ABSTRACT
Conservative religious inclinations carried over into politics when the Secularisation threatened the Westphalians with absorption by Prussia. In Munster economic considerations played a hand in their attitude, but in Paderborn the people even resisted the secularisation of monastic property. The events surrounding the Secularisation and Napoleonic era did nothing to dampen the religious fervour and superstition of the Münster and Paderborn people. The several manifestations of popular culture have one thing in common, each is a Christocentric form of piety. The prevalence of this form probably has some significance, because German Christians, unlike the French, never experienced controversy over religious symbolism. In the first three decades of the nineteenth century there was a rush of popular disorders with religious overtones, but confessional rivalries account for most of these and they may not in any event be viewed as controversy over religious symbols such as the mission crosses in France.
