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>> Chuck: And welcome everyone to the
third webinar session.
This is--we began this last year and we had our first webinar
session with [unclear dialogue] on the Global aspects of the
french revolution.
In the spring, we had Julian Jackson who discussed 1968
and today our theme is concessional violence during
the wars of religion.
And we have three experts on this topic to join us.
Mack Holt is from George Mason University, he is going to
lead the discussions.
And he is he has written widely on the French Wars of
Religion, but he is probably best know for French Wars
of Religion before 1562 to 1629.
We are also joined by Penny Roberts, the
University of Warick.
>> Penny: Hi.
>> Chuck: and Hello.
And she, again has written widely on this topic, including
a monachra entitled "A City in Conflict: Troyes during the
French Wars of Religion".
She was also a co-editor for the Supplement to Captain Present
which we will be talking about today.
And we have, we are also joined by Keith Luria at North
Carolina State University, who wrote a wonderful book on
religious violence, "Sacred Boundaries Religious
Co-existence in Conflict in Early Modern France."
So I'll turn the session over to Mack and perhaps Mack can tell
us a little about one might say the Err Article, the article
that really got this topic going in the 1970s by Natalie Zeman
Davis "The Rites of Violence".
>> Mack: Ok thank you Chuck.
And let me thank Dave also for setting this up.
And for inviting Penney, Keith, and myself to participate today.
When Natalie Davis first published her article, 'The
Rites of Violence in Past and Present', in 1973, it was
something so different from everything else I'd ever read,
and yes, I am old enough to have been a student in 1973.
And the article was just so completely different,
than anything I'd read on the French wars of religion in that
I couldn't know it at the time, but it would be a paradigm
shifting piece that would turn scholarly attention in a
very different direction.
To give those of you a taste of what life was like before the
Rites of Violence appeared, most accounts of the wars religion
and if they included anything about religious violence at all,
treated it either as something that was really politics, or
some aspects of material life, economics, or simply treat
it as some fanatacist.
That is, it wasn't dealt with as a significant part of the
religious wars at all.
And just as a brief example of that, one of the first
things I was ever asked to read on the french wars of
religion as an undergraduate, was something that here in
the United States, for you Penny, you may not be familiar
with this, Keith's pamphlet series, a short pamphlet edited
by John Salmon called "The French Wars Religion,
How Important were Religious Factors."
This was published in 1967.
It gave a short passage from eighteen different scholarly
pieces, some published in journals, and some as books.
And it asked the questions how important
were religious factors.
Well sixteen of the eighteen selections made it very
clear that religion wasn't very important at all.
And the only two that indicated that religion was important,
were by Robert Kingdon and Nicholas Sutherland.
And while Salmons' introduction didn't come out and say
religious factors were not important, certainly the overall
tenor of the volume suggested that very much.
And Natalie was in the forefront of restoring religion as an
important part of the whole experience of the
wars of religion.
And her role in doing this is very important.
But the other thing that her article did, was to
directly answer some of the earliers
paradigms about religious violence.
Her argument that religious violence in 16th Century France
was neither random, nor spontaneous, but patterned after
political and religious rituals by magistrates in the clergy,
was simply enlightening.
No one had ever thought of looking for patterns of
behavior, that is the rituals of violence, in that most
treatment simply considered it to be nothing
but religious fanaticism.
And her entire approach was based on other
disciplines, particularly social and cultural anthropology.
And the work of Mary Douglas, 'Purity and Danger', was
very important in developing her whole idea of what really was
at the heart of much of this violence, were efforts by both
sides to purify what they perceived to be pollution in the
presence of their community.
So purifying pollution, was at the foundation of her model.
Now, this transformed the way I ,as a mere
student, thought about it.
I never even imagined at the time that I would be going on to
graduate school, writing myself on the French wars of
religion, and sitting here today, talking to you.
But, it also had, you know it did a lot of other things,
and for a long time, Natalie's article, accompanied by
works of other scholars, who began building on the
same general framework began to transform the way we
think about the wars of religion.
And now, we are sitting here nearly 40 years later, lots of
other scholarship has been published, and we have asked you
to not only read Natalie's article, but take a look
at several more recent pieces, that have built on this
earlier paradigm, and in fact moved well beyond it.
And if you followed the historiography of religious
violence, particularly over the last ten, fifteen years or
so, you will know that other scholars, based on their
own research, have tried to move beyond Natalie's model of
purifying pollution inside a community, and one of the
scholars--in fact, a Dutch scholar--[unclear dialogue]
published a piece in past and present in 2006 I believe, that
actually raised a question in that Natalie didn't raise.
All of the very interesting and intriguing illumination about
religion's violence that she produced in 'Rites to Violence'
didn't really attempt to even answer the question, "why
did violence break out in some places, and not in others?"
And then later on, other scholars, and particularly Keith
Luria, raised a related, but even different question.
If the purification of pollution model helps us understand why
violence broke out, it doesn't really help us understand
how it might come to an end.
Maybe it was religious violence unalterable.
Was it inevitable?
Were there ways in which communities that had experienced
violence could, in fact, find ways to get along together,
to coexist, without religious violence?
So the readings, we've asked you to read in addition to Natalie's
article help bring us up to speed in dealing with some of
these more recent questions.
I'd like to begin by trying to get as many of you involved, and
to help you participate.
I don't want to see and hear myself on screen for the
next hour and a half.
I want to hear what you think, and I'd like to start by
asking what your general reaction to was to reading the
original article, "The Rites of Violence" When I first read
it in 1973 it was a very different world.
Scholarship has come a long way.
Obviously your first reading will be different than mine was,
nearly 40 years ago.
And I'd be very interested in hearing from you but before
we get to the questions that we asked you to consider, just
to see what your general reactions were to your
first reading of the Rites of Violence.
So any of you feel free, hit your hand raising button,
and we'd like to hear from you.
>> Chuck: And here we have Nicole
[unclear dialogue].
David--do we have Nicole on?
I've been cut off.
I don't hear anything.
>> Mack: I can hear you Chuck.
>> Chuck: ok
>> Nichole: Yeah.
>> Chuck: Ok I hear you now.
Do we have Nichole on?
>> Nichole: Do I hit the button?
>> Chuck: Nicole, you might try
writing in your question.
Is there someone else who wants to go ahead and jump on in.
Aaron??
>> Aaron: Hello.
>> CHuck: Aaron [unclear dialogue]
>> Aaron: Uhh yeah that was
actually pretty good.
Can everyone hear me?
>> Chuck: Yes, you can
go ahead Aaron.
>> Aaron: I actually really enjoyed this
article and I thought that it was just, it
approached violence of this sort
in a way that I'd never really approached it.
In the sense that it was very, I guess it was just had like a
level of thought behind the violence that I don't usually
think about when you think about just intense religious riots.
And she laid that type of violence out in a very
clear and good way.
LIke with her examples about just the very specific examples
about what happened in these riots.
So, yeah.
>> Mack: Good, thank you.
