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Narratives of Peace in Religious Discourses
Perspectives from Europe and the Mediterranean in the Early Modern Era
Edited by
Ludovico Battista [+–]
Sapienza University of Rome
Ludovico Battista (PhD, Sapienza University of Rome) is a researcher at Sapienza University of Rome. He deals with the history of Christianity and the critical relationship between theology and philosophy. His interests focus on the problem of secularization and the genesis of modernity, on the Renaissance and the period of the Reformation (with specific attention to Erasmus and his reception in Italy), on the question of political theology since the early Christianity and the patristic reflection. Among his publications: Hans Blumenberg e l’autodistruzione del cristianesimo, Viella, Roma, 2021; and Le ragioni della religione. Mito, modernità e secolarizzazione in H. Blumenberg and J. Habermas, Lithos, Roma, 2021.
Maria Fallica [+–]
Sapienza University of Rome
Maria Fallica (Ph. D., Sapienza University of Rome) is a Post-Doc researcher at Sapienza University of Rome. Her research interests lie in the reception of the Fathers of the Church in the modern age, the history of the Reformations, the Italian Reformation of the 16th century, the history of methodism. Her most recent publications are The Protestant Origen. Polemical Use and Theological Appropriation of Origen in 16th Century Patristic Anthologies, Aschendorff, Münster, 2022 and Il metodismo via media della Riforma. Progresso e tradizione nella Christian Library di Wesley, Carocci, Roma, 2022.
Beatrice Tramontano [+–]
Sapienza University of Rome
Beatrice Tramontano’s (PhD., Sapienza University of Rome) research deals with the topic of multiculturalism in the Western liberal democraticies, with a focus on the comparison of the philosophical theories of Charles Taylor and Jürgen Habermas, and focusing on certain aspects of multicultural societies such as religious pluralism, the relationship between religions and public space, secularization and post-secularism, and the question of recognition and individual and collective rights within the liberal-democratic normative system. She has published articles on the developments and critiques of the multicultural model by interculturalism, postcolonial studies and feminist theory as well as the relationship between multiculturalism and immigration in European societies.
In the Modern Age, the encounter and conflict between competing religious identities produced a renewed emphasis on the concept of peace, which was invested with religious, political and ideological connotations that still need to be investigated. This volume explores the role of religious discourse in the construction of the concept of peace from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, analyzing the narratives which in Europe gave extrahuman value to peace, with a focus on the processes of idealization of peace and the relationship with the concept of toleration. The volume investigates crucial authors such as Nicholas of Cusa, Luis Vives, Pico della Mirandola, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Thomas More, Pierre Bayle, Benjamin Constant, who reflected on the problem of tolerance as an attempt to shape the relationship between confessions as a peaceful coexistence beyond doctrinal differences. The essays explore the extent to which religious conflicts within Christianity triggered a rhetoric of peace and tolerance/toleration, for instance in the case of the French Wars of Religion and the Revolt of the Netherlands. The rhetoric and imaginary field of peace in its religious connotations are then explored and analyzed in their apocalyptic (for Benivieni or Savonarola) or humanistic connotations (from Petrarca to Pico). The essays combine history, philosophy, history of religions and anthropology, with approaches that go from the historical-critical analysis of documents, to archive research, to comparative history to the analysis of the world of objects, that, following the “material turn”, allows an alternative view on the narratives of confrontation and peace that presided over the intrareligious exchange.
Series: Religions and Peace Studies
Table of Contents
Prelims
Foreword vii-x
Sapienza University, Rome
Alessandro Saggioro is Full Professor in History of Religions and member of the Department of History, Anthropology, Religions, Arts, Performing Arts of Sapienza University. Faculty member since 2007, he is leading or supervising research and teaching projects related to religious pluralism, mediation, peaceful coexistence. Director of the PhD Course in History and Cultures of Europe of Sapienza University and delegate for this University in the Italian network of Universities for Peace (https://www.runipace.org/), he is also editor-in-chief of Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni and of the related book series Quaderni di SMSR. Books recently edited: with C. Russo: Roma città plurale. Le religioni, il territorio, le ricerche, Chi siamo – Storia delle religioni 48, Bulzoni, Rome, 2018; Definire il pluralismo religioso, Morcelliana, Brescia, 2020. His interests and publications include teaching, methodology and Historiography of the History of Religions, religious conflict and coexistence, religions of Ancient Mediterranean, religions, law and politics, identity, mythology and peace studies.
