[10] See, for example, Stefan Ehrenpreis,  Konfessionalisierung von
unten. Konzeption und Thematik eines bergischen Modells?" in Burkhard
Dietz and Stefan Ehrenpreis, eds., _Drei Konfessionen in einer Region.
Beitraege zur Geschichte der Konfessionalisierung im Herzogtum Berg vom
16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert_ (Cologne: Rheinland-Verlag, 1999), pp.
3-13; Marc R. Forster, _The Counter-Reformation in the Villages.
Religion and Reform in the Bishopric of Speyer, 1560-1720_ (Ithaca,
London: Cornell University Press, 1992); Werner Freitag, "Konfliktfelder
und Konfliktparteien im Prozess der lutherischen und reformierten
Konfessionalisierung - das Fuerstentum Anhalt und die Hochstifte
Halberstadt und Magdeburg im 16. Jahrhundert," _Archiv fuer
Reformationsgeschichte_ 92 (2001), pp. 165-194; Ute Lotz-Heumann, _Die
doppelte Konfessionalisierung in Irland. Konflikt und Koexistenz im 16.
und in der ersten Haelfte des 17. Jahrhunderts_ (Tuebingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2000); Olaf Moerke, "'Konfessionalisierung' als
politisch-soziales Strukturprinzip? Das Verhaeltnis von Religion und
Staatsbildung in der Republik der Vereinigten Niederlande im 16. und 17.
Jahrhundert," _Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis_ 16 (1990), pp.
31-60.

[11] See, for example, Reinhard, "Zwang zur Konfessionalisierung" (note
4), pp. 268-277; Heinz Schilling, "Reformation und Konfessionalisierung
in Deutschland und die neuere deutsche Geschichte," _Gegenwartskunde:
Zeitschrift fuer Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft, Politik und Bildung_,
Sonderheft 5 (1988): Religion, Kirchen und Gesellschaft in Deutschland,
pp. 11-29, here pp. 37-39.

[12] This is the subject of a research group sponsored by the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft in which we are currently involved at the
Humboldt University, Berlin. The group is directed by Heinz Schilling
and the other members are Vera Isaiasz, Matthias Pohlig and Ruth
Schilling.

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