Conflicts over religious interpretive authority were increasingly identified as the primary causes of escalating violence in the 16th and 17th centuries. Separating questions of confession from other spheres of life—above all, from the newly conceptualized and autonomous field of "politics"—was therefore intended to restore and secure social peace. Ecclesiastical rule, however, was fundamentally legitimized by confessional penetration, that is, its visible Catholicity. Consequently, these religious self-definitions had to be reintegrated or "translated" into emerging discourses, while political practice needed to be redefined and imbued with confessional significance to stabilize ecclesiastical rule per se.

This study examines whether and how these objectives were achieved by focusing on historiography as a mode of negotiation about identity and community, and thus an integral component of "political communication." The analysis centers on the historiographical projects of Prince-Bishop Ferdinand of Fürstenberg (1626–1683), which were shaped by the personal and institutional impact of the Thirty Years' War and the Peace of Westphalia, yet extended their influence far beyond this context. Particular attention is paid to the theoretical and methodological contributions, as well as the practical involvement, of the rhetoric teacher and controversialist theologian Jacob Masen SJ (1606–1681), specifically his hitherto scarcely examined collaboration on the Annales Paderbornenses.