Confessionalization and Central European Peasantry

By David Mayes, Department of History, Sam Houston State University

Study of Central European peasant history has undoubtedly benefited from
the appearance of the confessionalization paradigm.  For one, the
paradigm's broad claims have stimulated new avenues of research into
topics concerning the peasantry.  For another, it has compelled scholars
to examine peasant religious history of the later sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, something which had previously received little
attention.  Research promises to continue as well, as discoveries
leading to new questions provoke yet further inquiry.  Included among
those new questions are ones stemming from my own research on the
peasant population of Upper Hesse.[1]  I would like to utilize this
opportunity to touch on some of the main ideas derived from this
research.

Certainly one important question surrounding the peasantry and the
confessionalization model concerns the agency given by today's scholars
to the peasants of that era.  To this point, most scholarly studies have
depicted the peasants' agency as one of three kinds:  receiving and
defending confessional religion, resisting its confessionalizing
intentions, or negotiating it in such a way that the peasants construct
a confessional identity that ultimately suits them.  My intention here
is not to assess positively or negatively the value of these studies;
that has been adequately done by other scholars. Instead I would like to
explore another idea, one that, in my view, may throw our notion of
peasant agency into a new light (at least, that is, for the peasants
located in the Protestant territories).  The idea has to do with the
terms _christlich_ and _christliche Gemeine_. After looking again at the
sixteenth- and early-seventeenth century ecclesiastical ordinances of
Protestant territories (edited by Emil Sehling) and considering their
content alongside the unpublished primary source material I have
gathered (largely from Hessian archives), I find that _christlich_ was
the principal and definitive word in the religious history of the period
and that _christliche Gemeine_ was the period's central concept.[2]

It should be noted first that _christliche Gemeine_ appears with a
number of different spellings, a fact apparent in the ecclesiastical
ordinances.  The spelling varied not only from territory to territory
but also within each territory, within each document, and could even
vary on a given page. In Hesse, the authorities more often used
_gemeine_, while the rural
(political) _Gemeinden_ more often used _gemein_ (or _gemeyn_).  What
was implied by _christliche Gemeine_ could vary.  It could be used as an
overarching, all-encompassing indication of all Christians who comprised
God's church, or it could mean the community of believers in a single
locale.  The one implied simply depended on the context.  Furthermore,
the concept _christliche Gemeine_ was sometimes rendered as _die gemeine
Gottes_, or die gemeine Christi, or some like synonym.  And as for
Gemeine, it was sometimes rendered as _kirche_ or, as in certain north
German regions, _ker(c)ke_.  The use of _kirche_ instead of _Gemeine_
shows that the two terms could be interchangeable in certain
ecclesiastical contexts. In any case, the concept _christliche Gemeine_
was found in Protestant territories stretching from the coastlines of
the North and Baltic Seas to the Alps.

The _Gemeine_ was not the only thing the authorities wanted to make
_christlich_.  Surviving records reveal that their stated intention was
for just about everything to be _christlich_, including individuals, who
were to be _christen_ or _christliche personen_.  For this reason, in
the ecclesiastical ordinances one finds the adjective _christlich_ in
front of words ranging from _zusamenkunften_, _gesang_, _andacht_,
_vermanung_, _gebet_, _vorbitt_, _werk_, _zucht_, _discipline_,
_beicht_, _prüfung_, _underrichten_, _gehorsam_, _ordnung_, _exempel_,
_leben_ and _wandel_ to _warheit_, _glaube, _bekenntniss_, _religion_,
_besserung_, _prediger_, _taufe_, _ceremonien_, _bescheidenheit_,
_freyheit_, _vorsatz_, _mitleiden_, _gottesforcht_, _almoß_, and _bann_.

