Entre a incompreensão e a intolerância: as raízes do extremismo no século XVII

Abstract

Clearly, to explain the roots of extremism is an extraordinarily complex task. It is not enough to make the individual and collective psychological profiles behind the phenomenon of extremism, it is also necessary to take in account social, economic and geopolitical factors which are involved in the matter. Besides, it is not possible to make a generalization from some cases, assuming that what is observed in certain cases applies to the whole world. In other words, it is the job of a historian, such as understood contemporarily, taking in account the history and the evolution of the field of History since the XVII^{th century} to the XXI^th century (DOSSE, 2017). The XVII^th century, this is the period which is central to our analysis, is an “age of extremes (HOBSBAWM, 1995), or, more to the point, an age of intolerance. There was no space to neutrality, it was mandatory to take sides. In order to understand the roots of intolerance, or extremism, we look, in the first place (I) to the Edit of Nantes, promulgated by Henry IV in 1598. It is the first or more important document which renounces to the idea of conciliation between the religions (the so-called Protestant, or Religion Alleged Revealed, and the Roman Catholic Apostolic). It announces as a matter of fact principles of tolerance between the followers of the two religions. In second place (II), we analyze the “antidote”, that is, the Edit of Fontainebleau, promulgated in 1685 by the king Louis XIV, which revoked the Edit of Nantes. In third place (III), we examine the “Funereal oration to Michel de Tellier” (1686), pronounced by Bossuet, which is an exaggerated encomium both to Louis XIV and to the Edit of Fontainebleau. At last (IV), we examine the “Important notice to the refugees on his next return to France” (1690), by Pierre Bayle, in which the author reminds that the intolerance is not an exclusivity of Catholics, affecting also the Protestants. So, in this paper, we will try, as an essay, to search the roots of extremism in that century which, at least in Europe, was known as the century of the wars of religion, or century of intolerance.