>> Chuck: Nicole has raised the question,
the point, what she found interesting in the readings was
the involvement of women and teenage boys in the violence.
>> Mack: Yeah, it is an interesting
aspect of a lot of Natalies' work and if you've read
her collection of essays, 'Society and Culture in
an Early Modern France', in which Rites of Violence
is reprinted, she has a lot of other research directed
toward male use and women and their
roles in early modern French society generally.
But that is a very good point.
Anybody else want to share your reactions to
reading Natalie's piece with us.
>> Chuck: I think we have Kevin Green
>> Kevin: Do you hear me?
>> MacK: Yeah.
>> Chuck: Go ahead Kevin.
>> Kevin: What got me most in this and
the other articles, is the amount of violence,
since I don't really know that much about French history at
this time, it was just fascinating to hear these
Catholics and Protestants going to such levels of like
violence that it just, yeah, and that's all I have.
>> Mack: Yeah well it raises one of the
real questions, that everybody who teaches the French wars
of religion, and everybody who teaches
the reformation generally, has to deal with.
Why was there so much violence and popular violence?
Not soldiers against civilians but neighbors against neighbors.
Why was there so much in France?
There was nothing like the St. Bartholomew's massacre
anywhere else in Europe.
What was there about this level of violence that lets us,
helps us understand what was going on, and at the same
time, see that despite everything you read, not only
in Natalie's articles, but in the other pieces, there
were long periods when there was no violence.
Even during the long period of the war's religion, during
the second half of the 16th century.
There were periods of peace, periods of tenuous coexistence,
but definitely periods where there was no violence at all.
But clearly the level of violence in France
is something striking.
And it's not surprising that it is something that
should stand out.
>> Chuck: Penny would like to add a
comment, so why don't we jump to
Penny and then we'll go to Chris and Leah.
>> Penny: Ok, if I can I won't
monopolize the time.
I just wanted to say I suppose when I first read Natalie Davis,
it was in the 80's so it was a bit later, but very much in
the context of the social history
I was studying at the time.
And, well I went back to it when we were editing the volume you
mentioned earlier, it was really striking just how I'd been
teaching it for years, and you know I rather simplified it
really as just how much depth there is to it, because the
comment about women and children for instance being involved,
or women and teenage boys, really striking how much
she got into that article about the
role and tradition and so on.
And as Mack said, just really striking how she was able
to give us very clear paradigm to what was happening
at the time, so that was really what I was going to comment on.
>> Chuck: Yeah, and I was impressed by how
that collection of articles you edited, each author took
an aspect of Natalie's work and developed it because there is
so much there to develop.
It can go in a lot of different ways.
>> Penny: Yeah, and I think it really
stood the test of time, I think that the thing, yeah.
>> Kevin: Chris, Chris Schilling.
Chris hit your microphone button.
>> Chris: Uh yeah.
What I was well kind of impressed by was the way that
she looks at people sort of as, she looks at people as more
individuals acting within these sort of contexts having
internalized the, these sort of roles of, this sort of
priests, and the sort of authority figures of the day.
Just the way that you have they take, they basically look at
the the rights that the priests used and they sorted pervert
those or they basically are doing it as an imitation
of sort of judicial proceeding trying to almost punish in
place of the king, do what they think the king would do, it
is just it sort of instead of, you know, waiting for the
government to do that, they have taken
it and made it as a part of their own selves.
>> Chuck: Yeah, that's Mack, do you
want to respond to that?
Because that seems to be an issue that I noticed in several
of the readings we did, that were assigned for today.
It's the role or actions of kingship.
And some of the readings, it seems that the role of
active king is important in determining whether
violence will break out or not or whether it accommodations
will happen or not, and the but in Natalie's article its the
actions of the authority that that generates these riots.
I think it's an interesting, it seems to cut both ways.
>> Mack: Yeah, the whole issue of Royal
affair authority, and how it was supported, how it was
challenged and the this sort of wavering
and vacillating nature over time, of royal authority.
From the early 1560's to 1598 and beyond, and as Keith's books
point out, on all the way up to the revocation of the Edict and
beyond, the wars of religion was not a period of royal stability.
[unclear dialogue] a lot of hereditary problems meant that
there were a whole succession of different monarchs, but at the
same time, royal policy even in the reign of individual
monarchs kept vacillating between legal recognition of
Hugonos, and the various peace edicts, to a rejection of
that in attempted suppressions, as each
successive civil war broke out.
And so the whole role of royal authority is very interesting.
And clearly, you know ,this plays a role in a lot of
the episodes of violence, and especially at St.
Bartholomews in Paris and in the provinces in 1572.
>> Chuck: We have several hands
and several questions.
So I will try to get to everyone, but there's
a lot coming in.
And Nicole, had a follow up question, which is "Why France?
Why is the violence more intense in France than in other places?"
>> Mack: Well, this is
a very big question.
And it's real hard to give you a simple answer.
The simple answer isn't that the French were more violent than
the Swiss, or the Germans, or Spaniards, or Italians.
And the answer I think has to do again going back to our
discussion of Royal authority, not a simple, simplistic
weakness of the monarchy during the wars of religion, but the
vacillating nature of royal policy and the
interaction of local policy.
That is the policies of local magistrates, and the policies of
the local churches.
That would have left much more room to interact as a result
of the inability of the crown to maintain and enforce a
centralized religious policy from the court.
That is one of the key questions, and I think this is
why starting with Natalie and a whole host of later
historians who were really wrestling with the question,
why was religious violence, popular violence, so much
greater in France than elsewhere, that lead us to
focus much more on the violence itself and less on why it
occurred some places less than others, or how it could be
de-escalated or even prevented from breaking out in the
first place, and this is really what recent scholarship has
done to take up those questions, but
>> Chuck: Yeah, a similar question, he
points out that Ireland in the 1640's could be
considered comparably violent so, so historians are not
asking the question, they are not giving national comparisons
as much to show more or less violence in one place or
another, which more investigation of
the relationship between punitive impulses on the
popular level and royal authority or authority.
>> Mack: Yeah, well I would say it is
hard to give national comparisons when we don't have
nations states that have some kind
of unified policy and reaction.
Again I think the local situation is clearly key in you
know what I tell students is paraphrasing Tip Oneal who used
to say all politics is local.
Well in some ways, all reformations, at least in the
beginning, are local and they can later become part of a
larger, more stabilized movement, but it is hard to make
national comparisons, and I think most historians are pretty
loathe to do that.
>> Chuck: Yeah.
There's a question from Leah Chang and she has her hand up,
so can we try to bring her into the conversation.
>> Keith: Chuck?
Can you hear me?
>> Chuck: Yes.
>> Keith: She doesn't have a microphone,
but her question is in your chat window.
>> Chuck: Ok yeah, she asked she said she
'is interested in the extent to which early modern
people understood the pattern that Davis shows.
Now wasn't in the interest of each side to characterize the
violence as fanaticism or without reason in patterns?'
That's a fascinating question.
Certainly thats what we would do, that a
very interesting question.