Most critical to these authorities, however, was _christliche Lehr(e)_.
Implicit and explicit to their stated ambitions was that only with the
correct teaching and doctrine could the other, aforementioned things in
fact be _christlich_, including the _Gemeine_.  If they were lacking,
then erroneous, damnable teaching and doctrine (_unchristliche lehr_,
_gefehrliche irrthumen des glaubens_, _des antichristes valscher lere_,
irrige, _widerwertige_, _falsche_, _verdampte_) would likely take hold
instead.  Hence the critical stress placed by the authorities on the
creedal confessions and catechisms.

It should come as no surprise that, with the onset of the confessional
age in the German territories, the governing authorities' notions of
_christlich_ and _christliche Gemeine_ became confessionalized.  For
authorities in Lutheran territories, _christlich_ was defined according
to Lutheran theology and the Lutheran practice of religion, while the
Calvinist or Catholic or Anabaptist teaching and practice was understood
to be false, erroneous, damned, _unchristlich_.  For this reason, the
Lutheran territorial authorities, as seen in their church ordinances,
considered themselves _christen_ and directed pastors and visitors to
report any _calvinisten_, _papisten_, _wiederteufer_, _schwenkfelder_
and others who stubbornly opposed "our Christian church ordinance" and
any _irrige leut_ who opposed "the worship service and the pure teaching
of the holy Gospel." Authorities in Calvinist territories did
essentially the same thing.  They referred to themselves as christen and
implemented measures to deal with those individuals who did not conform
to their notion of Christian religion.

The whole matter of _christlich_ and _christliche Gemeine_ may not seem
necessarily noteworthy in the sense that one would expect the respective
confessional adherents to declare that they alone held to the true,
Christian religion (_unsere wahre und christliche religion_, _der rechte
christliche glaube_) and that their opponents did not.  But what does
make the matter noteworthy and even profoundly important for our
understanding of peasant agency is that the governing authorities who
wrote such ecclesiastical ordinances may not have been the only ones who
possessed identifiable, definable notions of _christlich_ and
_christliche Gemeine_. Other segments of the German population may have
had their own, distinct understanding of them and made documented
references to them, too.  In Hesse, for example, the terms were in
common usage among the general populace just as they were among the
governing authorities who wrote the ordinances.  For residents in towns
such as Marburg and Schmalkalden, the notion of _christlich_ became a
(Lutheran) confessionalized one by the early 1600s.  When Landgrave
Moritz of Hesse-Kassel attempted a confessional change of religion from
Lutheranism to Calvinism in the early 1600s, they rejected it outright.
But in rural Upper Hesse, the (political) _Gemeinden_ had cultivated a
notion of _christlich_ that was aconfessional, that is, void of and
indifferent to confessional interests. The _Gemeinden_ actively
maintained their aconfessional notion of _christlich_ amid the otherwise
tumultuous confessional changes of religion (Lutheranism in 1576,
Calvinism in 1605, and Lutheranism again in 1624), and therefore strode
unfazed through them.

This information leads me to wonder whether documented references to
_christlich_ and _christliche Gemeine_ were being made in other
territories, not only by the governing authorities. but also by certain
segments of the general populace, such as the rural _Gemeinden_.  If so,
then the strength of the confessionalization model's claims about the
peasantry may rest on the resolution of this question: whether the
peasant notions of _christlich_ and _christliche Gemeine_ ever became
confessionalized according to the governing authorities' way of thinking
(and if so, in which respects and to what degree), or whether the
peasantry instead possessed and maintained its own, distinct notion of
_christlich_ through the so-called confessional age.