Introduction
Sapienza University of Rome
Maria Fallica (Ph. D., Sapienza University of Rome) is a Post-Doc researcher at Sapienza University of Rome. Her research interests lie in the reception of the Fathers of the Church in the modern age, the history of the Reformations, the Italian Reformation of the 16th century, the history of methodism. Her most recent publications are The Protestant Origen. Polemical Use and Theological Appropriation of Origen in 16th Century Patristic Anthologies, Aschendorff, Münster, 2022 and Il metodismo via media della Riforma. Progresso e tradizione nella Christian Library di Wesley, Carocci, Roma, 2022.
Chapter 1
Theological and Philosophical Bases for Dialogue Between Religions in Cusanus’ De pace fidei [+–] 12-34
Sapienza University of Rome
Beatrice Tramontano’s (PhD., Sapienza University of Rome) research deals with the topic of multiculturalism in the Western liberal democraticies, with a focus on the comparison of the philosophical theories of Charles Taylor and Jürgen Habermas, and focusing on certain aspects of multicultural societies such as religious pluralism, the relationship between religions and public space, secularization and post-secularism, and the question of recognition and individual and collective rights within the liberal-democratic normative system. She has published articles on the developments and critiques of the multicultural model by interculturalism, postcolonial studies and feminist theory as well as the relationship between multiculturalism and immigration in European societies.
Written after the fall of Constantinople (1453), De pace fidei tries to elaborate at a philosophical and theological level a solution to the contrasts between religions. This chapter analyzes the structure of Cusanus’s work, finding the theological and philosophical aspects of his construction, in particular regarding his speculative and mystic approach to Christianism, and considering the idea of realization of an inclusive modality to thinking about religious pluralism in a line of continuity that, from De docta ignorantia to De coniecturis, lays the basis for a speculative theological mechanism of thinking about peace through the idea of coniectura, used at a historical and political level, and through the development of the core idea of una religio in rituum varietate, which shows how different religions and religious rituals are not at odds, but can be rationalized and considered as multiple manifestations of the same human research in faith.
Chapter 2
The University of Haifa
Nathan Ron is a Research fellow at the School of History, The University of Haifa, Israel. He is the author of four books: Erasmus and the “Other”: On Turks, Jews, Amerindians and Indigenous Peoples, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2019; Erasmus: Intellectual of the 16th Century. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2021; Erasmus, the Turks, and Islam, Resling, Tel Aviv, 2022 (in Hebrew); Nicholas of Cusa and Muhammad: A Critical Revisit (upcoming, Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). N. Ron is the author of numerous articles. Among them: “Erasmus’ attitude toward Islam in light of Nicholas of Cusa’s De pace fidei and Cribratio Alkorani.” Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval 26/1, 2019, 113-136; (with Thomas Izbicki) “Nicholas of Cusa and the Ottoman Threat to Christendom,” Medieval Encounters 28 (2022), 129-147.
The chapter argues that the objective of Pope Pius II’s abortive crusade, which came close to realization in 1464, was not just the retaking of Constantinople, as historians usually observe, but the conquest of Jerusalem as well. This can be deduced from several of Pius II’s orations and other sources that are analyzed here. Indeed, Nicholas of Cusa, the Pope’s lieutenant in setting the crusade in motion, does not refer to any crusade in his anti-Islamic book A Scrutiny of the Koran (Cribratio alkorani, 1461). However, the book’s treatment of Islam as a religion of the sword and its harsh denigration of Muhammad resonate with the crusading spirit of both Cusanus and Pius II. Thus, Cusanus, known as a man of peace through his irenic work De pace fidei (1453), distanced himself from the idea of religious dialogue that his name is often linked with.
