Diplomacy and Domestic Devotion: Embassy Chapels and the Toleration of Religious Dissent in Early Modern Europe

In the wake of Europe's religious wars, it became accepted that embassies could include chapels where forms of Christianity illegal in the host country could be practiced. In theory, only ambassadors and their entourage had the right to worship in such chapels, but in practice the latter became bases for full-fledged congregations of native religious dissenters. Constructed out of residential space, the chapels belonged to a broader category of edifice, the "clandestine church." They helped give birth to the modern doctrine of "extraterritoriality."