In early modern Germany, religious conversion was a profoundly
social and political phenomenon rather than purely an act of
private conscience. Because social norms and legal requirements
demanded that every subject declare membership in one of the
state-sanctioned Christian churches, the act of religious
conversion regularly tested the geographical and political
boundaries separating Catholics and Protestants. In a period when
church and state cooperated to impose religious conformity,
regulate confessional difference, and promote moral and social
order, the choice to convert was seen as a disruptive act of
disobedience. Investigating the tensions inherent in the creation
of religious communities and the fashioning of religious identities
in Germany after the Thirty Years' War, Duane Corpis examines the
complex social interactions, political implications, and cultural
meanings of conversion in this moment of German history.
In "Crossing the Boundaries of Belief, " Corpis assesses how
conversion destabilized the rigid political, social, and cultural
boundaries that separated one Christian faith from another and that
normally tied individuals to their local communities of belief.
Those who changed their faiths directly challenged the efforts of
ecclesiastical and secular authorities to use religious orthodoxy
as a tool of social discipline and control. In its examination of
religious conversion, this study thus offers a unique opportunity
to explore how women and men questioned and redefined their
relationships to local institutions of power and authority,
including the parish clergy, the city government, and the
family.
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