Die doppelte Konfessionalisierung in Irland

In Ireland, a peripheral kingdom in the 'multiple kingdom' of the English monarchy, a process of 'confessionalization from above' initiated by the Protestant state church and the English state confronted a process of 'double confessionalization from below' initiated by the country's traditional elites and supported by the Catholic underground church. In this process of 'double confessionalization' neither the Protestant nor the Catholic confessionalization was successful: the state-sponsored Protestant one failed because it could not achieve an integration of politics and religion in Ireland; the oppositional Catholic one failed because it could not break the legal status and rhetorical confessional monopoly of the church of Ireland. As a consequence, the history of Ireland in the first half of the early modern period was characterized by both 'conflict' and 'coexistence'. Ute Lotz-Heumann analyzes the process of 'double confessionalization'.