The project examines the so far understudied role emotions played in shaping Protestant identities and confessional cultures in sixteenth century German-speaking lands. The key hypothesis, that emotions are constitutive for the forming, negotiating and maintaining of confessional identities (both individual and collective), is tested with a broad range of sixteenth-century archival and printed sources. The project explores both the group-intern religious and emotional practices as well as demarcation processes towards confessional ‘others'. It will demonstrate the identity and group building potential of emotions, and in doing so, offer new pathways to explaining the formation and durability of the sixteenth-century Protestant confessions. On a larger scale, the project tests and develops tools how emotions can be fruitfully used as an analytical category in the history of Christianity.

2022

2027