Readings for:
Persecution, Toleration, Co-Existence: Early Modern Responses to
Religious Pluralism
Week 1: Heresy and Persecution
Monday, July 15: Heresy, Co-existence, and the Early Reformation (Discussion leaders: Karin
Maag and Amy Burnett)
Primary sources
 Thomas Aquinas, definition of heresy from Summa Theologica (available on-line)
 John of Brevicoxa, “On the Church and Heresy” (1375) in Heresy and Authority in
Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania press, 1980), pp. 297-307
 Selected documents from Thomas Fudge (ed. and trans.) The Crusade against Heretics in
Bohemia, 1418-1437 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 17-20; 45-49; 175-77; 368-72
Secondary sources
 John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558-1689 (Harlow:
Pearson Education, 2000) pp. 1-20
 C. Scott Dixon, “Living with Religious Diversity in Early Modern Europe” in Living with
Religious Diversity in Early Modern Europe edited by Scott Dixon, Dagmar Freist, and
Mark Greengrass (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 1-20
 David Nirenberg, “The Two Faces of Sacred Violence” in Communities of Violence:
Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1996), pp. 200-30
 Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in
Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 1-47
Wednesday, July 17: Advocates of persecution (Discussion leader: Ben Kaplan)
Primary Sources
 Exsurge Domine (Papal Bull, 1520) (available on-line)
 -Whether Secular Government Has the Right to Wield the Sword in Matters of Faith: A
Controversy in Nürnberg, 1530, edited and translated by James Estes (Toronto: Center
for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 1994), pp. 37-118
Secondary Sources
 Brad Gregory, Salvation at Stake (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), Chap.
3: “The Willingness to Kill”

E. William Monter, “Heresy Executions in Reformation Europe, 1520-1565, in Ole Grell
and Bob Scribner, Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 48-64
Friday, July 19: Trials for Heresy (Discussion leaders: Victoria Christman and Jane Wickersham)
Primary Sources
 The Spanish Inquisition 1478-1614: An Anthology of Sources edited and translated by Lu
Ann Homza (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co, 2006), pp. 13-50; 168-211
 “The Trial of Michael Servetus” (1553) in The Registers of the Company of Pastors of
Geneva in the Time of Calvin edited and translated by Philip Hughes (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1966), pp. 223-85
 “The Trial and Martyrdom of Michael Sattler” in A Reformation Reader: Primary Texts
with Introductions edited by Denis Janz (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008), pp. 212-14
Secondary Sources
 B. Netanyahu, Towards the Inquisition: Essays on Jewish and Converso History in Late
Medieval Spain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 183-200
 Alastair Duke, Judith Pollmann, and Andrew Spicer, “The ‘Inquisition’ and the Repression
of Religious Dissent in the Habsburg Netherlands 1521-1566” in Dissident Identities in
the Early Modern Low Countries (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 99-118
 S.S. Menchi, “The Inquisitor as Mediator,” in Ronald Delph, Michelle Fontaine, & John
Jeffries Martin, Heresy, Culture, and Religion in Early Modern Italy (Kirksville, 2006), pp.