That's how we would have done it in the late 20th century, just
said that the violence of [unclear dialogue] or what have
you, was irrational and doesn't have a possible explanation,
and yet the primary sources that historians draw on including
Natalie Davis, show, reveal religious patterns.
Why would they do that?
>> Mack: Well, the short answer is the
one Natalie gave.
They were acting out these patterns because they felt that
the magistrates and clergy were not doing their proper job to
help purify the pollution in their community.
So in that sense, I think they did have some idea of what
they were trying to do.
Now they didn't have any 16th century social
anthropologists around to theorize it for them.
But, I think on some level, they were aware that acting out
mock trials was playing the role of the magistrate, acting out
mock baptisms was playing the role of clergymen,
and that there was an association
there, but I don't think there was
any deep theorization.
>> Chuck: But I think I am speaking on
behalf of Leah here, but I think the question is more the way
that each side depicts the violence of the others.
They themselves showed them to be carrying out justice
according to the rituals terms, they understand authority then.
But when they depict the other's violence, it's not just
random, and and fanatical.
I think that's the observation.
Ashley, Ashley Corwin has her hand up.
Can we bring her in?
>> Keith: She doesn't have a video cam,
but she does have a microphone.
Go ahead Ashley.
>> Ashley: ok can you hear me?
>> Mack: Yes.
>> Ashley: Ok.
I just wanted to comment generally on the aspects of
rituals that was brought up and especially how it differs
between protestant and catholics on the treatment of the body
and dead bodies after they were killed, She hypothesizes has
to do with the protestant conception of purgatory or lack
of that conception, and I was wondering if there was any work
done looking at that aspect.
[no dialogue]
>> Mack: Good question, Keith would you
like to respond to that?
>> Keith: First of all let me ask,
can you hear me?
>> Ashley: Yes
>> Keith: Ok, because I am getting a lot
of feedback from my own microphone, and I am having
trouble, I actually couldn't hear the last question,
>> Penny: No, I think we
need the question repeated.
>> Ashley: ok.
Can you hear me,
>> Keith: I am just not hearing well here.
>> Chuck: There is a background noise,
I am not sure where it is coming from.
Yeah, Ashley, it might work better if you could type your
question, because I know your mike is picking up
a lot of feedback.
>> Penny: There it is gone.
>> Mack: It is better.
>> Chuck: I cut off her microphone.
So Ashley if you could write the questions, And Chasity can you
hit transmit to go onscreen, because I know you have
had a question for a while.
>> Chasity: Yes, can you hear me?
>> Mack: Yes, yep, yeah
>> Chasity: OK.
I just wanted to say that in Natalie Davis's article I found
it very interesting how the protestants and Catholics
differed in their acts of violence, and how they
preferred targets differed.
With the protestants normally attacking those in church
leadership roles, such as priests, monks, etc. but then
the Catholics were less discriminatory in their, they
would attack any heretic that they found, and I just
guess what my question was, I just wanted to ask why
you think this was?
Was it because they feared that if the protestants challenged
the political and religious authority of France, of the
Monarch just because they had been catholic for so long?
>> Mack: Well, I think Catholics perceive
all protestants, whether clergy, laity or whatever, to be
heresy within the community, that threatened their
salvation, threatened their sense of what was sacred.
Protestants attacked what they felt threatened their sense
of sacred, and for them it included priests,
Catholic priests, but it also included material objects,
older pieces, communion cups, that sort of thing.
So there was a similarity to both sides, they were targeting
their violence toward what they considered were the main
pollutants of their perception of sacred society.
And they happened to be different things, because they
had well, different rituals and most of the Catholic
sacraments and a lot of the rituals accompanying them were
believed to be simply mundane and ordinary,
not sacred by protestants.
And they attacked things that were attached to those.
Does that make sense?
>> Chasity: Yes, thank you.
>> Chuck: We have, Ashley has
typed in her question.
But there was one before that by Liviana [unclear dialogue} An
interesting background question to the wars of
religion and the violence.
Do you see the Gallican tradition within France, and the
strike between the monarchs and the papacy, that preceded the
wars of religion, such as the pragmatic sanction of the
wars of 1438, helped fuel this type of violence?
Does Gallicanism play a role in any of this?
>> Mack: Well, I think Gallicanism
certainly plays a role in the way the French church and
the monarchy responded to the advent of protestantism.
I am not sure it played directly into the rituals of violence
that Natalie was talking about, but I certainly think it
played a role in the way the French crown, and the
French church responded to the sudden and overwhelming
growth of protestantism in this sort of decade preceding the
outbreak of the wars of religion.
>> Keith: Still getting a lot of feedback
from my own microphone here, but
I will just add to what Mack just said.
One thing that is just strikes me and i don't think we
should forget, is that under Gallican ideas, this
notion of a sort of independent autonomy in the French
church, that also created a possibility to
actually try to negotiate for peace at times.
It didn't work, I admit, but starting in 1560 and thereafter,
the notion that the French church could reach its
own accommodation with protestantism, it was subject
to Gallican tradition.
So it maybe didn't feed into violence, but it could feed at
times into efforts of peacemaking.
>> Mack: Hmmm--interesting
>> Keith: Not very satisfactorily
in the long run, but at least.
Sorry Penny.
>> Penney: No, I was just going to,
Yeah, I was just going to bring in the role the courts,
the judges, which we haven't really discussed.
We've mentioned how popular violence reflected that people
felt judges weren't taking on the you know the full role, but
actually they were just obeying the crown's judgment on the
way the policies should be pushed forward, but they
suddenly had very strong Gallican view of the position,
and of the monarchy, in relation to the pope, and indeed, in
relation to the church, and was remembering that
Gallicanism also promotes the idea that
of a church is independent from the crown.
It's not what the crown would support, but one Gallican
line of thinking is really the church should be free of
crown interference, which of course, is not what the earlier
agreement to the papacy actually instituted which actually was
a crown that was able to appoint
bishops and so on in the church.
With papal approval, but really having much more control, so
the Gallican influence was in a number of ways actually I
think, and probably as Mack said, none of the the
popular violence, but much more influencing the elite who are
controlling obviously the way the courts are dealing with the
protestants, at times they were allowed to but also when they
actually in peace, as Pete mentioned, so it operates, you
know, a number of different levels, I think.
>> Chuck: Yeah, Ashley has asked
the following question.
Regarding the aspects of rituals and rite surrounding
protestant and catholic treatments of the bodies of
their enemies, Davis hypothesized that protestants
were not as concerned with desecrating bodies after death,
because they had been rejected the
catholic conception of purgatory.
I was wondering if any further work had been done looking
at this difference and if Davis's theory has
panned out more in the scholarship.
Perhaps.
>> Mack: I am going to turn this over to
Keith because he has done some fascinating work on
cemeteries and burial rites that relate to this,
but this is a very interesting question.
>> Keith: Again, I am sorry, I am just
having some technical problems, could you just very briefly
repeat the question to me?
>> ChucK: The question is also in the
chat window, we can read it.
