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Managing the Peace 1555–1618

Joachim Whaley

in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire: Volume I: Maximilian I to the Peace of Westphalia, 1493-1648

Against the traditional view that this period saw conflict and political breakdown, this section argues that the Reich was stabilised under Ferdinand I and Maximilian II. The Reichstag, the Kreise, ... More

Against the traditional view that this period saw conflict and political breakdown, this section argues that the Reich was stabilised under Ferdinand I and Maximilian II. The Reichstag, the Kreise, the Reichskammericht, the Reichshofrat now matured as institutions. The Reich was united by the threats posed by France and the Ottomans, by the revolt of the Netherlands and the French religious wars. The emergence of Calvinism and conflicting interpretations of the Peace of Augsburg slowly disrupted the political equilibrium. By 1600 the Reich under Rudolf II was in serious political crisis. Problems within the Habsburg dynasty itself contributed further problems: disputes over the succession and how to deal with the rising tide of Protestantism in the Habsburg lands. Under Emperor Matthias from 1612 the Reich edged closer to a major crisis. Even so, the debate about the constitution in German public law writings around 1600 and the strength of irenicism and patriotism reveal tendencies that were to provide the foundations for a new unity after 1648.Less

The Idea of Europe

John McCormick

in Europeanism

Chapter 1 examines broad themes in the evolution of the idea of Europe and of how Europeans have been defined. In this chapter, it is further argued that Europeans were for centuries understood less ... More

Chapter 1 examines broad themes in the evolution of the idea of Europe and of how Europeans have been defined. In this chapter, it is further argued that Europeans were for centuries understood less on their own terms than in relation to outsiders. Christianity provided a critical early defining force, as did external threats from the Persians, the Arabs, and the Ottoman Turks. But Christianity was never a unifying force, and indeed Europe was for centuries divided by religious wars, and territorial authority was exerted by aristocrats and the church. It was only in the seventeenth century that the modern Westphalian state system began to emerge, soon to be overlaid by national divisions that created a complex and troubled political dynamic. In the nineteenth century, nationalism evolved from a cultural into a political force, Europe was held hostage to great power rivalry, and the accumulating tensions spilled over into the two world wars. Until 1945, European history was one of divisions compounding divisions, and there was little sense of a common European mission or purpose.Less

Religion, Terrorism, and Civil Wars

Monica Duffy Toft

in Rethinking Religion and World Affairs

This chapter has four main sections. It begins by discussing five anecdotes that highlight the role of religion in two types of large-scale violence: civil wars and terrorism. It then introduces key ... More

This chapter has four main sections. It begins by discussing five anecdotes that highlight the role of religion in two types of large-scale violence: civil wars and terrorism. It then introduces key concepts, followed by important empirical facts about religious civil wars from 1940 to 2000. Finally, it examines religiously-inspired terrorism. Regarding both civil wars and terrorism, it is noted that religiously-inspired violence is, by and large, more deadly than violence justified by other means. In addition, it is shown that Islam has come to play a disproportionate role in violence: more than 80% of religious civil wars involve Islam, and religiously motivated incidents of terrorism involve Islam more than any other faith.Less

Religious War in the Works of Maimonides: An Idea and Its Transit across the Medieval Mediterranean

George R. Wilkes

in Just Wars, Holy Wars, and Jihads: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Encounters and Exchanges

Maimonides’ notion of religious war was idiosyncratic within the rabbinic tradition. His views were rejected or ignored by many of his most ardent followers. Nevertheless, his treatment of the laws ... More

Maimonides’ notion of religious war was idiosyncratic within the rabbinic tradition. His views were rejected or ignored by many of his most ardent followers. Nevertheless, his treatment of the laws of war is widely credited by Jewish scholars in universities and yeshivot alike as both authoritative and representative of the normative rabbinic tradition, a basis for subsequent halakha. This conundrum derives first and foremost from Maimonides’ own iconoclastic combination of Jewish and Islamic sources. Maimonides’ Islamic models also make essential background to his selection of genres and of biblical and rabbinic sources, both as yet under-explored influences on the political and philosophical agendas underlying his treatment of war.Less

