Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe

by Benjamin J. Kaplan

As religious violence flares around the world, we are confronted with an acute Can people coexist in peace when their basic beliefs are irreconcilable? Benjamin Kaplan responds by taking us back to early modern Europe, when the issue of religious toleration was no less pressing than it is today. Divided by Faith begins in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, when the unity of western Christendom was shattered, and takes us on a panoramic tour of Europe's religious landscape--and its deep fault lines--over the next three centuries. Kaplan's grand canvas reveals the patterns of conflict and toleration among Christians, Jews, and Muslims across the continent, from the British Isles to Poland. It lays bare the complex realities of day-to-day interactions and calls into question the received wisdom that toleration underwent an evolutionary rise as Europe grew more "enlightened." We are given vivid examples of the improvised arrangements that made peaceful coexistence possible, and shown how common folk contributed to toleration as significantly as did intellectuals and rulers. Bloodshed was prevented not by the high ideals of tolerance and individual rights upheld today, but by the pragmatism, charity, and social ties that continued to bind people divided by faith. Divided by Faith is both history from the bottom up and a much-needed challenge to our belief in the triumph of reason over faith. This compelling story reveals that toleration has taken many guises in the past and suggests that it may well do the same in the future.

Genres: History, Religion, Nonfiction, European History, Christianity, Politics, Geography

432 pages, Hardcover

First published October 30, 2007

About the author

Benjamin J. Kaplan is a historian and professor of Dutch history at University College London and the University of Amsterdam.

He taught at University of Iowa. He is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow.

According to the New York Times, in his 2007 book Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe, Kaplan "maintains that religious toleration declined from around 1550 to 1750," and that Europeans responded by devising "intricate boundaries allowing them to live more or less peaceably with neighbors whose rival beliefs were anathema."

Books
Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe.Harvard University Press. 2007. ISBN 978-0-674-02430-4.
Calvinists and Libertines: confession and community in Utrecht, 1578-1620, Clarendon Press, 1995, ISBN 978-0-19-820283-7
Benjamin J. Kaplan, Marybeth Carlson, Laura Cruz, eds. (2009). Boundaries and their meanings in the history of the Netherlands. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-17637-9.
Benjamin J. Kaplan, Bob Moore, Henk Van Nierop, Judith Pollmann, (eds.) Catholic Communities in Protestant States: Britain and the Netherlands C.1570-1720, Manchester University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-7190-7906-1

Reviews

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a social and cultural history of early modern Europe (late 15th century to the late 18th century) that focuses on how religious diversity was accommodated within the Christian society of that time. In the book's introduction the author lists the sorts of questions that will be addressed:

Where would the various groups worship? How would they pay for their churches and pastors? Who would educate their children, and with what curriculum? How would charitable funds be distributed? How would public events be solemnized? Whose holidays would be celebrated? How would the powers and spoils of governance be shared, if at all? What rights and privileges would each group have? ... Did they intermarry? If so, how would their children be raised? Did they live in the same neighborhoods? employ or buy goods from one another? belong to the same guilds and clubs? drink in the same taverns? attend each other's weddings and funerals? To what extent did they form distinct subcommunities and subcultures?

The book then proceeds with an abundance of historical accounts of multiple ways communities dealt with these issues. In Part I the book concentrates on the many obstacles that had been raised by the social upheavals resulting from the Reformation. Part II then shows how certain mixed communities successfully contained the threat of conflict. Part III examines how people of different faiths got along in daily life. Part IV returns to the question of how much changed from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.

This book takes exception to other views of history that measure the level of advancement of civilization based on the degree of acceptance of the concept of toleration as propounded by Enlightenment intellectuals. The book portrays most common people (including political leaders) of this era as believing that toleration was a bad thing--an admission that ones own beliefs were not the correct truth. Examples of what appears to be toleration were "grudging acceptance of unpleasant realities, not a positive virtue."

