Religious Intolerance as Policy During the Reformation

Ever since the biblical dispute of Ishmael and Isaac, persons of different ethnic backgrounds have fought - verbally and physically - over matters of religion and culture. However, the Reformation era of the 15th through 17th Centuries brought about an historic and unique kind of discrimination, because Roman Catholicism in Europe had never been viably challenged within Christianity. True, Eastern Orthodoxy was developed earlier in the millennium, and its Church in Russia and Greece did frequently quarrel with the Catholics. Yet, the centers of the Reformation were geographically much clos…