Toleration

Sunday 14 July

I read chapter 17 of Owen Chadwick book The Early Reformation on the Continent because I wanted to find out more about John Calvin’s role in the burning of Michael Servetus. Interesting stuff. In a way Servetus became a martyr for a movement toward toleration (don’t burn your neighbors for holding a different religious opinion) even though it would take a long time. Of course, in many Muslim majority countries there is still no “toleration” and in countries like Pakistan perceived blasphemy is still punishable by death.

In passing I also learned about the 1946 Kielce pogrom.

During the Middle Ages ritual murder, the killing of babies or children for magical purposes [by Jews], was a widely believed legend....During the later fifteenth century the lawyers of the Renaissance started to save Jews from legendary evidence and pooh-poohed the accusations. Johann Eck tried to keep them going. They continued to be believed in remoter parts and for a long time. In 1946 the legend unleashed a massacre at Kielce of Jews who had escaped the Holocaust.

The Kielce pogrom destroyed the hope of most Polish Jews that survived the Holocaust that they would be save from persecution in Polen. And indeed, Jewish emigration from Poland increased dramatically. With the blessing of the Polish government, which signed a decree allowing Jews to leave officially without visas or exit permits.