Amidst the turbulent confessional politics of Early Modern Europe, individuals regularly transgressed confessional barriers in pursuit of socio-economic, political, or sentimental goals. Such transgressions were most explicit within the dynamics of mixed interfaith marriages. In contemporary Anglophone parlance, the term ‘mixed marriage’ connotes an exogamous legal union between individuals of differing nationalities, cultures, ethnicities, or religions. Within the context of Early Modern Europe, however, the polemic over mixed marriages focused on the legal, socio-political, and spiritual challenges presented by the union of individuals from differing religious faiths.
Mixed marriage has increasingly come to the foreground of a growing historiography that encompasses the history of religion, law, socio-economics, politics, gender, family, and the emotions. On May 26th and 27th 2011, the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Rom made an invaluable contribution to this discourse by hosting the first international conference dedicated to exploring the means and modalities whereby individuals, communities, and institutions negotiated interconfessional marriage in Early Modern Europe. “Mixed Marriages in Europe: The Politics and Practices of Religious Plurality Between the Fourteenth and Nineteenth Centuries” was organized by Dr. CECILIA CRISTELLON (Rome) of the Deutsches Historisches Institut with the collaboration of the Royal Netherlandish Institute in Rome and the sponsorship of the Gerda Henkel Foundation. Through formal presentations by sixteen scholars and the discursive participation of many more, this conference unveiled new and ongoing research which critically reassesses how mixed marriage served to bridge or reinforcing confessional divisions between Roman Catholics, Orthodox Greeks, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and New Christians in Early Modern Europe and beyond.
Marital strategies were instrumental in the dynastic and socio-economic ambitions of the entire family. Amongst Europe’s ruling and middling classes, brokered marriages secured dynastic succession and served to reinforce political alliances and mercantile networks. For propertied and landless classes alike, endogamous marriage could reinforce communal bonds and strengthen confessional identities. Given the political and socio-economic complexities of Europe’s marriage market, anxieties proliferated concerning the threat that mixed marriages posed to civil and religious institutions, patrimonial interests, and the spiritual and social well being of the community. Prior to the Council of Trent, the sacrament of marriage in the Latin church was governed according to the loose regulations of Canon law. Within the vague demands of Canon law, a legally valid marital union could be contracted through the mutual verbal consent of two willing partners who consummated the union. These unions did not require the intervention of a priest and although marriage without parental consent was discouraged, clandestine marriages were recognized as legally valid. In the absence of stricter ecclesiastical guidelines, secular authorities throughout Catholic Europe were charged with the task of creating civil laws to regulate marriage and protect patrimonial interests.
The social, legal, and spiritual regulation of marriage changed dramatically in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. Protestant Reformers denied the sacramentality of marriage and placed its regulation within the control of secular authorities in civil courts. In Protestant lands, civil courts tightened patriarchal control by requiring parental consent and the publication of banns three weeks prior to a marriage. Although Martin Luther, Jean Calvin and others condemned mixed faith unions, civil courts in Protestant lands considered mixed marriages legally valid and their regulation was left to the discretionary powers of local courts and Reformed Consistories.
Although the introduction of civil marriage in the Protestant countries created the legal possibility for interfaith relationships, RALF FRASSEK’s (Frankfurt am Main) research on civil marriage disputes in Saxony during the early phase of the Reformation (1517-1580) highlights the need to clearly distinguish between theoretical doctrinal disputes and actual marriage practices on the ground. Frassek’s examination of civil marriage disputes in early Reformation Saxony yielded no evidence of discussion concerning mixed faith marriages. Moreover, he argues, while contemporaneous theoretical writing explored the epistemological possibility of interfaith marriage, this discourse remained ambiguous concerning the Privilege Paulinum, which in theory permitted divorce on the basis of the unbelief of the spouse.
However, the practice of mixed marriages in other Protestant lands demonstrates how civil law came into conflict with Canon law, particularly after the Council of Trent issued the 1563 Tametsi clause. The Tatmetsi clause significantly altered the Catholic Church’s role in regulating marriage. The clause upheld the sacramentality of marriage but revised Canon law by requiring that a parish priest officiate all Catholic marriages in the presence of two witnesses. These measures were intended to put an end to the practice of clandestine marriages and to hinder cross-confessional unions. The Tametsi clause barred Roman Catholic priests from officiating over mixed faith unions. The Catholic Church required that non-Catholic spouses convert to Catholicism and agree to raise children as Catholics. Since the Tametsi clause was conceived within the framework of a normative diocese structure, it had limited applicability within Protestant lands where Catholics were the minority. Like all Tridentine Reforms, the enforcement of these new regulations varied widely by region. For instance, in regions where the council of Trent had not been published, a marriage between a Catholic and Protestant in front of a Protestant minister was considered illicit but valid according to the Catholic Church.
