A Conscience Against Violence
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A Conscience Against Violence
''A Conscience against Violence'' is a polemical essay by Stefan Zweig (1936) that depicts the struggle between Sebastian Castellio and John Calvin. The book, written during the rise of fascism and far-right movements in Europe, remains highly relevant as it serves as a powerful critique against all forms of totalitarianism and intolerance. Title The exact title in German is "''Ein Gewissen gegen die Gewalt''", which translates to "''A Conscience against Violence''", capturing the rebellion of an individual against the power of authority. The title is a reference to a quote by Michel de Montaigne, one of the great representatives of humanism. Story During the 16th century, in the era of the Protestant Reformation, Geneva was under the control of Calvin, who established a theocratic regime coexisting with a state subjected to the will of the new Church. The Genevans were forbidden from wearing rosaries, crucifixes, and were subjected to various austere rules. Michael Servetus, ...
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Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig ( ; ; 28 November 1881 – 22 February 1942) was an Austrian writer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most widely translated and popular writers in the world. Zweig was raised in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. He wrote historical studies of famous literary figures, such as Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky in ''Drei Meister'' (1920; ''Three Masters''), and decisive historical events in ''Decisive Moments in History'' (1927). He wrote biographies of Joseph Fouché (1929), Mary, Queen of Scots, Mary Stuart (1935) and Marie Antoinette (''Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman'', 1932), among others. Zweig's best-known fiction includes ''Letter from an Unknown Woman'' (1922), ''Amok (novella), Amok'' (1922), ''Fear (Zweig novella), Fear'' (1925), ''Confusion (novella), Confusion of Feelings'' (1927), ''Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman'' (1927), the Psychological fiction, psychologica ...
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Sebastian Castellio
Sebastian Castellio (also Sébastien Châteillon, Châtaillon, Castellión, and Castello; 1515 – 29 December 1563) was a French preacher and theologian; and one of the first Reformed Christian proponents of religious toleration, freedom of conscience and thought. Introduction Castellio was born in 1515 in the village of Saint-Martin-du-Frêne. Having been educated at the age of twenty at the University of Lyon, Castellio became an expert in Latin, Hebrew and Greek. Two hundred years later, Voltaire wrote: "We can measure the virulence of this tyranny by the persecution to which Castellio was exposed at Calvin's instance — although Castellio was a far greater scholar than Calvin, whose jealousy drove him out of Geneva." Castellio later wrote that he was deeply affected and moved when he saw the burning of heretics in Lyon by the French Inquisition, and at the age of twenty-four he decided to subscribe to the teachings of the Reformation. In the spring of 1540, after ...
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John Calvin
John Calvin (; ; ; 10 July 150927 May 1564) was a French Christian theology, theologian, pastor and Protestant Reformers, reformer in Geneva during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism, including its doctrines of predestination and of God's Monergism, absolute sovereignty in the Christian soteriology, salvation of the human soul from death and Damnation, eternal damnation. Calvinist doctrines were Augustinian soteriology, influenced by and elaborated upon the Augustinian and other Christian traditions. Various Reformed Christianity, Reformed Church like Continental Reformed, Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, Waldensians, Reformed Baptists, Baptist Reformed, Calvinistic Methodism, Calvinist Methodism, and Reformed Anglican Churches, which look to Calvin as the chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world. Calvin was a tireless polemicist and Christian apolog ...
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Fascism
Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or Race (human categorization), race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy. Opposed to communism, democracy, liberalism, Pluralism (political philosophy), pluralism, and socialism, fascism is at the far right of the traditional left–right spectrum.; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; Fascism rose to prominence in early-20th-century Europe. The first fascist movements Italian fascism, emerged in Italy during World War I, before Fascism in Europe, spreading to other European countries, most notably Nazi Germany, Germany. Fascism also had adherents outside of Europe. Fascists saw World War I as a revolution that brought massive changes to the nature ...
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Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system and a form of government that prohibits opposition from political parties, disregards and outlaws the political claims of individual and group opposition to the state, and completely controls the public sphere and the private sphere of society. In the field of political science, totalitarianism is the extreme form of authoritarianism, wherein all socio-political power is held by a dictator. This figure controls the national politics and peoples of the nation with continual propaganda campaigns that are broadcast by state-controlled and state-aligned private mass communications media. The totalitarian government uses ideology to control most aspects of human life, such as the political economy of the country, the system of education, the arts, sciences, and private morality of its citizens. In the exercise of socio-political power, the difference between a totalitarian regime of government and an authoritarian regime of government is ...
