Week 8 - Religious refugees: reformation and exile Flashcards
Exile and displacement
Accident of conquest or regime change - fleeing armies or religious influence
Deliberate policy: tool of political control - Mongols and Ottomans
Tool of religious purification
Europe: building on earlier pollution concerns
Safavid purges in 17th century
Both push and pull: expulsion and self-isolation
the scale of premodern religious exile
Fifteenth century:
20000 Jews from France and Germany
80000 Jews from Iberia
200000 Muslims from Grenada
80000 moriscos from Grenada
Sixteenth century:
300000 Muslims from Iberia
150000 Hugenots from France
Other people moved too. Widespread
main types of displacement and major destinations
Main types:
Expulsion from city, kingdom etc.
Enclose in isolation within region eg ghettos
Forced conversion
Major destinations:
Nearby European countries
Colonies
Islamic world or ottoman world - more tolerant in some places
how does violent explosion or persecution arise?
Emile Durkheim: mob expressing animal irrationalities
RI Moore: anxieties of governing class and their administrators
Weber: the state imposing its will and protecting its monopoly
Nirenberg: local context, not big patterns
Terpstra: a community feeling threatened
Terpstra’s three main concepts
Imagined communities:
A socially constructed community as imagined by the people who perceive themselves as part of a group (nation, faith etc.)
Who belongs?
What qualities make membership?
Defined by place - literal or figurative
Feelings of solidarity and belonging
Shared sense of threat
Common belief in the community, its shape, its enemies etc.
Consensus realities:
Intellectual constructs or metaphors believed in so widely or strongly that they are considered self evident or real
Legitimising discourse:
Words that obliged authorities to act, or that justified actions
How crusades were justified
early modern European perceived threats
External:
ottomans
And islam generally
Internal:
Heretics who rejected proper doctrines and structures
No longer had a single type of christianity - confessional divergence
Witches in league with the devil
Jews who refused to accept Christianity
healing premodern bodies
Separation - cutting away the diseased or corrupt element
Containment - isolating the diseased corrupt element, isolation from the corrupting element
Prosecution - spiritual/legal remedy to return mind-body balance to normal eg. Inquisition
Purgation - expel the diseased or corrupt element from the body
Restoring humoral balance - purging body of infectious material by removing infected fluids
Blood letting
Emetics - cause vomiting
Diuretics
Enemas
All strong metaphors for expulsion
ideas shaping attitudes and experience
Purification and purgation:
Medical ideas with political impact
Removing contagious or infective agents of the body
Exile:
Jews and Christian: association with biblical Israel in Egypt
Muslims: associated with Mohammed’s persecution and exile
Specialness and divine mission
Both attitudes could stoke religious intolerance
diaspora
A dispersed community
Which still experience a sense of its wholeness
Which may still be linked by kinship, communication, trade etc.
Which reverse the experience of expulsion or exile as part of identity
Which may express the desire for reunification as part of identity
Assumes the existence of borders, which separate members
Seems to demand conscious membership like imagined communities
Terpstra
Introduction:
By defining the events within and outside of the Corpus Christianum in terms of medical and spiritual treatment of diseases from the Other, Terpstra argues in this ch that this concept and language (of purging a body) drove (determined??) social and political responses, and results
Separation:
Many within the church viewed its sprawling expansion and separate orders as a means to help filter the faith as a whole and make it more purer. Many within began to develop the following of the faith in a stricter sense where those that followed (Observers) stated that practitioners of the faith shouldn’t have personal possessions. This is in contradiction to how the church at the time controlled around a third of all farmland and often had the biggest residences in towns and cities.
Containment:
Containment had both positive and negative effects. It sought to protect people, but was often used to exploit people. Seemingly the corruption of religion by political motives often was the cause of exploitation, as religious powers sought to hold political power.
Prosecution:
Protecting Christianity by eliminating immorality and anti-Catholic values.
‘Tolerating evil did no one any good, because God could lash society with ‘natural’ disasters as a form of warning, and then consign evildoers to eternal punishment in hell.’
Inquisitors aimed for repentance and conversion more than punishment
Codes developed to identify and prosecute evildoers (witches, heretics)
Spanish Inquisitions: ‘The Spanish Inquisition executed at least 2,000 heretics in its first fifty years.’
Purgation:
* the cleansing of the Christian religion/ people- Europeans such as the Spanish and Portuguese
* The Christians began to expel “alien” religious groups, such as the Jews and Muslims. However, over time they then began expelling other Christians who had had differences and beliefs over the points of the Christian doctrine
* the first Europeans to experience mass expulsion were the Jews- suspicion they had spread the plague
expulsion of the Jews
- Who tells the story? an Italian Jew
- What is the ‘imagined community’ that needs ‘protecting’ in this case? Spain
- What group or people are the ‘problem’ in this case? The Jews
- What is the stated/assumed ‘problem’ they present? There is increased nationalism, and the Marranos are a threat to ‘pure’ Christianity
- What ‘legitimizing discourses’ were expressed to promote persecution? “The official reason given for driving out the Jews was that they encouraged the Marranos to persist in their Jewishness and thus would not allow them to become good Christians”
- Who did these discourses target? (think here of audience as well as victims) - Christians (appeal to fear?), Marranos (if you want to stay, be less Jewish)
- What happened as a result? They try to stay, but the won’t budge, Some find refuge in Naples, the Moors initially take some but then there are too many
- What attitudes to persecution / expulsion are expressed by the author? The Lord exiles them and then the king carries it out - he’s not acting out of the Lord’s will. Thus, they appeal to God to save them, as he has done in the Torah twice
- What feelings are attributed to perpetrators / victims in the source? They don’t overly victimise themselves/aren’t angry - the king’s actions make him look cold and harsh?
