Maps and Early Modern Religion

A map is a diagrammatic representation of a geographical area. Historians of early modern Europe use them to show the way in which confessional groups spread over areas, within cities, states or territories. Maps communicate a wealth of data, such as the legal religion of a state, via a quick visual form. 

But, in terms of post-Reformation history, the use of maps has unintended consequences. In 2017, Peter Marshall criticised C. Scott Dixon’s The Church in the Early Modern Age (2016) for its use of a confessional map of Europe – particularly for the map’s key which included the term ‘Anglicanism’ in reference to England. Historians, Marshall wrote, ‘need to stop reusing the map of “confessional divisions in Europe towards the end of the sixteenth century”[,] employing variant shading for an “Anglican” England which in fact firmly identified itself as part of the family of Reformed Churches’ [1]. 

Similarly, Benjamin Kaplan argued that confessional maps mislead viewers. These maps, he said, fail to account for religious division and variation at ground level. Kaplan asserted that cartographers of the early modern world engage in an impossible task: they attempt to capture a state of affairs ‘that does not lend itself to plotting on a map’ [2].

Map of London, 1653. © The British Library. 

Both Marshall and Kaplan criticise maps in religious history for their representational dilemmas. Confessional labels fail to reflect the substance of the areas they represent. Maps cannot communicate the totality of present religious divisions, variation and polarization of groups at the local level. In addition, the terms used, such as Anglicanism, may fall short of representation in both a legal and social sense.

The way in which historians have treated and approached maps is key to this problem. Historians need to discard the notion that maps are objective, concrete representations of the areas they depict. Historians should view historic maps as something in flux, or ever-changing, and never fully formed. 

Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge, two geographers, offered an argument in 2007 which historians may learn from. They contested the post-modern theory of maps (that maps are representations of power and based on cultural judgements) to make the case that ‘[m]aps are transitory and fleeting’ things. Together, they coined the phrase that maps ‘are practices – they are always mapping’ and continually shifting to the views and attitudes of their authors [3].

Rather than trivialising their use, maps as a practice – as something dynamic and processual – allows historians to move closer to the reality of their historical subjects. In the history of early modern religion(s), maps as a practice gives a clearer view of the confessional problems which confronted Europe after the German Reformation. 

Maps can signify confessional states by variant shadings. But, as Peter Marshall pointed out, this provokes the reader and leads them to investigate the reality behind those shades - namely, the processes behind that label, the realities they signify. Admittedly, they are problematic, but they also set new agendas, which rather importantly lead the way to further research.

Notes:

[1] Peter Marshall, ‘Review: The Church in the Early Modern Age by C. Scott Dixon’ Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 68/4 (2017), p. 868.

[2] Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (London, 2007), p. 150.

[3] Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge, ‘Rethinking Maps’ Progress in Human Geography, 31/3 (2007), p. 335.