Toleration--allowing people of a different faith to live peacefully in one's community--was an embarrassment. From a confessional standpoint, it was even a sin, though perhaps, as some figured, a lesser sin than the bloody alternatives. Framed as a temporary concession, part of a longterm strategy for the restoration of unity, it might be acceptable. But to the extent that it entailed the abandonment of hopes for the triumph of the one true faith, it clashed directly with th eschatological teaching of all the Christian churches. Until Christianity itself changed, toleration would suffer from a basic illegitimacy. Its very forms would be shaped by the embarrassment and denial of those who practiced it.

Most historians today consider the Treaty of Westphalia as the formal acknowledgement that the Christian religion was irrevocably and permanently divided. But language within the treaty document held out the promise of an eventual future unanimity.

"...until, through God's grace, agreement is reached over religion."

So how did different religious beliefs managed to coexist when nobody, governments in particular, wanted to admit that there was more than one church (i.e. the official state church for that region)? One solution was for dissidents to cross a political border into another jurisdiction for religious meetings and worship. Europe was such a patchwork of jurisdictions that this was a viable possibility is many places. The following quotation explains the situation at Vienna.

This trek from city to countryside was called "Auslauf," literally "walking out." According to contemporaries, these processions involved as many as ten thousand people, as Viennese were joined by peasants who lived on nearby Catholic estates. Singing hymns, the throngs made their way ...

Numerous destinations are listed, but then a significant destination is mentioned.

... they went to nearby Hernals, an estate with an imposing castle only three kilometers from the walls of Vienna. Hernals was bought in 1577 by a group of nobles to serve as principal place of worship for Vienna's Protestants.

Another version of crossing borders was to not allow any dissident church buildings within the official city walls. Then all the dissidents had to do was to build their church buildings in the suburbs (i.e. outside city walls).

Another solution to the problem of dissident churches was to allow their existence but pretend that they didn't exist. This required that church buildings be constructed within private dwellings or constructed with exteriors that appeared to be a private residences or places of business. In the Netherlands they called these churches "schuilkerken" (hidden church). Ownership of schuilkerken were in the names of private individuals since the church as an organization had no right to exist. In reality these schuilkerken were not secrets; almost everybody in town knew where they were. But it provided a legal fantasy that allowed the external appearance of having only one state church.

Sharing church buildings was a solution in some places--a solution that was often imposed on communities. The following quotation explains how Louis XIV of France imposed sharing church buildings on Alsace after it came under French control:

... in 1684 a royal order required Lutherans to surrender the choir of their church if seven or more Catholic families lived in their parish. Lutherans were to retain use of the nave, and a wall was to be erected separating the two spaces. Within four years, the choirs of more than fifty churches were appropriated; by 1697, over one hundred. It did not matter that many parishes lacked the requisite seven families: Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries encouraged the immigration of Catholic dayworkers who were counted as families. Nor did it matter that there weren't enough priests available for each of these churches to be given a Catholic pastor; That came later. In the meantime, Louis established a Catholic beachhead, as it were, in each parish. Equally important, he seized the holiest part of each church back from "heretics" and established in principle the primacy of Catholicism.

The book proceeds with numerous stories about how the lack of religious uniformity was accommodated. Some of the examples appear to be almost examples of toleration and others of controversy and violence. The issue of intermarriage is discussed as well as the treatment of Jewish and Moslem communities.

This examination of the details of history is much like other studies of history in that things that actually happened are never as clear and simple as portrayed in the stories commonly remembered and retold about the era. I'm inclined to be a more lenient than the author on historians who credit Enlightenment intellectuals for leading the way toward increased levels of toleration. When summaries of history are written it's difficult to include all the complexity behind it all.

