Toleration and Tolerance in Medieval European Literature

by Albrecht Classen

  31 Gisbert Ter-Nedden, Der fremde Lessing (2016), 387–410; Albrecht Classen, “Toleranz im späten 13. Jahrhundert” (2004), 25–55; Dinzelbacher, “Kritische Bemerkungen zur Geschichte der religiösen Toleranz und zur Tradition” (2008); cf. now also Werner Heinz, “Toleranz – Akzeptanz – Versöhnung” (forthcoming).

  32 Steven D. Martinson, “Transcultural Literary Interpretation” (2016); online at: doi:10.3390/h5030065 (last accessed on September 18, 2017).

  33 Steven D. Martinson, Projects of Enlightenment (2013), 159.

  34 L’intolleranza cristiana nei confronti dei pagani, ed. Pier Franco Beatrice (1990).

  35 Peter Dinzelbacher, “Toleranz bei Bernhard von Clairvaux?” (2002), 9–29.

  36 See, for instance, the studies by Abdelfattah Amor, Néji Baccouche, and Mohamed Talbi, Etudes sur la Tolérance (1995); cf. the contributions to Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration, ed. Alan Levine (1999); Naissance et affirmation de l’idée de tolérance: XVIe et XVIIIe siècle, ed. Michel Peronnet (1988). Even Pope Benedikt XVI (Ratzinger) commented on this universal issue as well, see Joseph Ratzinger, Glaube – Wahrheit – Toleranz (2017).

  37 Modern research has intensively engaged with the issue at stake; see, for instance, Toleranz: philosophische Grundlagen und gesellschaftliche Praxis einer umstrittenen Tugend, ed. Rainer Forst (2000); Rainer Forst, Toleration in Conflict: Past and Present, trans. Ciaran Cronin (2012); Scott Sowerby, Making Toleration (2013); The Power of Tolerance: A Debate / Wendy Brown, Rainer Forst, ed. Luca Di Blasi and Christoph F. E. Holzhey (2014); Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, Beyond Religious Freedom (2015); Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now (2015); Religiöse Toleranz: 1700 Jahre nach dem Edikt von Mailand, ed. Martin Wallraffsee (2016); cf. also the contributions to Harmonie, Toleranz, kulturelle Vielfalt: Aufklärerische Impulse von Leibniz bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Christoph Asmuth, Concha Roldán, and Astrid Wagner (2017); Franco Buzzi and Markus Johannes Krienke, Toleranz und Religionsfreiheit in der Moderne (2017). The literature on this large topic is virtually legion.

  38 Martha Nussbaum, The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Political Fear in an Anxious Age (2012), 2.

  39 See now the contributions to Die Evolution der Menschlichkeit, ed. Peter Gowin and Nana Walzer (2017). The authors argue as a whole that humanity does grow, undergoes a permanent evolution and that there are many good reasons to believe that we will overcome conflicts from the past and establish a society in which mutual respect and tolerance will be fully in place. Of course, the rise of modern technology, especially the emergence of the digital world with its robotics, might take us in a totally different direction. See, for instance, Fred Spier, Big History and the Future of Humanity (2015); James Hendler, Social Machines and the New Future (2016); Luke Dormehl, Thinking Machines (2017). There is a legion of relevant studies on these topics.

  40 I have explored the relevance of the Humanities already in previous publications and have engaged there with the major research literature on this global topic; Albrecht Classen, “The Role of the Humanities Past and Present” (2012), 9–30; id., “The Challenges of the Humanities, Past, Present, and Future” (2014) (www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/3/1/1); id., “The Meaning of Literature – A Challenge of Modern Times — What the Sciences Cannot Teach (www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/5/2/24/html); April 2016.

  41 Ferdinand von Schirach, “Siege über uns selbst verteidigen,” July 21, 2017; online, for instance, at: http://orf.at/salzburgerfestspiele17/stories/2400912/; or: http://tvthek.orf.at/profile/Festakt-zur-Eroeffnung-der-Salzburger-Festspiele-2017/13887564/Festakt-zur-Eroeffnung-der-Salzburger-Festspiele-2017/13939494/Festredner-Ferdinand-von-Schirach-Autor/14099998.

