This case study of the causes of the Thirty Years' War suggests an alternative framework to that of Absolutism, and views statebuilding as an interactive bargaining process that can engender challenges to political authority. It shows how selective court patronage changed the cultural habits of nobles in education, manners, and tastes, but failed to transform religious identities, which were intimately tied to noble interests. Instead, the confessionalization of patronage deepened divisions within the elite, providing multiple incentives for the formation of an anti-Habsburg alliance among Protestants in 1620.

List of Tables List of Figures Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction PART I: COORDINATING STATE, REFORMATION AND ELITES Political Culture, Political Space Religious Reformations and Civil War Discourse of Division, 1618-20 Conclusion to Part I PART II: COURT PATRONAGE AND NOBLE STRATEGIES Social Capital, Symbolic Power and Religious Conflict Advancing at the Imperial Court Confessionalizing Court Patronage Conclusion to Part II Notes and References Bibliography Author Index Subject Index

KARIN J. MACHARDY is Associate Professor of History at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She has published numerous articles on the early modern nobility and on historical methodology, and is co-editor of Fact and Fiction: German History and Literature, 1848-1924.