Nationalism, Religious Violence, and Hate Speech in Nineteenth-Century Western Europe

Memories of Intolerance

Francisco Javier Ramón Solans

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781032442716
• eBook ISBN: 9781040008621
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Nationalism, Religious Violence, and Hate Speech in Nineteenth-Century Western Europe critically analyses the role played by different memories of past religious violence in public debates in nineteenth-century Europe.

Looking back, European societies often did not seek to overcome their differences and create a framework of peaceful coexistence among various religions and denominations, but rather, more frequently, to fuel intra- and inter-religious hatred. Moreover, various violent pasts were mobilised to define what and who was intolerant, in order to mark the "other" as intolerant and therefore incompatible with societal values. To examine conflicting memories of violence and hatred, this book focuses on commemorations, statues, publications, and public polemics surrounding past religious violence. Three elements serve as a framework to explain the conflictive nature of these memories of intolerance: the age of commemorations, the culture wars, and the second confessional age. The authors explore cases in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the Low Countries, covering Catholicism, Protestantism, Anglicanism, Islam, and Judaism. The book focuses on iconic victims such as Giordano Bruno and Michael Servetus, collective massacres, and discourses surrounding religious hatred in events such as the Crusades. The cases of religious violence remembered in the nineteenth century span the Middle Ages and the intense period of religious violence known as the confessional age.

This book will appeal to students and scholars of politics, religious tolerance and freedom, hate speech, nationalism, religious history, and European history.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Endorsement Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Funding Information
• Contents
• Figures
• Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Servetus’ memory as the symbol of Christian intolerance
• 2 Remembering and Narrating Catholic Intolerance in Anti-Catholic British Discourse during the Long Nineteenth Century
• 3 A Battle for Freedom: The Statue of Giordano Bruno in Rome
• 4 Manipulating Martyrdom: Repurposing the Victims of Blasphemy Prosecution for Libertarian Purposes in Nineteenth-Century England
• 5 Between perpetrator and victim: Pedro Arbués’ canonisation and the memory of the Inquisition in 1867 Europe
• 6 The ‘Legend’ of intolerant Spain in nineteenth-century Spanish reactionary discourse
• 7 The crusade between memorial activation and re-enactment: Sacrifice, war and the brutalisation of the enemy in the nineteenth century
• 8 Memories and narratives of the Roman Inquisition in the first half of the nineteenth century: Silences, apologies, denunciations
• 9 The reformation re-enacted: The role of the sixteenth-century memory in the Swiss Kulturkampf
• 10 Memory in anti-Judaism and modern antisemitism: German Catholic mentalities between 1870 and 1945
• 11 Conclusion: Sites of memory of intolerance
• Index