THE ROOTS OF RELIGIOUS TOLERATION HIS309J, JS 31C, RS 306D, EUS 309J MWF 11-12

Prof. Miriam Bodian Office hours TBA

*This will be a synchronous Zoom class.*

For many centuries in the Christian west, deviation from authoritative religious beliefs was an offense punishable by death. But during the upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, radical new arguments supporting freedom of emerged, as well as practical measures aimed at ensuring that freedom. We’ll explore how this striking development occurred, and in what ways the issues debated in the early modern period have present-day echoes. We’ll also use this chapter in history to think more generally about the historical processes at work in periods of very rapid historical change.

To understand the extraordinary struggles of the period, we’ll first have to understand the basic position and practices of the western Church toward heretics and non-believers as they were formulated in the first few centuries of the Common Era and as they were elaborated in the medieval period. We will then turn to the radical rupture of the Reformation period, as the Church found itself unable to suppress the “heresy” of . Finally, we’ll consider the great range of ideas about religious toleration proposed by European thinkers, and consider their practical implications. We’ll conclude with some reflections on the persistent problems that have arisen and still arise in the effort to achieve religious toleration, including recent issues particular to the multicultural experiment.

The course, then, has a three-part structure:

Part 1: The justification for, and practice of, punishing “erroneous” beliefs in western Christendom (Late Antiquity and medieval Europe); Part 2: Religious war and the emergence of ideas of religious toleration in the Reformation period; Part 3: Major thinkers in the development of concepts of religious toleration; some contemporary issues.

After each class (classes will be remote and synchronous, with one exception) I’ll post an item (film clip, excerpt from an important text, image, etc.) and ask you to address a critical question about it on Discussion Board. Your responses will not only open the way for discussion in class; they’ll also be graded. This element of the course will be 35% of the final grade. (Grading method to be explained.) You’ll take a brief exam after each of the first two segments of the course (together, 30% of the grade), and a final exam (25%).

1 In addition, attendance and participation will be evaluated (10%). Plus/minus grades will be assigned.

1. Aug. 26 – How do new ideas arise from periods of crisis? What do we mean by religious freedom – or do we know what we mean?

PART 1

2. Aug. 28 – The persecution of “error” and the concept of “heresy.”

Reading: Parable of the wheat and the tares (Canvas).

3. Aug. 31 – Early Christian thinking about heresy.

Reading: From Augustine’s letter to Vicentius on Donatists (Canvas).

4. Sept. 2 – The suppression of heresy and “unbelief” – crusades, inquisition, censorship.

Reading: From Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, “Whether Heretics should be Tolerated” (Canvas)

5. Sept. 4 - The medieval inquisitions.

Reading: “A Heresy Case from the Medieval Inquisition” (Canvas).

Sept. 7 – LABOR DAY, NO CLASS

6. Sept. 9 – Jews and Judaism. If Jews weren’t “heretics,” why were they persecuted?

Reading: Excerpts from Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Canvas). The entire letter is easily available online.

7. Sept. 11 – The Church Fathers on the Limits of Tolerating Jews

Reading:

Augustine’s interpretation of Psalm 59 (Canvas).

Rosemary Ruether, "The Adversus Judaeos Tradition in the Church Fathers" in Jeremy Cohen, ed., Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict, 174-189 (Canvas).

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8. Sept. 14 – The Church and Islam: The Crusades and Forced Conversion

Reading: “Conclusion” to John Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (2002) (Canvas).

9. Sept. 16 –Christians, Jews, and Muslims: Medieval “convivencia” in Spain?

Image: The Tomb of Ferdinand III of Castile (Canvas)

10. Sept. 18 – QUIZ #1

11. Sept. 21 – Skepticism and its Suppression in pre-Reformation Europe: Can the truth be known?

The “Story of the Three Rings” from the Decameron: Decameron, Day 1, Novel 3: online at http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/texts/DecShowTex t.php?lang=eng&myID=nov0103

12. Sept. 23 – Mass Conversion in Spain and the Spanish Inquisition

Reading: The trial of María González, in Lu Ann Homza, ed., The Spanish Inquisition: An Anthology of Sources, 50-60 (Canvas).

