ABSTRACT
The religious settlements of the mid-seventeenth century not only marked the broad spatial subdivision of Europe between Catholic and Protestant populations, they also cemented the divisions within Protestant Europe between different types of confession and different patterns of Church-State relationship. This chapter discusses the balance in studies of the religious factor by: providing a summary overview of the most salient features of the religious structures and cultures of Protestant Europe; and relating these constellations to the emergence or non-emergence of the religious factor in politics. The religious cultures of Protestant Europe have generated a wide range of separate religious traditions and communities within certain Protestant populations which were once largely uniform in matters of religion. The Reformation had brought the use of vernacular languages into the churches of Protestant Europe at a time when the spread of printing facilitated the development of national literatures and cultures.
