Forgetting Faith?: Negotiating Confessional Conflict in Early Modern Europe (Pluralisierung & Autorität Book 29)

For the last decade, early modern studies have significantly been reshaped by raising new and different questions on the uses of religion. This ‛religious turn’ has generated new discussion of the social processes at work in early modern Europe and their cultural effects ‑ from the struggle over religious rites and doctrines to the persecution of secret adherents to forbidden practices. The issue of religious pluralisation has been mostly debated in terms of dissent and escalation. But confessional controversy did not always erupt into hostilities over how to symbolize and perform the sacred nor lead to a paralysis of social agency. The order of the day may often have been to suspend confessional allegiances rather than enforce religious conflict, suggesting a pragmatic rather than polemic handling of religious plurality. This raises the urgent question of how 'normal' transconfessional and even transreligious interaction was produced in a context of highly sharpened and always present reflexivity on religious differences. Our volume takes up this question and explores it from an interdisciplinary and interconfessional perspective. The title “Forgetting Faith?” raises the question whether it was necessary or indeed possible to sidestep religious issues in specific contexts and for specific purposes. This does not mean, however, to describe early modern culture as a process of secularization. Rather, the collection invites discussion of the specific ways available to deal with confessional conflict in an oblivional mode, precisely because faith still mattered more than many other social paradigms emerging at that time, such as nationhood, ethnic origin or class defined through property. Introduction / Isabel Karremann, Cornel Zwierlein And Inga Mai Groote -- Too Long For A Play : Shakespeare And The Wars Of Religion / Richard Wilson -- Caesarean Negotiations : Forgetting Henri Iv's Past After The French Wars Of Religion / Andrea Frisch -- The Historical Sublime In Shakespeare's Richard Ii / Jonathan Baldo -- Flooding Faith : Forgetfulness In Robert Burton's Anatomy Of Melancholy / Ingrid Horz-davies -- Forgotten Religions, Religions That Cause Forgetting / Cornel Zwierlein -- Controversy And Reconciliation : Grotius, Vondel And The Debate On Religious Peace In The Dutch Republic / Freya Sierhuis -- The Renaissance Musician And Theorist Confronted With Religious Fragmentation : Conflict, Betrayal And Dissimulation / Inga Mai Groote And Philippe Vendrix -- 'of No Church' : Immigrants, Liefhebbers And Confessional Diversity In Elizabethan London, C. 1568-1581 / Andrew Spicer -- Trading Goods -- Trading Faith? Religious Conflict And Commercial Interests In Early Modern Spain / Thomas Weller -- Familiar Strangers : Dissimulation And Faith In Early Anglo-ottoman Travel / Stephan Schmuck -- Perpetual Oblivion? Remembering Westphalia In A Post-secular Age / Jane O. Newman. Edited By Isabel Karremann, Cornel Zwierlein, Inga Mai Groote. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Unter den Leitbegriffen ›Pluralisierung‹ und ›Autorität‹ konzentriert sich diese Reihe auf eine Grundfigur der Frühen Neuzeit. Die Aufmerksamkeit liegt dabei nicht auf dem historischen Siegeszug von Pluralität als einem Ideal der Moderne, sondern auf dem Spannungsverhältnis zwischen Phänomenen der Pluralisierung und Setzungen von Autorität. Dieses Verhältnis ist keineswegs deckungsgleich mit dem von Innovation und Beharrung: Pluralisierung bewirkt nicht nur den Abbau vorgegebener Autoritäten, sondern setzt selbst wiederum Autorisierungsprozesse in Gang. Die Leitbegriffe der Reihe eröffnen eine Doppelperspektive, die es erlaubt, für gewöhnlich isoliert betrachtete Entwicklungen in Literatur, Wissenschaft, Kunst, Gesellschaft, Religion und Recht in einem gemeinsamen interdisziplinären Rahmen zu erfassen. Die Bände der Reihe verstehen sich als Beiträge zu einer Neukartierung der Epoche zwischen dem Spätmittelalter und der ›Sattelzeit‹ um 1750. Introduction Too Long for a Play: Shakespeare and the Wars of Religion Caesarean Negotiations: Forgetting Henri IV’s Past after the French Wars of Religion The Historical Sublime in Shakespeare’s Richard II Flooding Faith: Forgetfulness in Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy Forgotten Religions, Religions that Cause Forgetting Controversy and Reconciliation: Grotius, Vondel and the Debate on Religious Peace in the Dutch Republic The Renaissance Musician and Theorist Confronted with Religious Fragmentation: Conflict, Betrayal and Dissimulation ‘Of no church’: Immigrants, liefhebbers and Confessional Diversity in Elizabethan London, c. 1568–1581 Trading Goods - Trading Faith? Religious Conflict and Commercial Interests in Early Modern Spain “Familiar Strangers”: Dissimulation, Tolerance and Faith in Early Anglo-Ottoman Travel Perpetual Oblivion? Remembering Westphalia in a Post-Secular Age Index Early modern Europe faced a host of confessional conflicts. The Reformation brought about struggles over religious rites and doctrines as well as the persecution of secret adherents and forbidden practices. So far, the issues of religious pluralisation and the divisions between Catholic and Protestant positions, among sectarian movements, or between the church and the state, have been debated mostly in terms of dissent and escalation. Yet despite the centrality of confessional conflict, it did not always erupt into hostilities. Rather, everyday life had to go on, people had to arrange themselv The order of the day may have been, more often than not, to suspend confessional allegiances rather than enforce religious conflict, suggesting a pragmatic rather than polemical handling of religious plurality, in social practice as well as in textual and dramatic representations.