Chapter 3
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Manuel López Forjas holds a PhD in Hispanic Studies from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, where he has taught History of Spanish and Latin American thought at the Department of Social Anthropology and Spanish Philosophical Thought. He is a member of the Instituto Universitario La Corte en Europa (IULCE). His research focuses on the intellectual history of Latin America and Spain and the modern history of the Hispanic world. Recently, he has edited some manuscripts from the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset: Notas de trabajo de la carpeta Vives, in “Revista de Estudios Orteguianos” 39-43.
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Veronica Tartabini is a PhD student of the Department of Social Anthropology and Spanish Philosophical Thought at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Her research focuses on the reception of Spanish mysticism in Italy – especially on the Discalced Carmelites – including María Zambrano’s philosophy. Recent publications: Rendere eterno l’istante: misticismo e realismo nel Velázquez di María Zambrano e José Ortega Y Gasset, In “B@belonline”, (2021), 8, 339-355; Verso un sapere sul sacro: dal misticismo spagnolo alla ragione poetica, in “Bajo Palabra. Revista de Filosofía”, 251-272; Pico della Mirandola y Santa Teresa: el camino compartido del Humanismo, in https://theconversation.com/pico-della-mirandola-y-santa-teresa-el-camino-compartido-del-humanismo-175103
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) offers a proposal for preserving religious peace in his well-known book Oratio elegantissima (1486). The intellectual, whose work is recognized as the manifesto of Italian humanism, opens his Novecento Tesi with the intention of demonstrating that Christianity is the peaceful meeting point of all existing cultural, theological, philosophical and, especially, religious traditions. Innocent VIII hindered his project of religious peace, but Fernán Peréz de Oliva (1492–1533) and Juan Luis Vives (1493–1540) took it upon themselves to introduce it and spread it in the Hispanic-speaking lands. It was the Valencian philosopher, in voluntary exile in Antwerp, who wrote a treatise entitled De concordia et discordia in 1529, inviting us to reflect on the devastating consequences of belligerent activity. He shares with Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536) the rejection of the concept of “just war” (bellum iustium) and of every possible manifestation of militarism. For the Spanish humanist, politics can fulfil its most noble functions, only in favour of the achievement of peaceful international coexistence. Therefore, we present a comparison between the principles of religious peace of Pico and the concept of political peace in Vives, in order to shed light on two philosophical perspectives converging in the defense of universal peace.
Chapter 4
Peace, Prophecy, and the Apocalyptic Expectation: Girolamo Benivieni’s Letter to Clement VII [+–] 90-133
Sapienza University of Rome
Maria Fallica (Ph. D., Sapienza University of Rome) is a Post-Doc researcher at Sapienza University of Rome. Her research interests lie in the reception of the Fathers of the Church in the modern age, the history of the Reformations, the Italian Reformation of the 16th century, the history of methodism. Her most recent publications are The Protestant Origen. Polemical Use and Theological Appropriation of Origen in 16th Century Patristic Anthologies, Aschendorff, Münster, 2022 and Il metodismo via media della Riforma. Progresso e tradizione nella Christian Library di Wesley, Carocci, Roma, 2022.
The eschatological atmosphere of the first half of sixteenth-century Italy was permeated by the anguishes and hopes of prophecies and predictions about impending disaster and heavenly salvation. The memory of one of the most disruptive and powerful of the prophets of the modern age, Girolamo Savonarola, who had tried to mold (thanks to an inflammatory rhetoric) Florence into a type of new Jerusalem, was often evoked by his follower Girolamo Benivieni (1453–1542). The poet wrote in his old age, in 1530, a letter to Pope Clement VII to promote the memory of Savonarola and prove the truth and usefulness of his prophecies for the Church. Benivieni’s letter is a masterful example of a political reenactment of prophecy which envisions the fulfillment of the heavenly promises on earth.
