Politics Religion and State building (11th – 16th/19th centuries)

The unity of the Christian world was brought into question at the beginning of the 16th century in Wittenberg^[1]in Northern Germany by a humanist monk, a theology professor by name of Martin Luther^[2]. He stressed the greater power of « divine grace », the role of faith and that of Scripture^[3]. He questioned widespread practices such as the cult of the Virgin Mary; he rejected papal authority and that of the clergy and disputed the legitimacy of its possessions. Luther had no intention of creating a new religion but he wanted to return Christianity to its original purity, to free it from what he judged erroneous theological and disciplinary evolutions. He did not want to break with the church but it looked to be unavoidable and there being two « religions » in Europe confronted those living at the time with questions as novel as apparently intractable.

« Religious toleration », understood as the full and final acceptance of the parallel practice of diverse religions within a same society, such a religious toleration was at the time unthinkable for people; it was, barring very rare exceptions, beyond them. Indeed, tolerating the practice of a « false » religion would unavoidably lead, in their view, to provoking « God's wrath » which he would wreak not just upon « the others » but also on those who had assented to the situation. Thus, each party thought that the other corrupted the whole social body. For the champions of the Roman church, the « heretics »^[4] formed a sect whose blasphemies visited God's wrath on everyone and whose injurious impact had to be stopped. For the Protestants, Papist « idolatry^[5] » and all the distortions it may have inflicted on « God's word » was dragging society to its perdition. Much considering, thinking and organising went into addressing this reality. A number of solutions were explored.