Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation

Abstract

This volume offers a re-interpretation of the role of tolerance and intolerance in the European Reformation. It questions the traditional notion of a progressive development towards greater religious toleration from the beginning of the sixteenth century onwards. Instead, it places incidents of religious tolerance and intolerance in their specific social and political contexts. Fifteen leading scholars offer a comprehensive interpretation of this subject, covering all the regions of Europe that were directly affected by the Reformation in the crucial period between 1500, when northern humanism had begun to make an impact, and 1648, the end of the Thirty Years War. In this way, Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation provides a dramatically different view of how religious toleration and conflict developed in early modern Europe.