The author's comments about this painting were of particular interest to me because one of the figures is identified as a Mennonite (quotation is below the picture):

Known to every cigar smoker, Rembrandt's 1662 painting The Syndics of the Clothmakers' Guild is a pop icon of seventeenth-century Dutch art. When we look at it, it is as if we ourselves, transported back to that time, have entered a room where six sober Dutchmen are working. Interrupted, they look up from their book and peer at us, as do we at them. Assisted by the hatless servant behind them, the syndics had the duty of assessing the quality of cloth sold in Amsterdam, Europe's great emporium of trade. It was a duty with a moral edge, ensuring that no shoddy wares were passed off as good. Wearing a modest black with flat white collars, the officers exude unity and seriousness of purpose. One would never imagine from this image that they were divided from one another in any fundamental way. Yet these five men belonged to four different confessions. The chairman, seated with the book directly before him, was Calvinist. The second man from the left, half standing, was a Mennonite of the strict Old Frisian variety and probably a deacon of his congregation. Two other syndics had Catholic schuilkerken in their homes. The fifth was Remonstrant.

In summary I found this book to be very interesting. I have a special interest in learning about living situations during this era because I have plans to write a historical novel set in Europe during this time.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an argument driven book, but it's interesting - Kaplan is not overly forceful with his argument. He's not claiming to have found some amazing new cache of documents that radically changes our view of some moment in history, and he's not trying to overturn a mountain of scholarship. He basically just wants us to reinterpret toleration and what it meant in early modern Europe.
According to Kaplan, the common interpretation is flawed. Most people see the post-Reformation era of religious wars as a time of great intolerance. The eighteenth-century age of enlightenment, by contrast, is seen as a time of ebbing violence and growing tolerance. This view of history is problematic, Kaplan argues, because people associate the Enlightenment with growing secularization, and this encourages the idea that secularization leads directly to tolerance: “Equating religion with destructive fanaticism, it tempts us to fear and condemn religion in general.” Kaplan argues for a rethinking of the whole era. Very religious people in the earlier period found ways to accommodate each other, more often than we give them credit for, while the “Enlightenment” secularists brought more strife and intolerance than we think.
So Kaplan provides all kinds of examples of tolerance where we might not expect it. "Secret" churches in Amsterdam that weren't really secret - everyone knew they were there, but they turned a blind eye to keep the peace. Communities of Protestants in Catholic cities (or vice versa) who traveled miles to attend church each week a few towns over, and simply returned to their homes without incident. Towns where everyone signed a treaty of friendship, essentially, promising not to kill each other over religion. Kaplan also takes a fresh look at outbreaks of violence, and argues that they didn't happen just because of the existence of heretics, but rather the visibility of heresy. Violence tended to come after parades or funerals, when people were being demonstrative about their faith.
I also really appreciated the scope here - Kaplan covers a wide swath of Europe, from Ireland to Lithuania. I feel like we often get to hear about events in France and Spain, but very rarely in Hungary or Lithuania.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an excellent history of European Christianity in the early modern/Reformation period. The book begins with an explanation of how religious communities were formed and saw themselves in the early modern period. The author then covers conflict (mainly between Catholics and Protestants) and cooperation among people of different faiths during this period.

I learned a great deal from this book. It was particularly interesting to learn how much interaction there was between Catholics and Protestants during this period (even to the point of high degrees of intermarriage). I was surprised by the number of Protestants in countries that are traditionally seen as Catholic (and vice versa). Overall, a well-researched, well-argued book on an important topic that doesn't always get the attention it deserves.

[Chelsey M. Ortega · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers about 200 years of European history during the Reformation and shows how toleration was perceived and changed over time. Kaplan spends moments in each "country" where he glosses over general history as well as focussing in on specific stories to show how the Reformation was received in each Kingdom. He splits up the book into themes or ideas rather than a chronological order, so he is constantly jumping around Europe and going backward and forward in time. As this is my special area I enjoyed what I read, but I can't give it five stars because I wish he would have organized it differently - like each chapter is either a different area or set of years - that's jus the way my brain works.