Ashley Corwin's question.
Essentially the Davis's hypothesis, the protestants were
not a concerned with desecrating bodies after death.
Because they rejected purgatory as a concept.
Have scholars built on that idea and how has it panned out
in recent scholarships?
>> Keith: I mean I have to say my
impression is that scholars have not pursued that particularly,
there may be something that Mack or Penny know that I don't but
what has been pursued is the question of conflicts,
Penny has done this work as others have, over
burials, and the places for burials and so forth.
The level or the amount of body desecration if I can call it
that, after the worst of the popular violence in the wars of
religion, becomes less of an issue, but the conflicts
over burial rituals and places for burials and so forth, that
continues on in through the next century actually.
>> Chuck: Ok there is a Chris Schilling
has his hand up.
Chris you want to hit your transmit button.
There you go you should be available, and you need to hit
your microphone button.
>> Chris: Ok, I had a question regarding
the sort of well, yeah, a question regarding sort of the
sheer level of division there seems to be a lot I mean of
division and this is not just what you would call minor
problems, they are having really really just the level of
division is so high that it is just almost to
a modern perspective, sort of unbelievable.
You see these christian groups today essentially
acknowledging themselves as being part of what is the same
religion, but at the time, they are
just completely rejecting each other.
You have protestants, calling the catholics the god of
hate, and you have the catholic student saying same sort of
things to the protestants.
As if they aren't at all similar, that is there is no
relation between these religions at all, and I was just
wondering, how prevalent was this sort of thing
throughout Europe, or was it just something specific to
just how bad things were in France, and how did the
you know this sort of extreme level of division develop?
>> Mack: Well, go ahead Penny.
>> Penny: You sure?
Ok I thought Mack, you had done a lot of the talking so
I'd give you a rest.
>> Mack: Thanks.
>> Penny: No problem.
I think it's worth saying that you know the only response
to religious divisions is not violence.
There are other responses as well, so there are people
who are talking about the fact that they should be as
opposed to being christians united together, so there are a
whole other discourses going on suggesting that they should
be trying to get on and indeed as Mack has said, there are
long periods when there is coexistence in certain
communities so it is not the people are killing each
other all the time, I mean obviously you know in a sense
the wars of religion wouldn't have lasted so long, if
they'd been just hacking each other to pieces from the
outset, there wouldn't have been so many people to do that to.
[unclear dialogue] but you know, so it worth thinking about
that as well, so it not just about well I suppose what
we need to think about is why there are moments when it
becomes much more extreme the violence and that is you
know a very difficult question to answer.
But I think it has a lot to do with obviously we've
mentioned the physical context the relative balance
between the [unclear dialogue] as well, one thing that is
often said is protestants formed a big
enough minority to constitute a threat.
Maybe up to ten percent of the population at their height
in many cities larger than that.
When they are posing that much of a threat, there's a lot
of mutual suspicion on both sides, its trust and sometimes
even when they seem to be getting along relatively ok, it
only takes one small thing to spark off those kinds of
tensions which can turn murderous.
And actually it not just true of France in the 16th century of
course that exists in society today too, when there are
divisions which run sufficiently deep, that under certain
circumstances, violence will happen, and it's not as I
say something exclusive to this period, or this place.
>> Chuck: Go ahead Mack.
>> Mack: OK, I was just going to build on
the very important point that Penny made to make it very
clear that violence wasn't the only response to this kind
of rhetoric, to this kind of language.
You do find Chris, this same kind of language in reformation
Germany, in the Netherlands, you find it in England, but you
don't find necessarily the same levels of violence.
So there are other ways to respond to that kind of
rhetoric, that kind of perception, and again, I keep
going back to the pollution model.
Violence isn't the only response, it happened to be one
that was used much more in France than some of
these other places, however.
>> Chuck: OK we have a question
from Robert Fulton.
He has his hand up, can we bring Robert in?
>> Keith: He doesn't have a microphone.
>> Penny: He has typed in.
>> Chuck: Ok I see that as well, but if
they have their hand up, I like to try to bring in the student's
>> Penny: Through the chat box.
>> Chuck: Yes.
>> Penny: So he's got a question in the
chat box I think yeah.
>> Chuck: I it's concerning trend culture
and the question is 'How did Catholic
theologians perceive the violence described
by Professor Davis?' So that's a very good question in a sense,
because Natalie Davis's expresses--
her argument is the violence expresses the beliefs and
the values of the religious communities.
In fact, echoed in the way the theologians talked about it,
or did theologians have a different take?
>> Mack: Well, I'll say something very
briefly, then I'll let others respond.
I think protestant violence simply reinforced
catholic theologians beliefs that protestantism or
heresy and social disorder went hand in hand.
And you find this outside of France as well, but there was a
lot of a lot of Catholic language that suggested that
protestants were simply rebels, dissemblers of the social order,
and that was generally the way that they reacted to it.
Keith you've done more work on this.
>> Keith: Well, I've--I was just going
to very quickly add, because I agree with what you said.
The other aspect is this is less concerned with theologians
per se than with catholic preachers, and we know
for example the work of Barbara Diefendorf, specially comes
to mind, how essential they were to [unclear dialogue] some of
them were [unclear dialogue] the violence and I think in that
point of view you could say they were certainly reflecting a
larger theological outlook.
But I think perhaps we know more about these preachers than
we do about theologians per se.
>> Mack: Right.
Right.
And one of the interesting things about one of
those preachers that Barbara mentions,
and this in her book 'Beneath the Cross',
which some of you I am sure are familiar with.
She singles out Seymour VIgor more than any other Grecian
preacher for committing violence, but one of the others
that she points to, who was preaching in the same general
genre was Rene' Vunwa, and one of the interesting things
about him was he was very afraid of protestantism, and fearful
for protestant presence in the capital of Paris, itself,
but he was also involved in some ways in seeking some
kind of resolution.
He translated the bible into French for French
Catholics [unclear dialogue] never condoned it, but he
was seeking in his translation, in fact, is based to a large
extent, not just on the text, but on the notes in the
margin, on the Calvin bibles that
were coming out of Geneva and Leon.
So, you can have a preacher preaching and urging Catholics
to take up arms against their protestant neighbors, yet at the
same time, well, maybe ten years later, creating a vernacular
translation of the Bible in French in an attempt to try to
find some bridge between this great divide, which is just
an interesting paradox.
>> Penny: And it's true, some catholic
theologians were pulled by the violence.
On both sides, and either felt that this wasn't the way for
which and it you know again, [unclear dialogue] pieced being
something that were striving for christian unity again, and I
think that comes across in some of the catholic theologians,
people like Simon Igor, and you know their voices become
louder at certain stages, and when they are able to so
there is quite a variety of responses again amongst
the Catholic theologians.
>> Chuck: Joseph [unclear dialogue]
has a question.
What role was played in by the fact that the French
protestantism was Calvinist and therefore more radically
reforming than its Lutheran or Anglican counterparts.
