ABSTRACT

This book examines the practice of toleration and the experience of religious diversity in the early modern world.

Recent scholarship has shown the myriad ways in which religious differences were accommodated in the early modern era (1500–1800). This book propels this revisionist wave further by linking the accommodation of religious diversity in early modern communities to the experience of this diversity by individuals. It does so by studying the forms and patterns of interaction between members of different religious groups, including Christian denominations, Muslims, and Jews, in territories ranging from Europe to the Americas and South-East Asia. This book is structured around five key concepts: the senses, identities, boundaries, interaction, and space. For each concept, the book provides chapters based on new, original research plus an introduction that situates the chapters in their historiographic context.

Early Modern Toleration: New Approaches is aimed primarily at undergraduate and postgraduate students, to whom it offers an accessible introduction to the study of religious toleration in the early modern era. Additionally, scholars will find cutting-edge contributions to the field in the book’s chapters.

chapter |20 pages

Introduction

Early Modern Toleration

chapter I|64 pages

Sensing the Other

Historiographic Introduction

chapter 1|22 pages

“To Preserve and Instill the Beloved Peace”

Religious Invective and Confessional Coexistence under the Peace of Augsburg

chapter 2|18 pages

The Acoustics of Peace

Singing and Religious Coexistence in Seventeenth-Century Mechelen *

chapter 3|18 pages

Tuning Catholicism in the Dutch Republic

Catholic Soundscapes in a Calvinist Society, c. 1600–1750

chapter II|42 pages

Asserting Identities

Historiographic Introduction

chapter 4|17 pages

At the Crossroads of Identity

Conversos and Moriscos in Inquisitorial Spain (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries) *

chapter III|68 pages

Crossing Boundaries

Historiographic Introduction

chapter 6|20 pages

Constitutional Dynamism and Demographic Diversity in Early Modern Confessional Coexistence

Dutch Reformed Refugees in the Holy Roman Empire, 1554–1596

chapter 7|21 pages

Ambivalent Neighbours

Sensory and Spatial Dynamics of Religious Exchange in Early Modern Tuscany *

chapter 8|21 pages

Crossing Borders?

Conversions and Mixed Marriages in Ottoman Bilād al-Shām (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries) *

chapter V|62 pages

Sharing Space

Historiographic Introduction

chapter 11|21 pages

A Middle Path to Toleration?

Sharing Sacred Spaces in Bautzen and Wetzlar, 1523–1625

chapter 12|20 pages

From Contested Space to Sacred Topography

Jews, Protestants, and Catholics in Reformation Cracow