Toleration, or Church–State Relations? The Determinant in Negotiating Religions in the Modern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: The religious, or confessional, history of the modern Europe, split by the Reformation, is, for one thing, a history of religious disputes and the related political confl icts, but it extends in parallel to attempts at regaining the lost unity -and also, to the absorbing history of elaboration of methods of peaceful arrangement of relationships between communities and states that had grown irreversibly diversifi ed in terms of religion.On the verge of the Reformation process, the secular authorities tried to put an end to it by referring to the time-honoured obligation of their subjects' obedience.However, the Lutheran reformers reminded that "God ought to be obeyed more than men", and regarded the confessional coercion as a tyranny one may, if not ought to, oppose.In face of a threat of religious war, secular authorities attempted therefore to restrict the scope of religious confl icts through top-down issuance of religious peace decrees and, subsequently, tolerance edicts.Polish historians willingly refer to the Confederation of Warsaw, which, however -seen against the period's other instances of religious peace -was distinct not so much in its originality but rather, scope, effi ciency, and stability.By the latter half of the sixteenth century, not only the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the United Provinces of the Northern Netherlands, but also Transylvania, then under the Hungarian rule, attained a high level of religious tolerance, close to equality in rights. 1 The Polish religious peace ought thus 1 Ludwig Binder, Grundlagen und Formen der Toleranz in Siebenbürgen bis zur Mitte des 17.
Source: Acta Poloniae Historica
Author: Wojciech Kriegseisen
Institution: Polish Academy of Sciences
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2343908315