Faith Control and Confessionalism, Easter Confessions in Catholic Germany
Author : Wolfgang Wüst
Abstract :
In modern times, the Catholic sacrament of confession and penance has been desacralized worldwide as an “unpopular” sacrament. Churchgoers always note empty confessionals with mixed feelings, and not only in Europe. At the end of the nineteenth century in the countryside of southern Germany, this was quite different. Josef Schlicht, the beneficiarius and folklorist who died in 1917 in the Lower Bavarian castle and parish of Steinach, described the collection of confession slips in 1875 at a time when industrialization and modernity had long since left their mark on rural life. Schlicht's choice of words, as if out of time, is still strongly reminiscent of the guidelines of the era of early confessionalization. “A life of its own now passes through the Bavarian countryside when, after Easter, the priest comes to every family and collects the confession slips. He enters the home there: as friend, peacemaker, comforter, counselor and judge.” The disciplining of the subjects, which according to Josef Schlicht's description still subsumed home and family control in the countryside towards the end of the First World War, was part of the fixed program of secular and ecclesiastical governments at the interface between Church, early modern state, society, Reformation and Counter-Reformation in the confessional age. In basic research on the formation of confessions and European confessionalization, however, the question of the Easter Confession slips (Beichtzettel), from whom they came and for whom they had to be presented, has not yet played a role. This article illustrates the supporting role of the Easter confession for the political and theological system of confessionalized worlds on the basis of regional examples.
Keywords :
Easter confession, sacraments, state building, confessionalization, birthrights, reformation
