Talking Toleration in a Time of Sectarian Controversy and Violence: Speech, Silence and Religious Coexistence in Early Modern England

Five hundred years after the outbreak of the Lutheran Reformation in 1517, the topic of religious toleration remains as urgent in our societies as ever it was in the past. In this lecture, a leading scholar of the Reformation explores a neglected aspect of interconfessional (Catholic/Protestant) relations in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, namely the role of oral exchange and conversation as the nexus between thought and action. Putting the social histories of toleration and of language into dialogue, Alexandra Walsham brings to light the deep and unresolved tensions that shaped daily life, periodically precipitating outbreaks of prejudice and violence. Alexandra Walsham is the author of The Reformation of the Landscape (2011) and Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain (2014).