[Mardin Aminpour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Benjamin Kaplan’s Divided by Faith challenges the traditional view that toleration took hold in early modern Europe as a direct result of the percolation and entrenchment of Enlightenment ideals that were propagated by such philosophes as Castellio, Locke, and Voltaire. He identifies this outlook as a Whig historiographical trend that tends to credit the elite for waging an unabated war of reason against the forces of darkness. Granted that viewing our modern history as a progressive one that has moved in the direction of tolerance has its benefits in that it “provides a standard against which we judge our societies – severely sometimes – and lends moral weight to calls for greater tolerance,” but it can also preclude an accurate understanding of the early modern Europe rift by confessionalism. Kaplan’s objective is to correct our misperceptions about early modern Europe as a site of murder and pillage where religious warfare resulted in an onslaught against individuals and communities for their beliefs. With this goal in mind, he refuses to subscribe to a single definition of tolerance as freedom of conscience for individuals. Toleration, rather than tolerance, he argue, existed among the most confessionally structured societies in which communities found ways to accommodate their religious differences with their neighbors for pragmatic reasons.
Divided by Faith consists of four chapters that cover a wide geographical space, namely Western Europe and a period that spans the Reformation and the French Revolution. Part I, “obstacles,” examines the reasons why it was so difficult for people divided along confessional lines to live together in early modern Europe. He outlines three reasons for this: the division of societies based on confession which called for clear doctrinal distinctions among different religions, the imposition of conformity with religious creed and the body politic, and the merging of the sacral with the civic life that allowed the church enough latitude to intervene in the social and political arena. Thus religion came to be viewed as a chain that held society together in a world known as corpus Christianum.
Having set up the background for intolerant societies in early modern Europe, Kaplan goes on to the second part where he describes in detail the ways people of different faiths accommodated their differences. One of these ways of accommodation was known as auslauf, the practice of permitting a religious minority to attend services outside the boundaries of the community. Through this channel, the community managed to preserve on the surface the integrity of corpus Christianum while tolerating the religious practices of the minority other. Another way in which religious practice was tolerated became possible through the institution of Shuilkerken (the conversion of a private space into a place of worship for a community). There were also other ways such as Simulaneum in which toleration was practiced more freely. In Netherlands, for instance, there were smaller communities in which confessional groups shared a public place of worship.
It is in this section that Kaplan presents his main thesis that hinges on a different definition of toleration than that familiar to our modern sensibilities. These accommodations did not mean to end religious conflicts but rather they were instituted as a necessity to keep peace within a realm. As much as they might be far from our understanding of tolerance, these methods, nevertheless, worked and provided a space where peaceful coexistence was possible. What informed this accommodation practices, Kaplan argues was the hope to fix the rifts that appeared in Christendom after the Reformation.
The third section examines the daily lives and interactions of people from different faiths as practitioners of toleration. It specifically demonstrates the porous nature of confessional allegiances through cases of intermarriage and conversion from one faith to another. Interestingly, what the church feared most was not the threat the Jews and Muslims posed to Christendom as they clearly constituted the “other.” What inspired fear to corpus Christianum, though, was the threat from the rival Christian churches.
The last section addresses the questions raised in the introduction. Was Enlightenment instrumental in leading to more toleration among religious communities? Kaplan’s answer is a strong no. According to him, religious strife continued into the 18th century and the ideals of the Enlightenment were only adopted by an elite stratum of the society in the latter decades of eighteenth century. Kaplan concedes that there was a marked shift in the understanding of religious toleration but this did not stem exclusively from the elite ruminations of philosophes but from a host of broader social changes on the ground.
Kaplan’s book goes against the grain by challenging the prevailing views of how toleration, as discourse and practice became a reality. His treatment of the concept of religious toleration in the context of early modern Europe is certainly conducive to a better understanding of our own struggle with religious antagonism in an increasingly diversified world. He presents his arguments in a very vivid language in an organized manner that help the reader digest the massive amount of information he engages in his discussion of the history of religious toleration. The reader is presented with arguments that might not sound palatable but they certainly strike him/her as perfectly legitimate explanations. Toleration, whether driven by pragmatic considerations or a genuine understanding of individual conscience helped communities maintain a precarious coexistence through critical times.

