The Role of Neighbourhood Relations in Confessionalisation

Abstract

By means of a statistical model we study the adoption of Protestantism during the Reformation for 262 territories of the Holy Roman Empire. Our unit of analysis is a territory and the dependent variable indicates whether and when the territorial ruler adopted Protestantism. The independent variables are based on seven theoretical factors that historiographical research has identified to be important for the adoption of Protestantism, and on neighbourhood relations. We use an Event History Model to track changes in the variables over time and compute the importance of each driving factor. Our results reveal that geographic neighbourhood relations explain the adoption of Protestantism best. The more neighbourshad become protestant in the recent past, the more likely is a territory to become protestant itself. This effect is strongest for weak territories, which may point towards a strategic hesitation to adopt Protestantism in politically uncertain times.

Geographical Research in the Digital Humanities

“…The rights of a prince not only depended on his own status (e.g., weak count vs powerful elector) but also on political dependencies with other princes. Powerful princes could impose their denominational choice onto their territories, but weaker princes often waited and copied the choice of more powerful ones (Cantoni 2012, Roller et al 2022. Different types of dependencies further differentiated the influence among princes.…”

“…For example, imperial knights provided bishops in neighbouring Bamberg despite being equally powerful as the city council (Ninness 2011). However, in practice, power relations often influenced spillovers between neighbours leading to entangled dependencies between territories (Cantoni 2012, Roller et al 2022.…”

“…These operationalisations are also subject to historical inaccuracies (remember, every operationalisation simplifies reality), and, like mine, simplify territories to address a specific aspect of a research question. By using the simplified operationalisation, I found that neighbourhood and local power relations between territories are the most important factors in explaining the adoption of Protestantism (Roller et al 2022). Weak territories wait to become protestant until their more powerful neighbours have done so.…”