Pastoral careers in Bischwiller (1618–1663). Politics and discipline in a refugee community
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The topic of pastoral careers in the Reformed world in the seventeenth century is still relatively unknown in the French-speaking world. Within the churches that belonged to the synodal structures of the Kingdom of France, these careers were mostly determined by the consistorial and synodal institutions. However, there were other French-speaking communities on the margin of this French model, but operating according to a model controlled by a Calvinist prince. This was the case in the Duchy of Zweibrücken (Deux-Ponts), which the study of the village of Bischweiler allows us to observe. Within a German-speaking and Lutheran Alsatian environment, John II of Zweibrücken granted privileges to Reformed French-speaking refugees and guaranteed them a pastor. The recruitment of the latter, largely thwarted by the Thirty Years’ War, posed various problems and makes it possible to observe the power relations between the civil power and the laity of the local Church, two spheres that are far from being hermetic, as well as the German, Swiss, Alsatian, Lorraine, and French influences. Between 1618 and 1663, several pastors succeeded one another, in varying political conditions (in particular after the Birkenfelds had become local lords), and in sometimes confused disciplinary conditions. This Church, which is always called “française” in the sources, could recruit different models that also questioned the place of the pastor. Thanks to the documentation available on this case of a community on the fringes and at the intersection of various influences, the historian can analyze at the local level problems that sources sometimes leave implicit elsewhere.
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