Resumen de The Prussian Estates and the question of religious toleration, 1500–1800

Janusz Małłek

• In this article Janusz Małłek discusses the policies on religious toleration developed in the Estates of Royal Prussia and Ducal Prussia in the early-modern period. The article shows how political and religious developments had led to a reluctant acceptance of the peaceful coexistence of different religious confessions in the same community in both the Prussian provinces. It is suggested that the motivation for this development was political expedience rather than any principled belief in religious toleration, and was accepted as necessary to preserve the provinces from internal disruption and civil strife and the external intervention that this would tend to generate.