173-92
Week 2: Tolerance in theory and in limited practice
Monday July 22: Proponents of Toleration (Discussion leaders: Geoffrey Dipple and Shira
Weidenbaum)
Primary Sources
 Sebastian Castellio, Concerning Heretics (1554) edited and translated by Roland Bainton
(New York: Octagon Books, 1965), pp. 121-40 (dedication letters)
 Johannes Reuchlin, Recommendation Whether to Confiscate, Destroy and Burn all Jewish
Books translated and edited by Peter Wortsman (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), pp. 3188
 Martin Luther, Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (1523) in
Luther’s Works vol. 45, edited by Walther Brandt (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press1962),
pp. 104-118
Secondary Sources
 Hans Guggisberg, “The Defence of Religious Toleration and Religious Liberty in Early
Modern Europe: Arguments, Pressures, and Some Consequences” History of European
Ideas 4 (1983): 35-50

Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Toleration and Intolerance in England, 15001700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 228-246
Wednesday July 24: Catholics in Elizabethan England (Discussion leaders: Susan Cogan and
Jason Strandquist)
Primary Sources
 The Execution of Justice in England by William Cecil and A True, Sincere, and Modest
Defense of English Catholics by William Allen edited by Robert Kingdon (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1965), pp. 1-41; 53-78; 93-117
Secondary Sources
 John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558-1689 (Harlow:
Pearson Education, 2000), pp. 78-109
 Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Toleration and Intolerance in England, 15001700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 39-105
Friday July 26 Protestants in Catholic France (Discussion leader: Barbara Diefendorf)
Primary Sources
 The French Wars of Religion: Selected Documents edited and translated by David Potter
(New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997), pp. 211-252 (France under Henry IV)
 “The Edict of Nantes” (1598) in The Edict of Nantes: Five Essays and a New Translation
edited by Richard Goodbar (Bloomington: National Huguenot Society, 1998), pp. 41-68
Secondary Sources
 Barbara Diefendorf, “Waging Peace: Memory, Identity, and the Edict of Nantes” in
Religious Differences in France: Past and Present edited by Kathleen Perry Long
(Kirksville, Truman State University Press, 2006), pp. 19-49
 Keith Luria, Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early Modern France
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), pp. 1-46; 143-92
Week 3: Co-existence and bi-confessional communities
Monday July 29: The Swiss lands and the Holy Roman Empire (Discussion leaders: James
Blakeley and Emily Gray)
Primary Sources
 Wittenberg Concord (1536), in Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition.
Volume II, Part Four: Creeds and Confessions of the Reformation Era, ed. By Jaroslav
Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 796-801
 Provisions from Second Peace of Kappel (1531)
 Provisions from 1555 Religious Peace of Augsburg recognizing “churches of the Augsburg
Confession” (available on-line)
Secondary Sources
 Scott Dixon, 'Urban Order and Religious Coexistence in the German Imperial City:
Augsburg and Donauwörth, 1548–1608', Central European History, 40 (2007): 1–33
 Berndt Hamm, 'Tolerance and Heresy: Martin Bucer's Radical new Definition of Christian
Fellowship', in Politics and Reformations: Histories and Reformation. Essays in Honor of
Thomas A. Brady, Jr., ed. by Christopher Ocker and et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 269-91
 Randolph Head 'Religious Coexistence and Confessional Conflict in the Vier Dörfer.
Practices of Toleration in Eastern Switzerland, 1525-1615', in Beyond the Persecuting
Society: Religious Toleration before the Enlightenment, ed. by John Christian Laursen and
Cary J. Nederman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), pp. 145-65
 Jesse Spohnholz, The Tactics of Toleration (Newark: University of Delaware, Press, 2011),
pp. 69-106
Wednesday, July 31: Eastern European models of co-existence (Discussion leaders: Tim Fehler
and David Mayes)
Primary Sources
 “The Confession of Holy Christian Faith of All Three Estates (Bohemian Confession of
1575)” (available on-line)
 Act of the Diet of Torda, 1568 (available on-line)
 Consensus of Sandomierz (1570) (available on-line)
Secondary Sources
 Graeme Murdock, “The Boundaries of Reformed Irenicism: Royal Hungary and the
Transylvanian Principality” in Conciliation and Confession: The Struggle for Unity in the
Age of Reform, 1415-1648 edited by Howard Loutham and Randall Zachman (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), pp. 150-172
 Zdenek David, “Confessional Accommodation in Early Modern Bohemia: Shifting