So you know, if beginning with Davis, if we see the
violence expressing the beliefs in the theology, well, then
can't we start to compare the, can we compare the violence
then in its Calvinist form, in its
Anglican form, or in its Lutheran form.
>> Mack: Well, it is certainly true that
there was a revolutionary message in Calvinist theology
and doctrine, and in some ways this might have affected the
way the French crown, the local Catholic magistrates, and
even the Catholic church would have responded to the
advent of protestantism.
I don't know if it informs us, and I am not sure in which way
it informs us, about motives for protestant violence against
Catholics, but you certainly, well while Calvin was alive, he
strongly discouraged Calvinists from taking up arms against
the state, and he died in 1564 and there were more radical
political ideas that emerged out of French Calvinism later on,
particularly getting closer to St. Bartholomew's day, but
even though Calvin's own theological was pretty radical,
he did his best to discourage violence
by the Huguenots in France.
>> Chuck: Yeah, but I think Keith makes
the point that it is truly revolutionary it's Calvinism
is radical and revolutionary and one of their goals was
to morally regenerate society through and through, so If
it helps to think about the French wars
of religion as a kind of revolution.
Should we be comparing it to the violence of the French
revolution in some ways which was also obsessed
with moral regeneration?
It would be
>> Keith: Would you like for me to try to
respond to that or?
>> Chuck: Sure.
>> Keith: My response is going to be a
little bit confused I am afraid, because until rather recently
I would have probably felt fairly uncomfortable with the
idea that the Calvinist reformation of France
was particularly revolutionary, but in reading a number of
things recently, including some of the articles in the past
and present supplement that Penny was a part of
editing, and some of the work of Philip Benedict, I've
come to change my opinion on this to some degree.
Not in so far as it was politically radical, except
perhaps through the period of after the St. Bartholomew's Day
massacre when there is a clear radicalization of the
[unclear dialogue] ideas, but what calvinism demanded, I,
is a really thorough going of radical purification of
religious life in society, and given the intimate
connections between religion and politics in society in France,
that posed a real radical issue.
I've come around to that point of view, at any rate, but
I'll pass it back to Mack or Penny who know that particular
material better than I, I think.
>> Penny: Well, at times the moral
regeneration of society is going to be in charge of society to
morally regenerate it, I think so we only really see that
operating in towns where the Calvinists are in charge
in places like Mead, [unclear dialogue]'s work on that
for instance when you see you know moral discipline being
introduced through history and so on, but I suppose the big
question is, what would have happened in France if the
Calvinists had you know succeeded in the sense of
actually turning it into a protestant country.
So it had revolutionary potential, I am not sure i'd say
it was able to be revolution ultimately because
it didn't succeed.
I also wanted to remember that Calvinism is French, Calvin
and all his main you know his main were French church in
exile, so i think that is often forgotten actually although
it is often referred to as the Plague of Geneva, by
Catholics in France, actually it's
entirely a French production in many ways.
>> Chuck: We have another
question, we have two
>> Keith: The French Catholics certainly
accused the Huguenots of being politically radical, that
was certainly part of the [unclear dialogue]
against them, so
>> Penny: Yeah, sure, sure, I think they
would have been if they could have been.
>> Chuck: So they were Jacques who
just didn't manage to get power.
>> Keith: Well it's interesting in the
period after the Edict of Nantes, French protestants just
bend over backwards to make clear their dyed in the
wool royalism and certainly having pushed to the background
any radical tendencies they might have had except
again perhaps after the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes at a much later time.
>> Penny: Yeah, yeah, and they do during
the wars, too, I think they are conservative in that you know
declarations of loyalty to the crown, but that because they
are hoping to get the crown on their side, so you know when
the crown is not is clearly not going to be on side, it is
become more radical in those moments
when the wars actually take place.
>> Chuck: That is a fascinating topic
right there, if you are Calvinists, what do you do to
get the king on your side?
From all the practices and the political
negotiations, around that.
We have two hands up that also have the questions in the
box, that i'd like to try to bring them on if possible.
>> Keith: Tiffany's on, Melinda, if you
could hit your transmit button, and your microphone button in
the bottom left hand corner, we can bring you onscreen.
Melinda doesn't have a microphone, so you'll need to
read her question.
>> CHuck: oh ok, Melinda asks, 'when I
teach the wars of religion in France, I rely heavily on
Davis's idea of the rites of violence and the evidence that
points to the genuine fear of religious pollution
as primary motivators for the violence.
But I was wondering if anyone had a comment about older
interpretation and [unclear dialogue] by Davis concerning
the economic or social conflicts that might
have sparked violent acts.
Has there been any new work on these aspects?
>> Penny: Would you like for me to
say something MacK?
>> Mack: Sure, go ahead.
Yes.
>> Penny: You sure?
Well, It is sad to say that [unclear dialogue] Davis doesn't
dismiss those approaches entirely.
Her argument is, and this is an argument that she has had In
past and present with Jenny Nigel about the roles with the
socioeconomic issues, but the type of writing that takes place
in the religious context are different kind of writing that
takes place in the socioeconomic context when there are issues
over the price of grain for instance, and therefore,
you know all tax for instance, we call the tax collectors
or grain stores and so on, and then obviously in the
religious rights are completely different kind of targeting.
You could say that rich Huguenots are targeted, but
there are often the leaders of the groups and there are other
reasons why they might be targeted, too.
So like first of all say, new work, I suppose the leading
proponents in recent years are the socioeconomic analysis
of the world's religious is, the work of Henry Haller, which
Mack and Keith are familiar with.
And he has you know a number of all the sleeping views on the
role of economics in particular in pushing the
calvinists movement forward.
He has some very interesting points to make.
It hasn't gained a lot of general credence, and naturally
you have the idea of religion being very much at the heart of
things, very much [unclear dialogue] you know that it's
very much predominate and I think the role of politics have
come back in very strongly as well, interestingly, which would
say used to be seen as an old-fashioned approach
but political culture in particular and so there are new
approaches I think which are, maybe not so much socioeconomic
[unclear dialogue] but I think we have we have to do
broadening out in a sense in thinking about the wars.
>> Chuck: If I can just add a question
on to that one.
Has there been a lot of work on not so much social clash, but
patronage, in other words you could have an economic dimension
of this that is highly political and has to do with patronage
and clientelism and doesn't have to do with the social class,
per se, and if, is that a way of a way of destroying stuff and
bringing the economic back into the frame of religious
tensions, and why violence can break out in some areas, and
why it doesn't in other areas.
>> Mack: Yeah, well, I would just say
that clearly putting religion back into the war's
religion never meant leaving the politics out,
or leaving the economics out.
And I think a lot of recent work certainly wants to sort of
recenter material life, as a fundamental part of
religious life, and political life.
And not reverting to some of the earlier and more simplistic
and reductionist models that religion is just an expression
of something else, but that religion is so deeply ingrained
in terms of defining politics, the state and society
altogether, that if you ignore material life altogether, you're
missing some fundamental aspect of pre-modern religion.
And you know, I always go back to one of my favorite
books I encountered in graduate school.