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Benjamin Kaplan’s Divided by Faith is a wide-ranging review of the interactions of different faith communities from the Reformation to the eighteenth century. The author argues in favor of a more complex, nuanced path to toleration than the standard narrative, which depicts religious strife until roughly 1650 followed by a linear progression toward toleration by the eighteenth century according to the liberal philosophies of the Enlightenment. According to Kaplan, this conventional understanding is simplistic and incorrect on several grounds: it distorts the various forms of de facto toleration that were practiced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; it assumes an anachronistic, liberal notion of ‘toleration’ instead of attempting to understand what toleration would have meant in early modern times, and it incorrectly paints the eighteenth century as a time when tolerance had become mainstream, which is not entirely accurate.
Kaplan devotes a large portion of the book (Part I) to characterizations of religious strife and intolerance. He notes that violence and discord particularly accompanied public processions, death, and holiday times—because all three had an element of spectacle and publicity which triggered the greatest offences. Kaplan does a particularly effective job of presenting the early modern mindset toward tolerance of other religions. Not only were members of other religions viewed as heretics (naturally), but they were also seen as seditious liabilities to the stability of the state, imperiling the people from the designs of God, and also potential invaders. Early modern notions of the corporate nature of political membership also colored leaders’ inclinations toward intolerance. The chapters of Part I are meant to provide a nuanced understanding of why religious violence occurred, instead of attributing it to simple religious fundamentalism. According to Kaplan, the source was more complex than that.
The strongest chapters of Kaplan’s book explore the various manifestations of tolerance that did exist in early modern societies. Some locales permitted practitioners of the non-dominant religion, but simply prohibited the open practice of these non-sanctioned religions. In such places, dissidents could observe their religion by crossing the border (Auslauf), or by worshipping privately. In some cases, authorities turned a blind eye to private home-worship (Schuilkerk), even as these services and their backyard structures attained an institutional permanence. The development of this public-private dichotomy in the identity of the citizen created the space for a more secular public sphere today. In some cases, different denomination even shared church space, typically out of practical necessity. These “practices of tolerance,” to quote the book’s subtitle, existed during the bloody seventeenth century, when conventional wisdom would argue that toleration was not yet mainstream.
Finally, Kaplan suggests that cases of religious violence and intolerance did not abruptly, or even linearly, come to a conclusion in the way that the conventional narrative depicts. Instead, new political philosophies emerged slowly, fitfully, and unevenly, and even as they began to penetrate society, intolerance of other religions remained.
Kaplan’s book is a fairly comprehensive account of a topic traced through several centuries and countless regions. What emerges from his text is not a clear narrative or a particularly chronological account of anything; however, given the number of states and principalities in Europe in the early modern period, it would not have been constructive to attempt to generalize in a single chronological account (or even a half-dozen, for that matter). Since the work is essentially a refutation of clear-cut narratives, it is appropriate for his book to lack a strong chronological axis. Instead, the author arranges his ideas according to logical and well-crafted topical units, each of which could be eminently readable in isolation.
The author convincingly makes the case against painting the seventeenth century as a time of unmitigated religious violence; however, his case against the emergence of tolerance in the Age of Enlightenment is weaker. To be sure, he devotes a far smaller portion of his book to the latter half of his thesis than he does to the former. It is clear that the bulk of his research and emphasis is on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, it is difficult to refute that by 1800, the momentum across Europe had turned in favor of religious tolerance and individual rights. Kaplan’s reminder that instances of religious intolerance remained into the modern period does not fundamentally refute the new trajectory that history had taken since the decades before the French Revolution.
The one question that this reader leaves with is, if early modern Europe was as disjointed and multifarious Kaplan convincingly portrays it to be, how meaningful are our generalizations about it at all?

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Benjamin Kaplan pulls together the wide body of work by recent historians on the topic of early modern toleration, and weaves a very interesting narrative.