Introduction

Serhii Plokhy

in The Cossacks and Religion in Early Modern Ukraine

This book explores the interaction of Cossackdom and religion, specifically the role of the Cossacks in the religious wars that began in Ukraine in the late 16th century and the influence of religion ... More

This book explores the interaction of Cossackdom and religion, specifically the role of the Cossacks in the religious wars that began in Ukraine in the late 16th century and the influence of religion on the ideology, social and political behavior, and cultural identity of the Cossacks. Another aspect of this theme is the effect of Cossack intervention in religious affairs on the Ukraine's Orthodox Church and its relations with other churches and religious groups. The period covered in this book, extending from the late 16th century to the middle of the 17th, was one of the growth and development of Ukrainian Cossackdom as a distinct social estate. It discusses the effect of confessionalisation on religious life in Ukraine and how it influenced the fate and outlook of Ukrainian Cossackdom.Less

Calvinism as an Actor in the Early Modern State System around 1600: Struggle for Alliances, Patterns of Eschatological Interpretation, Symbolic Representation

Heinz Schilling, Irena Backus, and Susanna Gebhardt

in Calvin and His Influence, 1509–2009

The chapter explores political Calvinism in the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century. It aims to show the close link between Calvinism and political activism on the international ... More

The chapter explores political Calvinism in the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century. It aims to show the close link between Calvinism and political activism on the international level and argues that this activism was not theologically motivated but that Calvinism had its own political persona. This interest in political action accounts, for among other things, Calvinists’ interest in building alliances with Lutheran states in their struggles against the Catholic powers, viewed as the enemy of both confessions. The chapter also argues that the eschatological view of war that political Calvinism espoused bore a large part in the disaster of the Thirty Years’ War.Less

Conclusion

Tadhg Ó hAnnrachÁin

in Catholic Reformation in Ireland: The Mission of Rinuccini 1645-1649

Barely eight months after GianBattista Rinuccini's departure from Ireland, the Cromwellian conquest began. In some respects, it is ironic that neither the nuncio, nor Owen Roe O'Neill, the two ... More

Barely eight months after GianBattista Rinuccini's departure from Ireland, the Cromwellian conquest began. In some respects, it is ironic that neither the nuncio, nor Owen Roe O'Neill, the two figures of this time easiest to portray as Catholic crusaders, directly engaged in the struggle against God's Englishman. That conflict between the Catholic population of Ireland and the saints of the English revolution was certainly harsh enough to qualify as another outcrop of the ferocity of the European religious wars, and it distinguished the Irish experience of the interregnum from anywhere else in the archipelago. Rinuccini was not the only papal nuncio retreating to Italy in the late 1640s following the collapse of his mission. Fabio Chigi, the papal delegate at Munster, had endured a similar fate following the Treaty of Westphalia. Both the Chigi and the Rinuccini nunciatures were creations of the period covered in this book and their frames of reference were remarkably similar.Less

Introduction: authority and society in sixteenth-century Nantes

Elizabeth C. Tingle

in Authority and Society in Nantes during the French Wars of Religion, 1559–98

This study of Nantes is about the impact of the religious wars on the exercise and understanding of authority in the city, principally that of the municipal government. This chapter explores the city ... More

This study of Nantes is about the impact of the religious wars on the exercise and understanding of authority in the city, principally that of the municipal government. This chapter explores the city context of events, including the motives for Nantes' participation in the religious wars and for its revolt against the crown in 1589, also exploring why the Catholic League rebellion lasted longer here than in any other town. This is not a simple narrative of Nantes' experiences of the religious wars. The central focus is on authority, its theoretical construction, its institutional embodiment, its reception and negotiation, and changes within these over time. During the religious wars, the understanding and exercise of many different levels of authority came under close scrutiny by contemporaries, and the nature and legitimacy of authority were questioned. This book offers a study of city governance in a period of pressure and change, and also examines the changing relationship of the city government and the royal state.Less

