Shaping confessional identities in the urban home

Attention was first drawn to religion in the home by scholars of the Protestant Reformation. The traditional narrative relates that for Protestants the family home provided a new alternative spiritual locale to the religious houses and idealised celibate life of medieval Catholicism. Research on Catholic contexts has recently provided a counter-balance to this account. The Italian renaissance home and Catholic households in northern Europe have been shown to be places of vibrant devotional activity. This chapter surveys the scholarship and proposes a new direction for research to take forward our understanding of the domestic sphere in early modern religious practice and push beyond confessional arguments. Using two examples of current research on sixteenth-century Naples and seventeenth-century Prague, we argue that the home was more than just a passive setting. It enabled individual varieties of “lived religion” practised daily away from the church and authorities. Furthermore, the early modern home had agency in shaping the daily religious experiences and spiritual spheres of men, women and children.