ERMANNO ORLANDO’s (Venice) work on mixed marriages between Orthodox Greeks and Latins in Venice from the fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century demonstrates how interfaith unions produced jurisdictional complications long before the fissures of the Protestant Reformation. Given the failure of the union at the 1439 Council of Florence, Venice’s Greeks Orthodox community was placed under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the patriarch of Constantinople and was thus exempt from local ecclesiastical authorities. Although mixed marriage could facilitate the integration of Greek minorities into the local communities of Venice, these unions were fraught with polemic over competing marriage liturgies, judicial systems, and the proscribed religious education of future progeny. Drawing from sources contained in the Venetian church archives, Orlando demonstrates how individuals navigating mixed marriages took advantage of jurisdictional ambiguities when seeking divorce or annulment. In addition, his study demonstrates a trend from relative openness to Latin-Greek marriages to increased restriction following the Council of Trent (1545-1563).
Despite the strict guidelines of the Tridentine reforms, the Catholic church did permit certain dispensations for mixed marriages in Catholic minority countries. By examining the Holy Office of the Inquisition’s deliberations and dispensations for mixed marriages from 1630-1798, the research of CECILIA CRISTELLON (Rome) demonstrates the extent to which the central administration of justice depended upon local conditions and the opinions of local authorities. Since Catholic missionaries were faced with limited options in non-Catholic lands, the application of Tridentine rules were refined to better suit local conditions. Moreover, Cristellon demonstrates how Holy Office decrees became part of a corpus for successive decisions, and thus the arguments posited for specific marriages could crystallize into general principles. Cristellon’s study emphasizes the gulf that separated the ideals of the Catholic church from the realities of local conditions, and her work illustrates how the Catholic church must not be viewed as a monolithic entity.
GIAN ACKERMAN’s (Nijmegen) research on mixed marriages within the Catholic mission in Holland demonstrates the flexible pastoral strategies that were necessary to attract and keep the faithful within a Protestant environment where Catholics were a persecuted minority. While the rate of mixed marriages in the Dutch Republic tended to be fairly low, the leaders of the Holland Mission nonetheless had difficulty enforcing the Tridentine standards for canonical marriage. Confessional competition required a flexible approach to mixed marriages since a too strict adherence to the Tridentine rules made the Church risk losing Catholics and their potential progeny. Technically, Catholic priests who celebrated mixed marriages were threatened with suspension and the Catholic partner of a mixed couple who married before a protestant minister was banned from communion for six months. In practice, however, by granting absolution after an illicit mixed marriage took place, local priests exercised latitude in applying the Tridentine regulations. The competing demands of Tridentine Reform and pragmatic flexibility were demonstrated by work of the Apostolic Vicar Johannes van Neercassel, whose efforts for the Holland Mission sought to establish a good relationship with civil authorities and the community while enforcing Tridentine Reforms when possible.
Although mixed faith marriages were uncommon in Episcopal principality of Basel during the Thirty Years’ war, BERTRAND FORCLAZ’s (Neuchâtel) research demonstrates how cross-confessional interactions were possible in confessional borderlands and this increased the possibility of mixed unions. By examining the reports of pastoral visits written by the General Vicar of the diocese of Basel, Thomas Henrici, Forclaz’s work reconstructs the daily supraconfessional contacts and confessional tensions which affected daily life in the politically and confessionally diverse region around the diocese of Basel. Henrici’s reports describe common borderland practices such as simultaneum churches and the pattern of Protestants crossing into Catholic lands to work on religious holidays. Henrici’s reports describing the confessional borderlands suggest that mixed marriages were concentrated in the villages of the diocese that were closest to Protestant territories. Thus, while mixed marriage in the Episcopal principality was rare, it was not completely prevented by the principal of confessional territoriality, cuius regio, euius religio, that was agreed to by the rulers of German-speaking states and Charles V in the 1555 Peace of Augsburg.
