The Counter-Reformation in the Villages : : Religion and Reform in the Bishopric of Speyer, 1560-1720 / / Marc Forster.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Archive Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: Forster, Marc,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2019]; ©1992
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (288 p.) :; 2 maps

Located in the middle Rhine valley, the Bishopric of Speyer was a confessionally diverse, primarily rural region dotted with villages and several small cities. In this book, Marc R. Forster reconstructs and analyzes the history of the Catholic Counter-Reformation in this one German bishopric from the later sixteenth to the early eighteenth century.Drawing on a wide variety of archival sources, including visitation reports, Cathedral Chapter minutes, and court records, he examines the impact of the reforms of the Council of Trent on Protestant/Catholic relations, on the nature of popular religion, and on the relationship between the village clergy and their parishioners. He demonstrates that the strong confessional loyalties that characterized the villages of the bishopric by about 1700 were rooted in communal loyalty to traditional, pre-Tridentine Catholicism, and that the episcopal hierarchy was also highly traditional and concerned primarily with local issues. As a result, Catholic authorities were reluctant to enforce "reformed" Catholicism, with its emphasis on a celibate and educated clergy and a disciplined and moral laity. This hesitant policy contrasted sharply with the determined effort of the region's Calvinist rulers to suppress traditional religious practices.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Glossary and Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1. The Traditional Church and the Resistance to Reform -- 2. The Reform of the Clergy -- 3. The Reform in the Villages -- 4. Confessional Conflict and the Limits of Episcopal Authority -- 5. The Thirty Years7 War and the Failure of Catholicization -- 6. The Tridentine Clergy and the Communal Church, 1650-1720 -- 7. The Growth of Catholic Consciousness, 1650-1720 -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index