It's, in fact, about the medieval period, and a French
historian named [unclear dialogue] "The Accounting of the
Beyond", and he's looking at masses for the dead, and how the
amount of money funding the masses for the dead, and it's
relation to belief in purgatory.
But there is a lot of much more recent work than that that
does, I think, try to bring material like politics
and religion together, rather than just assuming that a
correlation over time between grain prices, and religious
violence necessarily means there is some
causation between the two.
I don't think any historian would may be with some of the
work of Henry Haller, would move in that direction at all.
And like Penny, I think that Henry Haller's first book
on Calvinism is actually very very insightful.
>> Keith: Chuck could I--add
something to this?
>> Chuck: Yeah
>> Keith: I think one of the best examples
that I know of, of doing just exactly what you are
asking about, I'll mention because Mack is clearly
too modest to mention it himself, but the article that
he wrote on the wine grower's [unclear dialogue] which I
think brilliantly ties together a religious symbolic analysis
Paula Nebely gave us, but from the other side of the
religious divide, but with a very, very close attention
to economic life and political strife in that city.
And I think it really does an excellent job driving,
tying excuse me, those two things together.
The other work that I was going to mention, I tried to type
it into the box, but I mistyped it so I'll just mention it
here, and it strikes me as something which is trying very
much to bring the political back into this discussion, is
Stuart Carol's work on the Key's family.
which I think, and other things he has written as well which
I think does this, and is trying to move
things in this direction.
>> Mack: Well, thank you Keith.
I am Mack Holt and I am responsible for this message.
[laughter]
>> Keith: He didn't pay me anything to
put his name on here.
[laughter]
>> Chuck: We have a couple questions.
Tiffany can you activate your microphone.
>> Tiffany: Sure, Hi.
The question I think is really should be a side issue under
causes related to downplay importance of religion, but I
was wondering if there was evidence that there was
conflicts diffused or I don't know, something people were
fighting about at the time, that it either
exacerbated religious violence, or were exacerbated by that,
is there any evidence at the time?
>> Mack: Well, I think there is some
anecdotal evidence of cases of that, I don't think you
can discount that this happened altogether.
I don't know of anyone who is specifically tried to you
know collect information and make a study of that approach.
You know the closest thing to that, and it doesn't really get
to your question, is Barbara Diefendorf's analysis of
religious violence in Paris.
Because it's St. Bartholomew's Day, the first protestant
targets, or were those who drank in one pub the protestant pub
or tavern, against the catholic tavern.
And showing that you know the violence wasn't random and that
they had clashed before, particularly over the Gasteen
cross in Paris, but individual feuds, individual issues,
I am sure there are examples of that, but I don't know of any
study that has tried to look at that in depth.
>> Penny: Yeah its quite hard to
reconstruct I think, but certainly there are those
catholics who give refuge to their protestant neighbors when
threatened violence when as Mack mentioned St. Bartholomew's
Day massacre in particular, but it happened in other episodes
of violence as well, and so you know some relatives, some
neighbors are making a choice either to turn people over
to the authorities, or not, and that you might say they did
to honor religious basis, but the more seriously
Catholics who were handling the protestants over, but I
suspect there are personal issues there as well,
both neighbors and family.
And of course, remembering that within families, there are
protestants and Catholics as well, but as Keith was showing
that not only in the 17th century, but also in the 16th as
well, there are families that are struggling with the fact you
know comes first, the ecumenical loyalties, or you
know whether they feel that religious issues aside,
that they need to put those as a priority.
>> Chuck: We have several questions,
here that we can turn to.
Odid Ravinovich, can we bring him on, he has a long question,
if we can bring him on, that would be great.
>> Keith: He does not have a microphone.
>> CHuck: ok, ok, I am wondering whether
you could discuss the role of [unclear dialogue] models
versus actual politics in the
development of popular violence.
David stressed the adoption of roles responsibilities by
religious crowds, in other words they took over the role of the
[unclear dialogue] and more recent work they have stressed
the role of law and political arrangement in regulating
and constraining violence.
How would this work, with the view of society, whose politics
very much work through exceptions.
This is [unclear dialogue] idea.
Or you formal patronage networks.
I think Keith Luria's work pushes in this direction, but I
am wondering whether you could elaborate some more.
>> Keith: I guess I am being called on.
>> Chuck: yes,
>> Keith: I am not entirely certain what
Odid means by politics working through exceptions, but in
general, I think, and this actually circles back to
a question that we started with at the beginning, that I
didn't comment on then, but I would say a couple things, just
by way of perhaps provoking some comment from others.
I would not first of all separate in any very rigorous
way religious ideas from or religious practices from law and
political arrangements in France, in early modern France.
I think in a sense, the religious society is always
formed the law, and that is crucial.
But what I have tried to show is that the extremes of religious
violence could be moderated by reference to royal
will and royal law.
And this is of course, I particularly looked at this in
the period after the Edict of Nantes, but Penny and
Jeremy [unclear dialogue] and others have looked at this
for the earlier period, that the law provides a framework in
which, law and loyalty to the king provides a framework
in which the tensions between the religious groups, at
least can be moderated to the point
to tamping down the violence.
I am not sure whether that really answers Odid's question,
exactly, but maybe at least it can get us started.
>> Chuck: Yeah, I am wondering, I mean the
way I interpreted that question was that you know are we in
the Early Modern period are we dealing with an age of you
know, I am thinking, I am wondering if the exception is
also in the Carl Schmidt type of sense in that he is
always acting in a particular way at particular times,
and not following general rules, or rule of law.
Because sovereign force is the force that makes the law.
So it can remake the law, and is always exceptional.
So I think the question he is trying get at the tension
between law as the embodiment of something to
[unclear dialogue] and and then the more kind of arbitrary
almost with the sovereign will or exception.
And the argument that society of exceptions, then how can
we put so much weight on law and the authority of law
in explaining you know the crowd violence
and the way the form it takes.
I think that is it, but that is hard to know for sure, so
feel free, Odid, if you want to add on there.
We have a question from David Littlefield.
I may have missed this, but I was wondering why the importance
on the debauchery of women which is a topic we need to turn to,
was religious violence against women simply a result of women's
social standing at the time?
Penny can.
>> Penny: Did you want me to say
something on this since I...
>> Chuck: Well, yeah uh
>> Penny: *** violence, yeah.
Ok well the issue around the *** honor of women is,
I suggested, is about the position of women at this time
and it is the *** honor of women
is a reflection of the group.
So to impugn the *** honor of women is to impugn the entire
group is to imply that that men can control their women and,
therefore, there is the reflection of how sordid and
engorged in moral this group [unclear dialogue] and
indeed the fascination with whether there were *** going
on during protestant assemblies, which of course, takes place
at night and in secret when they were first held is a
reflection that of a common [unclear dialogue]
right through the medieval period as well.
Getting back to what the early church, and to the Romans
who were also christians who choose then but then right
through them in the middle ages and heretical groups were
accused of it as well.
