Diversity and Dissent

Early modern Central Europe was the continents most decentralized region politically and its most diverse ethnically and culturally. With the onset of the Reformation, it also became Europes most religiously divided territory and potentially its most explosive in terms of confessional conflict and war. Focusing on the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, this volume examines the tremendous challenge of managing confessional diversity in Central Europe between 1500 and 1800. Addressing issues of tolerance, intolerance, and ecumenism, each chapter explores a facet of the complex dynamic between the state and the regions Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Utraquist, and Jewish communities. The development of religious tolerationone of the most debated questions of the early modern periodis examined here afresh, with careful consideration of the factors and conditions that led to both confessional concord and religious violence.