In early modern Germany, religious conversion was a profoundly social and
political phenomenon rather than purely an act of private conscience. Because social norms and legal
requirements demanded that every subject declare membership in one of the state-sanctioned
Christian churches, the act of religious conversion regularly tested the geographical and political
boundaries separating Catholics and Protestants. In a period when church and state cooperated to
impose religious conformity, regulate confessional difference, and promote moral and social order,
the choice to convert was seen as a disruptive act of disobedience. Investigating the tensions
inherent in the creation of religious communities and the fashioning of religious identities in
Germany after the Thirty Years' War, Duane Corpis examines the complex social interactions,
political implications, and cultural meanings of conversion in this moment of German
history.In Crossing the Boundaries of Belief, Corpis assesses
how conversion destabilized the rigid political, social, and cultural boundaries that separated one
Christian faith from another and that normally tied individuals to their local communities of
belief. Those who changed their faiths directly challenged the efforts of ecclesiastical and secular
authorities to use religious orthodoxy as a tool of social discipline and control. In its
examination of religious conversion, this study thus offers a unique opportunity to explore how
women and men questioned and redefined their relationships to local institutions of power and
authority, including the parish clergy, the city government, and the family.