[EarthBlues]

I think the parent posters are misstating an argument made by Kaplan[0]. Kaplan argues that religious persecutions accelerated from 1550 onwards. He nowhere argues that the medieval European society was proto-liberal or wasn’t intensely allergic to heresy.

There was no liberal freedom or value of toleration as we understand it prior to the resolution of the wars of religion. There was, however, a variegated patchwork of ad hoc arrangements based on custom, convenience, common interest, charity, forbearance (notably NOT liberal freedom or toleration) that allowed people with different religious beliefs, practices, and levels of commitment to live together in relative peace over long periods of time.

He also gives material evidence of how the reformation, counter-reformation, wars of religion, and the emergent nation state systematically destroyed these intricate arrangements.

[0]https://books.google.com/books?id=wGJjSvehY5MC

[nataliste]

This is a totally fair perspective and I have no qualms with it, beyond an asterisk that the seeds that matured with the Reformation and its aftermath were planted during the Gregorian Reforms.