Chapter 5
The Ambiguities of Erasmus’ Religious Peace: A Reading of De amabili ecclesiae concordia (1533) [+–] 134-166
Sapienza University of Rome
Ludovico Battista (PhD, Sapienza University of Rome) is a researcher at Sapienza University of Rome. He deals with the history of Christianity and the critical relationship between theology and philosophy. His interests focus on the problem of secularization and the genesis of modernity, on the Renaissance and the period of the Reformation (with specific attention to Erasmus and his reception in Italy), on the question of political theology since the early Christianity and the patristic reflection. Among his publications: Hans Blumenberg e l’autodistruzione del cristianesimo, Viella, Roma, 2021; and Le ragioni della religione. Mito, modernità e secolarizzazione in H. Blumenberg and J. Habermas, Lithos, Roma, 2021.
The article offers an analysis of Erasmus’s De sarcienda Ecclesiae concordia and aims to show how the theme of religious concord is not simply an expression of a neutral and conciliatory position, but—particularly in reference to the biblical episode of Moses and the punishment of Korah—hides an anti-Lutheran key. The ideological exaltation of the “concordia” is a way of neutralizing the effects of the Reformation, that is, of reintegrating them into the Catholic context and thus challenging Luther for the leadership of a process of Church reform. This interpretation would later be verified following the reception that Erasmus’s text would have among some Catholic controversialists, such as Cochlaeus and Nausea.
Chapter 6
University College Cork
Antonello Mori is Junior Research Fellow at the Euronews Project of the University College Cork. He obtained his first Master’s Degree in Historical Studies at the University of Naples Federico II cum laude and his second Master’s Degree in Digital and Public Humanities at the University of Venice Ca’Foscari. His research interests are related to Digital and Public Humanities and the relationship between the religious and political power during the early modern period.
University College Cork
Antonio Senneca is Junior Research Fellow at the Euronews Project of the University College Cork. He completed a Master’s Degree in Historical Studies at the University of Naples Federico II in July 2020 with a thesis titled “La riflessione sulla maiestas nel De principe di Giovanni Pontano e nel De maiestate di Giuniano Maio”, focusing on the Humanistic and Renaissance political thought. During his academic career, he trained himself in palaeography, diplomatics, digital humanities and followed courses on Renaissance diplomacy, early modern politics and communication.
This chapter aims to present the reflections of Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More on peace. Erasmus was mainly focused on the question of war, being a fierce opposer of it and strongly believing in the possibility of eradicating it from human behavior. Peace is an achievable status through a mix of free will, ratio, and logos. In order to reach such a goal, humankind needs education, a crucial element in Humanistic and Renaissance thought. On the same path we find More and his contradictions, which must be analyzed and contextualized. Although More imagined a tolerant and peaceful society on a global scale, unlike Erasmus, he recognized the impossibility of realizing this vision without the use of war.
Chapter 7
University of Castilla-La Mancha
Francisco Moreno Díaz del Campo is Associate Professor in the UCLM Faculty of Arts in Ciudad Real. His main field of research is social history, principally in relation with the analysis of the morisco minority in Castile. Currently, he focuses his work on subjects concerning to material culture and daily life of morisco people. He is the author of Los moriscos de La Mancha. Sociedad economía y modos de vida de una minoría en la Castilla (Madrid, 2009). Recently has written —in colaboration with Dr. Borja Franco— Pintando al converso. La imagen del morisco en la península ibérica (1492-1609).
The forced conversion of Spanish Muslims to Christianity gave rise to the so-called “Morisco issue.” Until their final expulsion from Spain between 1609 and 1614, Moriscos were kept under surveillance and forced to adopt the cultural habits of Old Christians. In its efforts to bring about the conversion and socio-cultural assimilation of the Moriscos, the Hispanic monarchy implemented a policy of political, social, and religious control. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, several intellectual proposals sought to encourage a mutual understanding between the two communities, but all without exception supported an uncompromising view of coexistence. This chapter offers an alternative and complementary vision of the confrontation vs. peace narratives that permeated the lives of Moriscos and Old Christians alike, focusing on the world of objects, where the two communities found common ground for both consensus and difference.
