Religion as a civic virtue: Religious identity and communal relations in Augsburg, 1517–1555

Historians have commonly viewed the Reformation as a time of bitter religious antagonism, leading to political hostilities and cultural divisions, but this view obscures the fact that in the midst of great changes people continued to live together. This study considers how the religious diversity and resulting tensions of the early Reformation, which so consumed secular and spiritual leaders, affected the daily interactions of townspeople. The interrogation records of the Free Imperial City of Augsburg in southern Germany, provide an opportunity to investigate the experiences of the ordinary people, whose voices are heard nowhere else in the sources. The amorphous nature of religious groups in the early Reformation often made identification with a particular group problematic and even inappropriate. In turn, this made possible the acceptance of religious differences by individuals, in a way that was not conceivable after confessionalization. Thus, religious diversity did not automatically lead to divisiveness. The examination of the diverse personal experiences of Augsburg\u27s citizens during the early sixteenth century supplies a new aspect to our vision of the Reformation by indicating the multiplicity of motives which influenced people as they developed their religious convictions. It also challenges our assumptions about reform and confession as historical processes