Work in Progress - 'Promoting the coercion of heretics in early modern Reformed Protestantism'

Odile Panetta (Lecturer in Cultural and Intellectual History): 'Promoting the coercion of heretics in early modern Reformed Protestantism' 

By the middle of the sixteenth century, Reformed thinkers had formulated a distinct approach to the question of whether heretics may legitimately be punished. An arsenal of stock arguments and references drawn from Scripture, Patristic sources, and ecclesiastical history allowed them to put forward a powerful and coherent justification for the use of coercion, and even of capital punishment, against religious radicals and dissenters; these arguments gradually seeped into the mainstream of Reformed discourse, moving beyond the polemical contexts in which they had originated and getting repackaged for a number of audiences at various levels of society. This paper will examine the means adopted by the Reformed to disseminate their views on religious coercion in different contexts, whether through academic instruction, preaching, or print. By laying out a new approach to the history of ideas about religious persecution, it will point to potential avenues for uncovering the ideological foundations of persecutory practices in early modern Europe. 

The Work in Progress seminar explores the variety of subjects studied and researched at the Warburg Institute. Papers are given by invited international scholars, research fellows studying at the Institute, and third-year PhD students.

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