ABSTRACT
The most intriguing position regarding tolerance was the one embraced by theologians such as Sebastian Castellio, who had arrived in Geneva in 1541 and assumed the position of a school principal there, quickly getting into conflicts with John Calvin. There were also a number of urban communities in the age of the Reformation where Catholics and Protestants managed to live together, despite all conflicts. At times of a paradigm shift, such as the Protestant Reformation, many of the traditional viewpoints are harshly debated, and many different voices attempt to establish their authority, demanding intellectual freedom for themselves in that process. The Protestant Reformation certainly destroyed, at first, the dominant authority of the Catholic Church in some parts of Europe, but it took hundreds of years following the events in 1517 for the idea of tolerance to emerge fully and to take hold even in the Evangelical or Lutheran Church.
