Biographies of a Reformation: Religious Change and Confessional Coexistence in Upper Lusatia, c. 1520–1635. Martin Christ. Studies in German History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. xiv + 262 pp. $100.

Abstract

This book examines the ways Lutherans and Catholics maintained a peaceful coexistence in the towns of the Lusatian League in Upper Lusatia in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. By studying how reform occurred in these small and medium-sized towns, Christ shows how biconfessionalism lasted for over a century in a region less studied than the imperial cities and areas such as Saxony. The author argues that this religious coexistence led to a syncretism, or combination, of Catholic and Lutheran belief systems, practices, and religious spaces. The Reformation in Upper Lusatia was neither fully Catholic nor fully Lutheran, but a syncretistic combination of confessional elements that both groups could accept. These settlements were negotiated by town councils, clergy, and artisans, and not imposed from above by the king or his administrators.