Religious Warfare in Europe 1400-1536 - Softcover

Housley, Norman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199552282 ISBN 13: 9780199552283

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2009

Synopsis

Religious warfare has been a recurrent feature of European history. In this intelligent and readable study, the distinguished Crusade historian Norman Housley describes and analyses the principal expressions of holy war in the period from the Hussite wars to the first generation of the Reformation. The context was one of both challenge and expansion. The Ottoman Turks posed an unprecedented external threat to the "Christian republic" while doctrinal dissent, constant warfare between states, and rebellion eroded it from within. Professor Housley shows how in these circumstances the propensity to sanctify warfare took radically different forms. At times warfare between national communities was shaped by convictions of 'sacred patriotism' either in defending God-given native land or in the pursuit of messianic programs abroad. Insurrectionary activity, especially when driven by apocalyptic expectations, was a second important type of religious war. In the 1420s and early 1430s the Hussites waged war successfully in defense of what they believed to be "God's Law" And some frontier communities depicted their struggle against non-believers as religious war by reference to crusading ideas and habits of thought. Professor Housley pinpoints what these conflicts had in common in the ways the combatants perceived their own role, their demonization of their opponents, and the ongoing critique of religious war in all its forms. This is a major contribution to both Crusade history and the study of the Wars of Religion of the early modern period. Professor Housley explores the interaction between Crusade and religious war in the broader sense, and argues that the religious violence of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was organic, in the sense that it sprang from deeply rooted proclivities within European society.

About this title

About the Author

Norman Housely is a Professor of History at the University of Leicester.

Review

"...Housely is uniquely qualified to discuss the subject of religious wars...[H]e succeeds in demonstrating the continuity of ideas linking the crusades of the Middle Ages with the religious violence of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Religious Warfare in Europe is also valuable as a broad historiographical study..."--HISTORY: Reviews of New Books

"What makes Religiious Warfare extraordinarily good and of intest to scholars and students alike in any field is, first and foremost, its uncompromising comparitive perspective. Housley's story ranges from much-neglected central Europe and Iberia to the Ottoman lands, Africa, the New World, and the core lands of western Europe. Housley shifts from case studies to thematic discussions, inviting the reader to examine his conclusions from a variety of perspectives. We must all be grateful indeed to Housley for writing such an intelligent, insightful, and moving book. It illuminates vividly and reflectively one of his eary quotations from Peter Partner: 'the violence men do, they seek to justify.' Then, as is often done today, men justify violence by the preposterous claim that it is God's will."--Speculum

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0199552282
• ISBN 13: 9780199552283
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 250