ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the role of the morals courts in the everyday life of the ordinary Reformed Protestant believers in Berne until the end of the eighteenth century. Our main focus is on the long-term effects, and not on the causes of the Reformation, and we stress the actions of peasants and craftsmen who, as believers, formed the church together with the pastor and who sat as elders in the morals courts. Consequently, we will be offering a view of the everyday life of the Reformed Church rather than of its doctrine or its written norms. In the second place our intention is to provide an insight into the motives and influences that may have formed the evangelical movement, seen retrospectively from the point of view of confessionalization. This chapter summarizes a detailed published study,1 in which the presbytery records of morals courts from the canton of Berne, and the city of Biel, between 1540 and 1800, were analysed against the background of leading theories about the role of the church in early modern times.2