Chapter 8
University of Granada
Alberto Hernández Pérez currently enjoys a research initiation scholarship at the Department of Modern and American History at the University of Granada. An article will soon be published that was presented at a scientific seminar and deals with the management and construction of memory by members of the Catholic militias at the end of the 16th century.
Explaining the history of peace and tolerance through moderate thinkers, jurists, magistrates, and clergy also implies understanding the coexistence of different religious communities during the second half of the sixteenth century in France and the Netherlands, as well as knowing how this reality conceived these discourses. In addition, it was these discourses of peace and tolerance and its practices that were essential in determining the future of religious wars. Comparative history allows us to reflect on two situations that begin as different but merge into three convergent scenarios of confessionalism: France (successive edicts of pacification until the toleration Edict of Nantes in 1598), United Provinces of the Netherlands (freedom of conscience, but not of worship), and the Spanish Netherlands (minimal religious tolerance and social reconciliation).
Chapter 9
Religious Co-existence in Malta, 1530-1798 [+–] 241-268
University of Malta
Frans Ciappara is an associate professor at the International Institute of Baroque Studies of the University of Malta. His special field of study is the eighteenth century. His articles and books deal with the Roman inquisition, the council of Trent, the professionalisation of the Maltese clergy, the eccesiastical court, the enlightenment, marriage and the family, death, the place of the parish priest and the people in the parish, confraternities, ecclesiastical immunity and religion, kinship and godparenthood as elements of social cohesion. His latest book is Church-State Relations in Late-Eighteenth-Century Malta, Gio. Nicolo Muscat (1735-1803), Malta University Press, Malta, 2018. He is the editor of The Journal of Baroque Studies.
During the government of the Order of St John (1530–1798) Malta was a frontier city and a focus of religious border crossing. Christians of all shades, as well as Jews and Muslims both free and enslaved, brushed shoulders with each other. How did the governing majority preserve its Catholic identity? Did it make the minority adopt its culture? This chapter argues that a recurring theme in frontier history is that of acculturation. Far from being a barrier, the Maltese bastions were only a symbolic boundary; they were formidable and awe-inspiring but porous to every influence. Commercial imperatives obliged the various ethnic groups in border areas to maintain constant relations. A Maltese frontier identity eventually evolved into an integral part of national identity, a multi-ethnic and poly-religious society, whose members were engaged in constant exchanges with each other.
Chapter 10
Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha
David Martín López is a Lecturer in the History Department at the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. His research interests are: the Toledo province of the Society of Jesus, its territorial expansion and consolidation during the sixteenth century and its heritage after Jesuits were expelled from Spain in 1767; the University of Toledo in the early modern period; Hispanic political thinking and its relationship to ethics in the Baroque period.
In the course of their travels across the world, Jesuits encountered a variety of cultures, modes of life, and conceptions of religion. In this chapter, I shall introduce the notion of tolerance developed by the Jesuits in their manuscripts and printed books through two lines of research. The first relates to the political sphere, where contact with other societies led these writers to advocate peace, just war and, where possible, coexistence of multiple religions within one state. The second explores the Jesuit image of “the other” embodied, on one hand, in Juan Azor’s depiction of Jews and Muslims, and on the other, in the perception of Japanese culture as conveyed by eyewitness accounts of the Tenshō embassy to Europe.
Chapter 11
University of Oxford
Nora Baker is a PhD candidate in the Medieval and Modern Languages Department of the University of Oxford, specialising in Early Modern French. Her research focuses on the writing of Huguenot refugees following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and she is also interested in migration studies, minority cultures, and religious history more broadly.
