ABSTRACT
The lands of east-central Europe played an integral part in the process of religious reform during the early modern period, but the significance of this region has been largely neglected by historians. The early modern confessional environment of east-central Europe was thus marked by a wide variety of religions. The confessional identity of officially-sanctioned religions took on a particular form, dominated by social elites, although ordinary people did not become merely passive recipients of religious discourse. While churches in some territories across the Continent gained exclusive rights to practise their religion, in east-central Europe churches were forced to acknowledge the existence of immediate competition from rivals. Whether churches could rely on state support or not, and whether they shared territory with confessional rivals or not, their success was partly reliant on the effective transmission of key ideas. Attempts by clergy to impose confessional discipline on ordinary people involved challenging popular religious traditions and entering the realm of individuals' private beliefs.
