Religious Change during the European Wars of Religion NTC+

Please note, this seminar runs from 9:30 to 3:30 and comes with 5 CPDUs. Religious Change during the European Wars of Religion will be a journey into the excitement, division, chaos, and horror of religious reform and civil violence during the Wars of Religion in early modern Europe. This seminar will focus on cultural and social aspects of religious and civil conflict during the German Peasants’ Revolt, Dutch Revolt, French Wars of Religion, Thirty Years’ War, and English Civil Wars. Participants will explore the religious conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the experiences of the people who lived through them. Participants will confront various faces of religious violence, from iconoclasm and book burning to executions of heretics and religious massacres. We will explore the motivations and explanations for religious violence in early modern Europe, as well as the problems of peacemaking during religious conflict. The seminar also offers participants a chance to consider the difficult questions posed by religious violence outside the charged contexts of religious violence in contemporary societies like Bosnia, Kosovo, Algeria, Palestine, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq.