Abstract
The bi-confessional city of Augsburg, an imperial city in the Holy Roman Empire, has been the object of many a study that focuses on the practice of religious toleration. Due to the existence of this extensive body of literature, some of the key events and developments examined by Sean Dunwoody, such as the Kalenderstreit and the quarrels about the appointment of Reformed ministers, will probably be familiar to scholars in the field. However, Dunwoody's analytical lens differs from the perspectives adopted in earlier studies: he seeks to understand how emotions and ‘emotional practices’ contributed to or undermined peaceful coexistence. According to him, ‘Augsburgers in the sixteenth century developed and adapted their emotions to social practices in ways that resulted in peaceful coexistence’ (2).
In the introduction, the concepts and distinctions that are central to Dunwoody's argument are introduced and explained. A clear distinction is made between the civic emotional community on the one hand, and the confessional emotional community on the other. Each of these communities had their own ‘emotional practices’, a habituated and cultivated emotional repertoire that ‘guided how sixteenth-century Augsburgers made sense of and articulated their feelings’ (6). The first three chapters of the book introduce the different emotional communities in Augsburg – Civic, Lutheran and Catholic – and their emotional practices. Emotions that were expected to guide the behaviour and attitude of Augsburg's citizens included modesty, good neighbourliness and trust. Citizens were exposed to this emotional regime through, for instance, the art and decorations which embellished the city's various civic buildings, and if necessary the city council enforced laws that stipulated the correct behaviour. The confessional communities resorted to their churches as emotional vectors, but also relied on catechisms, devotional works and sermons to instil the desired emotive responses in the minds and hearts of the laity. Although this analysis largely comprises prescriptive and normative texts, other sources, such as the diary of a Protestant layperson and the documentation generated by court cases, shed light on the reception and transgressions of the emotional guidelines propagated by the different communities.
By examining a variety of primary sources, Dunwoody is able to add a richer texture to the idea of emotional communities and practices, thus dispelling the notion that such practices were identical for every member of a community. Another layer of analysis is added in the fourth chapter, where the spatial dimension of emotional practices is studied, showing how space influenced the behaviour, feelings and emotional responses expected from people. In the fifth and last chapter of the book, events such as the controversies about the calendar reform and the vocation crisis that revolved around the appointment of Protestant ministers are examined in detail. Both controversies soured the relationships between the Augsburg Council and the Protestant community, and paved the way for a greater salience of emotions such as constancy and zeal, emotions that were at odds with the emotional practices of the civic community. Eventually, the vocation crisis was resolved and relationships between the two parties were restored by the resolutions of an Imperial commission (drafted in 1584) that were ratified by Emperor Rudolf II in 1591. Interestingly, the 1591 agreement included additional stipulations about the proper behaviour and attitudes expected from the Lutheran ministers, showing the formative role of emotions in the newly achieved restoration of the earlier modus vivendi.
Dunwoody's book makes a good case for the advantage of incorporating emotions in the analysis of religious coexistence in the early modern period. After all, the religious differences people saw themselves confronted with as a result of the Catholic and Protestant Reformations elicited emotional responses that were not necessarily conducive to social stability and harmony. The inculcation and enforcement of emotional practices which fostered peaceful coexistence was potentially another tool in the box of the secular and religious elites to manage religious diversity, but emotions were hard to control, both on the individual and communal level, and could just as easily undermine the fragile peace.
However, the added value of focusing on emotions in the context of religious coexistence is not always clear. This is mainly the result of the lack of attention given to explaining how emotion as an analytical category relates to another central concept – identity – that informs our analysis. For example, the change in emotional practices can also be understood and explained as the formation and hardening of confessional identities, something which is mentioned in the fourth chapter. To what extent, then, should emotions be seen as being part of an identity or as constitutive of a role people had? As Dunwoody himself writes: ‘An Augsburger's sense of self as citizen, or as neighbor, or as artisan sometimes meant that emotional practices other than those typical of a believer were prioritized’ (269). Without such a conceptual clarification, it sometimes feels as if the main difference of the analysis offered in this book in comparison to other studies is the use of a different vocabulary. Still, the emotional dimension of religious coexistence is important and Dunwoody should be commended for putting it front and centre of his analysis, thus furthering our knowledge of how religious groups managed to live peacefully in early modern Augsburg.