Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-hn9fh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-23T20:14:09.686Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Struggle for Religious Liberty1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Roland H. Bainton
Roland H. Bainton
Affiliation:
Yale Divinity School
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A sketch of the struggle for religious liberty during the course of the last four hundred years will be attempted in this paper. Attention will first be focussed on the theories and factors affecting persecution and tolerance on the part of both Catholics and Protestants. Then the administrative aspects of the subject will be considered alike from the broader standpoint of the structure of the church and of the state and from the more specific angle of the handling of dissent by political authority. Finally brief consideration will be devoted to residual and perennial problems of constraint and freedom.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , June 1941 , pp. 95 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1941

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Ruffini, Francesco, La libertà religiosa (Turin, 1901); English translation,. Religious Liberty (London, 1912), is still the best survey on the factual side.Google Scholar
Kühn, Johannes, Toleranz und Offenbarung (Leipzig, 1923), constitutes the most illuminating discussion of the ideas of Protestant groups.Google Scholar
Bainton, Roland H., Castellio's Concerning Heretics (New York, 1935). The introduction deals briefly with the early Church and with a number of Reformation figures.Google Scholar
Bainton, Roland H., “Academic Freedom in the light of the Struggle for Religious Liberty,” Proceedings of the Middle States Association of History Teachers, XXXIII (1935), 37–44. A very brief sketch, largely incorporated in the present article.Google Scholar
Burr, George Lincoln, Persecution and Liberty, Essays in Honor of (New York, 1931), contains essays by Ernest W. Nelson on “The Theory of Persecution,” Austin P. Evans, “Some Aspects of Medieval Heresy,” Wallace K. Ferguson, “The Attitude of Erasmus toward Toleration,” and by myself on “Sebastian Castellio and the Toleration Controversy of the Sixteenth Century.”Google Scholar
Burr, George Lincoln, “Anent the Middle Ages,” American Historical Review, XVIII (1913), 710–726.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burr, George Lincoln, “Liberals and Liberty Four Hundred Years Ago,” Proceedings of the Unitarian Historical Society, II (1933), Part 2.Google Scholar
Garrison, Winfred Ernest, Intolerance (New. York, 1934).Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Heinrich, article “Toleranz” in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart.Google Scholar
Matagrin, Amédée, Histoire de la Tolérance Religieuse (Paris, 1905).Google Scholar
Schaff, Philip, “Progress of Toleration as shown in the history of Toleration Acts,” Papers, Am. Soc. Church History, I (1889).Google Scholar
Hermelink, Heinrich, “Der Toleranzgedanke im Reformationszeitalte?,” Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte, XCVIII (Leipzig, 1908).Google Scholar
Koehler, Walther, Reformation und Ketzerprozess (Tübingen, 1901).Google Scholar
Murray, Robert Henry, Erasmus and Luther: Their Attitude to Toleration (London and New York, 1920).Google Scholar
Paulus, Nikolaus, Protestantismus und Toleranz im 16. Jahrhundert. (Freiburg i. Br., 1911). Catholic, very thorough as to facts.Google Scholar
Völker, Karl, Toleranz und Intoleranz im Zeitalter der Reformation (Leipzig, 1912).Google Scholar
Bainton, Roland H., “The Development and Consistency of Luther's Attitude to Religious Liberty,” Harvard Theological Review, XXII (1929), 107–149.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, Austin P., An Episode in the Struggle for Religious Freedom (New York, 1924).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faulkner, J. A., “Luther and Toleration,” Papers of the Am. Soc. of Church History, 2d ser. (1914), 131–153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wappler, Paul, Inquisition und Ketzerprozesse in Zwickau zur Reformationszeit (Leipzig, 1908).Google Scholar
Wappler, Paul, Die Stellung Kursachsens und des Landgrafen Philipp von Hessen zur Täuferbewegung (Münster i W., 1910). Spain and Portugal in the Sixteenth CenturyGoogle Scholar
