religious history

The early modern period is surely not remembered as a century of tolerance. During the so-called Reformation times, however, the question of tolerance became a central issue for the first time in public discourse. Propositions for toleration were either to argue for the freedom of conscience, or to procure greater civil security.

Intellectuals who argued for more religious tolerance had mostly a firm humanist education. Humanist discourse, thus, started to be used for new, "Christian" goals in Northern Europe. The course is going to examine the cooperation and tension between humanism and the reformation. Special attention will be paid to the radical reformation (e.g. Central-European antitrinitarianism) and the heterodox interconfessionalism, the humanists which prepared the way for a more modern religiosity in the time of Enlightenment as well as laid the groundstones of civil rights to be codified by the time of the French Revolution.