Exile encounters and cross-border mobility in early modern borderlands

Abstract

Sixteenth-century Europe witnessed an unprecedented sequence of religious reformations, which disintegrated medieval Christianity into a series of confessional churches along a new divide between Catholics and Protestants. This societal change has traditionally been located in cities, such as the triad Wittenberg, Zürich and Geneva for Protestantism and the axis Rome-Madrid for Catholicism. Hence, Reformation Studies traditionally analyse the ensuing church-state collaboration, working with a silent paradigm of capitals and cities "enlightening" their Hinterland. The crucial perspective of borderland studies can, and should, decentre this focus on capital cities (Sahlins, 1989; Ditchfield, 2010). Early modern rulers clearly were willing to defend state borders to aggrandize their reputation and territory, but also to secure the Catholic or Protestant salvation of the souls in these realms. Despite the elaboration of the juridical principle cuius regio, eius religio ("whose realm, his religion") by the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, religious divisions in borderlands did not always have clear-cut or quick outcomes, as borderlines and ensuing prescribed confessions could shift dramatically, even within a lifespan. On the northwestern border of the Low Countries and the Holy Roman Empire, the city of Emden in the County of East Frisia changed from the prescription of Catholic Exile encounters and cross-border mobility in early modern borderlands Belgeo, 2 | 2015 Exile encounters and cross-border mobility in early modern borderlands Belgeo, 2 | 2015