Diversity and Dissent: Negotiating Religious Difference in Central Europe, 1500-1800(11 Austrian and Habsburg Studies)

Early modern Central Europe was the continent’s most decentralized region politically and its most diverse ethnically and culturally. With the onset of the Reformation, it also became Europe’s most religiously divided territory and potentially its most explosive in terms of confessional conflict and war. Focusing on the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, this volume examines the tremendous challenge of managing confessional diversity in Central Europe between 1500 and 1800. Addressing issues of tolerance, intolerance, and ecumenism, each chapter explores a facet of the complex dynamic between the state and the region’s Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Utraquist, and Jewish communities. The development of religious toleration—one of the most debated questions of the early modern period—is examined here afresh, with careful consideration of the factors and conditions that led to both confessional concord and religious violence.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures Preface Introduction:Between Conflict and Concord: The Challenge of Religious Diversity in Central Europe Howard Louthan  Chapter 1. Constructing and Crossing Confessional Boundaries: The High Nobility and the Reformation of Bohemia Petr Maťa Chapter 2. Religious Toleration in Sixteenth Century Poland: Political Realities and Social Constraints Paul W. Knoll Chapter 3. Customs of Confession: Managing Religious Diversity in Late Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century Westphalia David M. Luebke Chapter 4. Cuius region, eius religio: The ambivalent meanings of state building in Protestant Germany, 1555-1655 Robert von Friedeburg Chapter 5. The Entropy of Coercion in the Holy Roman Empire: Jews, Heretics, Witches Thomas A. Brady, Jr. Chapter 6. Conflict and Concord in Early Modern Poland: Catholics and Orthodox at the Union of Brest Mikhail V. Dmitriev Chapter 7. Confessionalization and the Jews: Impacts and Parallels in the City of Strasbourg Debra Kaplan Chapter 8. Mary “triumphant over demons and also heretics”: Religious symbols and confessional uniformity in Catholic Germamy Bridget Heal Chapter 9. Heresy and Literacy in the Eighteenth-century Habsburg Monarchy Regina Pörtner Chapter 10. Union, Reunion, or Toleration? Reconciliatory Attempts among Eighteenth-century Protestants Alexander Schunka Chapter 11. Confessional Uniformity, Toleration, Freedom of Religion: An Issue for Enlightened Absolutism in the Eighteenth Century Ernst Wangermann Notes on Contributors Select Bibliography Figures Figure 1. Master of St. Severin rosary altar Figure 2. Rosary image, Cologne Figure 3. Bartolomäus Bruyn the Elder, Tryptich Figure 4. Sixteenth-century panels, Virign and Child Figure 5. Arrival of Gustav Adolph, Augsbury 1632 Figure 6. Altarpiece, Parish Church, Sebes, c. 1524-6

About the Author :
Howard Louthan is Professor of History at the University of Florida. He specializes in the intellectual and cultural history of early modern Central Europe. Among his books are The Quest for Compromise: Peacemakers in Counter-Reformation Vienna (Cambridge, 1997) and Converting Bohemia: Force and Persuasion in the Catholic Reformation (Cambridge, 2009).

Review :
“This volume gives a good, comparative insight into the construction of denominational affiliations, the inter-denominational understanding and the conflicts in political and everyday life in Central Europe.”  ·  Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung