Small Books with a Mission

As a term describing the process of converting non-Catholics to the Catholic faith during the Early Modern Era, re-Catholicisation has been described as either a forced political process of social disciplining or a phenomenon combining coercion with persuasive strategies such as catechesis, promotion of popular devotions and spreading of literature. This thesis examines how certain German-language Catholic prayer books functioned as tools of ‘soft’ re-Catholicisation, seeking to persuade Protestants to return to the Catholic faith.
By analysing so called catechetical meta-texts – such as prefaces, didactic introductions and marginal commentaries – alongside the prayers themselves, this study explores how these books promoted Catholic doctrine and various devotional practices that were questioned by the Protestants. Situating these texts within the theoretical frameworks of confessional knowledge and confessional culture, this thesis reveals their authors as ‘knowledge actors’ who contributed to a Catholic identity and demonstrates that Catholic prayer books played a role in both apologetics and catechesis during a crucial period of religious transformation.

Fredrik Norberg-Schiefauer is a Church Historian at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, Lund University, Sweden. This is his doctoral dissertation.