On the “wars of religion”

The wars of religion get labelled the wars of religion, I haven’t quite pinpointed it yet but I think it’s probably in the late 18th, early 19th century. And of course the typical person on the street would say, well, it’s Catholics and Protestants killing each other over doctrine. And that’s the kind of typical way of thinking about it; so you have  unity before the Reformation, Luther comes along and Calvin, and now you have Protestants and Catholics, and so they begin killing each other because they can’t stand the idea that they believe in other things. That’s the typical idea. And so then the modern kind of secular nation-state has to step in and send Protestants and Catholics to their punishment corners and privatise religion so that we can all live in peace. That’s the typical narrative of the wars of religion. 

Now one of the first things that should become obvious to anybody that’s taken even a cursory look at the history of the wars of religion is that you often – very often – have Catholics killing Catholics and Protestants killing Protestants, and Protestants and Catholics collaborating in the wars. And so this automatically kind of throws a big wrench in the usual story about them. The 30 Years War, which is the most brutal and is kind of treated as the posterchild of the wars of religion – the second half of the 30 Years War was largely a contest between the two great Catholic dynasties of Europe, the Habsburgs and the Bourbons. You know, you have Cardinal Richelieu who was a Catholic cardinal of France, the kind of prime minister of France, throwing French support behind the Lutheran Swedes in their war in the Holy Roman Empire, against the Holy Roman Empire. 

Clearly it’s not just people killing each other because they don’t believe in certain kind of doctrines. There’s obviously a lot more that’s going on there.