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Michel De Montaigne
Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne ( ; ; ; 28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592), commonly known as Michel de Montaigne, was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularising the the essay, essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with intellectual insight. Montaigne had a direct influence on numerous writers of Western literature in the Western world; his ''Essays (Montaigne), Essais'' contain some of the most influential essays ever written. During his lifetime Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author. The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovation, and his declaration that "I am myself the matter of my book" was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne came to be recognised as embodying the spirit of freely enter ...
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Humanism
Humanism is a philosophy, philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and Agency (philosophy), agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humanism" has changed according to successive intellectual movements that have identified with it. During the Italian Renaissance, Italian scholars inspired by Greek classical scholarship gave rise to the Renaissance humanism movement. During the Age of Enlightenment, humanistic values were reinforced by advances in science and technology, giving confidence to humans in their exploration of the world. By the early 20th century, organizations dedicated to humanism flourished in Europe and the United States, and have since expanded worldwide. In the early 21st century, the term generally denotes a focus on human well-being and advocates for human freedom, autonomy, and progress. It views humanity as responsible for the prom ...
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Reformation
The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major Theology, theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and the authority of the Catholic Church. Towards the end of the Renaissance, the Reformation marked the beginning of Protestantism. It is considered one of the events that signified the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the early modern period in Europe. The Reformation is usually dated from Martin Luther's publication of the ''Ninety-five Theses'' in 1517, which gave birth to Lutheranism. Prior to Martin Luther and other Protestant Reformers, there were Proto-Protestantism, earlier reform movements within Western Christianity. The end of the Reformation era is disputed among modern scholars. In general, the Reformers argued that justification (theology), justification was sola fide, based on faith in Jesus alone and n ...
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Geneva
Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the capital of the Canton of Geneva, Republic and Canton of Geneva, and a centre for international diplomacy. Geneva hosts the highest number of International organization, international organizations in the world, and has been referred to as the world's most compact metropolis and the "Peace Capital". Geneva is a global city, an international financial centre, and a worldwide centre for diplomacy hosting the highest number of international organizations in the world, including the headquarters of many agencies of the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC and International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, IFRC of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, Red Cross. In the aftermath ...
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Michael Servetus
Michael Servetus (; ; ; also known as ''Michel Servetus'', ''Miguel de Villanueva'', ''Revés'', or ''Michel de Villeneuve''; 29 September 1509 or 1511 – 27 October 1553) was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and Renaissance humanist. He was the first European to correctly describe the function of pulmonary circulation, as discussed in '' Christianismi Restitutio'' (1553). He was a polymath versed in many sciences: mathematics, astronomy and meteorology, geography, human anatomy, medicine and pharmacology, as well as jurisprudence, translation, poetry, and the scholarly study of the Bible in its original languages. He is renowned in the history of several of these fields, particularly medicine. His work on the circulation of blood and his observations on pulmonary circulation were particularly important. He participated in the Protestant Reformation, and later rejected the Trinity doctrine and mainstream Catholic Christology. After being condemned by Catholi ...
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Inquisition
The Inquisition was a Catholic Inquisitorial system#History, judicial procedure where the Ecclesiastical court, ecclesiastical judges could initiate, investigate and try cases in their jurisdiction. Popularly it became the name for various medieval and reformation-era state-organized tribunals whose aim was to combat Christian heresy, heresy, apostasy, blasphemy, witchcraft, and customs considered to be Deviance (sociology), deviant, using this procedure. Violence, isolation, torture or the threat of its application, have been used by the Inquisition to extract confessions and denunciations. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, but convictions of unrepentant heresy were handed over to the secular courts for the application of local law, which generally resulted in execution or life imprisonment. Inquisitions with the aim of combatting religious sedition (e.g. apostasy or heresy) had their start in the Christianity ...
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1936 Non-fiction Books
Events January–February * January 20 – The Prince of Wales succeeds to the throne of the United Kingdom as King Edward VIII, following the death of his father, George V, at Sandringham House. * January 28 – Death and state funeral of George V, State funeral of George V of the United Kingdom. After a procession through London, he is buried at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. * February 4 – Radium E (bismuth-210) becomes the first radioactive element to be made synthetically. * February 6 – The 1936 Winter Olympics, IV Olympic Winter Games open in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. * February 10–February 19, 19 – Second Italo-Ethiopian War: Battle of Amba Aradam – Italian forces gain a decisive tactical victory, effectively neutralizing the army of the Ethiopian Empire. * February 16 – 1936 Spanish general election: The left-wing Popular Front (Spain), Popular Front coalition takes a majority. * February 26 – February 26 Incident (二・二六事件, ...
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