So it is just a common [unclear dialogue] which is directed
at [unclear dialogue] so you have a whole set of gammet
of ideas of women's unbridled sexuality as an issue
around, you know, impugning the whole
group, not just the women in fact.
Religious violence against women.
That is an interesting question whether religious violence is
directed specifically against women as such.
In many ways they are featured as victims of religious
violence, as Natalie Davis said, but probably not to the same
extent men do, and that is across society so again it is a
reflection of women's position, I would say.
>> Chuck: There was more violence against
women in the case of army battles right?
So that if we could distinguish between is that right, that
women were more likely to be targeted with you had
armies coming through than if you had a religious riot?
>> Penny: In terms of ***
violence, yes.
>> Chuck: Ok.
>> Keith: Chuck, Leah Chang has a note in
the Jackpot about this also.
>> Chuck: Yes, thanks Leah.
I was hoping Penny Roberts and Keith Luria could speak a little
more about the violence against the women and the
gendering of the violence.
I was struck by Penny Roberts analyses
of the lack of any historical record about ***, while at the
same time, violence against pregnant women was a
commonplace in the accounts of the violence and also held
up as an example in the extreme cruelty of the violence.
Could you say more about why *** is not so present
in the accounts of the violence and is there anything
symbolic or significant in the violence against pregnant
women beyond representations of the extreme violence and is
more work being done on the gender of violence?
>> Penny: Ok
>> Mack: Penny, before you answer, can I
just jump in here.
I want you to answer this question, then Nicole
has a question on the chat screen for Keith, but as our
time is running out, there may be one or two people who
joined in thinking they were actually going to get
some answers to the questions we posed, [laughter] If you and
Keith could give short answers, ok I want to make sure we
get to them, but go ahead Penny.
>> Penny: I am not sure beyond what I have
said I have much more to say about why *** isn't so present
in the accounts of violence, I made the case there to the
fact that it is mostly protestant accounts we have
they don't certainly want to really
name and shame if you like in terms of the act of ***.
It is something which clearly does go on during war time
but the fact it is not talked about very much I think is
an issue around women's honor again, in this sense protecting
women's honor rather than impugning it.
The violence against pregnant women, it has been
suggested that this has been the attack on the next generation,
but again it is [unclear dialogue] as well.
It's the most extreme form of barbarity you can imagine.
And I think there are issues again as I wrote in the
essay about how we understand the violence that takes
place in wars of religion whether we understand it as a
repertoire of images, or believe that these acts took
place exactly the way they described.
I think there are issues we need to discuss with historians.
I am not denying they took place, but I think we do need to
obviously be critical about [unclear dialogue] in that way
especially when it seems to be a
repertoire of work.
There is more work being done on the gendering side so I know
that Brian you know is.
>> Mack: Sandburg--Brian Sandburg
>> Penny: Yes, he is working on it at
the minutes, so he is in particularly the period after
the [unclear dialogue] war and I think he is known as well, so
this is [unclear dialogue] work being done that on that topic.
I am not myself doing any more work on it, but it
is an interesting topic.
>> Chuck: Ok, we do.
>> Keith: Chuck, can you read the
note from Nicole?
>> Chuck: Yeah, there was a question by
Leah too. Oh no, that's ok, we did that.
Yes, this is from Nicole.
Going on with discussing Dr. Luria's piece, it was mentioned
that local commissioners stated many problems in maintaining
the peace, limited resources, the short duration of terms.
Where the commissions perhaps set up to fall or was this just
a pure unfortunate consequence of implementing a new system
with the organizational skills they had at the time?
>> Keith: Well, in keeping in mind Mack's
desire to move to the other questions,
I will just be very brief.
I do not think they were set up to fail.
I think there is always in any early modern state, a great
gap between the intentions and the ability to implement
any kind of policy.
It's quite clear that the commissioners during the wars of
religion were in the period after the Edict of
Nantes, were really stretched.
Both in time and research they had to cover a lot of ground
in short periods of time, and so forth.
I mean I am more struck by the fact that given that how
much success they had, at least in the period after the, in
the 17th century.
So no, I don't think they were set up to fail, I just don't
think the state is ever capable of undertaking of full
implementation of policies.
And I think I'll just leave it at that.
>> Penny: Let me say just very, very
quickly on reading the Keith's work again, I was really
struck by the similarities between what they were trying
to achieve before and after the Edict of Nantes
and the commission's impact.
I think they were very similar.
They have longer to do it after the Edict of Nantes.
>> Mack: Ok Chuck, before you cut us off,
I want to turn to some of the questions that we asked you
to consider while doing the reading.
And I am going to skip over the first question, that was just
kind of a throw away question to get the conversation started.
Whether it was possible to purify a community of pollution
without violence in 16th century France.
Obviously if you can redefine pollutants as human beings,
it is possible, but this is a circular issue.
How do you do that?
And I think questions 2 and 3 are really at the heart of
the matter, and I think Barbara Diefendorf's piece on
peacemaking and Keith's chapter outline different settings in
[unclear dialogue] different towns and villages go to
the hearts of these questions.
What why did violence break out in some confessionally
divided communities, but not in others, and once violence
broke out, what strategies worked best
to de-escalate the violence.
Do you of you graduate students, do you have any ideas now how
to approach those questions, based on your reading
that you've done for today?
>> Chuck: Chris Schilling.
>> Mack: Ok, Go ahead Chris.
>> Keith: Hit your microphone
button Chris.
>> Chris: Well, it seems that the most
effective sort of strategies for de-escalating the violence all
seem to have to have some sort of external intervention.
Whenever there is a problem, it usually generated sort of
locally and it would sort of percolate locally and
cause problems, and it needed some sort of external issue
to kind of come in to sort of de-escalate, or just keep
a lid on things.
Without that sort of top down sort of control it seems
there was really not a lot of things that could be done
once there was bad blood between the parties, it just tended
to go in cycles.
>> Mack: Ok anyone else?
>> Chuck: Aaron, go ahead and
jump on Aaron.
>> Aaron: Yeah, I am going to go or start
from where Chris kind of left off.
I think that I do agree with him saying though, oftentimes, you
do need an external party to come in and help
facilitate peace, but at the same time, you also
needed the communities themselves to accept that peace
and to go along with those external parties, so they were
really the ones where the external parties seemed to be
the ones to start the process, the communities themselves
need to be the people that tried to finish the
process if that makes sense.
>> Mack: Yeah, and by local communities,
do you mean local magistrates, local churches, both,
the general population?
>> Aaron: The general population, and just
the communities at large, is what I meant.
>> Mack: Umm ok.
>> Chuck: Yeah, that is a fascinating way
to look at because the implications of those two
different ways of looking at it, the outside source coming in,
or the inside source are the local community resolving these
problems on its own, have very different implications if
you think about it, The types of political systems you
need, to prevent a civil war, it was Hobbs right in that
you need outside armies, and force to prevent civil war, or
can we be optimistic about society being able to resolve
this themselves, and it sounds like it is a little bit of
both, with the dialogue back and forth.