One of the primary concerns for individuals entering mixed marriages was the negotiation of terms that stipulated the religious upbringing of the couple’s future progeny. Since all confessional denominations feared losing future generations of the faithful, most church officials often refused to marry mixed couples without their promise to raise their children in correct faith. However, the terms governing the religious education of such faith children varied by confession and region, with arrangements that included the agreement that the children’s religion would be either determined by the state, by the faith of their mother or father, or in some cases that the religious education would depend on the gender of the child.
In Protestant lands, marriage required parental consent and this allowed the parents of a mixed faith couple to influence the terms governing the religious upbringing of future children. While parents could threaten disinheritance if these terms were not met, BENJAMIN KAPLAN’s (London) study of child kidnapping in the Dutch Republic highlights how third party relatives and neighbors also had a vested interest in influencing the religion of the mixed couple’s children. However, since these individuals had fewer fiscal and legal options, at times they resorted to the unauthorized removal, or kidnapping, of children for the sake of their spiritual education. By examining cases of real or threatened kidnapping in the Dutch Republic, Kaplan finds that the children subject to unauthorized removal typically were progeny of a mixed marriage that had was dissolved after one or more parent died. The controversy that ensued following such kidnappings encouraged the state to intervene. Dutch authorities mediated such kidnapping by demanding the extradition of children from neighboring lands or by carrying out reprisals that involved closing Catholic churches or throwing local priests into jail. Kaplan’s evidence suggests that Catholics more commonly perpetrated kidnappings in the Dutch Republic and that the incidents were concentrated in Generality Lands along the southern and eastern borders. As a borderland area, the Dutch Generality was adjacent to a Catholic state, which not only facilitated religious motivated kidnapping but also allowed the Catholic community the option of crossing the border to attend Catholic services during reprisals. Ultimately, Kaplan’s study demonstrates how the Catholics in Dutch borderlands used political borders to pursue their religious goals.
The communal reinforcement of confessional identity figures prominently in AMANDA EURICH’s (Bellingham) work on mixed marriage in the biconfessional communities of Early Modern France and specifically the principality of Orange. By examining 800 marriage contracts amongst the Orangeois, Eurich demonstrates how confessional communities were torn between religious expectations and the need to survive a restricted marriage market. She finds that the Huguenot Orangeois elite reinforced their hegemony by intermarrying amongst themselves and by using the strong intra-regional Calvinist networks to find suitable marriage partners. These factors lessened the pressure to marry outside of the Huguenot faith, the Huguenot community support also extended to women of the lower and middling classes through charitable contributions to Huguenot dowries. Although mixed confession marriages were discouraged, Huguenot consistories upheld their legal validity and recognized such unions as a social necessity. Since the Huguenot community could lose members when the consistories were inflexible towards mixed marriages, Huguenot consistories emphasized the role of patriarchal authority in preventing mixed marriages and in reconciling the offending members to the church. Eurich find that confessional identities in Orange crystallized under the pressure of French hostility. Confessional lay associations inhibited cross-confessional sociality and Huguenot sociality was reinforced by the central role that pastors and notaries played in civil marriages and the ceremonial life of the community. Overall, socio-economic distinctions and the combative relationship between Huguenots and Catholics in Orange help explain the relatively low rate of cross-confessional marriage. Nonetheless, the Orangeois were still forced to weigh the benefits and risks of intermarriage versus communal survival.
LAURA BINZ’s (Florence/Bern) research demonstrates how the strict application of the Tridentine marriage reforms was untenable for Latin Catholics living in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople. By examining the correspondence between missionaries and prelates in Constantinople and the curia in Rome (1660-1760), Binz demonstrates how Latin Catholics in Constantinople faced a severely restricted marriage market. Consequently, they were forced to look beyond their denominational boundaries to broaden their marriage options. Local Catholic clergy tried to support Latin unions, but they also recognized the social necessity of mixed marriages. Frequent violations of the Tridentine marriage rules included local Latin women marrying Greek men, or Latin Catholics getting married before Greek Orthodox priests, Protestant ministers, or Ottoman civil authorities. Although Catholic priests were prohibited from attending the wedding of mixed marriages, Greek Orthodox priests, Protestant ministers, or Ottoman qadis could legally contract such unions. Thus, local conditions offered Latin Catholics a set of spiritual alternatives that limited the power of Catholic Church. In a climate where mixed marriage seemed unavoidable, local officials reasoned that if a mixed union was inevitable, it would preferable to allow a Catholic priest to perform the union so that the couple’s children could be raised in the Catholic faith. Ultimately, Binz’s analysis highlights the significant maneuverability that Latin Catholics had in Constantinople, since ecclesiastical punishments proved ineffectual and the church had vested interest in offering indulgence.
