In my M. A. thesis I research the role of religion in the european society in the time of ancien régime and its place in the wars of religion in the 16th and 17th centuries. The first chapter brings a critical review of historians’ approaches to the understanding of religion and religious conflicts. It argues, that the mainstream approaches fall either into anthropological ahistorical understanding of religion and religious violence or into teleological understanding of religious conflicts as factors, contributing to the development of the modern state. Stemming from the findings of political marxists regarding the role of monarchical apparatus of power as the main expropriator, the second chapter attempts to embed the religion into the social relations of ancien régime and to interpret it as specifically embedded in the social formation of the period. The third chapter brings concrete class analysis of two examples of religious wars: the French Wars of Religion and the Thirty Years’ War. It interprets both examples in light of a structural coercion to (geo)political accumulation.
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