ABSTRACT
From the kiss of peace to shared toasts to signed contracts, practices of reconciliation were integral parts of social, legal and political life across early modern Europe.1 The particular outlines of such peace-making varied from country to country, changing due to different constellations of government, local politics, legal traditions and religious dynamics.2 Such practices were not connected, for the most part, with the aftermath of warfare, rather they were part of patterns of injury and insult within communities. Often, such practices were necessitated by physical violence; homicide was one of the major causes of interpersonal enmity. The early modern European history of reconciliation offers important insights into wider academic investigation of reconciliation practices. It offers examples of instances in which peace-making practices, originally under the auspices of ‘local’ authorities or actors, are taken up or used by outside or distant authorities in order to perform government. Reconciliation, despite what commonplaces about the voluntary nature of forgiveness, was often a product of larger political strategies or attempts to avoid punishment. It also provides an example in which reconciliation is not seen as transformative but rather as conservative, showing the ways in which peace-making was not a set of ‘transitional’ practices but rather ones that sought to reproduce pre-existing social dynamics; a return to equilibrium.
