Divided By Faith Summary

Kaplan, Benjamin J. Divided By Faith: Religious Conflict And The Practice of Toleration in
Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007).
Benjamin J. Kaplan’s Divided By Faith: Religious Conflict And the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe challenges the traditional view that religious toleration became prevalent in Europe following the Enlightenment. Kaplan is a Professor of Dutch History at the University College London and the University of Amsterdam. The purpose of Divided by Faith is to provide a new outlook on the history of religious tolerance and conflict in early modern Europe. Kaplan illustrates this purpose by diverging from traditional scholarship on toleration in early modern Europe. Divided by Faith has four sections that cover the obstacles to the implementation of toleration, the practice of toleration, interactions between opposing faiths and the

Christians of different faiths interacted with one another and they also interacted with Jews and Muslims. Treating your neighbor with respect was a Christian ideal, and it precipitated the tendency for neighbors to tolerate their neighbors who did not share their religious beliefs. Another reason people of different faiths tolerated one another was because they relied on each other for services. The divisions between social classes led to religious toleration among the same social class. Kaplan argues that the separation between the cause and the person was important to religious toleration in early modern Europe. He argues, “This distinction helps explain the “Janus face” of religious toleration – the way in which people could be, and commonly were, both tolerant and intolerant” (264). Early modern Europeans instituted practices that encouraged religious toleration; however, there were still religious divisions and