Confessional Identity in East-Central Europe

This book considers the emergence of a remarkable diversity of churches in east-central Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries which included Catholic Orthodox Hussite Lutheran Bohemian Brethren Calvinist anti-Trinitarian and Greek Catholic communities. Contributors assess the extraordinary multiplicity of confessions in the Transylvanian principality as well as the range of churches in Poland Bohemia Moravia and Hungary. Essays focus on how each church sought to establish its own identity in a crowded market-place of religious ideas and on the extent to which printed literature brokered the popular reception of religious doctrine. The volume addresses how ideas about religion spread within the largely illiterate societies of east-central Europe especially through catechisms and how printed literature was used to instruct congregations about doctrinal truth to encourage the faithful to pious devotions and to shape the religious life and identity of local communities.