  42 Martha Nussbaum, The New Religious Intolerance (2012), 97.

  43 Andreas Voßkuhle, “DISKURS IST UNVERZICHTBAR” (2017) (online, November 23, 2017). He correctly identifies ‘political populists’ as those individuals who claim to possess a full understanding of the people’s will, granting them allegedly a moral superiority over the political elite who have, as they advocate, betrayed the people. However, in the end, such false, bluntly ideological arguments allow them to pursue totalitarian strategies that might ultimately overthrow any democracy and lead to a new dictatorship. Voßkuhle specifically insists on the very multiplicity of opinions, interests, and concerns within any social group and that there is nothing like an absolute truth: “Der Populist hingegen behauptet, das Volk sei im Besitz der Wahrheit, habe also die Einsicht in das für alle Richtige” (The populist, in contrast, claims that the people possess truth and have thereby an understanding of what would be right for everyone). Such a claim, however, represses all democratic discourses and represents nothing but a form of absolutist ideology. Voßkuhle thus correctly concludes: “Deshalb muss in einer Demokratie der jeweils andere Bürger als gleich und frei anerkannt, ihm also gleiche Mitwirkungsrechte in öffentlichen Angelegenheiten zugestanden werden. Das demokratische Mehrheitsprinzip gewährleistet, dass die größtmögliche Zahl der Bürger ihren Urteilen über das Gemeinwohl entsprechend leben kann. Weil aber eine politische Einschätzung auch dann nicht zu einer unwandelbaren Wahrheit wird, wenn sie von einer noch so großen Mehrheit der Bürger geteilt wird, muss in der Demokratie immer auch davon ausgegangen werden, dass sich vielleicht in der Zukunft eine abweichende Einschätzung als überzeugender erweist” (Hence, in a democracy every citizen must be acknowledged as equal and free; he must be granted the same rights to participate in public affairs. The democratic majority principle guarantees that the largest possible number of citizens can live according to their own judgments regarding the common weal. Insofar, however, as no political opinion, even if it is embraced by the largest majority, can turn into an unchangeable truth, in a democracy we must always assume that in the future, perhaps, a deviant opinion might prove to be more convincing).

  44 Religious Traditions and the Limits of Tolerance, ed. Louis J. Hammann and Harry M. Buck, with Michael McTighe (1988); Religion and Sexuality, ed. Pamela Dickey Young, Heather Shipley, and Tracy J. Trothen (2015); Clemens Sedmak, Toleranz: Vom Wert der Vielfalt (2015). At the same time, the institution of tolerance, that is, the idea of a tolerant society must be defended energetically, which also means that those who fight this open society cannot be tolerated. Every form of tolerance must have its own limits to avoid becoming meaningless. See Alexander Kissler, Keine Toleranz den Intoleranten (2015).

  45 Nussbaum, The New Religious Intolerance (2012), 144.

  46 David M. Perry, “What To Do When Nazis Are Obsessed With Your Field” September 6, 2017 (https://psmag.com/education/nazis-love-taylor-swift-and-also-the-crusades. He notes, for instance: “Marchers in Charlottesville held symbols of the medieval Holy Roman Empire and of the Knights Templar. The Portland murderer praised ‘Vinland,’ a medieval Viking name for North America, in order to assert historical white ownership over the landmass: Vinlander racists like to claim that whites are ‘indigenous’ here on the basis of medieval Scandinavian lore.” See also the powerful statement by Josephine Livingstone: “Since racialized medievalism draws upon an essentially imaginary category, it is extraordinarily flexible and easily adapted: the historical detail of America’s past is woven into the racist medievalism that we saw on the streets of Charlottesville,” in her provocative but deeply worthwhile blog “Racism, Medievalism, and the White Supremacists of Charlottesville,” August 15, 2017 (https://newrepublic.com/article/144320/racism-medievalism-white-supremacists-charlottesville); Dorothy Kim, “Teaching Medieval Studies in a Time of White Supremacy,” August 28, 2017 (www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2017/08/teaching-medieval-studies-in-time-of.html; all last accessed on September 10, 2017). However, Kim’s position is vehemently opposed by Rachel Fulton Brown in her blog “How to Signal You Are Not a White Supremacist,” September 14, 2017, online at: http://fencingbearatprayer.blogspot.com/2017/09/how-to-signal-you-are-not-white.html. Cf. also Alana Lentin and Gavan Titley, The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age (2011); Lynn
Tarte Ramey, Black Legacies: Race and the European Middle Ages (2014). The entire debate, however, is in danger of spiraling into a political exchange no longer based on serious scholarship.