He argues against a divide between the period of religious wars and the period of Enlightenment tolerance. Kaplan challenges his reader to re-conceptualize the notion of "tolerance," since our notion has been so much shaped from the polemical rhetoric of the philosophe. Eschewing for the purposes of historical investigation an a priori definition of tolerance, Kaplan pulls us into the communities of the 16th and 17th centuries to show us how very tolerant neighbors in these tightly knit groups really were of their religious differences in a confessional age. He also maps the boundaries of this tolerance.

Kaplan admirably balances intellectual and social influences in his account. I can't stress enough how informative, well organized, and balanced this work is. Historical research at its best, you will empathize with nobles and peasants, Protestants and Catholics, Jews and Muslims, idealists and realists. You'll probably also learn many new things: about often overlooked brutal religious violence in the Age of Enlightenment, about the value of the creation of the ghetto--Jewish ghettos were a realistic means to protect Jewish communities from Christian violence and from pressures to assimilate--about publicly acknowledged "clandestine" churches called schuilkerken, about the weekly Auslauf ("walking out") of masses of citizens from communities across Europe to worship in communities of their own faith, about the dynamics of religiously mixed marriages, about simultaneum or the sharing of church buildings by Catholics and Protestants, about the enslavement of Muslims by Christians and the enslavement of more than 1,000,000 European Christians by Muslims (often through piracy of the Mediterranean) who the Spanish had driven from the Iberian peninsula to North Africa.

This is the rare book that is a must read.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant examination of how Europeans kept the peace in local communities in the aftermath of the Reformation. Kaplan explores forms of tolerance practiced between about 1550 and 1790 that don't always fit our notions of what tolerance is, but in their day obviously were. He makes sense of a period that has often been inadequately portrayed and is much misunderstood by a public schooled in such inadequate portrayals. He also offers food for thought about our ideas of tolerance which would repay thoughtful reflection in our times. To the extent we see the world "defined" by the Enlightenment and the Romantic Movement, we are blind to many saving possibilities. Kaplan offers a window into some of them.

It was helpful to me to have read "Trent and All That" before reading this book, because it oriented me to the reconsideration of names and labels for this period currently being discussed among historians. One of these, which Kaplan makes good use of, is the idea of "confessionalization" - that the definition of creeds changed religion - not only institutions but ordinary experiences and ideas of it - after the Reformation.

[Randi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting and yet logical take on the existence of toleration in Europe before, during, and after the Protestant Reformation. The author takes the stance that tolerance was practiced as the word is defined: tolerance - "endurance, fortitude," from O.Fr. tolerance, from L. tolerantia "endurance," from tolerans, prp. of tolerare "to bear, endure, tolerate" (see toleration). Of authorities, in the sense of "permissive," first recorded 1539; of individuals, with the sense of "free from bigotry or severity," 1765. Meaning "allowable amount of variation" dates from 1868; and physiological sense of "ability to take large doses" first recorded 1875.
One must keep this definition in mind while reading because today's definition of tolerance has distanced itself greatly from what it was only 20 years ago. The gap of over 400 years between these two definitions carries with it a great deal of social baggage, so open-minded reading is a must.
Fabulous book.

[Joeji]

So only 100 pages in and it gets stolen from my car. I hope that bastard that took my backpack and cds and broke my back window will appreciate the depth with which Kaplan analyzes the conflicts between post-Reformation Prostestants and Catholics. I hope that that son of a bitch is enjoying the detailed accounts of Hugonaut persecution. I assume that the asshat will appreciate Kaplan's thesis that because religion took a highly public and confessional role, it opened up an easy atmosphere for conflict in a world where churches acted as civic institutions. I'll have to put this one on hold until I replace it. What a jerk.

