Lutheran Conversion and Confessional Contact in Augsburg
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Emily Fisher Gray
Abstract
Lutherans and Catholics lived alongside one another peaceably as neighbours and shared political power in Early Modern Augsburg. Yet cases of conversion from one confession to the other were rare. Augsburg’s Lutherans and Catholics seldom changed confession even though they interacted regularly in domestic spaces, in public markets and taverns, and even in churches. Lutheran fears of recatholicization and Catholic concerns about minority status built confessional boundaries after 1555, making conversion socially disruptive. After 1648, under a new government based on confessional parity, conversion threatened to upset the political order as well. Neighbourliness and peaceful confessional coexistence in Augsburg depended on clear divisions between Catholics and Lutherans, making conversion a threat not only to the soul of the convert, but to the civic order of Augsburg.
© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Conversions and Lutheranism in Early Modern Central Europe
- Research Articles
- Power and Patronage: Lutheran Revocation Sermons in Germany, 1600–1740
- “Der verkehrte und doch widerbekehrte Thomas”: Ambiguities of Jewish Conversions and Christian Hebraism in Nuremberg around 1700
- Between Beggars and Professors: Jewish Converts at Early Modern Lutheran Universities
- From Proselytus to Exul Christi: Networks, Brokers and Religious Identity in the Reconversion of Christian Fischer, 1627
- Converting Nuns: Religious Diversity in Convent Congregations during the Long Seventeenth Century
- Lutheran Conversion and Confessional Contact in Augsburg
- Sambo’s Worlds: Lutheran Baptismal Sermons and Global Knowledge in the German-Speaking Lands of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
- Winner of the REFORC Paper Award 2024
- The Apocalypsis Nova – Narrating Prophecy and Reform Theology on the Eve of the Reformation
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- Conversions and Lutheranism in Early Modern Central Europe
- Research Articles
- Power and Patronage: Lutheran Revocation Sermons in Germany, 1600–1740
- “Der verkehrte und doch widerbekehrte Thomas”: Ambiguities of Jewish Conversions and Christian Hebraism in Nuremberg around 1700
- Between Beggars and Professors: Jewish Converts at Early Modern Lutheran Universities
- From Proselytus to Exul Christi: Networks, Brokers and Religious Identity in the Reconversion of Christian Fischer, 1627
- Converting Nuns: Religious Diversity in Convent Congregations during the Long Seventeenth Century
- Lutheran Conversion and Confessional Contact in Augsburg
- Sambo’s Worlds: Lutheran Baptismal Sermons and Global Knowledge in the German-Speaking Lands of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
- Winner of the REFORC Paper Award 2024
- The Apocalypsis Nova – Narrating Prophecy and Reform Theology on the Eve of the Reformation
