This edited volume of thirteen studies considers how religiously diverse populations of early modern Eastern and Central Europe dialogued and lived with one another. It includes an introduction by Maciej Ptaszyński, a very brief afterword by Luise Schorn-Schütte, and a map (p. xii) that is largely unhelpful as it is set at the scale of Europe itself and does not indicate the location of many places mentioned in the book. The introduction notes that whereas older works on the theory of toleration put scholarly focus on Western Europe, recent interest in the social history of toleration puts Eastern and Central Europe ‘center stage’ (p. 16) because a constellation of differing religious parties operated there side by side. In summation, Ptaszyński states the book's studies ‘lean toward a general hypothesis: that the origins, shapes, and impact of multiconfessional coexistence in Eastern and Central Europe were instrumental in building confessional identities and confessional cultures’ (p. 22), ones that imparted ‘a sense of belonging’ to ‘confessional Europe’ (p. 23).
The book is organised into three parts. Part i concerns ‘Terms of Coexistence between Law and Tradition’. Christopher Voigt-Goy opens it by examining the notions of ‘public’, ‘private’ and ‘domestic’ religious exercise through the writings of leading jurists in the Empire and arguing that a conceptual differentiation among them took hold around 1600. As Voigt-Goy concludes, their aim was not ‘to construct a legally justified oppression of one confessional group in favor of a “privileged” one’ but rather ‘the legal safeguarding of intraterritorial religious liberties, which … had not been provided for at all in the context of the corporate imperial religious law of 1555’ (p. 50). Begumil Szady explores Red Ruthenia during the same period, a time when some ‘churches and benefices’ in the region were ‘occupied by Protestants’ (p. 57) before the Roman Church reclaimed certain church buildings. Szady emphasises the right of parish and church patronage ahead of diocesan structures to argue that it ‘was not the bishops but the landowners … who primarily decided on religious relations in their estates’ (p. 83). Uladzimir Padalinski also highlights non-ecclesiastical factors, noting that common rights and obligations instead of confessional affiliation among the nobility of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania formed the basis of their perceived community. Such social conditions held sway until the efforts of Jesuits and the Roman Church unravelled interfaith relations at the end of the sixteenth century. Kazimierz Bem discerns that the apparently irenic steps taken toward union by ‘Polish Reformed and Lutherans’ in Cracow, Sławatycze, Nejdorf and Leszno were in fact ‘attempts to incorporate Lutheran congregations into Reformed (Calvinist and Brethren) church structures’ (p. 132). These failed because both sides held passionately to their respective theological teachings. Melchior Jakubowski, in a trio of Romanian, Polish and Latvian case studies of towns around the turn of the nineteenth century (mislabelled in the chapter title as the ‘Turn of the 18th century’), finds that the ‘pragmatism of everyday life’ (p. 160) trumped people's denominational affiliations. Between travel distances, a minister's availability, financial considerations related to fees and ministerial willingness to cross denominational lines, laypersons solicited the services of opposing denominational ministers as a ‘matter of practical choice’ (p. 160).
Part ii addresses the topics of ‘Theology, Communication, Politics’. In a study of literary dialogues circulating in Bohemia between 1436 and 1517, Jan Červenka posits that the ‘religious coexistence of Catholics and Utraquists’ went ‘far beyond’ (p. 190) the legal bases which guaranteed it. With a headwind of powerful estates that valued the common good, prosperity and peace above theological disputes, the authors sought political concord among parties which otherwise had religious differences. Bryan D. Kozik elucidates a shift in the religious views of the Chełmno bishop Johannes Dantiscus – whereas around the 1530 Diet of Augsburg Dantiscus was a more conciliatory-minded Erasmian who called for all Christians to unite simply by accepting Roman Church authority, a decade later, after many exchanges with influential figures on the opposing religious sides, he wanted that unity instead on the basis of the Roman Church's orthodoxy. Sławomir Kościelak states that, in Gdańsk as in other leading urban areas of Royal Prussia, there was a ‘lack of irenic “empathy” between the two Protestant denominations’ (p. 225) and that ‘for Lutherans the Calvinist Second Reformation was more dangerous than the Catholic Counter-Reformation’ (p. 240). Consequently, there emerged ‘an ad hoc Lutheran-Catholic alliance, resulting in the consolidation of Lutheran domination’ (p. 225). Maciej Ptaszyński surveys the Christological and soteriological beliefs of the Leszno minister Jonas Schlichting, a ‘Socinian theologian’, to demonstrate how he tried to move ‘the Polish Brethren closer to Calvinism’ (p. 254). It was those steps, and not his prior polemics, that got him banished from the city in 1647.
Part iii is titled ‘Radical Century or Age of Toleration?’ In its opening chapter Alexander Schunka reconsiders irenicism by arguing against it as a marginal operation outside the confessional mainstream or ‘an early modern derivative of toleration’ (p. 322). Instead, Schunka sees it as ‘a powerful religious and political current of its own right’ (p. 323) and ‘often based at the very center of a broader Pan-Protestantism’ (p. 322). Indeed, ‘the ideal type of intra-Protestant irenicism’ was ‘the merging of two denominations in order to create one overarching faith’ (p. 300). Wolfgang Breul explains how Moravians engaged in ‘transconfessional’ diaspora work – Breul rejects characterising it as ‘interconfessional’ or ‘ecumenical’ (p. 348) – to connect Christians of different groups as the ‘true children of God’ (p. 339) who had been scattered about. Stephan Steiner spotlights the Lutheran, Calvinist and Pietist legation preachers of diplomats in eighteenth-century Vienna and illustrates how their ‘ecumenical’ communications engendered a ‘republic of letters’ that placed knowledge above allegiance to religious orthodoxy. Finally, Paul Shore writes about Adam František Kollár, a long-time Jesuit who served as the chief royal librarian in Vienna in the eighteenth century. By blending intellectual curiosity, an evolving religious understanding, and an affinity for toleration, Kollár could well imagine a polity in which various peoples exercised their respective religions while also bettering their lives. In their studies Breul, Steiner and Shore see anticipation of the Enlightenment and modern trends.
A couple of matters are worth raising. First, while the chapters’ discussions rely heavily on conventional categories such as Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed and Protestant, among many others, these are assumed uncritically and their names are presented as if static from inception. None of the authors document whether the historical actors themselves in fact used these names or – if they did – used them in the same categorical manner or with the same connotation that the authors do. Yet, at some point during these centuries a world of Christian monism in which creedal confessions made exclusive claims to the name Christian gave way to Christian pluralism with a set of naturalised and formalised denominations, each with its own name. What effect would these historical developments, if taken into account, have on the chapters’ analyses of the historical record and of the aforementioned notions of ecumenicism, toleration, irenicism, inter-confessional, denominational and the like? Second, a reader comes away with the impression that the book's leading question – ‘Searching for compromise?’ – concerned a small percentage of the overall population, i.e. largely those in elite, well-educated and urban circles. One wonders whether their contemporaries cared similarly or, instead, did not notice and were pursuing their own, distinct religious endeavours.
