Week 11: Coexistence

Europe’s Reformations

Argument:

  • 3 Models of coexistence:
      1. family/business/civic > religion.
      1. Negotiated divisions.
      1. Complete exclusion of minorities.
  • Over time, states slowly pushed for #3, but never completely succeeded.

The Problem of Coexistence

  • Providentialism
  • Millenarianism
  • Toleration (or lack thereof)

Sparks for Violence.

  • Public Worship.
  • Processions.
  • Religious holidays.
  • Revenge.

Disciplining the Population.

  • Reformed Church:
    • Consistories imposed greater conformity.
  • Catholics:
    • Missions sent to convert Protestants.
  • Attacked sites of confessional mixing.

Need for Coexistence.

  • Cross Confessional Families.
  • Business and trade.
  • Civil Affairs.

Ways of Coexisting

Familial Coexistence.

  • Both churches demanded conversion.
  • Spousal conversions were common.
  • Melle, France (Prot. Majority)
    • Council elders complained about daily “scandals”
    • 1598 to 1601: 1/3 to 1/2 weddings were cross confessional

Confessional Boundaries

  • Legal Division.
    • Edict of Nantes (1598)
    • Peace of Augsburg (1555)
  • Cemeteries.
    • Different times for burials.
    • Some places, entirely different cemeteries.

Church Spaces.

4 Models:

  • Shared Space, Separate times, Equal access.
  • Shared space, Separate times, unequal access.
  • Hidden places of worship.
  • Worship in surrounding towns.

States push for Exclusion

  • Militants adamant for purity.
  • Laws forbidding intermarriage.
  • Revocation of Edict of Nantes (1685).
    • Convert or leave.

Conversions

  • Greatest evidence of no impermiable barrier.
  • Official conversion model.
  • Conversions in both directions remained common.
  • Relapses were common.
  • Reality did not match the model.
    • Marriage conversions.
    • conversions for inclusion.