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Religious warfare has been a recurrent feature of European history. In this intelligent and readable new study, the distinguished Crusade historian Norman Housley describes and analyses the principal expressions of holy war in the period from the Hussite wars to the first generation of the Reformation. The context was one of both challenge and expansion. The Ottoman Turks posed an unprecedented external threat to the 'Christian republic', while doctrinal dissent, constant warfare between states, and rebellion eroded it from within. This is a major contribution to both Crusade history and the study of the Wars of Religion of the early modern period. Professor Housley explores the interaction between Crusade and religious war in the broader sense, and argues that the religious violence of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was organic, in the sens that it sprang from deeply rooted proclivities within European society.
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Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400–1536 Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400–1536 N O R M AN HOUS LEY 1 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and an associated company in Berlin Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Norman Housley 2002 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2002 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 0-19-820811-1 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset in Ehrhardt by SNP Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn Preface C o nsi de r i ng i t s m o de st le n g th, this book has taken a disconcertingly long time to write. The idea for it came to me while I was finishing my general account of crusading in the late Middle Ages, The Later Crusades, 1274–1580: From Lyons to Alcazar (1992). What gave the project focus and direction, however, was my participation in two research groups in the 1990s: first, my membership of Philippe Contamine’s team working on the volume on inter-state warfare and competition for the European Science Foundation programme ‘The Origins of the Modern State in Europe’, and secondly, my participation in Peter Schäfer’s seminar on Messianism at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1996. The intellectual stimulus offered by both groups proved invaluable; more generally, the months I was able to spend at the Institute in Princeton were tremendously useful because of the interdisciplinary contacts on which the Institute, quite rightly, prides itself. No less important have been the ideas I have encountered and tried out over the years at Jonathan Riley