Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures, Maps, and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on Usages
- Map 1 The Empire in 1547
- Map 2 The Peace of Westphalia, 1648
- Part I The Empire, the German Lands, and Their Peoples
- Part II Reform of the Empire and the Church, 1400–1520
- Part III Church, Reformations, and Empire, 1520–1576
- Part IV Confessions, Empire, and War, 1576–1650
- 13 Forming the Protestant Confessions
- 14 Reforming the Catholic Church
- 15 Limits of Public Life – Jews, Heretics, Witches
- 16 Roads to War
- 17 The Thirty Years War
- 18 German Reformations, German Futures
- Appendix
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
15 - Limits of Public Life – Jews, Heretics, Witches
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures, Maps, and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on Usages
- Map 1 The Empire in 1547
- Map 2 The Peace of Westphalia, 1648
- Part I The Empire, the German Lands, and Their Peoples
- Part II Reform of the Empire and the Church, 1400–1520
- Part III Church, Reformations, and Empire, 1520–1576
- Part IV Confessions, Empire, and War, 1576–1650
- 13 Forming the Protestant Confessions
- 14 Reforming the Catholic Church
- 15 Limits of Public Life – Jews, Heretics, Witches
- 16 Roads to War
- 17 The Thirty Years War
- 18 German Reformations, German Futures
- Appendix
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of VeniceAll Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent.
Edmund BurkeWitchcraft celebrates / Pale Hecate's offerings; and withered murder, / Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf, / Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, / With Tarquin's ravishing strides, toward his design / Moves like a ghost.
William Shakespeare, MacbethThe rapid growth, large followings, and powerful leaders of the confessions in the German lands vastly expanded the limits of public life, that is, the boundaries between those who possessed defensible rights and those who did not. The massive, overwhelming scope of the religious division defied the traditional remedy for heresy, which was judicial prosecution with three possible outcomes: acquittal, recantation, or death. The Peace of Augsburg transformed heresy from a spiritual crime into a question of temporal obedience, to be enforced – or not – at the temporal ruler's pleasure. This law averted the terrible spectre of a general civil war by accepting the lesser evil of a political toleration of religious differences. The Empire remained, on the one hand, a Catholic polity that tolerated those of the emperor's direct subjects who adhered to the (Lutheran) Confession of Augsburg. This is why the Calvinists, who appeared on the scene only five or so years later, had to present themselves as Lutherans with a difference.
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- German Histories in the Age of Reformations, 1400–1650 , pp. 319 - 348Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009