The Christian concept of the Pauline privilege dictated that new converts to the faith could choose to dissolve earlier marriages or they could remain in the household of the non-Baptized partner. The practical application of the Pauline privilege presented formidable challenges to ecclesiastical authorities concerned with monitoring the new convert to ensure that he or she did not return to his or her original faith or introduce syncretic religious practices into the household. Marriage between original Christians and new converts was often encouraged. However, in some regions these unions proved challenging not only on the grounds faith but also due to racial and cultural prejudices. This is amply demonstrated by MANUEL FERNÁNDEZ CHAVEZ and RAFAEL PÉREZ GARCIA’s (Sevilla) study of mixed marriages amongst the Morisco populations in Iberian Spain. After Spain’s Iberian Muslims had been forcefully converted to Catholicism, the Spanish crown introduced systematic efforts to repress and outlaw Morisco cultural expression. Initially, mixed marriage between Moriscos and Old Christians was encouraged as a strategy to assimilate these individuals by requiring them to renounce their social customs, style of dress, and language. Despite such efforts, the Moriscos retained much of their culture, language, and customs, which helped fuel, entrenched racial and religious prejudices. Moriscos were perceived as being overly sexual with high reproductive rates, and they were frequently accused of practicing sodomy, polygamy, and marriage that violated the prohibition of consanguinity. Ultimately, the Spanish authorities concluded that Moriscos were incapable of assimilation and their 1609-1614 expulsion from Spain was justified, in part, by the Moriscos’ role as a contaminating element for the Catholic region’s religious and social well being.
Although the Catholic church considered marriage between a Catholic and a heretic illicit but valid, marriages between Catholics and non-Baptized ‘infidels’ were deemed invalid. Consequently, mixed marriages between Catholics and Muslims were condemned as concubinage and dispensations for such unions required permission from the Holy Office. As MARINA CAFFIERO’s (Rome) work on mixed marriages between Catholics and Muslims in the mission territories of the Balkans and Albanian borderlands suggests, the demands of Catholic Church did not allow the flexibility necessary to address the needs of Catholics in Ottoman territories. In these regions, strict adherence to papal demands was untenable and could result in the persecution of the faithful. Missionaries in these regions reported that mixed unions were frequent, and they tended to encourage indulgence based on the mixed union’s potential evangelical benefits. However, by examining the papal responses given to eighteenth century women seeking the legitimation of their marriages to Muslims, Caffiero demonstrates that while the Holy Office offered theoretical sympathy for women, their requests were denied the basis of the impracticality of their living as Catholics in Muslim lands. Moreover, the papacy responded to such requests with increasingly severe rules that barred Catholic women married to Muslims from receiving sacraments and denied their Children Catholic baptism unless the mother could assure them a Christian education. As Caffiero’s research demonstrates, the eighteenth century papacy did not adequately respond to the conditions facing missionaries in Ottoman lands and papal dispensations for Muslim and Catholic unions did not become more flexible over time.
The missionary activities of the Early Modern Russian Orthodox Church diverged sharply from the pastoral ideals and strict guidelines conceived by the post-Tridentine Catholic church. The conversion of pagan, Buddhist, and Muslim populations living in Russia’s newly acquired territories was a key component within the Russian Imperial agenda. However, as MICHAEL KHODARKOVSKY’s (Chicago) work emphasizes, the Russian Orthodox Church’s approach to these conversions did not follow a Pauline ideal. Although conversion figured prominently within the civilizing mission of state ideology, missionary activity was a costly endeavor for the state and was riddled with internal corruption. Russian Orthodox priests were not trained in native languages and most conversions were nominal, either coerced through physical threats or enticed with the promise of tax exemptions and financial remuneration. As Khodarkovsky emphasizes, the study of mixed marriage within the heterogeneous Russian territories presents formidable challenges due to the lack of sources. However, his research demonstrates that for non-Christian nobles, conversion was a fast track to assimilation since non-Christian nobility who converted were easily able to intermarry into the Russian nobility. Although mixed marriages between the heterogeneous population and non-noble converts was likely common, the extant archival sources leave historians with limited options to explore these dynamics.
