Apocalypticism, Ritual and Carnival

Apocalyptic and millenarian beliefs permeated both Catholic and Protestant thought and were given added impetus by the destabilising impact of the Reformation. Prophets and their prophecies inspired resistance and reprisal, as did the radical preacher Thomas Müntzer during the German Peasants' War of 1525, which resulted in the death of many thousands of peasants in revolt against their lords.

Luther's condemnation of those who claimed to be acting in his name in his ‘Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants' lent legitimacy to the violent suppression of the revolt by delegitimising the use of force by the peasantry. Apocalypticism, the belief that the end of the world is imminent and, therefore, that preparation for the last days has to be hastened by whatever means, was at the root of much of the violence perpetrated by radical religious groups in early modern Europe, as notoriously at Münster in northern Germany in the mid 1530s. It is telling that Catholic and Protestant forces combined in the subsequent siege of the city and in the violent suppression of the movement, which had introduced compulsory rebaptism and polygamy, and expulsion or execution for those who resisted. The cages in which the corpses of the messianic regime's leaders were placed after torture and execution were hung from the tower of the city's main church as a grisly reminder of the violent fate awaiting rebels against the establishment.

Even the passive withdrawal of religious groups from society, which was also often inspired by apocalyptic beliefs, antagonised the authorities, who condemned such actions as seditious and harmful to the social order. The forced expulsion or dispersal of such communities was a common response, as was the case with the Hutterites in central Europe. Like many other minority groups, including Jews, they were gradually forced further east, some choosing instead to seek refuge in North America.

Violence carried out against civil war sects in seventeenth-century England, such as the Levellers and the Diggers, further demonstrates the official condemnation of acts of non-conformity and social protest. On the other hand, impatience with and intolerance of those who appeared to be obstructing the divine plan led to violent acts by radical groups. All parties believed that divine providence was on their side, whether reflected in their defeat of opponents or in their own testing through persecution. Indeed, the role of providence in both provoking and explaining violence is clear from many studies focusing on both Protestant and Catholic states. In sixteenth-century France, for instance, the trauma of civil war inspired lurid tales of unnatural violence and extreme cruelty, such as that perpetrated by parents against their children, and ‘wonderbooks' of the period were obsessed by prodigious signs. The collapse of buildings and the sudden death of opponents were seen as providential indications of divine disapproval, as when a chapel in Blackfriars in London fell down in 1623, killing a Jesuit preacher and his congregation.

While many traditional beliefs continued to be embraced by both Catholics and Protestants, historians have emphasised differences between the faiths when it came to the use and application of violence. Our attention was first drawn to the specific focus of Protestants on the destruction of material objects and assaults on Catholic clergy, and the Catholic emphasis on the removal of the pollution of heresy through the killing of Protestants, by an article by Natalie Zemon Davis.^{^[806]} It formed the basis of an influential ongoing debate about the nature of confessional conflict in early modern Europe. Drawing on anthropological and sociological approaches, Davis remarked in particular upon the apparent contrast between the ritualised violence used in the French religious wars by the faiths, and most of the bloodshed perpetrated by members of the Catholic majority against the Protestant minority.

As Davis herself has pointed out, however, this dichotomy was never absolute. If we look elsewhere in Europe, too, members of the clergy were, unsurprisingly, a prominent target of popular religious violence in most regions. For instance, in Poland-Lithuania in 1623 the Greek Catholic archbishop of Polatsk was murdered by an Orthodox crowd, his corpse dragged through the streets and dumped in a river, and hundreds of Greek Catholic priests were later killed during the Cossack uprising of 1648. Yet, it was not always so. Georg Michels' comparative analysis of the nature of popular religious violence against the official church in seventeenth-century Hungary and Russia argues that the marked differences to be found are due to context. In Hungary, iconoclasm and the ritual humiliation and torture of priests and their families, in response to the imposition of Catholicism in the 1670s and 1680s, is reminiscent of the ritualised violence of the Reformation years in much of western Europe. Here, however, it was Protestants who carried out the most brutal acts, including ‘various forms of sexual torture', even castration, of priests.^{^[807]} In Russia, by contrast, the official imposition of a new Orthodox oligarchy inspired a more socio-economic response, focused on plunder and destruction and largely devoid of ritualised religious elements.

Nevertheless, ritualised violence was already a well-established feature of non-religious cultural practices throughout Europe. Popular culture was shaped by collective expectations of behaviour and the policing of local morals. Religious groups were, thus, able to draw on an existing repertoire of responses to intercommunal friction. The socio-cultural practice of charivari provided an outlet for community tensions, but it both ‘resolved conflict and furthered it' and was ‘fraught with the potential for violence’.^{^[808]} ^{^[809]} This is unsurprising, since it encompassed animosities and feuds, as well as grudges of various sorts, often conducted by gangs of young men.

The public humiliation of cuckolded husbands or those beaten by their wives was a favourite pastime. But, combined with other resentments, mockery and derision could quickly lead to rough justice, blows and even murder. The rituals of Carnival, the disorderly festival preceding Lent, allowed for such unpredictable and rowdy behaviour, too. In a couple of infamous sixteenthcentury instances, it provided a stage for the acting out of barbaric cruelties as part of a family vendetta in Friuli, Italy, and the violent outcome of political and socio-economic tensions within the small town of Romans in southern France. Ritual practices continued to be employed throughout the early modern period for the sometimes violent expression of grievances. One infamous episode was the so-called Great Cat Massacre perpetrated by workers in eighteenth-century Paris and brought so vividly to life by Robert Darnton.11 Here, ritual combined with socio-economic resentment and feline symbolism in an explosive mix, with the resulting slaughter of cats reflective of social and cultural tensions within the master’s household and workshop. This event was also a simple extension of the ritualised torture and killing of animals which was a common feature of early modern popular festivals and street entertainment throughout Europe.

With the advent of the Reformation, confessional divisions generated new points of difference cutting across many existing areas of communal solidarity which were not previously at issue. Religious tensions could combine with and exacerbate, as well as run counter to and forge anew, existing hostilities, as they did at Romans. They were, at once, both galvanising and destructive. Another striking form of interpersonal violence, which escalated during the Reformation, involved attacks on those already dead. The disruption of burials and the disinterment and desecration of bodies took place in different locations from Ireland to Hungary. In England, in one instance, the decapitated head of an executed priest was used as a football; in France, corpses were left to the attentions of scavenging dogs and birds. Cemeteries were also targeted, graves vandalised and monuments pulled down. Disrespect and hostility towards the members of other faiths displayed by such violent activities, denying them the right to a proper Christian burial, was symbolic and unsettling and designed to intimidate. Other acts of confessional violence included attacks, both physical and verbal, on preachers during sermons and priests during processions; random or more premeditated assaults on those associated with the other faith; and threats of violence against those who supported them, even members of one's own family. Furthermore, the burning down and demolition of churches and sites of devotional importance, book burnings and the desecration of shrines and crosses brought a material dimension to violent rejection of the opposing faith.

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Source: Antony Robert, Carroll Stuart, Pennock Caroline D. (eds.). The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 3: AD 1500-AD 1800. Cambridge University Press,2020. — 710 p.. 2020

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