The dawn of the eighteenth century saw heightened persecution of Protestantism in France. Amid this turbulent landscape, a number of Huguenots turned to the pen, some advocating armed rebellion, others calling for the acceptance of differences of creed. This chapter considers the writings of two French Protestant refugees, Jean-François Bion and Jean Marteilhe, who had experience of the conditions of captivity on board Louis XIV’s galley ships. It asks to what degree these accounts are aligned with theories on tolerance espoused by contemporary philosopher Pierre Bayle. It finds that, though Bion and Marteilhe show some open-mindedness towards the Muslim men they encountered, their brand of tolerance is one flavored with an exoticism and an Orientalism which prevent the authors from seeing adherents of Islam as their equals. The chapter concludes with an evaluation of moments in these authors’ narratives where they condone the use of force.
Chapter 12
University of Genoa
Roberto Celada Ballanti is Full Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Philosophy of Interreligious Dialogue at the Department of Antiquity, Philosophy and History of the University of Genoa. His research interests are the philosophy of modern religion from the Humanism to the Enlightenment, the religious problem in the contemporary age and in relationship with nihilism, the philosophy of interreligious dialogue in its history and developments 20th century. Among his recent works, Religione, storia, libertà. Studi di filosofia della religione, Liguori, Napoli, 2014; La parabola dei tre anelli. Migrazioni e metamorfosi di un racconto tra Oriente e Occidente, Storia e Letteratura, Roma, 2017.
This chapter aims to outline the basic coordinates of Benjamin Constant’s work De la Religion, considerée dans sa source, ses formes et ses développements, published between 1824 and 1831, showing its belonging to the religious-liberal tradition of modern thought, which from Humanism and the Reformation reaches the Aufklärung of Lessing, Kant, and Schleiermacher. Moreover, it intends to claim the dense and original theoretical value of this historical-erudite work dedicated to ancient polytheisms—too often overshadowed by other more well-known studies of Constant—that is, an authentic theory of religious freedom with historical value.
End Matter
Index 341-353
Sapienza University of Rome
Ludovico Battista (PhD, Sapienza University of Rome) is a researcher at Sapienza University of Rome. He deals with the history of Christianity and the critical relationship between theology and philosophy. His interests focus on the problem of secularization and the genesis of modernity, on the Renaissance and the period of the Reformation (with specific attention to Erasmus and his reception in Italy), on the question of political theology since the early Christianity and the patristic reflection. Among his publications: Hans Blumenberg e l’autodistruzione del cristianesimo, Viella, Roma, 2021; and Le ragioni della religione. Mito, modernità e secolarizzazione in H. Blumenberg and J. Habermas, Lithos, Roma, 2021.
Sapienza University of Rome
Maria Fallica (Ph. D., Sapienza University of Rome) is a Post-Doc researcher at Sapienza University of Rome. Her research interests lie in the reception of the Fathers of the Church in the modern age, the history of the Reformations, the Italian Reformation of the 16th century, the history of methodism. Her most recent publications are The Protestant Origen. Polemical Use and Theological Appropriation of Origen in 16th Century Patristic Anthologies, Aschendorff, Münster, 2022 and Il metodismo via media della Riforma. Progresso e tradizione nella Christian Library di Wesley, Carocci, Roma, 2022.
Sapienza University of Rome
Beatrice Tramontano’s (PhD., Sapienza University of Rome) research deals with the topic of multiculturalism in the Western liberal democraticies, with a focus on the comparison of the philosophical theories of Charles Taylor and Jürgen Habermas, and focusing on certain aspects of multicultural societies such as religious pluralism, the relationship between religions and public space, secularization and post-secularism, and the question of recognition and individual and collective rights within the liberal-democratic normative system. She has published articles on the developments and critiques of the multicultural model by interculturalism, postcolonial studies and feminist theory as well as the relationship between multiculturalism and immigration in European societies.
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Publication
19/03/2024
Pages
364
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234 x 156mm
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Illustration
3 figures