  47 For a good list of current studies on the topic of the abuse of medieval history for modern political purposes, see Sarah Emily Bond, “Hold My Mead: A Bibliography For Historians Hitting Back At White Supremacy,” September 10, 2017 (https://sarahemilybond.com/2017/09/10/hold-my-mead-a-bibliography-for-historians-hitting-back-at-white-supremacy/amp/; last accessed on September 10, 2017). I gratefully acknowledge my colleague Joela Jacobs, University of Arizona, for alerting me to some of these valuable posts and blogs concerning this issue.

  48 “People of Color in Medieval Art History,” http://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/archive (August 17, 2017).

  49 Karl-Josef Kuschel, “Jud, Christ und Muselmann vereinigt”? (2004), 9–20.

  50 Kuschel, “Jud, Christ und Muselmann vereinigt”? (2004), 196–97.

  2 History and Theory of Toleration and Tolerance: Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Early Modern Ages

  Early Voices, Quiet, and Yet of Great Strength

  The topic that interests us here has already been discussed for a very long time because it is of such a fundamental importance and represents a huge challenge in many regards for mankind. Philosophy and cultural history, anthropology and theology, literary studies and social studies, and especially religious studies have struggled for many decades and more to come to terms with the meaning of tolerance, and with the question whether this is only a modern phenomenon or whether it might not rather be of universal concern because throughout history people of different origins, cultures, or religions have been forced to live together. This also entails the additionally problematic question whether we need tolerance, what the limits of tolerance might be (Toleranzschwelle), and how the basic idea of tolerance was implanted and then slowly developed over the centuries.1

  Instead of reinventing the wheel, let us here take a global view at the various efforts to explore this phenomenon as it had emerged already in the past and reflect on the subtle but highly significant aspects that continue to be of great importance for us today.2 To be mindful of its huge impact on humanity at large, tolerance and its antecedent, toleration, appear to be rather fleeting and temporary, being an ideal or a complex of ideals developed by individuals throughout time opposed to the orthodoxy and ideology of a dominant religion or political orientation.3 True tolerance, even today in the twenty-first century, appears to be an ideal fully subscribed to only by a small group of intellectuals or highly ethically minded individuals, irrespective of many public declarations and statements in various state constitutions and other documents.4

  Tolerance requires an enormous degree of maturity, self-consciousness and self-respect, inner strength, and understanding of others at large. Undoubtedly, as we will see, in the course of the early modern age, the idea of tolerance became more widespread, and then entered the central political discourse in the eighteenth century. However, it would be an illusion to believe that tolerance today constitutes a fundamental value shared by the vast majority of people, at least in the Western world, not to speak of other parts where there is no democracy and no solid constitution guaranteeing the rights of everyone in the spirit of tolerance. Every time a crisis arises—when immigrants arrive from a conflict zone, when religious groups clash against each other, when crime is committed mostly by members of certain ethnic or religious groups—the dominant group tends to make every effort to hold on to their traditionally majority position, and then toleration is suddenly lost completely, and supremacy of the one group rules.5 We might even want to consider child psychology and ask whether children would be tolerant by nature or whether they would first have to learn tolerant behavior through instruction or imitation.6 Nevertheless, the struggle to establish tolerance continues, but as long as there is a struggle, the hope for the utopian goal of peaceful and tolerant interactions among people will remain alive and might even gain in strength in the course of time.