Lea, Henry C., History of the Inquisition in Spain (New York, 1922), III, 411–479, gives a brief summary of the treatment of Protestantism in Spain. He drew heavily and avowedly on Menéndez y Pelayo, “Historia de los heterodoxos españoles,” 2d ed. in the Obras completas (Madrid, 1911–33).Google Scholar
Bell, Aubrey F. G. “Liberty in Sixteenth Century Spain,” Bulletin of Spanish Studies X, 37 (1933), 164–79 gives a brief summary.Google Scholar
Bataillon, Marcel, Erasme et L'Espagne (Paris, 1937), is splendid for the treatment of the Alumbrados and Erasmians.Google Scholar
Schaefer, Ernest, Beiträget zur Geschichte des spanischen Protestantismus und der Inquisition im 16. Jahrhundert (3 vols., Gütersloh, 1902), covers the trials of Protestants before the Inquisition.Google Scholar
Aitken, James M, The Trial of George Buchanan before the Lisbon Inquisition (Edinburgh, 1939), gives the documents and a good discussion.Google Scholar
Amabile, Luigi, Il Santo Officio della Inquisizione in Napoli (2 vols., Cità di Castello, 1892).Google Scholar
Buschbell, Gottfried, “Reformation und Inquisition in Italien um die Mitte des XVI Jahrhunderts,” Quellen und Schriften … Görresgesellschaft, XIII (1910).Google Scholar
Münzer, Georg Florian, Franz I und die Anfänge der französischen Reformation (Diss, Freiburg i. Br., 1935).Google Scholar
Weiss, Nathanaël, La Chambre Ardente (Paris, 1889).Google Scholar
Bonet-Maury, Gaston, Die Gewissensfreiheit in Frankreich vom Edikt von Hantes bis zwr Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1912).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Puaux, Frank, Les Précurseurs français de la Tolérance au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1881).Google Scholar
Van Schelven, A. A., “De Opkomst van de Idee der Politieke Tolerantie, in de 16e eeuwsche Nederlanden,” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, XLVI (1931), 235–47, 337–388.Google Scholar
Banner, Hypatia Bradlaugh, Penalties upon Opinion (London, 1934), deals with the quite recent period.Google Scholar
Freund, Michael, “Die Idee der Toleranz im England der Grossen Revolution,” in Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, XII (Halle, 1927), gives a very illuminating discussion of the religious ideas.Google Scholar
Jordan, Wilbur Kitchener, The Development of Religious Toleration in England (4 vols., Cambridge, Mass., 1932–1940). Unsurpassed for a thorough survey of the literature, but better for the discussion of political than religious ideas.Google Scholar
Lyon, Thomas, The Theory of Religious Liberty in England, 1603–39 (Cambridge, Eng., 1937); useful as revealing some pattern in the welter.Google Scholar
Meyer, Arnold Oskar, “Der Toleranzgedanke in England der Stuarts.” Historische Zeitschrift, CVIII (1912), 255–94; protests against laying the stress on secular factors.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mullet, Charles F., “Some Essays on Toleration in Late Eighteenth Century England,” Church History, VII (1933), 24–44 reveals that when persecution had narrowed down to civil disabilities the arguments against it were no different from those of the sixteenth century.Google Scholar
St. John, Wallace, The Contest for Liberty of Conscience in England (Chicago, 1900).Google Scholar
Scott, Nancy Elnora, The Limits of Toleration within the Church of England from 1632–1642 (Thesis, Univ. of Pa., 1912).Google Scholar
Seaton, A. A., “The Theory of Toleration under the Later Stuarts,” in Cambridge Historical Essays, XIX (Cambridge, 1911).Google Scholar
Cobb, Sanford H.The Rise of Religious Liberty in America (New York, 1902).Google Scholar
Thorning, Joseph Francis, Religious Liberty in Transition (Diss., Washington, D. C, 1931).Google Scholar
Coons, Paul Wakeman, The Achievement of Religious Liberty in Connecticut, (New Haven, 1936).Google Scholar
Greene, Louise M., The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut (Boston, 1905).Google Scholar
Purcell, Richard J., Connecticut in Transition 1775–1818 (Washington, D. C, 1918).Google Scholar
James, Charles F., Documentary History of the Struggle for Religious Liberty in Virginia (Lynchburg, 1900).Google Scholar
McIlwaine, Henry R., The Struggle of Protestant Dissenters for Religious Toleration in Virginia. Johns Hopkins Studies XII 1894).Google Scholar