Violence in the Community
Benjamin Kaplan and others have remarked on the importance of the public nature of the causes of confessional violence throughout Europe; ‘the explosive potential of public religious acts was unmatched'.[802] It was offence done to the community, as much as the practice of another faith, which provoked a violent response.
This involved processions through sensitive areas of towns, the carrying of weapons to services, verbal as much as physical confrontations, but also passive resistance by those not involved in the usual communal activities, absenting themselves from parish life and the liturgical cycle. Feast days, and significant events such as Corpus Christi (the annual celebration of that most divisive of theological subjects, the Eucharist), were flashpoints for violent confrontations between the faiths. In areas with a history of tension, there was always a certain amount of volatility around public holidays, in particular, and individual actions which caused offence could soon stir others to action. Non-participation, such as eating meat or working on fast days, or failing to decorate houses on the procession route or to respect the passing of the Host, were symbolic and provocative stances which invited a sometimes violent response. In France, in Clermont in Auvergne, at Corpus Christi 1568, a Protestant whose house was undecorated (as it was customarily required to be on feast days), and who additionally was accused of throwing stones at the Host, was burned alive by a Catholic mob. Reactions were not often this extreme, but some form of insult or minor assault was commonplace, especially when suspicion and rumour were involved. Verbal exchanges and physical blows were part and parcel of confessional tensions. Tiles, stones, mud, ordure and even animals, such as cats (symbolic of unbridled sexuality), were all thrown at opponents in an attempt to humiliate and provoke. However, ‘it took more than the existence of religious difference to make people start lynching their neighbours', and ‘a violent popular response to the rise of Protestantism' was not inevitable.[803] Even in the most volatile circumstances, violence was not an everyday occurrence, although the potential was always there wherever differences existed which could be exploited. Provocative behaviour was a visible source of many incidents of confessional violence, but such tensions could be defused by the use of active restraint and careful vigilance by the authorities.Although the fundamental Reformation divide was between Protestant and Catholic, religious pluralism incorporated a myriad of beliefs (or multi- confessionalism) which needed to be practically accommodated in many regions. Nevertheless, in certain circumstances, acts of violence could also occur in successfully mixed local communities. Indeed, Kaplan urges us to consider toleration a pragmatic necessity which involved the regulation and containment of conflict rather than its elimination.[804] Although largely stable, religiously diverse polities such as Transylvania, Prussia, Lithuania and Poland witnessed violent clashes between Catholics, Orthodox, Calvinists and Lutherans as well as Antitrinitarians. On the whole, though, the populations of these areas of central and eastern Europe displayed more toleration, it is argued, due to their long experience of dealing with pluralism and diversity. Nevertheless, while on many occasions neighbours passed each other on the way to different churches without obvious signs of mutual hostility, the fragility of coexistence was ever present and ‘apparently stable relations between religious communities could quickly be disrupted by episodes of violence'.[805] In Vilnius (Wilno) in Lithuania, for instance, where there was a largely peaceful religiously pluralistic community of five confessions, there were still occasional clashes.
Such incidents might lead to the closing or removal of churches, or even the suppression of a community, to defuse tensions or punish perpetrators. In Torun, Prussia, in 1724, leading Lutheran officials took the rap for failing to prevent an attack on the local Jesuit college, resulting in their execution. Local authorities were expected to intervene in disputes to maintain the peace whatever their own prejudices and, as in this case, could be expected to be punished if they were unwilling or unable to do so.While there could be reconciliation and accommodation with some groups, others were beyond redemption. Particularly harsh punishments were reserved for those with the most radical views, collectively if erroneously termed Anabaptists, who were summarily executed in both Catholic and Protestant states for their unorthodox beliefs. Members of radical sects and their sites of worship were also singled out for attack. Their involvement in violent attempts to hasten change rapidly lost them sympathy with both the authorities and the populace alike and was used to justify their forceful suppression. An extreme religious group, the Old Believers in Russia, combined attacks on the Muscovite Church with mass ‘suicides' (in which victims did not always go to their deaths voluntarily), reminiscent of some fanatical cults of more recent times. Belying their passive reputation, they terrorised monasteries and civilians who did not comply with their commands. Like other non-mainstream religious groups, radicals were expelled or deported, sometimes forcibly, from territories. The ongoing if sporadic persecution of the Jewish communities of Europe also continued, including the segregation of the Prague ghetto, anti-Jewish violence of various sorts, and also many expulsions, such as from Vienna in 1669-70. In southern Ukraine, however, tens of thousands of Jews were killed in the Khmelnitsky massacres of 1648-58. In 1609 the order was given for the forced deportation of the moriscos (converted Muslims) from Spain to North Africa following episodes of brutal repression by the authorities in preceding decades.