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This book examines the practice of toleration and the experience of religious diversity in the early modern world.
Recent scholarship has shown the myriad ways in which religious differences were accommodated in the early modern era (1500-1800). This book propels this revisionist wave further by linking the accommodation of religious diversity in early modern communities to the experience of this diversity by individuals. It does so by studying the forms and patterns of interaction between members of different religious groups, including Christian denominations, Muslims, and Jews, in territories ranging from Europe to the Americas and South-East Asia. This book is structured around five key concepts: the senses, identities, boundaries, interaction, and space. For each concept, the book provides chapters based on new, original research plus an introduction that situates the chapters in their historiographic context.
Early Modern Toleration: New Approaches is aimed primarily at undergraduate and postgraduate students, to whom it offers an accessible introduction to the study of religious toleration in the early modern era. Additionally, scholars will find cutting-edge contributions to the field in the book's chapters.
List of contents
1. "To Preserve and Instill the Beloved Peace" - Religious Invective and Confessional Coexistence under the Peace of Augsburg / 2. The Acoustics of Peace: Singing and Religious Coexistence in Seventeenth-Century Mechelen / 3. Tuning Catholicism in the Dutch Republic. Catholic Soundscapes in a Calvinist Society, c. 1600-1750 / 4. At the Crossroads of Identity: Conversos and Moriscos in Inquisitorial Spain (Sixteenth - Seventeenth centuries) / 5. Memory, Toleration, and Conflict after the French Wars of Religion / 6. Constitutional Dynamism and Demographic Diversity in Early Modern Confessional Coexistence: Dutch Reformed Refugees in the Holy Roman Empire, 1554-1596 / 7. Ambivalent Neighbours: Sensory and Spatial Dynamics of Religious Exchange in Early Modern Tuscany / 8. Crossing Borders? Conversions and Mixed Marriages in Ottoman Bilad al-Sham (Seventeenth-Eighteenth Centuries) / 9. Catholic Merchants in British Commerce in the Age of Mercantilism / 10. Conquest, Colonialism and Religious Conflict in the Moluccas in the Early Seventeenth Century / 11. A Middle Path to Toleration? Sharing Sacred Spaces in Bautzen and Wetzlar, 1523-1625 / 12. From Contested Space to Sacred Topography: Jews, Protestants and Catholics in Reformation Cracow / 13. Confessional Boundaries and Transconfessional Spaces in Late Seventeenth- and Eighteenth- Century British North America
About the author
Benjamin J. Kaplan, Professor of Dutch History, University College London. He has published widely on the history of relations between religious groups in early modern Europe. Among his books is
Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (2007).
Jaap Geraerts, Digital Humanities Lab, Leibniz Institute of European History, Mainz. His research interests comprise the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, religious toleration, and the digital humanities. Publications include
Patrons of the Old Faith: The Catholic Nobility in Utrecht and Guelders, c. 1580-1702 (2018).
Summary
This book examines the practice of toleration and the experience of religious diversity in the early modern world.
