Heretics and Idolators: Conflict and Controversy in the Reformation

For centuries the history of the European Reformation was written in the terms of sixteenth-century religious rhetoric: Protestants vs Papists and heretics vs idolators.  While scholarly discussions in recent decades have come to focus more on the nuances of coexistence, negotiation, and the complex factors involved in these religious controversies, it remains all too easy for sixteenth-century polemic to dominate classroom discussion.  This presentation will discuss the challenge of finding an effective balance between getting students to take religious ideas seriously as a factor in Reformation-era conflicts, on one hand and, on the other, reducing the conflicts to “only religion,” and phrasing everything in the terms of the religious propaganda of the time.  It will suggest that while the traditional narrative of the religious conflicts of the Reformation remains an important organizational and conceptual tool, incorporating previously overlooked examples of negotiation and discussion—in places such as France, the Netherlands, and even Geneva—is critical for helping students to grapple with both the complexities and the historical ramifications of the “era of religious wars.”