[هاجر العتيبي · Rating 4 out of 5]

يعد كتاب عملاً أكاديمياً مميزاً يغطي فترة تمتد لنحو 200 سنة من تاريخ أوروبا خلال فترة الإصلاح. يقدم الكاتب في هذا الكتاب نظرة جديدة حول كيفية تغير تصورات التسامح الديني بمرور الزمن، مقدماً فهماً مغايراً للتسامح وكيفية تطوره بين فترة الحروب الدينية بعد الإصلاح وعصر التنوير.

الكتاب يسلط الضوء على كيف كانت التصورات حول التسامح تتغير في تلك الفترة، لكن الأسلوب التنظيمي للكتاب قد يكون محيراً لبعض القراء. بدلاً من اتباع ترتيب زمني تقليدي، يقسم الكاتب الكتاب إلى مواضيع وأفكار، مما يجعله يتنقل بين مناطق زمنية وجغرافية مختلفة بشكل غير متسلسل. قد يكون من المفيد لو تم تنظيم الكتاب بطريقة تتبع المناطق الجغرافية أو فترة زمنية محددة لتسهيل فهمه، خاصة لأولئك الذين يفضلون تسلسلاً زمنياً أو جغرافياً.

على الرغم من استمتاعي بالكتاب، إلا أنني شعرت بشيء من الرتابة في بعض النقاط. فعلى الرغم من تغطيته نطاقاً واسعاً من أوروبا، من إيرلندا إلى ليتوانيا، قد يكون التنظيم غير الزمني أقل جذباً لبعض القراء. ومع ذلك، يوفر الكتاب رؤى جديدة ومثيرة حول التسامح والعنف خلال فترة الإصلاح، ويستحق القراءة لأي شخص مهتم بتاريخ أوروبا وفهم عمق التسامح الديني.

يمتاز الكتاب بأسلوبه الذكي ، حيث يدعو الكاتب لإعادة التفكير في مفهوم التسامح وما كان يعنيه في أوروبا الحديثة المبكرة. على الرغم من عدم ادعائه اكتشاف وثائق جديدة تغيّر جذرياً نظرتنا لتلك الفترة، ولا محاولة نقض دراسات أكاديمية سابقة، يقدم الكاتب تحليلاً يفتح المجال لإعادة تقييم التصورات الشائعة. يقدم الكتاب أمثلة متعددة على التسامح الديني في أماكن قد لا نتوقعها، مثل كنائس "سرية" في أمستردام التي لم تكن في الواقع سرية، بل كان الناس يتغاضون عنها للحفاظ على السلام، ومجتمعات بروتستانتية في المدن الكاثوليكية والعكس، حيث كانوا يسافرون لمسافات طويلة لحضور الكنيسة دون حوادث.

كما يقدم الكاتب نظرة جديدة على تفشي العنف، حيث يجادل بأن العنف لم يكن ناتجاً فقط عن وجود الهراطقة، بل عن وضوحهم العلني. العنف كان يميل إلى الظهور بعد المواكب أو الجنازات، عندما كان الناس يعبرون عن إيمانهم بشكل بارز.

[wholelottaabs]

Read it for my religious persecution & tolerance class.

Learned that:
•People of different faiths could live together peacefully as demonstrated in early modern Europe

