Heretics and Infidels: Schisms, Persecution, and Religious Violence in Global Context, 1450-1600.

3 credits · Undergraduate

This class is dedicated to examining the concept of religious schisms and heterodoxy, with a particular emphasis on issues of polemics, violence, and persecution during the early modern period (1450-1600). This class will focus primarily on Christian Europe and the Islamicate world (North Africa, Middle East, Central Asia). We will be analysing this period as an “age of confessionalism” wherein a rich spectrum of religious communities in Europe (Protestants, Catholics, Jews) and the Islamicate lands (Sunnis, Shi`ites, Sufis) were increasingly delineated, juxtaposed, and persecuted. During the 16th century, European Christendom was shaped and drawn along contested lines between Catholicism and Protestantism. Likewise, in the same period, the Islamicate lands were defined by boundaries and divisions labelled as “Sunni” and “Shi`ite”. What mechanisms and rationales were employed by the state – allied with the dominant religious authority – to identify and suppress heterodox religious elements within their political boundaries? Conversely, what strategies did persecuted religious minorities adopt to circumvent identification and avoid state/church censure? This class is inspired to explore how such religious orientations and confessional rivalries laid the foundations for many of the current geopolitical zones which have been in crisis in the 20th-21st centuries (Northern Ireland, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan, Kurdistan). CROSSLISTED: RELS 2525 FORMATS: Lecture