Preconditions of tolerance and intolerance in sixteenth-century Germany

Abstract

Introduction This chapter is intended to offer some broad reflections on the problem of tolerance and intolerance within the framework of German history which might serve as social-historical parameters for the major themes of this volume. It is my intention to raise issues for further exploration, rather than to provide answers, although many of the thoughts offered here first emerged in the course of my own research many years ago, while pondering the unique circumstances of the religious settlement achieved in the Thuringian city of Erfurt, which in 1530, by means of a treaty of state, allowed the exercise of divergent religious worship within the same polity, without implying any disobedience to the secular authority of the town's ruler. The example seemed to offer a paradigm of the conditions under which toleration was possible in the modern era: the separation of church and state and the acceptance of plurality of religions. It was immediately apparent, however, that the degree of toleration thus achieved was dependent not on any ideals about the philosophical or theological desirability of toleration, nor on any altruistic regard for the rights of minorities, but was a consequence of Erfurt's unusual constitution, political, social and economic situation, what we might call a ‘pragmatic conjuncture’, which overrode other, under different circumstances stronger, considerations tending towards intolerance and even fanaticism. From the Erfurt example we can readily identify two approaches to tolerance and intolerance: the idea of tolerance and its theoretical foundations; and the broad conditions under which any given period or society might be said to be tolerant or intolerant.

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