Early Modern Child Abduction in the Name of Religion

Abstract

This chapter explores the physical removal and attempted indoctrination of European children during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Despite prohibitions on mixed marriages by the religious authorities of all confessions, interfaith unions continued to be common throughout the early modern period. The confessional identity of the offspring of such marriages remained a hotly contested issue, subject to a variety of customary, statutory and contractual norms. Contrary to conventional narratives of the development of religious toleration, abduction of children on confessional grounds—whether by parents, relatives, clerics or state authorities—actually increased in frequency during the so-called Enlightenment era. This chapter argues that new state attempts at enforcing religious homogeneity during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries played a key role in this intensification of confessional conflict.