Confessional Identity in East-Central Europe

Maria Craciun, Ovidiu Ghitta

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351949781
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book considers the emergence of a remarkable diversity of churches in east-central Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries, which included Catholic, Orthodox, Hussite, Lutheran, Bohemian Brethren, Calvinist, anti-Trinitarian and Greek Catholic communities. Contributors assess the extraordinary multiplicity of confessions in the Transylvanian principality, as well as the range of churches in Poland, Bohemia, Moravia and Hungary. Essays focus on how each church sought to establish its own identity in a crowded market-place of religious ideas, and on the extent to which printed literature brokered the popular reception of religious doctrine. The volume addresses how ideas about religion spread within the largely illiterate societies of east-central Europe, especially through catechisms, and how printed literature was used to instruct congregations about doctrinal truth, to encourage the faithful to pious devotions, and to shape the religious life and identity of local communities.

CHAPTER ONE
Religious reform, printed books and confessional identity

Maria Crăciun, Ovidiu Ghitta and Graeme Murdock

The lands of east-central Europe played an integral part in the process of religious reform during the early modern period, but the significance of this region has been largely neglected by historians. However, since the collapse of contemporary political barriers in Europe, the true breadth of the Continent has become more apparent, and the need to include the territories of east-central Europe within narratives about the Reformation, as within many other aspects of European history, has increasingly been recognized as a pressing one.¹ Religious reform affected east-central Europe from the Hussite movement of the fifteenth century, to the different strains of sixteenth-century Reformation thought, to various waves of reform within the Catholic Church, to the emergence of Greek Catholic churches up to the early eighteenth century. In the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, the lands of the Bohemian crown, and across the former Hungarian kingdom, a range of churches attempted to establish their distinct systems of belief during the early modern period and to shape the religious identity of local communities. An extraordinary multiplicity of religions found support in this region: Catholics, Utraquists, Bohemian Brethren, Lutherans, Anabaptists, Calvinists, anti-Trinitarians, Orthodox, Greek Catholics, Muslims and Jews. Each confessional group was concerned to legitimize their own position, proclaiming the historic orthodoxy of their doctrine, and attempting to distance themselves from those they identified as innovating radicals and heretics. Many of these religious groups failed to gain support from state authorities. However, political and social power was divided between monarchs and their estates across this region, and where churches or movements of reform could gain noble converts they were often also able to receive constitutional recognition, as part of estates’ desire to balance their corporate rights against the pretensions of royal sovereignty.

The early modern confessional environment of east-central Europe was thus marked by a wide variety of religions, by the development of distinct institutional frameworks for each church, by attempts to gain social support for different religious ideas, especially from the large ranks of nobles and from urban communities, and by struggles to gain legal protection for churches. Each church faced challenges from established rivals, and the battle for confessional space often centred on clarifying points of difference between churches almost as much as positively defining what each church stood for. This volume discusses such efforts to establish confessional identity in east-central Europe, and assesses the degree to which religious ideas were successfully transmitted to the social elites and to the ordinary people of the region. Taking into consideration the political environment which shaped the development of different confessions, it seeks to examine how far urban and rural communities were acculturated to different religious experiences, looking at the creation and reception of religious discourse during this period. This introduction will establish a framework for the different case-studies pursued here, provide a guide to the progress of religious reform in east-central Europe, and focus on the particular issues which will be examined by authors in this volume.

The construction of different churches in the wake of reform movements across the Continent is in many ways comparable, involving the production of agreed statements on key points of doctrine, making alterations to systems of ritual and patterns of worship, developing institutions to bolster reform, and establishing political and social support for reform.² Across much of early modern Europe success for religious reformers was often dependent on gaining state support for their cause. Territorial authorities could offer rights freely to practise religion, support the establishment of colleges and schools, and back measures which aimed to improve standards of moral conduct. States crucially also offered churches the prospect of establishing confessional dominance within their territories. The benefits of allying with state power for any church were matched by benefits for territorial rulers of having their authority sacralized by a church and gaining support for projects of social discipline. Confessional loyalty was also of great political significance to early modern rulers, as a force which could be harnessed to the interests of the state. A model of confessionalization, according to which alliances were forged between secular and ecclesiastical elites to dominate early modern states, offers a top-down vision of the institutionalization of reform and the growing integration of territorial states in this period. The confessional identity of officially-sanctioned religions took on a particular form, dominated by social elites, although ordinary people did not become merely passive recipients of religious discourse.³