While institutional and legal history figures predominantly in the study of mixed marriages, scholars also recognize the need to use diversified sources to construct a more nuanced picture of marriage practices. This is particularly true considering that a burgeoning discourse emerged following the Protestant Reformation, which emphasized the affectionate bonds that could exist between married couples. Mixed marriages brought the confessional divide into the domestic sphere and created a potential for conflict or mutual influence. The use of biographical sources allows scholars to examine the role that mixed marriage played within the history of emotions and the family. Such questions are of particular relevance when considering the mixed marriages of noble women whose confessional allegiances could affect their role as influential wives, mothers, and political actors.
MAGDALENA DREXL’s (Essen) research examines the role that confessional politics played in the political and religious views of Princess Anna of Prussia who married Prince Johann Sigismund, the future Elector of Brandenburg in 1594. Although the marriage began as a union of two Lutheran individuals, Prince Sigismund’s public conversion to Calvinism in 1613 led Princess Anna to act as a protector on behalf of Lutheran interests. Rather than submit her faith to the inclinations of her husband, Princess Anna recognized the Scriptures as the supreme authority. Princess Anna’s active confessional agenda was fiercely attacked, and these criticisms were epitomized in the anonymous pamphlet "Frantzösische Cato" which compared Anna to the divisive French regent, Marie de Medicis. Drexl’s research unveils how Anna defended herself in letters to her children in which she asserted her maternal love and begged them to restore her honor. By combining confessional, political, and gender discourse analysis, Drexl’s work demonstrates that while Anna of Brandenburg-Prussia sought to influence politics through her husband and children, she nonetheless maneuvered within the normative gendered framework and stylizing herself as a caring mother and good wife.
The politics of mixed marriage and gender discourse analysis is highlighted by DAGMAR FREIST’s (Oldenburg) study on the Catholic Queen Henrietta Maria, wife to King Charles I. In Seventeenth-Century England, the fear of popish conspiratorial plots had heretofore been concentrated on foreign conspirators. However, the marriage of Charles I to the French Catholic Henrietta Maria brought the popish threat into the inner workings of the English court. Freist’s research into the Queen’s political and religious activities during the English Civil War reveals that even after exile to France she corresponded regularly with her husband and sought to influence political decisions. After the execution of Charles I in 1649, Queen Henrietta dedicated her efforts to her children and tried to convert them to Catholicism. As the mother of two kings, this angered Royalists in exile. Freist’s analysis of Queen Henrietta’s correspondence with her children demonstrates her politics and emotions were interwoven into a precarious mix of motherly advice and dangerous political expression. Using pamphlets as a register of public opinion, Freist illustrates the effect of Henrietta Maria on discourse in the public sphere where she was portrayed as a threatening symbol of “popery in perfection.”
SILVANA SEIDEL MENCHI’s (Pisa) engaging study of Carl Eugen Duke of Wüttenberg suggests how one eighteenth century nobleman manipulated the ambiguities of ecclesiastical jurisdiction to fulfill his amorous pursuits. Using archival documents of marriage trials from Italian ecclesiastical archives in conjunction with the records of the Hauptstaatarchiv in Stuttgart, Menchi is able to provide a nuanced picture of a romantic affair which interlocked the marital fates of an Italian actress, the Duke of Württemberg, and his two legal wives. Although the Italian actress began as the Duke’s favored mistress, she is soon replaced and forced unwillingly into a marriage arranged by the Duke. In a complex series of twists and turns, Menchi traces how a series of marital separations, accusations of concubinage, and appeals for annulment and divorce ensued. By tracing the inner workings of these marital cases, Menchi reveals how the tyrannical Catholic Duke succeeded in manipulating the Protestant court and openly defying the Catholic Church. Nonetheless, the Duke is ultimately successful in bending the court to his will, whereas the legal efforts of the Italian actress fail miserably. Menchi’s study adroitly outlines the power dynamic, which encouraged Rome’s leniency towards the Catholic Duke of a Protestant territory, and this ultimately leads Menchi to conclude, “where power does not bow to law, law bows to power.”
