Jedność i różnorodność Europy we wczesnej epoce nowożytnej : religia – społeczeństwo – państwo
The book contains Polish translations of seven essays by Heinz Schilling on 16th-century
reforms of Christianity and their influence on emerging cultural and political divisions
in Europe, as well as on the acceptance of confessional diversity, interfaith dialogue
and the principle of tolerance. The first essay is devoted to the state and church policies of Charles V. The author
begins with presenting two key events for the reign of Charles V. The first is the Diet
of Worms in 1521, a site of conflict between Charles V of Habsburg and Martin Luther,
whose The second event crucial from Charles’ perspective happened in 1547 in Saxony, when the
imperial army defeated the army of the Schmalkaldic League during its first assault. The
religious and eschatological aspect of this victory over the Protestants was quite
visible in the Emperor’s consciousness as well as in later propaganda. Schilling devotes much attention to analyzing the Emperor’s religiousness. The only
available information on the matter was found in letters and documents left by Charles V
and in isolated and rare reports and testimonies. Not much is known about the influence
of religion on Charles V during his childhood. His religiousness had certainly formed
before Luther’s reveal of his 95 theses and was inclined towards the strict fulfillment
of church commandments. His upbringing had an enormous impact on his later efforts to
usher in a spiritual and political renewal and to rebuild the Christian world. Such
constant and deeply rooted views made it impossible for Charles V to abandon his
principles, which made him mentally and spiritually incapable of comprehending the
religious situation in the 1520s and of adjusting his actions accordingly. In the next part Schilling focuses on Charles’ religious policy. His actions
towards Luther and his supporters failed to unite Europe, which was his main goal.
Instead, they effectively reinforced divisions and provided new reasons for its
disintegration. The author also mentions Charles’ struggles in his conflicts
with the Turks and his attempts at sustaining unity in areas outside of immediate
Habsburg authority. The second essay discusses Erasmus of Rotterdam, one of the main humanists of the
Renaissance period. His views on the events of the time were quite close to these of
Charles V. Just like the Emperor, he saw Christianity as a unity in its ideal, political
and social sense. According to him, any antagonisms and particularisms within
Christianity led to unnecessary divisions. Erasmus did not perceive the divisions into
particular structures which had formed along the borders of counties and influences long
before Martin Luther posted his Theses. His views and his slightly
idealized concept of Christian unity prevented him from understanding the political
reality and its governing principles, which made his outlook slightly anachronistic and
his ideal impossible to realize. The third chapter deals with the phenomenon of confessionalization, that is the emergence
of divisions between confessions. The text focuses on two centuries, between 1450 and
1650, and limits to the area of Latin Christianity—which was Roman Catholic at first,
and later multi-denominational—which is described by the author as “Latin Europe,” a
type of civilization. It was a time of great transformations in church and religious
issues, cultural and mental notions, the ideas of statehood, politics and society.
Confessionalization is, therefore, much more than the emergence of new confessions and
modern Churches as institutions. It is a far-reaching process that completely
transformed the public and private life of Europe, impacting the formation of modern
states and disciplined societies at the same time. From the second half of the 16th
century, confessionalization played the role of a modernizing factor in all areas of
public and private life. The period is the only time when such dramatic and crucial
changes occurred in the history of Latin Christianity. Religious wars were also an
inseparable element of the process, fuelling the formation and modernization processes
in religion and politics. Another consequence of confessionalization were the changes in
spheres such as education, marriage, family, upbringing, the role of women and the
public sphere, it also ushered in new forms in people’s thinking, emotions and behavior.
The author describes the influence of confessionalization on the evolution of the
society of Latin Europe in a general sense, detailing key processes and transformations
and emphasizing the fact that the process is extremely complex and constitutes a diverse
field of research. In the forth chapter Schilling discusses two religious treaties from 1555 and 1649 from
the perspective of acceptance for diversity and evolution of the problem of religion in
Europe in direct reference to the present and the future. The author describes the
situation of German states, focusing on the reaction of the Reich to the diversity of
religions and churches that emerged after the Reformation and confessionalization. The author concludes that the decisions of the peace treaty of 1555 were reduced to means
of winning additional benefits for individual denominations. He assesses the peace as an
archaic, outdated and not necessarily beneficial compromise. For a generation which
entered maturity at that time in Germany, religion had always been closely related to
politics, and was linked to acquiring greater political, legal and territorial gains and
expanding power. This ambivalent situation means that religious peace and the acceptance
of religious diversity were, in reality, two separate issues. And although the Peace of
Augsburg was never revoked, it most certainly failed. The willingness to coexist
peacefully began to fade, and the process of confessionalization was growing in
strength. With the new generation gaining power (1570-1585), the drive towards
compromise was abandoned and a new system of power and influence emerged that aimed at
excluding other denominations. This transformation also took place at the very top when
Maximilian II died and was succeeded by Rudolf II. The Holy See, which initially
did not protest against the religious peace of 1555, decided to reexamine the
issue. The established peace crumbled at the beginning of the 17th century as
the result of the tensions caused by the belief held by the representatives of each of
the denominations that they in fact were in possession of the absolute truth—which, in
long term perspective, made it impossible for them to accept and understand the views of
other confessions. Peace was renewed in 1648 with a treaty which this time turned out to
be more durable and more detailed in its decisions. It also managed to construct quite a