>> Penny: Yeah.
If you think know now about the way conflict resolution
operates in all kinds of societies, we tend to think
external intervention is a good idea, neutralizing
the conflicts to some extent when somebody from outside
comes in who you know just isn't one side or the other.
I think one of the problems the commissioners face, is the
[unclear dialogue] the French, usually Catholic, or I think
there are issues around that, and issues sometimes
[unclear dialogue] or one Catholic commissioners
specifically in that storefront of issues, but you know the
external figures coming in sometimes actually exacerbate
the conflicts locally as well, because the don't know the
issues on hand, but also, I do agree, I think you have got
to have the external influence and the local communities
themselves, and I think Mack pointed out the local officials
actually cooperating actually having both working
together actually probably is a better solution.
Local officials are quite resistant actually to external
individuals coming in and telling them what to do.
So, even if they do have the authority of the crown, so you
know there are issues that have to be negotiated.
A lot of negotiations during the worlds religion it
is fair to say.
>> Mack: ok, good.
Let's move on to question 4.
And again, this is another circular question.
Was religious toleration possible in early modern France,
and of course, this depends on how we define toleration.
If we use the original connotation of the word, this is
exactly what they were doing.
They were gritting their teeth, and bearing the existence of
the other side, under trying circumstances.
But if we take the contemporary connotation of religious
toleration, that is the policy supporting confessional
pluralism, then that really is the question that
I am asking here.
Was that kind of more modern religious pluralism possible in
pre-modern France, and if so, how could they get there?
Anybody?
Anyone??
>> Chuck: David Littlefield
>> Mack: Go ahead David.
>> David: Ok I may be off on this point,
but I don't know necessarily if it was possible, but as I am
sitting here listening to everybody speech I keep
thinking of Norbert Elliott's Civilizing Process and how
at this time, according to him, he
thought it was just a model society.
And I see that this is the time when religion, we have, you
know, Catholic and protestant, and they are both very different
in their ideology, and being within this time, Elliot shows
such violence and uncivilization, I don't know if
toleration for each other would have been possible.
I today I could see, today I think we would want to believe
that there could be, I don't know if there was, based on what
I've learned from him in the past.
Take if from there.
>> Mack: Well, certainly there were very
few voices that were actually calling for this more
modern definition of religious toleration.
I mean, in France, I can think of Sebation Costellion, Michelle
Demontangue, but there just weren't very many, and whether
it was actually possible to construct a more confessionally
plural society, remains to be seen.
The best example of a multi-confessional society that
I can think of was the city of Strassburg, for much of the
middle to late 16th century where you had a Lutheran church
in one parish, a reformed Calvinist church in another,
and a Catholic church.
But this wasn't the policy of the city fathers.
This was the only practical solution that they weren't real
happy about, but it was more religious co-existence.
>> David: Mack, could I jump in quickly
on that point?
I, you would be real interesting to know, and I don't think we
do know, is the situation that say Stuart Swartz has found
for Spain, and the spanish empire, they existed in France
as well, where he was civil to find individuals who dragged
before the inquisition, who declared, believe it or
not, that before the inquisition, that they felt
that people could be saved in any of the 3 faiths
of Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, as long as they were
good people, and they followed the teachings
of their faith and so forth.
You know, we have a rare shreds of evidence in French
communities where people say something similar about
Catholics and protestants, but we have no real
systematic evidence of it.
I mean, one can assume it existed, but we haven't found it
yet, we just know it is there.
>> Chuck: Yes, Robert Fulton makes the
comment that based on research that I've done in the past
year, the [unclear dialogue] is the beginning of the more
modern concept of toleration was not really in evidence until
it was abdicated by Pierre [unclear dialogue] in
the late 17th century.
Before that it was not really possible.
I think that Robert Scribner has made that point in his work,
and many people have made it too, that it's the
enlightenment that brings about the ideology of toleration
that eventually evolves into perpetual peace.
>> Penny: You call the pre-enlightenment
with that question, I think.
>> CHuck: Yeah, because we in the 18th
century keep thinking we are discovering new things,
and they existed back then, or
>> Penny: Yeah, It's all about
definitions of toleration.
And how you define your terms really more than anything.
Yeah.
>> Chuck: Yeah.
>> David: We have one more person on
screen with a question, and one more in the box, so lets
hear from Lilliana first.
>> Lillana: Well, I was just going to
address what was just said about it's on the definition of
the word toleration.
I feel like, and it's you know, becomes in to understanding
each other's relegation, and I feel like sadly enough the
more you try to understand that the more differences you
come across, they kind, especially when it comes to
reading you know the religious texts
between Catholics and protestants.
That I feel like sort of drove them apart, and perhaps
brought up new types of issues into the light that perhaps
before had been ignored, so I don't know, you know, I
mean I feel like it's possible to tolerate within living
situations, but I feel like it also comes down to
understanding their religion and sadly I feel like the more you
try to understand, the farther it drives you apart, and
that's kind of what I got from reading all this stuff.
>> Mack: Thank you.
>> Chuck: Yes, I think the idea that it's
not the differences, it's the small differences that
matter, you know this is something that Sigmond Freud
says that it's the precipitance of violence, right.
It's the big differences we can deal with, it's the small
differences that drive us crazy and can provoke us to
violence in the end.
So that's I think that's a fascinating perspective of the
question, of which is violence.
>> David: And Chuck, we should bring this
to a close with a comment from Melinda in the box.
Ok, From the readings, especially Deifendorf, It seems
to me that the close ties between religious acts, and
public spaces by Catholics, and the corresponding refusal of
the power of physical objects, or spaces, by protestants
makes sharing the same spaces extremely problematic.
>> Mack: I would entirely agree, but I
would also say it was possible for protestants and
catholics to share the same spaces, and if you look at Ben
Chaplains book on religious toleration, in some cases, they
even shared the same churches, although
generally not at the same time.
So yes, space is defined differently, I mean Natalie's,
other major article in that period, "The Sacred and the Body
Social in the 16th Century Lyon" makes that very point.
Protestants and Catholics looks at that urban space very
very differently, and it was problematic to share it.
You are quite right.
>> Chuck: Ok.
Well thank you all for a wonderful session, and I think
we got a lot out of it and I'd like to thank the students
for typing in so often, which it
was great to have a back and forth.
>> David: And we can offer a round of
applause for everybody.
Click your applause button.
[laughter]
>> Chuck: There we go.
I'd like to thank you all and next spring we'll be having
a webinar session with Eric Jennings with the University of
Toronto, and the theme will be "French Colonial History".
>> David: And everyone will notice I have
put up on the whiteboard on the main screen, my email address.
We are very happy to receive any comments from you about
recommendations about how we can do this
better, and improvements.
These webinars are something we are all trying to learn how
to do well, so we appreciate your feedback.
>> Mack: And I want to say thank you to
everybody, and particularly Penny
and Keith for giving up your time.
>> Keith: Oh and think you too.
>> Penny: Thank you, Enjoyed it.
[no dialogue]