The history of the emotions has become a prominent field of study, as is evidenced by the upsurge in publications on this topic. This article collection comes out of a 2014 conference organized by the Centre of Excellence for the History of the Emotions at the University of Melbourne. Feeling Exclusion focuses on the religious, social, and political upheaval surrounding the Reformation and seeks to uncover the emotional fallout of this intense period, in which religious identities were contested and the losing parties experienced exclusion, persecution, and exile. Rather than tackling the religious controversies of this period, the book explores the emotional suffering and coping strategies that occur “in the shadow of immense political and religious upheaval” (2).
The thirteen articles, bracketed by the editors’ introduction and an afterword by Nicholas Terpstra, span the period from the late fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries and are divided into three sections: “Belonging and Displacement,” “Coping,” and “‘Othering’ Strategies.” The collection forms a coherent whole with recurring topics tying the contributions together. The authors probe the “emotional communities” of the persecuted (following Barbara Rosenwein's Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages). These include a broad range of groups: exiled Huguenots/Calvinists and their coreligionists at home, Jews and Christians, heterodox and mainstream Christians, and witches and society.
A prominent theme concerns the connections between exiled and home communities. Penny Roberts argues that, during the French religious wars, Huguenots in exile and at home struggled to develop a sense of belonging and identity. Letters from the exiled, framed in an intensely emotional key that speak vividly of their suffering and grief, underline the writers’ need of emotional and financial support. Susan Broomhall's analysis of letters by Huguenot exiles in London to their home communities in France shows the great efforts invested in upholding emotional connections despite geographic distance and lays bare the pressures exerted to elicit such backing. In her article on exiled English nuns, Claire Walker stresses that such essential networks were also maintained through material objects like relics, which connected English nuns to their homeland.
David van der Linden highlights the theological concerns the Huguenot exile experience engendered and how their ministers tried to address these issues in their sermons. Contrary to common opinion, Calvinism was not opposed to emotions when they were employed contemplatively. The preachers drew on Calvin's doctrine of divine providence to offer hope and comfort. Moreover, persecution, exile, and suffering were the surest signs the Huguenots were among God's chosen people. Gary Waite's essay on the Radical Reformation's David Joris underscores that the knowledge of being one of the chosen was a powerful means of maintaining emotional stability. The theme of God's chosen people is also integral to Ole Peter Grell's study of Calvinist refugees from the Upper and Lower Palatinate during the Thirty Years’ War. Grell argues that, in contrast to van der Linden's findings, the typical comforts of Calvinist teachings (predestination and election) fell short when no end to exile was in sight.
Several authors explore the emotional strategies that hardened stereotypes of difference as well as those that opened possibilities for tolerance. Fear and xenophobia played a role in fomenting intolerance toward other religious groups, as Giovanni Tarantino highlights in his study of Reformed martyrs in the Piedmont. According to Dolly MacKinnon, the Scottish Covenanters developed emotional strategies of righteousness in the face of persecution and trauma. Daniel Barbu emphasizes that emotional expressions follow certain societal rules and thus are socially constructed. His study of late medieval and early modern Jewish-Christian polemical writings investigates how such regularized emotions could heighten feelings of separation and otherness. Stories like the Toledot Yeshu (Life of Jesus) “served to draw the line separating . . . Jews and Christians, reflecting their entrenched feelings of mutual distrust and exclusion as well as their inextricable connections” (198). Intolerance and the emotional constructedness of difference are also evident in Charles Zika's discussion of the witches’ dance that became a feature in images of witches only from the 1590s, following the writings of Jean Bodin and Nicolas Remy. Here, witches—depicted as out of control, lustful, and feverish—are presented as an alien, diabolical counter-society.
Some contributors highlight openings for a more tolerant position toward others. John Marshall underscores how seventeenth-century Quakers used their experience of suffering to call for religious toleration—so much so that a few argued against slavery, insisting on the rights of all people. Paola von Wyss-Giacosa's fascinating pictorial analysis of what she calls the “con-visualization” in Bernard Picart's Cérémonies provides another example, where the representations’ emotional symbols signal criticism of the Catholic Church and approval of a more tolerant position. And María Tausiet's piece on witchcraft in Spain shows that, by the early 1800s, witchcraft accusations could no longer gain any traction.
By targeting the emotional dynamics between religion and exclusion as well as the affective strategies of coping with these experiences, the collection uncovers new insights that deepen our understanding of the Reformation. And, as Nicholas Terpstra underlines, when looking at Reformation history through the lens of emotions, many fruitful and exciting areas still in need of study come into view.
