Syllabus
1. Religious conflict and holy war: Theoretical framework.
2. Early Christianity and religious conflicts in late Roman Empire
3. Jihad, Reconquista and birth of "holy war" in Christianity
4. Rise and Fall of Crusades
5. “The Others”: Jews and Muslims in Christian Europe
6. Wars on heresy in the Western Church
7. “American genocide”: Religious aspects of New World’s conquest
8. Protestant reformation and "Wars of Religion" in France
9. Thirty Years' War
10. Secularization and wars against religion
11. Civil wars: Cases of Lebanon, Northern Ireland and Yugoslavia
12. Religious conflict in 21th century: Christians as oppressed/Christians as oppressors
13. Final test
Annotation
“Deus vult”: Holy War and Religious Conflict in the History of Western Christianity aims to introduce undergraduate students to the problematic question of religious conflict and “holy war”, providing them with basic theoretical framework and focusing on diverse case studies of its application throughout the history of Western Christianity. While fundamentals of this module are Europocentric, it reaches beyond the “vieux continent” as it includes cases from other parts of the world.