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1. Religious discipline 1.1. General considerationsIn the modern period there is an evident increased effort in all confessions to subject the lives of the faithful to Christian norms. Research into confessionalization was for a long time limited to church discipline (Ger. Kirchenzucht , Fr. discipline ecclésiastique), equating it with social discipline[10] or placing it in parallel with state defense against criminality. It is only recently that the aspects of “self-regulation” have been emphasized [11] and discipline has been classified with church efforts towards…

1. Historical survey 1.1. Terminology and early modern interpretationSince the mid-19th century,  Reformation (from Latin  reformatio, “restoration,” “transformation”) has been a specialized term for one side of the 16th-century events that tore Western Christendom apart into mutually antagonistic confessional churches; its antonym, denoting the other side, is  Counter-Reformation.Previously the term had carried the general meaning of “reform.” In the ecclesiastical and political reform movements of the late Middle Ages, we find both  reformatio and the verb  reform…