Relations between Catholics and Utraquists” in Conciliation and Confession: The Struggle
for Unity in the Age of Reform, 1415-1648 edited by Howard Loutham and Randall
Zachman (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), pp. 173-98
 Daniel Tollet, “Religious Coexistence and Competition in the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth c. 1600, in Religious and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400-1700 edited
by Heinz Schilling and István Tóth (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006), pp. 64-87
Friday, August 2: Permeable boundaries and social interactions (Discussion leaders: Greg
Bereiter and Beth Plummer)
Primary Sources
 Selections from the records of the Genevan Consistory, 1541-64
 Selections from John Quick, The Acts, Decisions, Decrees, and Canons of those famous
National Councils of the Reformed Churches in France (London: Parkhurst & Robinson,
1692)

Ecclesiastical ordinances of the States of Holland, 1576 and 1583, in Alastair Duke, Gillian
Lewis, and Andrew Pettegree, eds Calvinism in Europe, 1540-1610: A Collection of
documents (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992, pp. 175-81 and 184-87
Secondary Sources
 Willem Frijhoff, “How Plural were the Religious Worlds in Early Modern Europe? Critical
Reflections from the Netherlandic Experience” in Living with Religious Diversity in Early
Modern Europe edited by Scott Dixon, Dagmar Freist, and Mark Greengrass (Farnham:
Ashgate, 2009), pp. 21-51
 Benjamin Kaplan, “A Friend to the Person” and “Transgressions” in Divided by Faith:
Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: MA:
Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 237-93
 Keith Luria, “Sharing Sacred Space: Protestant Temples and Religious Coexistence in the
Seventeenth Century” in Religious Differences in France: Past and Present edited by
Kathleen Perry Long (Kirksville, Truman State University Press, 2006), pp. 51-72
Week 4: Christians, Jews and Muslims
Monday, August 5: Legal Status and Theological Justifications (Discussion leaders: Gerrit
Voogt and Daniel Wasserman-Soler)
Primary Sources
 Isaac ben Abraham, Faith Strengthened (1593) (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1970),
pp. i-iv; 1-22; 217-26
 Martin Luther, “On War Against the Turk” (1529), in Robert Schultz and Helmut
Lehmann, eds, Luther’s Works (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967), vol. 46, pp. 161-205
 Martin Bucer, Ratschlag, ob Christlicher Oberkait gebüren müge, das sye die Juden
undter den Christen zu wonen gedulden (1538) (Unpublished English translation by Amy
Burnett)
Secondary Sources
 Elisheva Carlebach, “Jewish Responses to Christianity in Reformation Germany” in Jews,
Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany edited by Dean Bell and
Stephen Burnett (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 451-80
 Thomas Kaufmann, “The Christian Perception of Islam in the late Middle Ages and in the
Reformation” Comparativ: Leipziger Beiträge zur Universalgeschichte und
Vergleichenden Gesellschaftsforschung 20 (2010): 43-57
 Gregory J. Miller, 'Luther on the Turks and Islam', Lutheran Quarterly 14 (2000): 79-97
 Juan Pulido Serrano, “Plural Identities: the Portuguese New Christians” Jewish History 25
(2011): 129-51
Wednesday, August 7: Inter-faith Relations in Practice (Discussion leader: Dean Bell)
Primary Sources
 selections from Chava Fraenkel Goldschmidt, The Historical Writings of Joseph of
Rosheim: Leader of Jewry in Early Modern Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2006): “The Letter of
Consolation” (response to Bucer’s Judenratschlag), pp. 363-74; description of expulsions
Secondary Sources
 Dean Bell, “The Little Ice Age and the Jews: Environmental History and the Mercurial
Nature of Jewish-Christian Relations in Early Modern Germany” AJS Review 32 (2008):127
 Benjamin Kaplan, “Infidels: Muslims and Jews in Christian Europe” in Divided by Faith:
Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: MA:
Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 294-332
 Magda Teter, “‘Bad and Cruel Catholics’: Christian Sins and Social Intimacies between
Jews and Christians” in Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in
the Post-Reformation Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 59-79
Friday, August 9: Successes and challenges of co-existence (Discussion leaders: Ekaterina
Lomperis and Brad Smith)
Secondary Sources
 Mark Greengrass, “Living Religious Diversity” in Living with Religious Diversity in Early
Modern Europe edited by Scott Dixon, Dagmar Freist, and Mark Greengrass (Farnham:
Ashgate, 2009), pp. 281-95
 Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Toleration and Intolerance in England, 15001700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 300-328