The interpretation of religiosity in post-Reformation Europe has been dominated by two major tendencies: first, to see a person's confessional membership as determinative of their religious identity; and second, to apply the broad strokes of the theories of confessionalization and state formation down at the community and individual level. If the important studies of Bob Scribner (Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany [1987]) and Ben Kaplan (Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe [2007]) have taught us anything, however, it is that belief and practice on the local level could very often belie the formal theological confessions and rituals mandated by higher authorities. Luebke's excellent book presents a detailed examination of this apparent contradiction in the region of the prince-bishopric of Münster, Westphalia.

Drawing from an impressive array of archival sources, Luebke reveals that, for the century after the infamous Anabaptist kingdom of Münster (1534–1535), local lords, magistrates, clergy (both secular and religious), and parishioners conspired to allow a hitherto unappreciated degree of religious plurality and accommodation. This excluded the Anabaptists—classified as heretics by both Lutherans and Catholics alike—but a variety of means were nevertheless developed to allow both Protestant and Catholic forms of worship under a generally Catholic rubric. The central goal of most people was, as Luebke observes, peace and tranquility, not doctrinal precision. The willingness of local clergy to accommodate both forms of Christianity in the same parish, often utilizing the same church property, is only one of Luebke's stunning conclusions. While increasing levels of research are confirming just how unusual the lower Rhineland was in terms of confessional identity, Luebke's richly detailed study adds layers of complexity to this picture. And while the major focus of his study is on the period when accommodation was widespread in northwestern Germany, it brings into relief the hardening of confessional identities that came with the Catholic Reformation in the seventeenth century, spurred on by the defeat of the Westphalian cities in the Thirty Years’ War. While Westphalia may have lost its confessional flexibility as a result, its period of experimentation helps us to understand why a neighboring region such as the Dutch Republic could move so effortlessly into acceptance of religious pluralism. Luebke therefore ponders how one “might approach the history of religion in post-Reformation Germany differently, with regimes of coexistence at the center of attention” (204). Flipping the confessional perspective on its head has the benefit of revealing the constraints on state and ecclesiastical powers, as well as the important role of the nobility's and magistracy's vested interests in shaping policy on the ground. It also reveals that, for many subjects, social and political cohesion did not require religious uniformity. When confronted by plurality, civic leaders worked hard to preserve civic unity over confessional conformity.

After reviewing the development of a biconfessional regime, Luebke organizes his discussion around chapters dealing with the rites of passage, especially baptism, as liturgies of accommodation; the Eucharist, as a communal rite around which only a certain range of accommodations could be arranged; sacred spaces, revealing how church buildings could variously accommodate both confessions, or alternately, force Protestants to “march out” (120) to churches in nearby jurisdictions; the clergy and their concubines; and, finally, burial, where it seems that interment in sacred ground was a right that went well beyond doctrinal affiliation. In the process, Luebke identifies what he calls six modes of coexistence that were applied across the Holy Roman Empire; these varied according to legal standing, the posture of the local authorities, the degree of confessional pressure applied, the precision of confessional boundaries, and the participants’ attitudes toward pluralization. The earliest and most widespread was what he terms the “hybrid” mode, by which parish priests sought to maintain cohesion among their flocks by ad hoc arrangements, such as distributing the sacraments in one or both kinds but at different times in the same church. Such arrangements formed the basis of the so-called middle path taken by the neighboring duchies of Jülich-Kleve-Berg until 1567. Another mode, which Luebke calls “subcutaneous,” involved accommodations made by the blurring of distinctions between Protestantism and Catholicism, especially as religious minorities practiced Nicodemism (dissimulation) as a means of avoiding exile. A third mode he describes as “entrenched,” whereby local elites had material interests in keeping the institutional status quo despite their own religious affiliations—hence a Catholic veneer could often cover a measure of toleration for Protestants.

The next set of modes applied when communities maintained clearer lines between the faiths but still found ways again to coexist. “Liminal” encompasses those cases where minority communities marched out to neighboring jurisdictions to worship with coreligionists. “Coequal” involves those places and times when two confessions both held legal standing: biconfessional regimes such as Augsburg, or triconfessional places like Jülich-Kleve-Berg after 1614, typically divided up ecclesiastical property equally among the confessions. Finally, the “concentric” mode defines those places where princes tried, but failed, to institute confessional homogeneity, and finally had to yield to popular pressure, tolerate the other faith, and suppress negative polemics. The first three modes, Luebke suggests, blurred confessional boundaries, whereas the last three found ways to sharpen them by forms of exclusion, such as marching out, which implied a form of legal identity on the part of the minority involved.

Luebke's study is essential reading for those laboring in the field of confessional identity in the early modern state or in the politics of religion in general. His primary source discoveries are impressive, confirming that there remains much to be found in the archives. It is to be hoped that he or others will now explore some of the interconnections between the theory and theorists of tolerance, on the one hand, and lived practices in the Lower Rhineland, on the other. The writings of spiritualists—including Sebastian Franck, Caspar Schwenckfeld, David Joris, Hendrik Niclaes—were disseminated in the region, as well as in the Low Countries. It is also known that one of the convents discussed by Luebke—the noble Freckenhorst cloister in the 1540s—allowed meetings of Joris's followers within its walls thanks to its abbess, Countess Agnes von Limburg-Styrum, who corresponded with Joris. Another Joris correspondent was none other than Johann Weyer (Wier), the chief surgeon at the court of Jülich-Kleve-Berg, who had composed De Praestigiis Daemonum against the prosecution of witches, thanks to the climate of religious accommodation promoted by Duke William. Not surprisingly, he also criticized heresy persecution. These are merely two examples of individuals who sought to frame and rationalize new forms of religious identity that were less tied to confessions and ritual in a region where such experimentation was, at least for a time, encouraged.