ABSTRACT
In the sixteenth century two separate organisations of living emerged and then converged, one spiritual, religious and directed by the Church, the other worldly, political and administered by the State. Heinz Schilling has termed this convergence ‘Confessionalisation’, displacing the notions of Reformation and Counter-Reformation in favour of a more variable and continuing series of exchanges between religion and politics. Confessionalisation is proposed as an ‘independent paradigm of social history’ where ‘[s]quarely in the centre stands the connection between ecclesiastical and religious forces and the rise of the early modern state with its modern social discipline’ (Schilling 1988:265-6). Far from there being a necessary contradiction between Church and State, ‘ecclesiastical, political and social developments combined to form politically significant confessions’.
