Whilst there may be some truth in the distinction: Protestants destroy property and Catholics kill, it is a gross over-simplification of the religious violence associated with the Early Modern era to characterise it in such a binary manner. At best, it is a sweeping generalisation based upon the assumption that Protestant property destruction is driven by their anti-iconic beliefs, who felt that they had a legitimate objection to the wrongful use of material objects during worship: something they felt was a Catholic practice. On the other hand, it is another sweeping generalisation to suggest that killing was solely a Catholic activity. The Catholics certainly felt that the new Protestants held iconoclastic beliefs that, whilst dangerous, went
…show more content…
Nonetheless, there were many other incidents of mobs deciding that they were best placed to carry out the will of God in cases where they felt that the courts had failed to pursue heretics for fear of incurring the wrath of The Lord. Alhough riots often resulted in death of Protestants at the hands of Catholics, it was not exclusively this way. There are many recorded incidents of the opposite holding true and in her 1973 paper on religious rioting in sixteenth century France, Zemon Davis makes reference to the Protestant murder in Paris in 1561 of a Catholic baker who was bearing a box of holy wafers. This killing of a Catholic man by a Protestant mob had overtones of a more commonly echoed Reformist objection to all forms of idolatry, as the crowd was reported as saying, "Does your God of paste protect you now from the pains of death?" in a clear mocking reference to the Catholic belief that the wafer became the flesh of God during the ritual of Mass set against the Protestant disbelief, at best uncertainty, in transubstantiation and using objects in the worship of …show more content…
Through the lens of today it may seem barbaric and murderous, and regarding torture quite pointless, regarding the validity of the confessions extracted or the expunging of a heretical individual, it was a social norm. God, religion and worship were the dominating factors of the Early Modern Period, not Human Rights as we now call
Nonetheless, there were many other incidents of mobs deciding that they were best placed to carry out the will of God in cases where they felt that the courts had failed to pursue heretics for fear of incurring the wrath of The Lord. Alhough riots often resulted in death of Protestants at the hands of Catholics, it was not exclusively this way. There are many recorded incidents of the opposite holding true and in her 1973 paper on religious rioting in sixteenth century France, Zemon Davis makes reference to the Protestant murder in Paris in 1561 of a Catholic baker who was bearing a box of holy wafers. This killing of a Catholic man by a Protestant mob had overtones of a more commonly echoed Reformist objection to all forms of idolatry, as the crowd was reported as saying, "Does your God of paste protect you now from the pains of death?" in a clear mocking reference to the Catholic belief that the wafer became the flesh of God during the ritual of Mass set against the Protestant disbelief, at best uncertainty, in transubstantiation and using objects in the worship of …show more content…
Through the lens of today it may seem barbaric and murderous, and regarding torture quite pointless, regarding the validity of the confessions extracted or the expunging of a heretical individual, it was a social norm. God, religion and worship were the dominating factors of the Early Modern Period, not Human Rights as we now call