Be kind to the Antichrist: Millenarianism and religious tolerance in the Edict of Pskov

Abstract

Scholarship often draws an equation between millenarian religious belief and violent intolerance. This article attempts to partially reformulate our ideas of both millenarianism and tolerance through the contextualized exegesis of a single line from an early modern royal proclamation on tolerance. Millenarian themes are crucial to the understanding of toleration promulgated in the Edict of Pskov—proclaimed by Stefan Batory, elected monarch of the multi-religious Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Batory's association of "other-believers" with the Antichrist paradoxically leads him to a theory of religious pluralism.