Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400-1536

249 Pages·2002·1.189 MB·English

by  Norman Housley

Religious Warfare in Europe,
1400–1536

Religious Warfare
in Europe,
1400 1536
–
NORMAN HOUSLEY
1
1
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Preface
Considering its modest length, this book has taken a disconcertingly
long time to write. The idea for it came to me while I was finishing my general ac-
count of crusading in the late Middle Ages, The Later Crusades, 1274–1580:
From Lyons to Alcazar(1992). What gave the project focus and direction, how-
ever, was my participation in two research groups in the 1990s: first, my mem-
bership of Philippe Contamine’s team working on the volume on inter-state
warfare and competition for the European Science Foundation programme ‘The
Origins ofthe Modern State in Europe’, and secondly, my participation in Peter
Schäfer’s seminar on Messianism at the Institute for Advanced Study in Prince-
ton in 1996. The intellectual stimulus offered by both groups proved invaluable;
more generally, the months I was able to spend at the Institute in Princeton were
tremendously useful because of the interdisciplinary contacts on which the In-
stitute, quite rightly, prides itself. No less important have been the ideas I have
encountered and tried out over the years at Jonathan Riley-Smith’s Crusades
seminar in Cambridge and London, at meetings in Richard Bonney’s Centre for
the History ofReligious and Political Pluralism in Leicester, and at the Summer
Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society at Warwick in 1998. Chapter 5in
particular benefited from outings at the Riley-Smith Crusades seminar, at the
seminar on Medieval and Early Modern Warfare convened by the Department
of War Studies at King’s College London, and the 19th International Congress
of Historical Studies which met at Oslo in August 2000.
Institutional support has been crucial. To the University of Leicester I owe
a considerable debt of gratitude. It has been generous with both study leave
and leave of absence, and it has financed a number of trips to use the British
Library in London. The University Library’s Inter-Library Loans Department
has come up trumps on numerous occasions. The Leverhulme Trust awarded
me a Fellowship which paid for six months leave of absence in 1996. The Arts
and Humanities Research Board awarded me money which, together with
study leave, gave me that elixir ofjoy for any academic, the full year free ofteach-
ing, in 2001–2. The British Academy kindly paid for me to go to the USA in 1996
and to Oslo in 2000. By appointing me a member of its School of Historical
Studies in 1996, the Institute in Princeton enabled me to make use of not just
its own superb Library, but also the Firestone Library at nearby Princeton
University.
I am very grateful to Jonathan Riley-Smith for reading the entire book in
draft. Finally, I must thank my wife Valerie and my children Simon and Sarah,
for providing a family life where history is kept firmly in its place.
N.H.

Contents
abbreviations ix
1. THE SUBJECT: RELIGIOUS WARFARE IN THE
LATE MIDDLE AGES AND EARLY
REFORMATION 1
1.1 The study of religious warfare: approaches and problems 1
1.2 The contexts of conflict, c.1300–1536 13
2. A CRUCIBLE OF RELIGIOUS WARFARE:
BOHEMIA DURING THE HUSSITE WARS,
1400–1436 33
3. THE CHRISTIAN COMMONWEALTH OF
EUROPE, 1436–1536 62
3.1 The commonwealth challenged, 1436–1517 62
3.2 The commonwealth divided, 1517–1536 85
4. THE ASSEMBLING OF AUTHORITY:
SCRIPTURE, MESSIANIC INDIVIDUALS,
AND SYMBOLS 99
4.1 Texts 101
4.2 Figures 111
4.3 Symbols and communities 116
4.4 Conclusion 129
5. THE THREE TURKS 131
5.1 External Turks: the Ottomans 131
5.2 Internal Turks: ‘worse than the Turks’ 137
5.3 The interior Turk 149
5.4 The images combined: Thomas More and the Turks 152
viii Contents
6. THE CRITIQUE OF RELIGIOUS WAR 160
6.1 The problem of agency 161
6.2 Condemnation 170
6.3 War and conversion 180
6.4 Conclusion 188
7. CONCLUSION: PERSPECTIVES 190
7.1 Religious warfare, 1400–1536 190
7.2 Religious warfare and the Wars of Religion 194
bibliography 206
index 227
Abbreviations
AHR American Historical Review
CWE Collected Works ofErasmus (Toronto: University ofToronto Press,
1974– )
CWMRE [N. Housley], Crusading and Warfare in Medieval and Renaissance Europe
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001)
CWSTM The Complete Works ofSt Thomas More (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1963– )
EHR English Historical Review
HZ Historische Zeitschrift
JEH Journal ofEcclesiastical History
JMH Journal ofMedieval History
LoB Lawrence ofBrˇezová
LW Luther’s Works, 55vols. (St Louis and Philadelphia: Concordia
Publishing House and Fortress Press, 1958–67)
MH Monumenta Henricina, 15vols. (Coimbra: Comissão Executiva das
Comemorações do Quinto Aniversário da Morte do Infante D. Henrique,
1960–74)
RHE Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique
SCH Studies in Church History
Setton, PL K. M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), 4vols.
(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1976–84)
TRHS Transactions ofthe Royal Historical Society
UB F. Palacky´ (ed.), Urkundliche Beiträge zur Geschichte desHussitenkrieges in
den Jahren 1419–1436, 2vols. (Prague: Friedrich Tempsky, 1873)