the Edict of Tolerance

Examples of the Edict of Tolerance in the following topics:

• The Rise of Christianity

  • The Great Persecution officially ended in April of 311, when Galerius, senior emperor of the Tetrarchy, issued an edict of toleration which granted Christians the right to practice their religion, though it did not restore any property to them.
  • Constantine, Caesar in the Western empire and Licinius, Caesar in the East, also were signatories to the edict of toleration.
  • In 313, Constantine and Licinius announced in the Edict of Milan "that it was proper that the Christians and all others should have liberty to follow that mode of religion which to each of them appeared best," thereby granting tolerance to all religions, including Christianity.
  • The Edict of Milan went a step further than the earlier Edict of Toleration by Galerius in 311 and returned confiscated Church property.
  • The Edict of Milan did, however, raise the stock of Christianity within the empire and it reaffirmed the importance of religious worship to the welfare of the state.

• Louis XIV and the Huguenots

  • The Edict of Nantes was issued in 1598 by Henry IV of France.
  • The Edict treated some, although not all, Protestants with tolerance and opened a path for secularism.
  • The Edict of Fontainebleau revoked the Edict of Nantes, and repealed all the privileges that arose therefrom.
  • The revocation of the Edict of Nantes created a state of affairs in France similar to that of nearly every other European country of the period (with the brief exception of Great Britain and possibly the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), where only the majority state religion was legally tolerated.
  • However, French society would sufficiently change by the time of Louis' descendant, Louis XVI, to welcome toleration in the form of the 1787 Edict of Versailles, also known as the Edict of Tolerance.

• Joseph II and Domestic Reform

  • He was the eldest son of Maria Theresa and her husband, Francis I and thus the first ruler in the Austrian dominions of the House of Lorraine, styled Habsburg-Lorraine.
  • He issued edicts, 6,000 in all, plus 11,000 new laws designed to regulate and reorder every aspect of the empire.
  • To equalize the incidence of taxation, Joseph ordered a fresh appraisal of the value of all properties in the empire.
  • Joseph's  enlightened despotism included also the Patent of Toleration, enacted in 1781, and the Edict of Tolerance in 1782. 
  • The Patent granted religious freedom to the Lutherans, Calvinists, and Serbian Orthodox, but it wasn't until the 1782 Edict of Tolerance that Joseph II extended religious freedom to the Jewish population.

• Constantine

  • The first Roman emperor to claim conversion to Christianity, Constantine played an influential role in the proclamation of the Edict of Milan in 313, which decreed tolerance for Christianity in the empire.
  • One of his major political legacy, aside from moving the capital of the Empire to Constantinople, was that, in leaving the empire to his sons, he replaced Diocletian's tetrarchy with the principle of dynastic succession.
  • Constantine's decision to cease the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire was a turning point for Early Christianity, sometimes referred to as the Triumph of the Church, the Peace of the Church or the Constantinian shift.
  • In 313, Constantine and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan decriminalizing Christian worship.
  • The emperor became a great patron of the Church and set a precedent for the position of the Christian emperor within the Church and the notion of orthodoxy, Christendom, ecumenical councils and the state church of the Roman Empire declared by edict in 380.

• The Shift East

  • The age of Constantine marked a distinct epoch in the history of the Roman Empire.
  • During this meeting, the emperors agreed on the so-called Edict of Milan, officially granting full tolerance to Christianity and all religions in the Empire.
  • In the year 320, Licinius allegedly reneged on the religious freedom promised by the Edict of Milan in 313 and began to oppress Christians anew, generally without bloodshed, but resorting to confiscations and sacking of Christian office-holders.
  • The new city was protected by the relics of the True Cross, the Rod of Moses and other holy relics, though a cameo now at the Hermitage Museum also represented Constantine crowned by the tyche of the new city.
  • Constantine built the new Church of the Holy Apostles on the site of a temple to Aphrodite.

• The French Wars of Religion

  • As the Huguenots gained influence and displayed their faith more openly, Roman Catholic hostility to them grew, even though the French crown offered increasingly liberal political concessions and edicts of toleration.
  • As on the other side ultra-Catholic and anti-royalist doctrines were closely associated, so on the side of the two kings the principles of tolerance and royalism were united.
  • The warfare was finally quelled in 1598 when Henry IV recanted Protestantism in favour of Roman Catholicism, issued the Edict of Nantes.
  • The Edict simultaneously protected Catholic interests by discouraging the founding of new Protestant churches in Catholic-controlled regions.
  • With the proclamation of the Edict of Nantes, and the subsequent protection of Huguenot rights, pressures to leave France abated.

• Expansion of the Maurya Empire

  • Perhaps one of the greatest-known accomplishments of Ashoka was his creation of his edicts, which were erected between 269 BCE and 232 BCE.
  • The Edicts of Ashoka, set in stone, are found throughout the Subcontinent.
  • Ashoka's edicts refer to the Greeks, Kambojas, and Gandharas as peoples forming a frontier region of his empire.
  • Ashoka's edicts also mentioned social and cultural attributes of his empire, emphasizing Buddhism, though not condemning other religions.
  • For this, the Edicts of Ashoka are known as an early document that promoted religious tolerance.

• The Sun-King and Authoritarianism

  • Finally, Louis dramatically limited religious tolerance in France as he saw the persistence of Protestantism as a disgraceful reminder of royal powerlessness.
  • Responding to petitions, Louis initially excluded Protestants from office, constrained the meeting of synods, closed churches outside Edict of Nantes-stipulated areas, banned Protestant outdoor preachers, and prohibited domestic Protestant migration.
  • In 1685, he issued the Edict of Fontainebleau, which cited the redundancy of privileges for Protestants given their scarcity after the extensive conversions.
  • It revoked the Edict of Nantes, and repealed all the privileges that arose therefrom.
  • By his edict, Louis no longer tolerated Protestant groups, pastors, or churches to exist in France.

• Clonal Selection and Tolerance

  • Clonal selection and tolerance select for survival of lymphocytes that will protect the host from foreign antigens.
  • The concept of central tolerance was proposed in 1959 as part of a general theory of immunity and tolerance.
  • It was hypothesized that it is the age of the lymphocyte that defines whether an antigen that is encountered will induce tolerance, with immature lymphocytes being tolerance sensitive.
  • clonal selection of the B and T lymphocytes:1.
  • Describe the importance of central and peripheral tolerance and distinguish between positive and negative clonal selection

• Ashoka's Conversion

  • Edict 13 on the Edicts of Ashoka Rock Inscriptions reflect the great remorse the king felt after observing the destruction of Kalinga:
  • The edict goes on to address the even greater degree of sorrow and regret resulting from Ashoka's understanding that the friends and families of deceased would suffer greatly too.
  • The use of Buddhist sources in reconstructing the life of Ashoka has had a strong influence on perceptions of Ashoka, as well as the interpretations of his Edicts.
  • In his edicts, Ashoka expresses support for all the major religions of his time: Buddhism, Brahmanism, Jainism, and Ajivikaism.
  • However, the edicts alone strongly indicate that he was a Buddhist.