~no rating

[Alexander Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is divided into four separate topics which each dealing with a different aspect of toleration. Kaplan begins with the obstacles to toleration which is appropriately placed because the reader must first understand what could potentially make toleration so difficult. According to Kaplan, the three main obstacles to tolerance were confessionalism, communal quest for holiness, and the fusion of religion and politics” (102).
Next, Kaplan moves on to discuss the arrangements which allowed toleration to flourish. In this section Kaplan starts to more aggressively make a polemical stand against the view of tolerance as embracing differences. He demonstrates that tolerance did not end conflict but rather controlled conflict “through a complex framework of laws and institutions that contained religious conflict and rendered it relatively innocuous” (218). The main examples of tolerance are the Auslauf, schuilkerk, and simultaneum. Auslauf was the journey that Protestants went on out of their usual city of residence to worship in peace outside city walls. Kaplan asserts that “action, not belief, was what rulers generally found seditious” (161). Thus, if the act of worship could be moved outside of the city walls, it was tolerable to live amongst people of a different faith. However, the act of leaving the city to worship could become a public spectacle, so this action did provoke some violence (167). With the schuilkerk the churches were private in the sense that they were more or less disguised and invisible to the public eye. The general public and magistrates were aware of the existence of these hidden churches, but turned a blind eye because the lack of visibility of these secret churches represented no threat to the state sanctioned church at the center of town (194). Lastly, simultaneum was effective because it limited conflict to innocuous symbolic protest in most instances, and legal mechanisms organized the usage of the church (217).
The next section of the book is on interactions at a personal level. The two major themes developed here are mixed marriages and conversions, which are interrelated. Kaplan finishes this section by addressing how infidels were treated. After 293 pages of interfaith Christian conflict, this chapter feels slightly awkward. Perhaps, Kaplan could have positioned the Jewish ghetto in the “Arrangements” section were it seems to best fit since separating the Jewish community was like a combination of the Auslauf and schuilkerk. The Jews were displaced from the religious heart of the city and were thus allowed to exist since they were at least out of sight if not out of mind. Building on this critique, the various sections of the book read very much like individual tractates on the different topics. Had Kaplan emphasized connections like the one mentioned above more often the book would have had greater cohesion especially considering that undermining the myth of Enlightenment toleration was not a very overt thread throughout the middle of the book.
To conclude the book, Kaplan returns to the myth that the Enlightenment was what ended religiously provoked intolerance and created a more tolerant atmosphere. Kaplan does a very thorough job of demonstrating that tolerance had a long history prior to Enlightenment ideals. As he expands to look at secularization in the West, he cautions historians against underplaying the role of religion in Western society. “According to this myth, toleration triumphed in the eighteenth century because reason triumphed over faith” (356). Faith and reason are not opposed. Kaplan warns people against lumping all of religion in with fundamentalism. Furthermore, he states that “If toleration depends on the adoption of certain contemporary Western values, its fate in the rest of the world, and perhaps in our own future, is uncertain” (357). This appears to be Kaplan’s main goal in writing this book. Unalienable rights and individual liberty don’t have to be the cornerstones of a tolerant society.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Benjamin J. Kaplan’s Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (2007) is a cultural and social history that re-examines the question of how communities within what had formerly been known as Western Christendom dealt with religious diversity. Traditional historiographies of religious tolerance in Europe have focused on intellectual and political history—what tolerance meant to elites. Kaplan’s contribution is a focus on everyday people in the context of villages, towns, and cities, and he highlights and challenges the way that prevailing (elite) narratives link religious tolerance to Enlightenment values of rationality and secularism. He’s particularly concerned to point out that secularism is designed to accommodate religious individualism, but not religious groups: to the extent that participation in secular society is linked to cultural assimilation, individuals for whom religious group identity is important may be faced with choosing between their religion and engaging in the public sphere. This dilemma informs Kaplan’s interest in critiquing the Enlightenment narrative’s claim to religious toleration by looking at the many different forms of toleration in early modern Europe. Kaplan is concerned that modern secular societies are so invested in the Enlightenment myth of toleration that it “narrows our thinking about ways to avoid or resolve conflict in the present” (7).

[Eric Pecile · Rating 4 out of 5]

A historical survey of primarily Catholic-Protestant religious of exceptional quality. Successfully highlights the difference between toleration and acceptance as popular and institutional practices. Poses an effective challenge to Enlightenment narratives concerning the intolerant logic innate to religion and offers an innovative alternative interpretation that resonates with contemporary issues concerning toleration in culture versus toleration by law.

[Jessica Zu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to admit that my professor choose awesome books for us to read. So far, I loved every single one of his assigned reading, including this one.
only had time to read into and conclusion. Will come back to this book later.

[Lashonda Slaughter Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was great and the focus Kaplan placed on the different faces of tolerance within the book really did illustrate how diverse the population in europe was in the early modern period.