As for Upper Hesse, the governing authorities were never able to
confessionalize the rural _Gemeinden_'s notion of _christlich_.  There
are a number of reasons why.  One of them is, ironically, not because
their respective notions of _christlich_ were sharply opposed to one
another but rather because they ran parallel to one another in many
respects.  The authorities and the rural _Gemeinden_ shared many of the
same interests‹-the faithful practice of religion, dutiful ministers,
effective schooling of the children, and so forth.  Even
confessionalizing the rural Upper Hessian _Gemeinden_'s notion of the
sacraments was a fruitless venture, because the _Gemeinden_ looked on
the sacraments as Christian and not through a lens confessionalized by
Lutheranism or Calvinism.  Therefore it did not matter to the rural
_Gemeinden_ if the minister was Lutheran or Calvinist, or if the
sacraments were administered according to the Lutheran or Calvinist
form, or if religion was practiced along Lutheran or Calvinist lines.
So while the succeeding Lutheran and Calvinist regimes in Upper Hesse
could be satisfied that all these were brought into conformity with
their confessional way of thinking, the rural _Gemeinde_ simply equated
either confession's minister, sacraments and religious practice with
Christianity. These served, in other words, as means by which the
peasants could affirm themselves as _christen_. Through the later
sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries the rural _Gemeinden_'s
aconfessional objectives neutralized the authorities' confessional
objectives by causing the latter to be a non-issue.  As a result, the
rural populace arrived at 1648 with an aconfessional Christian identity
still intact.

The above discussion leads to a second matter of importance concerning
the peasantry.  The so-called confessional age of 1555-1648 is, quite
plainly, a classification and periodization biased towards the
innovations, initiatives and historical experience of the governing and
educated classes.  As with others, such as the Renaissance, the
Scientific Revolution, the Age of Absolutism and the Enlightenment, both
the classification and the periodization are prone to overlook the
peasants' historical experience or to skew our understanding of it.

If _christlich_ was the principal and definitive word of the period, and
if it is more accurate to insert confession and confessionalization into
that context (instead of having confession and confessionalization serve
as the context itself), then one may wonder whether classifying the
1555-1648 period as the confessional age should be reconsidered.
Calling it the confessional age and then anchoring the
confessionalization model over that time period naturally inclines the
peasants' agency to be placed within the parameters of and in relation
to confessional religion.  The peasants are, as previously mentioned,
either receiving, or resisting, or negotiating it.

If, however, it can be demonstrated that German peasants (and/or other
segments of the population) had their own notions of _christlich_ and
_christliche Gemeine_, and if the peasants' efforts to achieve them are
placed equally alongside the authorities' efforts, then it may be more
accurate to classify the age as one defined by Christianities (as
opposed to confessions), or as a Christian age (as opposed to the
confessional age). It would be a classification that sets Christianity
as the context, and one that places Christianity and Christian
livelihood as the end-goal of the various segments of society and not
just the governing rank-and-file.  My study of Upper Hesse proposes this
by demonstrating how the latter sixteenth-earlier seventeenth century
was marked by communal Christianity (the aconfessional Christianity in
rural Upper Hesse) and confessional Christianity (comprised of
Lutheranism, Calvinism, Catholicism, Anabaptism).[3] It bears repeating,
however, that I have found _christlich_ and _christliche Gemeine_ to be
definitive to the ecclesiastical ordinances of Protestant territories
and Hessian archival documents.  I have not had opportunity to examine
their Catholic equivalents to know whether the same argument would apply
to Catholic territories.

A third important issue surrounding the peasantry and the
confessionalization model has to do with the 1555 Religious Peace of
Augsburg and the 1648 Peace of Westphalia.  The confessionalization
paradigm has earmarked the 1555 Peace as a crucial stepping stone for
the modernization of Germany.  The treaty is regarded as having greatly
favored the territorial princes and boosted their efforts to centralize
state power, and though it helped usher in the confessional age
(seemingly a reactionary trend since it would prolong and even enhance
the precedence of religion and religious politics), that same era of
religious intensification facilitated the state-building process and the
production of a more individualized, socially disciplined, and civilized
population--both of which are regarded as features of the modern era.
The 1648 Peace has been staked as an even more obvious signpost on the
path to modernity.  It has been credited with having helped lay to rest
the archaic conflicts of religion and open the door to a new age
highlighted by tolerance, science, skepticism, state interest,
enlightened thought, and so forth.  The effect has been a formulation of
German history that heavily favors the modernization paradigms and
serves the interests of progressive narratives. These interpretations of
the treaties have been standard for quite some time and have been
recently reinforced by the confessionalization paradigm.  As a result,
they have long served as pillars or cornerstones for our understanding
of early modern Germany.

