A Turk by Any Other Name

BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review , 2018

2014

Journal of Religion in Europe, 2020

The article attempts to show that the modern notion of ‘religion’ is a construction that emerged in the context of inter-religious encounters following the fall of Constantinople and especially in the years around the Reformation. Hereby, the article argues that the modern notion of ‘religion’ emerged earlier than found by most previous studies, and that it was used in the legislation of the new Protestant states as well as in the modern (Westphalian) state-system, both of which it has been a part of ever since. The notion of ‘religion’ is, thus, not a scholarly invention (J.Z. Smith) or tied to colonialism (Timothy Fitzgerald) but rather a product of complex historical processes in which religious conflicts and the attempt to overcome these played a key role.

Christian-Muslim Relations. An Annotated Bibliography, vol. 9, Western and Southern Europe (1600-1700), edited by David Thomas and John Chesworth, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2017, 1-16, 2017

Historein, 2007

Journal of Jesuit Studies, 2023

2016

Presenter Status PhD Candidate, Department of History, Bucharest University Presentation Type Oral presentation Session History and Music Location Buller Hall Room 108 Start Date 6-5-2016 2:00 PM End Date 6-5-2016 2:20 PM Presentation Abstract This paper will highlight the causality between the Ottoman’s menace and the Protestant Reformation in the XVI-th century, regarding the support, the consolidation and the direct determination of the Protestant movement. The question ,,whom did the Turks support more: the Protestants or the Catholics?" was for a long time a realm of debate for theologians and even for historians.

A study of later medieval understandings of Islam from Peter the Venerable to Martin Luther

This paper critically assesses the political paradigm shift of Byzantine theological thought towards Islam after the fall of Constantinople. Within this historical juncture, I focus on the re-articulation of the intellectual discourse of George of Trebizond towards a more conciliatory stance in opposition to the polemical hegemonic narrative of the Eastern Christian past. My aim is twofold: a) to indicate the premises of his discourse regarding Islam in comparison to the dominant prejudice against it; and b) to examine contextually his diverse perspective in approaching the Muslim ‘other’, his distinct religious considerations and political programme, as well as the theoretical formula proposed for the co-existence of the two communities. Furthermore, I explore whether his political swing and his contribution to the de-construction of the negative stereotypical images of Islam acquired social consensus and influenced in the long run the political behavior of the Christian ‘imagined community’ within the ottoman commonwealth. The method of elaborating the material is the so-called Essex School pattern, according to which discourse is analyzed as a network of meaning, articulating both linguistic and non-linguistic elements/signifiers that function as the nodal points of the discursive structure. Last but not least, I consider whether his relevant works might be a possible basis for Orthodox theology to transcend religious bias and establish a spirit of mutual understanding with Islam.

2017

The 'Turk' was greeted in various ways, but generally with hostility by Early Modern Europeans. The advancing army of Suleiman the Magnificent attacked Vienna in 1529, prompting apocalyptic fear from Christians throughout Europe. Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, Nicolas Senecker, etc identify the Turks with prophecy (e.g. Gog and Magog from Ezekiel 38 and 39 and the little horn of the beast in Daniel 7) and interpreted their approach towards Europe accordingly. They also identified a need for deeper knowledge of Islam. This prompted a number of publications including Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter’s Mahometis Abdallae filii theologia dialogo explicata, ... Alcorani epitome and Theodore Bibliander's Machumetis Saracenorum principis, eiusque successorum vitae, ac doctrina, ipseque Alcoran, both of which were published in 1543. This paper examines both of these works but particularly Bibliander's Machumetis Saracenorum. It explores the reasons why Bibliander produced it through a comparison of it with Bibliander's earlier Ad nominis Christiani socios consultatio, qua nam ratione Turcarum dira potentia repelli possit ac debeat a populo Christiano.

Journal of Muslims in Europe, 2015

Historians usually tell us about the development of religious toleration in Early Modern Europe while referring to official government policies, religious conflicts and their consequences, and publications on the virtues or vices of toleration by high-minded scholars and zealous pamphleteers alike. The social history of toleration construed as the study of tolerance or intolerance in daily life is, however, a different subject. Benjamin J. Kaplan courageously tackles this complicated problem in a well-written and original book. It does not come as a surprise that he finds little evidence of religious toleration as it is understood today. But by assembling and comparing many regional and local case studies he succeeds in presenting considerable evidence of practical coexistence. Although he still clings to the traditional image of the Reformation as, above all else, a history of religious conflict, he has a keen eye for the effects of this practical coexistence on daily life. Did religious differences within a given community contribute to feelings of dislike, hatred or even to inimical actions? If so, where these curbed or not, and how was this done? Or was there a general tendency to ignore these differences as much as possible because the daily work of peacefully living together was considered more important? What happened in the case of intermarriage? These and similar questions are treated by Kaplan, who succeeds in drawing patterns which seem to make sense of what is, by all accounts, a rather perplexing story of contact, negotiation and conflict between different confessional groups. The central question he poses is: how was religious diversity accommodated in the Christian society of Early Modern Europe? To illustrate the complex nature of this problem he quite rightly draws attention to the fact that historical maps cannot capture the different religious affiliations in Europe except in a rather rough way, as these varied sometimes even from one village to the next. The obstacles to peaceful coexistence are determined and described in the first, introductory, part of the book. Among them Kaplan counts, unsurprisingly, a form of Christian piety that zealously excludes dissidents from the way to salvation, but also the nature of the Christian community itself because, in its ideal form, it constituted a religious body that must not accommodate imperfections. He aptly describes the kind of attitudes and events that could, and often did, trigger violence. Kaplan terms them flashpoints which are difficult, though not always impossible, to defuse. "So long as a sacral act occurred