The suppression of Glastonbury abbey
Suppression of Glastonbury Abbey
* “Who tells the story?”
o The investigation on behalf of Thomas Cromwell, 1539.
o Including “One of the Visitors, Richard Pollard”
o Visible bias in article presenting these letters
* “What is the imagined community?”
o The King’s conception of the church as set out in his articles
* “What group/people are the ‘problem’?”
o Glastonbury Abbey (and others outside the text’s scope)
o The Abbot and his faith (Benedictine)
* “What represented ‘problem’ is stated?”
o Opposition to the King’s “majesty and his succession”
o Abbey specifically having a “cankered and traitorous heart”
o Withholding/hiding wealth from King’s seizure of assets as illegal action, therefore marks Abbot as acting against the King/state
* “What ‘legitimizing discourses’ promoted persecution?”
o King’s articles/invocation of King’s legitimacy as in opposition with Benedictine abbeys and therefore leadership figures of faith are positioned against the King, which legitimises their persecution
* “Who did the discourse target (audience & victim)?”
o Audience: Cromwell
o Victim: Benedictine, in particular the Abbot and his potential allies?
* “What happened as a result?”
o Seizure of assets on behalf of Cromwell (for the King)
o Excising of powerful Benedictine authority in the region
* “What attitudes of persecution/expulsion expressed by author?”
o Necessary, workmanlike, deferential to Cromwell and matter-of-fact reporting of events and duties carried out
o Report to boss and by extension the King: intent to sound successful and effective
* “What feelings are attributed to victims and perpetrators?”
o Victim: being traitorous and cowardly, as wearing a “double hood” - clandestine/secretive action. Frames Abbot as untrustworthy and actively undermining King
o Perpetrators: Detached, carrying out process. Little feelings beyond fulfilling duty and delivering punishment.
the massacre of st Bartholomew’s day
- Who tells the story? Historian De Thou- he witnessed the event
- What is the ‘imagined community’ that needs ‘protecting’ in this case? Catholics
- What group or people are the ‘problem’ in this case? Huguenots (Protestants)
- What is the stated/assumed ‘problem’ they present? They were a religious minority contrary to the majority
- What ‘legitimizing discourses’ were expressed to promote persecution? Exterminate the Protestants- approved by the queen. Discussions on whether the king of Navarre should be spared- they agreed. “Will of the King, according to God’s will”
- Who did these discourses target? (Think here of audience as well as victims) Leader of Protestants- Coligny and other Protestants
- What happened as a result? Coligny was murdered, massacre of Protestants including children
- What attitudes to persecution / expulsion are expressed by the author? - in awe of it: “spectacle to gratify the hate of many”. Seems to be okay with considering the Protestants heretics, and even with murdering Coligny, but isn’t okay with how they treated the body and how far they took it
- What feelings are attributed to perpetrators / victims in the source? - Spends a whole paragraph discussing the death of Coligny from his personal account. Coligny’s faith leaves him fearless in the face of death
destruction of Magdeburg
- “Who tells the story?” Otto von Guericke, Burgomeister
- “What is the ‘imagined community’ that needs ‘protecting’ in this case?”
o Attackers: HRE and collective religious identity (Catholic)
o Attackers: “The Catholic League”
o Attackers: Catholics in proximity to Magdeburg but outside of it
o Burgomeister: People of Magdeburg - “What group or people are the ‘problem’ in this case?”
o Attackers: “adherents of the Augsburg Confession” (Lutheran, but that’s not the label used within the source)
o Burgomeister: Catholic League and coalition whose “violence and cruelty were due in part to their common hatred of the adherents of the Augsburg Confession…” - “What is the stated/assumed ‘problem’ they present?”
o city against Empire? - “What ‘legitimizing discourses’ were expressed to promote persecution?”
o Augsburg Confession + perhaps the prospect of ‘booty’ - “Who did these discourses target? (think here of audience as well as victims)”
o Burgomeister/victims: attacking force framed as wave of looting, violent, cruel invaders and “enemy”, “marauding” individual soldiers.
o Burgomeister/victims/audience: Places Magdeburg on pedestal to emphasise admonition of attackers - “this noble and famous city, the pride of the whole country, went up in fire and smoke…”
o Attackers: Holdouts of deviant/splinter faith, serves as threat to other potential rebellious ideas/breaking from Catholic religious hegemony within the Empire and Catholic League more broadly - “What happened as a result?”
o city burnt, citizens taken prisoner/killed, wealth redistributed by army ‘sutlers’ [civilian merchant who sells to army] locally - “What attitudes to persecution / expulsion are expressed by the author?”
o That the city and citizenry are burned/killed, rather than any religious distinction (beyond mentioning “adherents of the Augsburg Confession”)
o Violence towards city and populace framed as brutal, barbaric, and damaging to HRE overall by destroying “this noble and famous city”
o Destruction of property and wealth by attackers paints them as invaders outside of any unified national identity in describing their looting and destruction of the city. (the abandonment of one kind of “Imagined Community” in favour of other distinctions based on place and, to an extent, religion). - “What feelings are attributed to perpetrators / victims in the source?”
o perpetrators ‘cruel and shameful’, ‘common hatred’, ‘embittered’, victims ‘innocent