clear division between political and religious issues. Society also changed, becoming
more secularized and tolerant. Religiousness was no longer perceived as the unity within
the national community. However, the decisions of the treaty addressed only three
denominations—Protestantism, Calvinism and Catholicism—so it still remained far from the
modern pluralism of worldviews. In the conclusion, the author proposes that
Germany still recognizes its special obligations towards churches and
religious communities that are rooted in history and grants privileges to Christian
churches by recognizing their legal entity. The fifth chapter focuses on cultural exchanges and international relations in Central
and Eastern Europe in 14th-17th centuries and is divided into two parts. The first
presents a historiographic outline of the role and function of religion in the history
of old Europe, with special emphasis on its mid-16th-century confessional form. The
author starts with the assumption that the Reformation period and, to some extent, the
Middle Ages can be perceived as s social system in which the Church and religion serve
as the foundation of the social structure and an element crucial for the functioning of
political and social life. That is why a thorough analysis of the structure of Europe
and its characteristic transformations in that period is impossible without the
inclusion of religious transformations as one of primary categories of historical
studies. This approach resulted in many monographic studies being published in the 1980s
and 1990s which focused on the history of Churches and confessions and included the
perspective of social history. Next, there was the process of secularization during
which church and state structures still interlocked. The author points to the fact that
the concept according to which the Reformation constituted a breakthrough in general
history is mainly rooted in the assumptions of Protestants and 19th-century German
historiography. He also claims that the view that modernity emerged from the Reformation
is a thoroughly German outlook. Studies show that the beginnings and the acceleration of
transformations did not coincide with the Reformation period, but rather happened in the
period after 1550, especially in the decades before and after the year 1600. Schilling
concludes the first part with a discussion of confessionalization as modernization. He
portrays it as a process of fundamental social change which engulfed all aspects of
public and private life, including religion, the Church, mentality and culture, and
transformations in states, policies and societies. In the second part of the text, the author focuses on the impact these transformations
had on the relations between religions and confessions, presenting Jan Łaski as an
example. He begins with the statement that homogenous worldview systems formed in
nations and cultures as a result of the confessionalization process which gave rise to
the division between “us” and “them.” Secondly, he argues that transformations occurred
at various times in individual regions of Europe and differed in their contents. The
author pays much attention to Jan Łaski and the impact of these cultural and religious
changes on his worldview. In the seventh chapter the author presents two contrasting stances while introducing the
reader to the evolution of research into the concept of discipline. He also explains the
success of the concept in the 1970s and 1980s as well as the grounds for its criticism.
He emphasizes the importance of the studies of the concept of discipline from the macro-
and microhistorical perspective and of the way they complemented each other, which
influenced the full and accurate understanding of the concept. A substantial part of the
article is devoted to the discussion of Heinrich Richard Schmidt’s publication on
Evangelical Reformed moral discipline in rural Berne communities in the early modern
period. Schilling’s main objective is to see if and how the author of the publication
applies the strategy of the dual macro- and microhistorical perspective, and, more
precisely, if he limits his attention to the general process or includes the process
within the social base and the object of discipline itself. The author is especially
intrigued by three aspects of the book, namely the wide presentation of the subject, the
monographic research into the rural communities (i.e. the Swiss villages of Vehingen and
Stettlen), and the subject in typological perspective, as the analyzed rural discipline
was introduced by the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church, which means that church
discipline was closely tied to general moral discipline. As a consequence, monetary
fines were often imposed instead of church penances. Schilling also pays much attention
to discussing discipline in two specific areas: sexuality and marriage. The last text in this collection of essays focuses on the general and historical
connection between the internal formation of European countries and the intensification
and institutionalization of their international relations, as well as their
transformation into a system of international, European, and later world powers. In the first part, the author focuses on structural and processual links. He begins with
describing two key tendencies in the state-forming process. The first one is the
emergence of the highest state authority which widens the scope of its power within the
country. More precisely, it is the formation of internal structures and the
concentration of power in the hands of the state, namely the monarch or a republican
government. As a result of the process, all aspects of foreign policy are monopolized.
The author claims that a state cannot exist without the monopolization of foreign
affairs. The second tendency is territorial expansion. In the second part the author presents a number of examples on how the history of the
formulation of the international system (with special attention paid to the
state-forming process and the changing forms of the state in the early modern period)
should be studied and described while basing on specific methodological and theoretical
premises.
Autor w siedmiu rozprawach przedstawia wpływ szesnastowiecznych reform chrześcijaństwa na wykształcenie się długotrwałych podziałów w kulturze i polityce europejskiej oraz postaw akceptacji zróżnicowania religijnego, dialogu międzywyznaniowego i zasad tolerancji. Każda z rozpraw jest próbą odpowiedzi na pytanie: w jaki sposób wczesnonowożytne procesy podziałów wyznaniowych i prób ich przezwyciężenia nadały kształt życiu politycznemu, religijnemu i kulturalnemu Europy oraz jak zrodziły się wartości takie jak dialog, kompromis i tolerancja.
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