War

Alexander Kluge

Richard Langston (ed.)

in Difference and Orientation: An Alexander Kluge Reader

This chapter studies war and harks back to both Alexander Kluge's controversial book on the Battle of Stalingrad, The Battle (1964), and those portions of the third book of History and Obstinacy ... More

This chapter studies war and harks back to both Alexander Kluge's controversial book on the Battle of Stalingrad, The Battle (1964), and those portions of the third book of History and Obstinacy (1981) coauthored with Oskar Negt on war as a special case of the public sphere of production. War lays waste to fields, depopulates provinces, and turns cities into dust. War is a fight between rulers carried out with the help of weapons. This definition comes from Louis de Jaucourt's article, which was written in 1757 during the second year of the Seven Years' War. Like a vaccination, societies internalized the excesses of a war that would not end, the religious wars in France, and the barbarism involved in the founding of the early colonies. Rules of war were developed. The way in which people deal with the catastrophe of war is regarded as a high art form. This art consists not only in conquering the enemy, but also in reining in the autonomous forces as well as war's movements, which subjugates the entire world to its destructive power. Ultimately, this art of war is considered to be the highest of art forms, above even architecture. Thirty-five years later, what erupts out of the escalation of the French Revolution is a form of modern war Jaucourt could not have known when he wrote his encyclopedia article: the people's war. Kluge then considers how the image of war changed in the second half of the twentieth century.Less

All the Wars of Christendom: Hobbes’s Theory of Religious Conflict

Jeffrey Collins

in Hobbes on Politics and Religion

This chapter considers Thomas Hobbes’s account of religious warfare, and his position within modern historical memory of the European ‘wars of religion’ as an era. From an interdisciplinary ... More

This chapter considers Thomas Hobbes’s account of religious warfare, and his position within modern historical memory of the European ‘wars of religion’ as an era. From an interdisciplinary perspective, it critically interrogates the concept of religious war as a modern observer’s category. It then measures Hobbes’s specific account of European religious conflict against both rival contemporary accounts and this modern theoretical construct. Hobbes’s account, it is argued, emerged from a specific and sectarian perspective. In another register, however, Leviathan offered a psychologized account of religious violence, which anticipated generic modern theories that often obscure that specificity. This tension in Hobbes’s account suggests features of the political project that the concept of religious war has sought to advance.Less

Introduction: Advancing the Enlightenment

Nicholas Tampio

in Kantian Courage: Advancing the Enlightenment in Contemporary Political Theory

The book begins by raising the question of how political progressives may find or construct a language for contemporary political circumstances. The chapter draws an analogy between the religious ... More

The book begins by raising the question of how political progressives may find or construct a language for contemporary political circumstances. The chapter draws an analogy between the religious wars of the eighteenth and twenty-first century and draws upon Michel Foucault's late writings to argue that an ethos, rather than any particular doctrine, connects us to the Enlightenment. The chapter then lays out a plan to constructa Socratic dialogue about the future of the Enlightenment with the Kant scholar Allen W. Wood, the political liberal John Rawls, the French poststructuralist Gilles Deleuze, and the Muslim political reformer Tariq Ramadan.Less

Discovery

Bernard Lewis

in Cultures in Conflict: Christians, Muslims and Jews in the Age of Discovery

This chapter examines the Europeans' voyages of discovery in relation to the religious war between Muslims and Christians. It suggests that most of the explorations and voyages were designed to seek ... More

This chapter examines the Europeans' voyages of discovery in relation to the religious war between Muslims and Christians. It suggests that most of the explorations and voyages were designed to seek and capture enemies. It also contends that there were good, practical reasons for the victors in the reconquests, at both ends of Europe, to pursue their retreating enemies and there was the obvious tactical need to prevent them from regrouping and to forestall a counterattack.Less

Conclusion

Barbara B. Diefendorf

in Planting the Cross: Catholic Reform and Renewal in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France

