Space as an element of religious identity and a cause of religious conflicts in the modern era. Exemplified with the case of Toruń Dominicans

Abstract

The progress of Reformation in Toruń/Thorn the modern era implied coexistence of repre-sentatives of different religions in common urban space, which often led to conflicts. The Toruń Dominicans were a large and active religious community at that time. Being necessary for their survival, the space which they occupied within and outside the town was very important in shaping their individual and communal identity. The Dominican friary functioned in a hostile neighbourhood, since it was situated in the New Town, where most people were Lutherans, who rejected the concept of religious orders as well as many Catholic dogmas and practices. Of the many conflicts between the Dominicans and protestant burghers, especially municipal authorities, in the modern era, most concerned space. The reasons were: the Dominican estates outside the town, the right to a town gate, alcohol licence, employing artisans not belon-ging to guilds on Dominican land, the friary cemetery, the brothel and the executioner’s house located close to the friary, and violating the sanctity of the Dominican church and cemetery. Using the common urban space by Catholics and Protestants generated many conflicts over Holy Sacrament processions, especially those on Corpus Christi. The Dominicans frequently complained to the royal court about being wronged (and even assaulted) by Protestants. Their relations with the Protestant municipal authorities and burghers in some periods of the 17th and 18th c. were so strained that the friars accused the authorities of aiming to destroy Catholicism in Toruń. The material, social and religious heterogeneity of space disintegrated the community of the early-modern Toruń, with religious differences being a major factor in that respect, as is confirmed by the relationship between the Dominicans and the Protestant burghers.