On Friday and Saturday, 17 and 18 September 2004, this faculty weekend seminar at the Folger Shakespeare Library will gather twelve-to-sixteen participants to explore how the members of Europe’s various religious groups--the competing Christian denominations in the first place, but also Christians, Jews, and Muslims--related to one another in the early modern era. How, in religiously mixed communities, did these groups negotiate their daily encounters? What kinds of arrangements and accommodations made peaceful coexistence possible in some places? Why did toleration prevail in some communities while others (or the same communities at different times) descended into sectarian violence? Such an investigation will necessarily examine religious conflict as well as toleration. Themes to be explored will be shaped by participants’ own research interests, but may include the rise--and limits--of confessional piety; the equation of civic and sacral community; the intersection of religion with national and ethnic identities; arrangements for worship, power-sharing, charity, education, and burial; boundary-formation and -violation; and patterns of integration versus segregation. The selection committee will seek a diversity of expertise in different geographic areas, including possibly the Ottoman Empire, opening a comparative perspective onto these issues.

Please visit our website for a full description of the program and application information.