Inciting Terror and Building Walls: A Catholic Convent and Lutheran Pastor Fight for the Souls of the Parish of Welver, 1649–1745

In 1720, the Soest consistory claimed that the Roman Catholic convent of Welver sought “to excite terror … in the military fashion” [ad excitandum terrorem … more militari] in the Lutheran parish of Welver through their strategic use of their clergy and servants to impose Catholicism on the devout laity of the parish. Among the violent tactics the Lutheran pastors accused the nuns of using in their attempt to “conquer” souls were the forced termination of the tenancy of convent property for non-Catholic tenants and pushing Catholic spouses for Catholic landholders. The regional consistory also claimed that the convent aggressively had interfered in the parish rights of the Lutheran pastor in when they sought to conduct baptisms, burials, and even Last Rights for Welver parishioners. This accusation of a spiritual terrorism followed almost two centuries of tensions between the Catholic and Lutheran congregations sharing a church in Welver. What was less evident was that the boundaries that had been set up in 1565, 1649, 1672, and 1697, including the strict regulation separating the two groups and building of a second convent church, obscured the pragmatic daily reality of a parish in which mixed marriage, shared education, and economic cooperation flourished. The full participation of all members of the parish, including the abbess of the convent, in the election of 1712 showed the level of integration in the community. This paper will explore how the parish of Welver allowed a simultaneum to flourish in the parish, even as outside forces from the local clergy to the King of Prussia sought to create distinct confessional congregations.