East-central European rulers identified the potential advantages to be gained from an alliance with a particular religion. However, in the territories of east-central Europe, where confessional uniformity seemed to be fractured beyond repair, a different sort of relationship was established between states and a variety of religions for much of this period. Moves towards legal acceptance of confessional difference and widespread social tolerance of a range of churches in this region reveal an alternative path towards state-building, which reflected the potentially disruptive and centrifugal, rather than centripetal, forces which could be unleashed by attempting to build a confessional state.⁴

While churches in some territories across the Continent gained exclusive rights to practise their religion, in east-central Europe churches were forced to acknowledge the existence of immediate competition from rivals. Intolerance of confessional diversity could come from courts, and attempts to achieve religious uniformity often equated loyalty to the ruler’s religion with loyalty to the state. Most church hierarchies also regarded one another with suspicion and hostility. The triumph of confessionalism in any territory was therefore frequently marked by the violent rejection of alternative churches and fostered aggressive militancy towards perceived heresies.⁵ Popular intolerance was also expressed in some localities against those who would not conform to religious and social norms or who threatened community solidarity. However, leading churchmen and state officials were left in many areas to confront the practical problems caused by religious plurality, especially where the limits of monarchical power required rulers to acquiesce to the presence of religious groups which they could not eradicate. Tolerance of religious difference could therefore be, as in most parts of east-central Europe, a product of legal concessions permitting freedom of conscience and rights of worship to minority religious groups. Local traditions of mutual acceptance of religious difference could also emerge, allowing shared use of church buildings and peaceful coexistence between confessional groups in the same region, town, neighbourhood or even family.⁶

Whether churches could rely on state support or not, and whether they shared territory with confessional rivals or not, their success was partly reliant on the effective transmission of key ideas. All churches were concerned to gain popular conformity to their statements of belief, to establish strict standards of moral conduct, and to eliminate traditional forms of religiosity. The initiative in efforts to transmit systems of belief and behaviour across societies was largely taken by clergy, sometimes with the support of state officials. Efforts to enforce theological orthodoxy and social discipline were pursued in parallel by all the major confessions, although the institutional mechanisms and moral priorities of each church differed. State officials and clergy often worked together to achieve similar disciplinary goals, responding to offences against state laws and moral codes with a mixture of secular and ecclesiastical sanctions. Crucial to the success of programmes to establish confessions was the degree to which parish clergy had effectively been remodelled as a professional body of teachers, agents of social discipline, and reliable channels of information between the centre and their local community. The key role of parish clergy was widely recognized by ecclesiastical and state elites, and much time and energy was devoted to improving the education and professional skills of clergy. The process of gaining acceptance for reform required parish ministers to manage a delicate balance between the interests of their own church hierarchy, of noble patrons or local magistrates, and of their congregations. The emergence of the clergy as an order of competent preachers and orthodox teachers with exemplary standards of personal morality was a slow one, but all the churches made progress towards the provision of proficient clergy and reformed religious orders, subject to tight controls from their own superiors.⁷

Attempts by clergy to impose confessional discipline on ordinary people involved challenging popular religious traditions and entering the realm of individuals’ private beliefs. One element of this interaction between elite and popular religion concerned adherence to traditional ways of relating to divine power. Some writers have identified a significant change in the early modern period from the communal piety and immanent sense of the sacred in the religiosity of late medieval communities to the emergence of text-based, individualistic and reflective forms of Protestantism and a disciplined, regulated Catholicism. Many Protestant and reformed Catholic clergy were confronted by persistent traditional beliefs and popular devotional practices which proved stubbornly difficult to change. New forms of sacraments and styles of worship with limited visual and sensual stimulation were introduced to communities accustomed to collective piety and the presence of the holy in things and places.⁸ Where intrusions on folk traditions and community solidarity were most obviously imposed on ordinary people from above, they normally received a less than enthusiastic response. Levels of cooperation to the demands of churches varied to a significant degree, according to the effectiveness of church institutions, or the degree of state support, and in some areas pressure was also exerted by groups within local communities for conformity to new patterns of belief and behaviour.⁹

