Religious Unity and Diversity in Sixteenth-Century Europe

Commentaire

The double page that introduces Part Four of the textbook contrasts two maps which are juxtaposed side by side. While the map on the left-hand page, on a plain yellow background, presents the centres of the European Renaissance, the map on the right-hand page, titled “Political and Religious Europe in the 16th Century”, is brightly illustrated with different colours. The authors thus present the heart of the European continent as a fragmented space: “Europe torn by religion” (p. 138).
Firstly, the authors (unlike the map key) present Europe as opposed to the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire here is characterised by its two religions (“Muslims and Orthodox Christians”), without clarifying whether or not the two groups coexist; indeed, how, and in what proportions. Europe appears to implicitly identify with western Christianity. At the end of Chapter 7, the authors specify that “oriental Europe was dominated by the Orthodox religion”.
Secondly, Western Europe is divided into “Protestant states” and “states or regions remaining Catholic”. The Protestant states are in the north (England, Scotland), in Central Europe (Switzerland) and north of the Holy Roman Empire (Denmark, Sweden, Prussia, Courland). The Catholic states are in the south (Portugal, Spain, Kingdom of Naples) and the “states of the Church” (in other words: Catholic) include those east of the Holy Roman Empire, such as Poland, not named by the map but nevertheless included in this group, and Ireland. The Catholic Church “maintained its dominance in Latin Europe” (p. 156).
France enjoys a special position as home to significant “Calvinist minority groups”, designated as such by the key, and countless “Calvinist centres”, also to be found all over the Holy Roman Empire or in Poland.
A third category of differentiation is drawn around the Protestant states: the Lutheran countries in the northern part of the Empire, the Baltic states and Scandinavia; the “Calvinist states” “in the French-speaking and Anglo-Saxon” countries (p. 156), and primarily the Swish cantons, the Netherlands and Scotland. The kingdom of England, however, is Anglican.
“Religious competition”, illustrated in this chapter by a Dutch painting (p. 145), and the “war of the churches”, depicted by an engraving by Lucas Cranach the Younger (p. 138), will be transformed into “wars of religion”, portrayed on this map by four circles representing the Holy Roman Empire, Western France, the Paris Region and England.
In this chapter the authors depict the tension between the religious unity and religious diversity within Europe. While analysis has pointed out the diversity aspects, we find no fewer elements to illustrate European unity: the depiction of the church in the 15th century, the “Christian Church”, referred to in the singular, as if the entirety of Western Europe were penetrated by the same desire for reform. The religious revolution of the 16th century is a European phenomenon, the dynamics of which (“the spread of Lutherism” from Wittenberg, the “spread of Calvinism from Geneva”, the “anti-reform movement”) are illustrated by arrows pointing towards different countries at the heart of Europe within the map on page 113. Despite the emergence of new Churches, the authors remind us in the conclusion that “all European Churches are Christian” (p. 156).


Pierre-Yves Kirschleger


Bibliography:

Chaline, Olivier, La reconquête catholique de l’Europe centrale : XVIe – XVIIIe siècle, Paris, Cerf, 1998.
Cottret, Bernard, Histoire de la Réforme protestante, Paris, Perrin, 2000.