ABSTRACT
The religious warfare of the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, along with some unpredictable dynastic developments, the religious frontiers change several times. The 'confessional age' saw the establishment of firm religious orthodoxies, and their internalization by many of Europe's peoples, but religious creativity did not come to an end after the first phases of Reformation and Counter-Reformation. In the early seventeenth-century Netherlands, there were repeated calls for Nadere Reformatie, or 'Further Reformation', with Calvinist ministers penning tracts advocating more ascetic lifestyles and serious personal piety. Increasing confessionalism was not a purely religious or spiritual phenomenon, but also a political one, linked to the development of European states. At the same time, social changes, and the desire of educated elites to distance themselves from popular belief and culture, reduced the leverage of shared religious meaning across society as a whole. Only few early modern people advanced such ideas; the vast majority held that there could be only one truth.
