Německá diskuse ke konfesionalizaci v evropském kontextu

This contribution provides a survey of the individual stages in the application of the confessionalisation paradigm in German historiography devoted to the period of the Early Modern Age, in the context of European, and in particular Central European, historical research from the 1980s until the present time. Attention is paid to methodical studies linking the application of the concept of confessionalisation with other paradigms of social and modern cultural history. It also focuses on a number of case studies concerning the application of this concept on the individual regions of the empire and their confrontation with research devoted to other European territories with different confessional profiles. Within the framework of the thematic link of the concept of confessionalisation with modern cultural history, the importance of research devoted to folk religiosity is emphasized. The main thrust of the survey primarily follows the discussion on the possibilities and limits of the concept of confessionalisation, as evident during its application in historical research, to which it responds both at the macro and micro-historical levels.