The conclusion argues that France’s Catholic Reformation benefitted from reform efforts initiated in Italy and Spain but was most profoundly shaped by France’s experience of religious war. The ... More

The conclusion argues that France’s Catholic Reformation benefitted from reform efforts initiated in Italy and Spain but was most profoundly shaped by France’s experience of religious war. The movement’s origins lay in the perceived need both to fight the spread of Protestant ideas and to raise standards of clerical behavior. Summarizing the diverse ways in which religious communities responded to the challenges of heresy and civil war, the conclusion further argues that the old religious orders, which had suffered greatly in the conflicts, found themselves at a serious disadvantage when wealthy elites shifted their patronage at the wars’ end to the new reformed congregations, whose penitential fervor and rigorous asceticism had captured their imagination. The new congregations grew at a rapid pace, while the old orders struggled to overcome wartime debts and destruction, fought to determine what reforms to enact, and pressured recalcitrant members to accept their programs for change.Less

Conclusions: authority and society in Nantes during the religious wars

Elizabeth C. Tingle

in Authority and Society in Nantes during the French Wars of Religion, 1559–98

Throughout the religious wars, the stability of urban governance in Nantes was striking. This arose from the shared nature of authority, which was widely disseminated among many different groups in ... More

Throughout the religious wars, the stability of urban governance in Nantes was striking. This arose from the shared nature of authority, which was widely disseminated among many different groups in the city. Urban government was not simply a system of regulation imposed from above. While participation in the municipality itself was the preserve of the wealthy elite, this was a relatively open group. Further, all householders could take part in the general assemblies of the city, as witnesses to communal decision making, giving a wide sense of involvement in urban affairs. The day-to-day administration of the city's hospitals was largely in the hands of men of the middling sort. The bourgeois militia was another important vehicle through which authority was disseminated downwards through the community.Less

The Concerns of the Founders

Howard Gillman and Erwin Chemerinsky

in The Religion Clauses: The Case for Separating Church and State

In the century after the founding of the British colonies in North America, the traditional governing model of establishment (of an official religion) plus conformity (to government-approved ... More

In the century after the founding of the British colonies in North America, the traditional governing model of establishment (of an official religion) plus conformity (to government-approved religious doctrine and practice) was replaced by a view that the government should be secular and tolerant of religious diversity. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights constructed a government that claimed no relationship to any particular religion, insisted on no test for religious office, vested in the law-making body no authority to legislate on matters of religion, and specifically prohibited the passage of any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Even with these historic changes, the Constitution left unresolved some basic questions about the meaning of the Religion Clauses.Less

Gallican Stirs

Joseph Bergin

in Politics of Religion in Early Modern France

This chapter explains the ensuing politico-religious situation brought about by gallican ways of thinking after Henri IV converted to Catholicism. The nature of royal power and its authority over ... More

This chapter explains the ensuing politico-religious situation brought about by gallican ways of thinking after Henri IV converted to Catholicism. The nature of royal power and its authority over church and religious matters had always been a controversial issue. There had never been a group with a modern, secular, political, and forward outlook that clarified this matter. The new Bourbon dynasty discouraged any disputes on this subject, and instead attempted to establish its right to rule over France. The passion of the earlier religious wars had not easily settled: claims that Henry IV's conversion was fake and that he remained an enemy of the Church persisted.Less

Godly Homelands: Trust in Religion

Geoffrey Hosking

in Trust: A History

Religion as a symbolic system supplies a firm foundation for social trust. It offers a secure knowledge of the cosmos, a way of salvation, emotional support in time of crisis, and it shapes personal ... More

Religion as a symbolic system supplies a firm foundation for social trust. It offers a secure knowledge of the cosmos, a way of salvation, emotional support in time of crisis, and it shapes personal identity. This chapter offers examples from Jewish religion, Christianity, Islam, and Confucianism in different countries and different historical periods. At the same time, because religion is so all-embracing as a trust system, its institutions tend to create tough boundaries around themselves, across which distrust is projected towards members of other faiths.Less