Overview

"Nationalism, Religious Violence, and Hate Speech in Nineteenth-Century Western Europe critically analyses the role played by different memories of past religious violence in public debates in nineteenth-century Europe. Looking back, European societies often did not seek to overcome their differences and create a framework of peaceful coexistence among various religions and denominations, but rather, more frequently, to fuel intra- and inter-religious hatred. Moreover, various violent pasts were mobilised to define what and who was intolerant, in order to mark the ""other"" as intolerant and therefore incompatible with societal values. To examine conflicting memories of violence and hatred, this book focuses on commemorations, statues, publications, and public polemics surrounding past religious violence. Three elements serve as a framework to explain the conflictive nature of these memories of intolerance: the age of commemorations, the culture wars, and the second confessional age. The authors explore cases in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the Low Countries, covering Catholicism, Protestantism, Anglicanism, Islam, and Judaism. The book focuses on iconic victims such as Giordano Bruno and Michael Servetus, collective massacres, and discourses surrounding religious hatred in events such as the Crusades. The cases of religious violence remembered in the nineteenth century span the Middle Ages and the intense period of religious violence known as the confessional age. This book will appeal to students and scholars of politics, religious tolerance and freedom, hate speech, nationalism, religious history, and European history."

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9781032442716

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Reviews

“This timely and engaging volume sheds new light on how, in nineteenth-century Europe, memories of intolerance towards the religious ‘other’ got instrumentalised to carry out conflicts over faith-related issues in the contemporary world. Focused on cases of past religious violence, most of them from the early modern period, it will be of great interest to scholars of religion and memory in modern history.” -Eveline G. Bouwers, Leibniz Institute of European History, Germany. “This extraordinary collection of essays on the memory of religious intolerance in the Europe of the nineteenth-century nationalisms deepens our knowledge about the “invention of tradition”. Placing the case-studies in the general processes of that age - the multiplication of public commemorations, the explosion of cultural wars, the clash between secularisation and confessionalization - it explores the multifaced political uses of the religious in the construction of national identities.” -Daniele Menozzi, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Italy. “This illuminating collection is a landmark in the comparative history of religion and nationalism. Consolidated figures join forces with promising young scholars to explore the multilayered socio-cultural dimensions of religious intolerance in the crucial period between c. 1850 and 1945, as well as some infamously violent outbursts. The book breaks new ground in the study of Hebrew, Catholic and Protestant Europe, and thus constitutes a fine example of transnational historiography.” -Gregorio Alonso, University of Leeds, United Kingdom.

Author Information

Francisco Javier Ramón Solans is Ramón y Cajal Researcher at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. His current research is on Catholic politics of the past, religious nationalism, hate speech and the limits of religious freedom in nineteenth-century Europe.

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