BENJAMIN MARSCHKE’s (Arcata) study on confessional identity and mixed marriage in the eighteenth century house of Hohenzollern raises critical questions concerning the degree to which attitudes about mixed marriage do or do not serve as an indicator for rising secularism in Europe. Marschke examines how political motivations encouraged confessional fluidity in early Modern Prussia, where mixed marriages were frequently contracted between Calvinist members of the house of Hohenzollern and suitable marriage partners of the Lutheran confession. By examining the court records describing the strategies of marriage brokerage amongst the Hohenzollerns, Marschke located the reign of King Frederick William I in the 1710s-1730 as watershed period in which Lutheranism and Calvinism were increasingly viewed as virtually interchangeable. Prior to these years, mixed marriages were contracted with Lutheran only after the meticulous gathering of intelligence concerning the piety of a Hohenzollern’s potential spouses. Moreover, marriage contracts during this period were highly explicit concerning the religious upbringing of the children and the religious influence of the Lutheran spouse. During the reign of King Frederick William I, however, all such clauses were removed from Hohenzollern marriage contracts and the confessional allegiance of female Hohenzollern children was pragmatically decided based on the desire of her future marriage suitor. Thus, while Protestant unions with Catholics were still seen as problematic, Marschke’s research suggests that Hohenzollern political culture encouraged a type of post-confessional pan-Protestantism in Prussia.
ELLINOR FORSTER’s (Innsbruck) examination of mixed marriages in Austria during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries highlights how the regulation of mixed faith marriages became part of the Austrian government’s agenda. Austria was a conglomeration of different kingdoms with mixed confessions and different legal jurisdictions. Whereas the German-Bohemian hereditary lands were relatively homogeneous in their Catholic affiliation, Hungary had strong Calvinist and Protestant minorities. Within this confessional landscape, state efforts to regulate mixed marriages often resulted in a tug of war between civil authorities and Catholic Bishops. Public debate tended to focus on the education of children in mixed faith households. During the reign of Maria Theresa, the Hapsburg leader resisted efforts to permit religious toleration, although her laws were tempered by pragmatism. It was decided that a ban on mixed marriages would isolate Protestants and Catholics would then risk losing the chance to persuade those individuals to join the Catholic faith. Consequently, mixed Protestant Catholics marriages were permitted, but the Catholic education of the children was compulsory. Joseph II’s enlightened efforts to reform the state resulted in the Patent of Toleration of 1781. While Joseph II’s efforts were motivated in part by economic rationale, the terms of mixed marriage outlined in this Patent suggested a more open attitude concerning the religious upbringing of children. However, this liberality was met with resistance and led to a partial withdrawal of Joseph’s ideas. Further resistance to the Patent of Toleration was registered in the Austrian Netherlands, where Bishops were unwilling to accept the law without Papal approval. In 1811, the General Civil Code regularized mixed marriages, making it compulsory that they take place before a Catholic priest in the presence of two witnesses. The Austrian government was unwavering in its rejection of mixed Christian and non-Christian marriages and marriage between a Christian and a Jew was only permitted if the Jew converted to Christianity. By the nineteenth century, Austrians couples seeking a mixed marriage between a Christian and Jews sometimes chose to marry aboard, even though they risked having the union declared legally invalid under Austrian law.
The collective contributions of “Mixed Marriages in Europe: The Politics and Practices of Religious Plurality Between the Fourteenth and Nineteenth Centuries” offered a comparative overview of the research methodologies applied to the study of mixed marriages. As such, speakers and commentators (GERARD DELILLE (Rome), HEIDE WUNDER (Bad Nauheim)) were able to identify historiographical lacuna and propose guidelines for future research. Several themes emerged throughout the conference: the importance of considering the heterogeneity or homogeneity of a confessional landscape, the need to distinguish marriage law from marriage practice, and the need to correlate evidence from diverse perspectives including the lawmakers, clergy, missionaries, and laypeople. Since confessional diversity did not necessarily imply division, mixed marriages did not inherently signal either the weakening or the entrenchment of confessional boundaries. Given the constructed nature of confessional boundaries, scholars must strive for a nuanced periodization by balancing microhistorical studies of mixed marriage with larger synthetic arguments. In each case, scholars must strive to identify the constraining factors and determine the degree of agency that individuals had in negotiating mixed marriages. Moreover, historians must be explicit in how they define mixed marriage, whether it is understood as a legal interconfessional union, the union of individuals following conversion, or the union of individuals according to local customs that include polygamy or concubinage. Such considerations are particularly relevant when considering how European conceptions of marriage changed or adapted when confronted with non-European and Non-Christian customs in frontier zones and colonial empires. Ultimately, future scholarship must consider the dynamics of mixed faith unions alongside other types of marriages deemed illicit based on race, gender, age, or class.