Religion and the Early Modern State
Views from China, Russia, and the West

Thirteen 2005 essays show worldwide perspectives of how early modern governments attempted to regulate religious life.

James D. Tracy (Edited by), Marguerite Ragnow (Edited by)

9780521172653, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 16 December 2010

436 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.64 kg

Review of the hardback: '… a very courageous book.' Journal of Ecclesiastical History

How did state power impinge on the religion of the ordinary person? This perennial issue has been sharpened as historians uncover the process of 'confessionalization' or 'acculturation', by which officials of state and Church collaborated in ambitious programs of Protestant or Catholic reform, intended to change the religious consciousness and the behaviour of ordinary men and women. In the belief that specialists in one area of the globe can learn from the questions posed by colleagues working in the same period in other regions, this 2005 volume sets the topic in a wider framework. Thirteen essays, grouped in themes affording parallel views of England and Europe, Tsarist Russia, and Ming China, show a spectrum of possibilities for what early modern governments tried to achieve by regulating religious life, and for how religious communities evolved in new directions, either in keeping with or in spite of official injunctions.

Preface Thomase Mayer
Introduction Stanford E. Lehmberg and James D. Tracy
Part I. Lived Religion and Official Religion: 1. The alternative moral universe of religious dissenter in Ming-Qing China Richard Shek
2. Ecclesiastical elites and popular belief and practice in seventeenth-century Russia Robert O. Crummey
3. The state, the churches, sociability, and folk belief in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic Willem Frijhoff
4. Communal ritual, concealed beliefs: layers of response to the regulation of ritual in Reformation England Caroline J. Litzenberger
Part II. Forms of Religious Identity: 5. Spirits of the Penumbra: deities worshipped in more than one Chinese Pantheon Romeyn Taylor
6. Orthodoxy and revolt: the role of religion in the seventeenth-century Ukrainian Uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Frank E. Sysyn
7. The Huguenot minority in early modern France Raymond A. Mentzer
8. State religion and Puritan resistance in early seventeenth-century England Paul Seaver
Part III. The Social Articulation of Belief: 9. False miracles and unattested dead bodies: investigations into popular cults in Early Modern Russia Eve Levin
10. Liturgical rites: the medium, the message, the messenger, and misunderstanding Susan C. Karant-Nunn
11. Self correction and social change in the Spanish Counter-Reformation Sara T. Nalle
12. The disenchantment of space: Salle church and the Reformation Eamon Duffy
An Epilogue at the Parish Level: 13. Popular religion and the reformation in England: a view from Cornwall Nicholas Orme.

Subject Areas: Political control & freedoms [JPV], History of religion [HRAX], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], General & world history [HBG]