  Undoubtedly, the history of Europe from the Middle Ages until today has been deeply determined by the ongoing struggle to find ways to establish a modus vivendi for the conflicting religious groups, especially Catholics versus Protestants, Christians against Jews, and also against Muslims. The idea of tolerance might even seem something like a paradox in the religious context.7 The early Christian Church struggled hard to come to terms with the notions of love, peace, and tolerance, as outlined by Christ in the New Testament; but already the global conflict between Arians and Athanasians did not bode well, despite the victory of the latter over the former. We might even claim that the much more tolerant Arians were defeated, ultimately, because they lacked a dogmatic approach to the fundamental theological questions and did not embrace the same kind of highly hierarchical approach to governing their people as the Athanasians did—and this very successfully. We can at least point to King Theoderic the Great, ruler of the Ostrogoths in Italy (451/456–526) who definitely subscribed to the notion of toleration and pursed a rather constructive domestic policy in Italy that guaranteed the thriving of his kingdom despite many external threats.8

  As Eckehart Stöve observes, “Toleranz ist ein Konfliktbegriff” (tolerance is a term of conflict).9 There are always barriers in life, and we as individuals constantly encounter limits to our ideas, convictions, desires, and concepts. Tolerance goes so far as is possible for an individual, until that limit is reached, the “Toleranzschwelle” (646; the threshold beyond which tolerance can no longer be practiced). In order to come to terms with the opposing side, there are three forms of tolerance, pragmatic, consensus, and dialogic (647). It proves to be a precarious enterprise to maintain tolerance in a world filled with aggression and violence, and a consequential and limitless tolerance is doomed to self-abrogation insofar as even a tolerant society requires ‘intolerant’ measures to protect itself. Moreover, there is a danger coming from within society, indifference, that is, a lack of any significant concern with the quest for truth, or truth itself, which tragically opens the floor for any fundamentalist regressions. Stöve, hence, defines tolerance as follows:

  Toleranz ist die Kunst, zwischen der Skylla des Fundamentalismus, der ein Glaube ohne Skepsis ist, und der Charybdis der Indifferenz, die eine Skepsis ohne Glauben ist, einen Weg zu finden, um dem Wertekonflikt, ohne den gesellschaftliches Leben unserer historischen Erfahrung nach nicht möglich ist, die zerstörerische Kraft zu nehmen und - so das Ideal - ihn sogar produktiv umzusetzen.

  (647)

  [Tolerance is the art to find a way between the Scylla of fundamentalism, which is a faith without scepticism, and the Charibdys of indifference, which is a scepticism without a faith, in order to remove the destructive force of the conflict of values, without which social life is not possible according to our historical experience, and to translate it—that would be the ideal—productively.]

  In antiquity, Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (ca. 345–402) had still argued that the world of the divine, of spirituality, or the heavens would be much too complicated for people if they pursued only one path toward the deepest secrets (Relatio III, 10; quoted from Stöve, 648). However, as soon as Christianity emerged as a state religion, this advocacy of plurality in religion disappeared quickly. From early on, the Christian Church held up its own teaching as the only true one and strictly persecuted anyone they suspected of heresy (Stöve, 650).10

  The question of how to deal with deviants, heretics, or infidels was of great significance for the church fathers and subsequent theologians, especially for the famous Cistercian Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux (ca. 1190–1153), who powerfully and successfully fought even against such intellectual giants as Peter Abelard (d. 1142) because of their presumed hereticism.11 The Middle Ages saw much bitter strife even within the Christian Church, especially with a focus on the larger heretical groups, such as the Cathars and the Albigensians, the Waldensians, the Wiclyffites, and the Hussites.12 The age of the Prote
stant Reformation, followed by the so-called ‘Counter-Reformation’, then the Thirty Years’ War, and countless subsequent wars throughout the centuries were all filled with strife determined by religious differences and total lack of tolerance.13 Those internecine strives represented a long, protracted struggle pitting Catholics against Protestants—see, for example, the Northern Ireland Conflict, known as The Troubles, from the late 1960s to 1998, though there the religious conflict was mostly predicated on nationalist and economic issues hiding behind the religious fronts14—and until today there are tensions and conflicts, although finally, with the Second Vatican Council, new forms of toleration and even tolerance were established. On December 7, 1965, the Council promulgated its “Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitas Humanae: On the Right of the Person and of Communities to Social and Civil Freedom in Matters Religious Promulgated by His Holiness Pope Paul VI.” The second paragraph, most remarkable by itself, reads:

  This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.

  The council further declares that the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person as this dignity is known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself. This right of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed and thus it is to become a civil right.15