ABSTRACT
One of the liveliest and most stimulating approaches to our understanding of the European Reformation has been the ‘confessionalization thesis’, pioneered by Heinz Schilling and Wolfgang Reinhard in the mid-1980s, and endlessly discussed and refined since. From the outset, proponents of the confessionalization thesis have been determinedly cross-confessional, comparative and international in their approach. Where traditional ecclesiastical history saw the Reformation and Counter-Reformation as opposing forces, Schilling, Reinhard and their followers stressed their parallel impacts, and the similarity of their aims beyond the narrowly doctrinal. From the perspective of a historian of the English Reformation, one of the most interesting features of the protracted discussion of confessionalization is the apparent failure of the history of England to make much of a mark on the refinement of the concept, or of the concept to make much of a mark on the interpretation of early modern England.
