ABSTRACT

What did it mean to be a Catholic in early modern Europe? In the study of early modern Catholicism this is a fairly new question to ask. This may seem odd, because ever since the days of Max Weber historians have spilt much ink in trying to analyse the mindset of early modern Protestants. Yet until recently few scholars thought one should do the same for individual Catholics. Weber himself did not think there really was such a thing as a Catholic individual. He argued that individuality was a by-product of the need to wrestle with one’s own conscience, and he believed that it was only Reformed Protestants who had to do so. Catholics, after all, could use confession to absolve themselves from personal responsibility. 1 While not necessarily agreeing with that line of reasoning, many Catholic scholars, too, have traditionally assumed that being a Catholic was more about the collective, the ritual and the hierarchical, than about individual mindsets. In a 1968 critique of Weber, Catholic scholar Werner Stark still argued that ‘the Catholic mentality’ was ‘consistently anti-individualistic’. 2 Given the consensus on the collective nature of Catholic identity, it is perhaps unsurprising that Catholic believers were not deemed to be very interesting as religious individuals.