From the peasants' perspective, however, these interpretations may very
well have a great Achilles' heel, for they are ones which have been made
from the vantage point of the central European states and of the
educated elites. What would happen if we stopped and considered the
cause-effect of these historic treaties from the vantage point of the
village?  Would doing so alter the interpretations of the two treaties
and, with it, our notion of German history into the modern period?

The case study I have done on Upper Hesse submits that the two treaties
in fact played a vital role not in the top-down modernization of the
peasantry but rather its opposite, the prolongation and even
reinvigoration of that communalization of peasant life which had evolved
across the late medieval period.  There is room here to summarize the
intricate argument only briefly.[4] In sum, it states that the standard,
top-down interpretations of the two treaties are wrong-headed as far as
the peasantry is concerned, for the treaties in fact had (potentially)
paradoxical effects at the village level.  In effect the 1555 Peace
prohibited alternative religious communities from forming within a given
village because the territorial prince--now wielding his right of cuius
regio eius religio--would never tolerate their existence.  The 1555
Peace thereby preserved the singularity of the parish community as well
as reinforced the (political) _Gemeinde_'s role as the local guardian of
religious life for that community.  This enabled the rural Upper Hessian
_Gemeinden_ to pursue uninhibited their aconfessional interests of
communal Christianity in local parish affairs. As a result, rural Upper
Hesse's religious history during the "Confessional age" is one of
communal Christianization.  Does the same pattern apply also to the
territorial cities?  The case of Upper Hesse would suggest not.  One
reason is that the citizens' civic consciousness, which sought to
safeguard the town's political liberties and rights, engaged them in the
kind of religious politics that helped engender a confessional identity.
The rural _Gemeinden_, by contrast, typically had no such liberties and
rights to defend, and the parish customs they were keen to defend were
aconfessional in nature.

As for the 1648 Peace, instead of ushering in a peaceful era of
confessional tolerance at the village level, it in fact opened the door
for a dismantling of the aforementioned local, village cohesion by
legally permitting the existence of two or more religious communities in
a given village, or rural town.  In those rural locales where a second
religious community formed, the volatile process of a polarizing,
communal confessionalization took place. (If a second religious
community did not form, then parish life continued essentially as it had
during the pre-1648 period).  These polarizing effects unleashed a new
phase of communalization. However, since in this case the rural locale
now had not one but rather two (or more) religious communities, a
communalization occurred within each of those respective communities,
for peasants were compelled to identify themselves with one community
against the other and to forge tight bonds with those in it.

These claims have been made for Upper Hesse and, at least for this one
region of Germany, have set on their heads the standard interpretations
of the 1555 Religious Peace of Augsburg and 1648 Peace of Westphalia.
Only case studies of other German regions would show whether the claims
can be substantiated elsewhere.  If so, then they would add to a growing
body of scholarly works that have, in the past generation, begun to
change consensus thinking about the peasants' religious history.

Notes:

[1] David Mayes, _Communal Christianity: The Life and Loss of a Peasant
Vision in Early Modern Germany_ (Boston: Brill, 2004).  The present
article summarizes a few of the main ideas found in the book and also
explores some related, additional ones that have developed since the
book's recent publication.

[2] Emil Sehling, ed., _Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des XVI.
Jahrhunderts_, Bd. 1-15 (Tuebingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1957-).

[3] A model for communal Christianity is proposed on pp. 23-60 in Mayes,
_Communal Christianity_.

[4] For much more on this argument concerning a reinterpretation of the
two
treaties:  ibid., pp. 60-63 and 207-16.

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