Optional reading: Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition, chs. 7-9 (Canvas).

PART 2

13. Sept. 25 – The Reformation: the breakdown of western Christian unity; the attack on the authority of the western Church.

Documentary film: “Reformation – Europe’s Holy War,” with David Starkey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE81s_Mjpuc

14. Sept. [28] – Humanism and the idea of Christian concord. [pre-recorded, students should view before class on Sept. 30]

Reading: From , The Complaint of Peace (1521) (Canvas).

3 15. Sept. 30, Oct. 2, Oct. 5 – The Reformation: religious wars and their fallout. Temporary pragmatic solutions: Peace of Augsburg, Union of Utrecht, Edict of Nantes.

Reading: Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith, 144-197 (Canvas, two files).

16. Oct. 7, 9 – Access to knowledge, intellectual freedom, and censorship in the Reformation period.

Reading: Carlo Ginzburg, “The High and the Low: The Theme of Forbidden Knowledge in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method, 60-76 (Canvas).

Image: “Santiago e Hermógenes” (Canvas).

17. Oct. 12 – “Disenchantment.”

Reading: Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 51-77 (Canvas).

18. Oct. 14, 16 – The impact of the discovery of new peoples. Anthropological speculation. The status of the “new” pagans.

Images of New Peoples (Canvas)

Reading: The Travels of Fernando Mendes Pinto, 87-89 (Canvas).

19. Oct. 19 – The early modern European state. Economic and military competition. State-building and the secularization of politics.

Reading: From John Toland, “ for Naturalizing the Jews…” (Canvas).

20. Oct. 21 – Habituation: The everyday practice of religious toleration.

Reading: Judith Pollmann, “The Bond of Christian Piety: The Individual Practice of Tolerance in the Dutch Republic,” in and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age, 53-71 (Canvas).

21. Oct. 23 – Humanizing the Jews.

Reading: Miriam Bodian, “Jews in a Divided Christendom,”471-485 (Canvas).

22. Oct. 26, 28 – Counter-Reformation Spain and Portugal: Backlash

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23. Oct. 30 – QUIZ #2

PART 3

24. Nov. 2 - Sebastian Castellio: The Irenic Approach

Reading: Castellio, excerpts from Counsel to France in her distress (1562) (Canvas).

25. Nov. 4, 6 – and the Ungovernable Mind

Viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26jeGHqlccE&t=1s

Reading: From Montaigne, Apology for Raymond Sebond (Canvas).

26. Nov. 9, 11 – Benedict Spinoza: The Tyranny of State Compulsion

Reading: Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), Chapter 20 (Canvas).

27. Nov. 13, 16 – and : “Moderates” and “Radicals”

Reading:

From Pierre Bayle, A Philosophical Commentary (excerpt from website below to be announced). http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=613&It emid=288

From John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) (Canvas).

28. Nov. 18, 20 – Enlightenment and the Modern State: Can a professing Jew be a good citizen?

Reading from Christian Wilhelm Dohm, “On the Civil Improvement of the Jews” (Canvas).

29. Nov. 23 – The American Experiment: Jefferson and the “Wall of Separation”

Reading: Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists (Canvas).

5 Nov. 25, 27 – THANKSGIVING BREAK

30. Nov. 30, Dec. 2 – Contemporary Issues

Viewing:

On French “laicité”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIdBu-WmCsE

Film: “God in America,” Episode 6: “Of God and Caesar” https://www.pbs.org/godinamerica/view/

31. Dec. 4 – REVIEW FOR EXAM

32. Dec. 7 - FINAL EXAM

NOTE: Students will be permitted two absences from synchronous Zoom classes without documentation. Accommodation will be made for students for religious holidays that fall on days when class is held.

Students with disabilities may request appropriate academic accommodations from the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement (DDCE), Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) at http://ddce.utexas.edu/disability.

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