Students in History classes often read and hear about wars which are allegedly caused by religion. In European History, narratives are frequently constructed about wars between Protestants and Roman Catholics.
Does a careful examination of the data support those narratives?
Three examples prove enlightening:
First, the conflicts between Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland. Long before they were ‘The Republic of Ireland’ and the ‘Devolved Government,’ tensions between the two had existed for centuries — since 1169, to be exact. In this year, English military forces, with some mercenaries, invaded the island from the north and began to claim pieces of land and set up provisional governments. The details of the invasions, of the various governments for the occupied territories, of competing claims of ownership made by the various invaders, of the resistance offered by the native populations, and the various governments formed over those native populations constitute a long and complicated history.
This much, however, is both clear and simple: the invasions of Ireland and the subsequent centuries of war and resistance were in no way religious, and in no way the product of any alleged disagreements between Protestants and Catholics.
There were no Protestants in England until the Anglican Reformation, which happened as a series of events between around 1527 to 1547. Only after those dates, at the earliest, were there people who could be described as ‘Protestant’ in England. Yet the fighting in Ireland began in 1169. Both sides of the conflict were Roman Catholic, either nominally or in fact. Nobody was viewing the invasions as religious-motivated or as conflicts between two religious groups.
Both England and Ireland were Roman Catholic in 1169.
Bluntly stated, there is no justification for any claim that the conflict between Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland were in any way caused by, or initiated by, conflicts between Protestants and Catholics.
After these military and guerilla actions had been raging in Ireland for approximately 400 years, England became Protestant. This late development can have had nothing to do with creating the hostilities in Ireland.
Second, a series of internal conflicts in France known as ‘The French Wars of Religion’ lasted from 1562 to 1598. Despite being so labeled in History books, the final phase of these civil wars saw two Roman Catholic kings fighting each other: Henry I of Guise and Henry III of the Bourbon Dynasty.
The events in France during the sixteenth century were complex and complicated, and a simple narrative is impossible. When King Henry II died in 1559, his son Francis II was the nominal heir, but was both too young and too unassertive. The young king was married to Mary, who was clever and assertive, and exerted influence by means of her husband. Mary was of the House of Guise and would later be known as Mary Queen of Scots. This angered the House of Montmorency, which wanted the power of the throne. Francis II died in 1560, and his mother, Catherine de’Medici became regent, ruling on behalf of her second son, Charles IX. The House of Montmorency remained unsatisfied, and the tensions continued.
The dense paragraph above narrates only the beginning of the tensions which would lead to the wars which dragged on for thirty-six years. The events became even more entangled and intricate over the next few years.
For present purposes, however, what is important is that all the individuals — Henry II, Francis II, Mary, Catherine de’Medici, and Charles IX — and both of the dynasties — the House of Guise and the House of Montmorency — mentioned in that dense paragraph were Roman Catholic.
The power struggle which led to the wars was not a dispute between Protestants and Catholics. It was a purely political and secular dispute between Roman Catholics. There was no religious aspect to the conflict.
Admittedly, as the plot developed, a group of French Calvinists — called ‘Huguenots’ — became part of the storyline. They were Protestants.
But they weren’t part of the action at the beginning, as summarized above, and they weren’t part of the action when it ended. They were ancillary to what was purely a power struggle.
Third, the Thirty Years’ War (1618 - 1648) is often listed as a religious war. The conflict began between Bohemia, which was a Protestant region, and the emperor, who was fiercely Roman Catholic. While this might seem like a religious conflcit, the questions at hand were about taxation and the relative balance between the centralized power of the emperor vis-a-vis the local government. It became more clear that this was not a religious conflict when neighboring powers were drawn into the fighting on different sides: Roman Catholic Spain fought against Roman Catholic France, while Protestant Sweden allied with Roman Catholic France. These alliances reveal that the conflict was not religious.
From the above three examples, three patterns are clear:
One, that some — or many — wars which are called ‘religious’ are in fact not religious.
Two, that the principals in the wars often go to great lengths to persuade the public that their motives are religious, when they are not.
Three, the true motive for wars is often greed for land, money, or power.
