Orthodoxy and Syncretism in the protestant context. Negotiating Protestant Orthodoxy in Gdansk in the Late 16th Century

This case study of confessional conflict in late 16th Century Gdansk enquires into how confessional (protestant) orthodoxy was defined and demarcated in the local/regional context in the post-Reformation period. Main-stream historiography on the Reformation in Central Europe suggests that, by the 1570s, the boundaries between the protestant confessions were rather clearly defined, and that lay authorities were more or less free to establish the confessional order of their choice in the given protestant territory – according to the principle of cuius regio eius religio. The present study challenges these views in two respects. It demonstrates, on the one hand, that even in the late 16th century there was nothing like a clear-cut model of protestant orthodoxy (whether Lutheran or Calvinist), and that the confessional profiles of territorial churches much rather emerged from local/regional negotiation processes. On the other hand, it shows that in these negotiation processes it could become highly controversial who would have the authority to define orthodoxy: While academic theology claimed authority, and local or regional magistrates used their prerogatives in order to implement ecclesiastical discipline, it could also happen that ‘the common man’ insisted on their own understanding of the true faith and enforced a re-definition of the community’s confessional profile.