Benjamin Kaplan’s recent Divided by Faith reveals (in the words of the Economist reviewer) that “there was more religious freedom in the 16th century than after the wars of religion ended a century later. The author tells of the widespread use of Auslauf , whereby Protestants were able to worship outside a Catholic city’s walls; of the clandestine yet accepted Catholic churches in the Netherlands known as Schuilkerken ; and of the practice of Simultaneum , the sharing of churches between Protestants and Catholics in such places as Biberach and, later, Augsburg.”
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