Catholiques et protestants sur la rive gauche du Rhin: Droits, confessions et coexistence religieuse de 1648 à 1789 (review)

This nuanced and sophisticated study examines religious developments in the German-speaking territories to the west of the Rhine River in the century and a half after the end of the Thirty Years' War. These territories were profoundly affected in this period by the growing power of France, which supported the expansion of Catholicism in a predominantly Protestant region. Laurent Jalabert shows, however, the complex consequences of French efforts in the context of international wars, the institutions of the Holy Roman Empire, and the particularist traditions of the region. Ultimately Jalabert argues that the efforts to promote Catholicism led to a growing "pluriconfessionalism" and a rough-and-ready toleration in the context of everyday life in the towns and villages.

Jalabert has conducted extensive archival research across a region that stretches from Alsace in the south to the region around Trier and Mainz in the north and from the Lorraine in the west to the Rhine in the east. The political fragmentation of the region was a cause of religious divisions and certainly complicates the research. One strength of Jalabert's study is its sensitivity to this complexity. Another is his familiarity with German, French, and English-language scholarship, a breadth that remains unusual in this field.

Jalabert's well-organized study is divided into three chronological periods. He begins by examining the Peace of Westphalia and its impact in the region up to the 1680s. The second period of the study reflects French historiography and focuses on the dramatic impact of King Louis XIV's France on the region between about 1680 and first decade of the eighteenth century. The last and longest section examines the development of religious identity, confessional cultures, and religious coexistence across the eighteenth century. Part I emphasizes that religious minorities, particular Catholic minorities, appeared across the region in the aftermath of the war, mostly because authorities were not choosy about who arrived to farm fields and rebuild houses. In part II the emphasis shifts to the role of the French state. In the western territories, many of which were "reunited" with France, Louis XIV's officials aggressively supported Catholic minorities, building churches, paying for priests, supporting conversion campaigns, and making life difficult for Lutheran or Reformed ministers. The impact of these policies was noticeable, but Jalabert points out that even Louis's officials did not overplay their hand. Aggressive in the territories absorbed into the Kingdom, French officials were more circumspect in the imperial territories they dominated. Furthermore, Protestant communities defended their rights tenaciously, often outlasting French efforts, as evidence by "relapses" by Catholic converts in the early-eighteenth century.

In part III Jalabert describes the characteristics of a "multicultural and multiconfessional society" (pp. 319–20). Both Protestants and Catholics accepted a mix of religions in many places and adapted to new circumstances. The conversion of a number of ruling families to Catholicism (especially the electors of the Palatinate) meant that Catholicism had political support. At the same time, Catholic territories, particularly the ecclesiastical territories, experienced the same religious revival found elsewhere in Catholic Germany, with a focus on pilgrimage, processions, and confraternities.

In a multiconfessional region, however, the very public nature of Baroque Catholicism had to adapt to local conditions. Many churches were shared by Catholics and Protestants (the Simultaneum), which required a certain cooperation between the confessions and limited the public demonstration of Catholicism. The realities of daily life also forced toleration. There were, for example, always mixed marriages. Jalabert also shows that traditions of popular culture, particular festival life, remained strong in villages and transcended confessional lines, as did communal loyalties, for example in conflicts between village communities and landlords.

Jalabert argues that the confessional frontier was not really a cultural frontier west of the Rhine, as it seems to have been in biconfessional cities like Augsburg. There were...