Rural Organization and Receptivity to Protestantism in Sixteenth-century Europe.

In this paper, I hypothesize and show evidence for a causal link between local land use systems and popular receptivity to ascetic, rationalist religions in sixteenth-century Germany, France, the Netherlands, and England. Rationalist religions typically received popular support in regions characterized by individual property rights in land and little communal control over agriculture. I argue that this social organization of agriculture gave rise to individualistic value systems, which had an affinity with rationalist, ascetic belief systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]