Communicating ideas about religion and reform in early modern societies could take place through individuals, such as preachers and teachers, through sermons, public debates and private discussions. Alongside oral forms of communication, visual images, including printed images, were also widely used by reformers to convey the essence of their ideas and to attack confessional opponents. However, some Protestant reformers had a profound suspicion about the emotional power which visual imagery could generate. Calvinist or Reformed churches insisted on the removal of religious images from public view by responsible magistrates, although ordinary men, and very often women and the young, sometimes preferred to take matters into their own hands. There was no simple dividing line between Protestants and Catholics on this issue, as some Catholics were critical of the traditional use of images both before and after the Reformation, while some Protestants defended the role of images in stimulating piety in worship, provided this could be done without encouraging superstition.¹⁰

All churches relied on personal contacts, oral forms of communication, and to some extent used visual images to convey their ideas. They also used written words, especially in printed books, to make their mark on the beliefs of early modern communities. The relationship between the printed word and religion, between books and systems of belief, was an extremely complex one. In particular, the timing of the printing revolution and Protestant Reformation has invited comment on the connection between technological advances in communication and religious reform in early modern Europe. Some historians have depicted Protestantism as a child of the printing revolution and, from Luther onwards, Protestant reformers seemed assured that the authority conveyed through printed texts was their natural ally in propagating true doctrine. For Luther, printing was ‘God’s highest and extremest act of grace, whereby the business of the Gospel is driven forward’. From England, John Foxe was later equally clear that ‘The Lord began to work for His Church not with sword and target to subdue His exalted adversary, but with printing, writing and reading.’¹¹ Part of Protestantism’s potential appeal was to offer every believer the opportunity, previously reserved to the Catholic priesthood, to interact directly with the written sources of Christian belief. However, there are also good reasons to be cautious of the confident claims made by reformers about the impact of the printed word upon the spread of ideas across the Continent. As Robert Scribner commented for Germany, ‘the role played by printing is undeniable, but over-concentration on the printed word may seriously distort our understanding of how Reformation ideas spread among the population at large.’¹² Natalie Zemon Davis has also argued that in France ‘for most peasants, the religion of the book, the Psalms, and the consistory gave too little leeway to the traditional oral and ritual culture of the countryside, to its existing forms of social life and social control.’¹³

The social impact of religious ideas conveyed through the medium of printed literature was certainly limited to those with access to books. This was related to the speed with which centres of printing spread out across the Continent, to the uneven spread of books from such centres into the countryside, to the gap between spoken forms of language and the standard vernacular used in print, which especially affected many rural areas, and to the extent of state censorship. The social impact of printed literature was also partly related to the cost of books, but although individual ownership of many books remained the privilege of the elite, in towns some sort of popular market for cheap forms of the printed word seems to have been established in many areas by the early seventeenth century.¹⁴ The significance of printing was also r...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• Note on place-names
• 1 Religious reform, printed books and confessional identity
• 2 Luther and the 'Hussite' catechism of 1522
• 3 Protestant vernacular catechisms and religious reform in sixteenth-century east-central Europe
• 4 Shaping Transylvanian anti-Trinitarian identity in an urban context
• 5 Calvinist catechizing and Hungarian Reformed identity
• 6 Building a Romanian Reformed community in seventeenth-century Transylvania
• 7 Catholic devotional literature in seventeenth-century Transylvania
• 8 Catholic identity and ecclesiastical politics in early modern Transylvania
• 9 The first Greek Catholic catechisms in Hungary and Transylvania
• 10 The confessional identity of the Transylvanian Greek Catholic Church
• 11 Attitudes towards the Jews and Catholic identity in eighteenth-century Poland
• Bibliography
• Index