Confessionalisation was a paradigm developed by Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling nearly four decades ago for the interpretation of early modern central European history. Although it has lost most of its steam in recent years in terms of generating research, Petrus Bayer contributes here one further volume to its study. He examines what he, like others, calls Catholic confessionalisation, and that specifically in the Mühlviertel, a region of Upper Austria north of the Danube and east of Passau. Significant to the region was the cloister of Schlägl, which had been established initially as Cistercian and then, amid a renewal and second founding, as Premonstratensian in the early thirteenth century. Bayer, a priest and member of the Schlägl cloister community, produced this work as a dissertation at the University of Linz; in his estimation, the seventeenth century, more than any other period, saw the significant growth in the region not only of numerous ecclesiastical buildings and artworks but also of a popular religiosity (p. vii).

Bayer's chief aim is to explain how the Mühlviertel became confessionally homogenous in contrast to neighbouring regions that did not. He accounts for studies that have emphasised a suppression of Protestantism or a negotiated compromise or the achievements of new orders such as the Jesuits and Capuchins. But in the case of the Mühlviertel, he elevates the cloister in Schlägl and asks to what extent could a cloistered community establish a confessional presence in its sphere of influence. His answer is that it could so to a significant degree. ‘ReCatholicisation’ began in 1589 with the installation of Wenzeslaus Zysper as provost and largely ended in 1665 with the death of abbot Martin Greysing. Prelates did establish measures of reform that paralleled those set down by the Council of Trent, yet the Tridentine decrees, argues Bayer, provided not a catalogue from which to carry out reform but rather a basis on which reform ideas were developed. Foremost were those concerning the cure of souls as based on the biblical ideal of a shepherd tending his flock. Premonstratensians led the way in this endeavour and it became integral to their spirituality. The old orders, then, played a key role in the confessionalisation of the Mühlviertel. The reforms, spearheaded by figures such as Zysper, aimed for a homogenous religious population but also had the unintended consequence of sharpening a confessionally Protestant consciousness and inclining those sympathetic to it to Lutheran theology. The reforms thus resulted in polarisation and the nurturing of rebellious movements. The latter, which occurred in the 1590s, had not only religious but also socioeconomic causes yet they were framed and styled at the time as religious troubles.

Because the episcopal seat was in Passau and thus outside the region, bishops had limited opportunity to intervene in its ecclesiastical situation. They tried to use Tridentine mandates to assert greater episcopal authority and control, yet this brought them into conflict with the prelates, who earnestly defended their order's privileges and, even more, their independent status. Prelates were reserved toward the implementation of Tridentine decrees because of how these would augment the bishop's power. The populace, sensing the tensions, exploited the situation by playing bishops and prelates against one another. Adding to the complexity, the cloister's provosts had to contend with secular overlords (Vogteien) who threatened to intervene heavily in the ecclesiastical order. Meanwhile, certain preexisting structural arrangements, namely the boundaries of parishes around the cloister and of the monastic manor, facilitated confessionalisation and were effectively indispensable to the ‘Catholic homogenisation’ of the parish population. Across the seventeenth century the cloister at Schlägl actively cultivated a confessionalised culture of piety, particularly with the veneration of the saints and the pilgrimages and confraternities associated with them. As Catholic piety gained broad credibility, Protestants dwindled in number, lived scattered across the landscape, and went without pastoral care. Their gradual assimilation, more so than any emigrations or expulsions, best explains how Protestantism disappeared in the Mühlviertel.

The book astutely considers mundane factors in the historical process and avoids any triumphalist narrative. Yet, arguably, it suffers from the same tendency or flaw – that of anachronism – as does the model of confessionalisation and other studies of it. In the opinion of this reviewer, the terms Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed, used by historians to classify confessionalisations and to interpret the historical record, were naturalised and steadily codified after the Holy Roman Empire had, for all intents and purposes, recognised the exact equality of the three religions in 1648. Similarly, Bayer, as per longstanding scholarly convention, lumps the sixteenth-century population into the institutionalised tropes of Catholics and Protestants and relies on these for his questions, analysis and conclusions. Yet the 1648 Peace of Westphalia caused the naturalisation of the term ‘Protestant’ such that its connotations broadened until it eventually became linked to the general populace. The naturalised names were also then projected back in time for the writing of pre-1648 history, distorting it in the process. Bayer, in other words, would have to demonstrate that these were naturalised if not codified in the fabric of the Mühlviertel long before then, by the 1580s, instead of assuming they were so. For, otherwise, the population was not made up of Catholics and Protestants but rather Christians and any needing to conform. Additionally, early on, Bayer briefly introduces the various parishes, and notes the sobering, logistical challenges most parishioners faced in accessing ministrations, before then returning to his points of orientation, the reforms of Trent and those of Stift Schlägl. One wonders about the narrative and vantage point left behind, namely, that of parish devolution and long-term efforts to localise Christian ministration and services. On that note, while Bayer accounts well for the offices and organisation of, for example, the cloister, he portrays the laypeople amorphously, as simply a body of parishioners. Lacking is an indication of whether they had communal institutions and offices and used them to advance locally-based interests that may have harmonised with or differed from those of the cloister in Schlägl.