Forced conversion is the adoption of a religion or irreligion under duress. Someone who has been forced to convert to a different religion or irreligion may continue, covertly, to adhere to the beliefs and practices which were originally held, while outwardly behaving as a convert. Crypto-Jews, Crypto-Christians, Crypto-Muslims, Crypto-Hindus and Crypto-Pagans are historical examples of the latter.
Religion and proselytization The religions of the world are divided into two groups: those that actively seek new followers (missionary religions) and those that do not (non-missionary religions). This classification dates back to a lecture given by Max Müller in 1873, and is based on whether or not a religion seeks to gain new converts. The three main religions classified as missionary religions are Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, while the non-missionary religions include Judaism, Hinduism, and Zoroastrianism. Other religions, such as Primal Religions, Confucianism, and Taoism, may also be considered non-missionary religions.
Religion and power In general, anthropologists have shown that the relationship between religion and politics is complex, especially when it is viewed over the expanse of human history.Firth, Raymond (1981) Spiritual Aroma: Religion and Politics . American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 83, No. 3, pp. 582–601
While religious leaders and the state generally have different aims, both are concerned about power and order; both use reason and emotion to motivate behavior. Throughout history, leaders of religious and political institutions have cooperated, opposed one another, and/or attempted to co-opt each other, for purposes which are both noble and base, and they have implemented programs with a wide range of driving values, from compassion, which is aimed at alleviating current suffering, to brutal change, which is aimed at achieving long-term goals, for the benefit of groups which have ranged from small cliques to all of humanity. The relationship is far from simple. But religion has frequently been used in a coercive manner, and it has also used coercion.
Buddhism People may express their faith through the act of taking refuge, and conversions usually require people to recite their acceptance of the Triple Gems of Buddhism. However, they may always practice Buddhism without fully abandoning their own religion. According to Chin Human Rights Organisation (CHRO), Christians from the Chin ethnic minority group in Myanmar are facing coercion to convert to Buddhism by state actors and programmes.
Christianity
Christianity was a minority religion during much of the middle Roman Classical Period, and the early Christians were persecuted during that time. When Constantine I converted to Christianity, it had already grown to be the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. Already under the reign of Constantine I, Christian heretics were being persecuted; beginning in the late 4th century, the ancient pagan religions were also actively suppressed. In the view of many historians, the Constantinian shift turned Christianity from a persecuted religion into a religion which was capable of persecuting and sometimes eager to persecute.see e.g. John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration on Protestant England 1558–1689, 2000, p.22
Late Antiquity
On 27 February 380, together with Gratian and Valentinian II, Theodosius I issued the decree Cunctos populos, the so-called Edict of Thessalonica, recorded in the Codex Theodosianus xvi.1.2. This declared Trinitarian Nicene Christianity to be the only legitimate imperial religion and the only one entitled to call itself Catholic. Other Christians he described as "foolish madmen". He also ended official state support for the traditional polytheist religions and customs.
The Codex Theodosianus (Eng. Theodosian Code) was a compilation of the laws of the Roman Empire under the Christian emperors since 312. A commission was established by Theodosius II and his co-emperor Valentinian III on 26 March 429"Codex Theodosianus" in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, Oxford University Press, New York & Oxford, 1991, p. 475. and the compilation was published by a constitution of 15 February 438. It went into force in the eastern and western parts of the empire on 1 January 439.
It is Our will that all the peoples who are ruled by the administration of Our Clemency shall practice that religion which the divine Peter the Apostle transmitted to the Romans.... The rest, whom We adjudge demented and insane, shall sustain the infamy of heretical dogmas, their meeting places shall not receive the name of churches, and they shall be smitten first by divine vengeance and secondly by the retribution of Our own initiative (Codex Theodosianus XVI 1.2.)., qtd. in
Forced conversions of Jews were carried out with the support of rulers during Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages in Gaul, the Iberian Peninsula and in the Byzantine Empire.
In Gregory of Tours' writing, he claimed that the Vandals attempted to force all Spanish Catholics to become Arian Christians during their rule in Spain. Gregory also recounted episodes of forced conversion of Jews by Chilperic I and Avitus of Clermont.Gregory of Tours, A history of the Franks, Pantianos Classics, 1916
Medieval western Europe During the Saxon Wars, Charlemagne, King of the Franks, forcibly converted the Saxons from their native Germanic paganism by way of warfare, and law upon conquest. Examples are the Massacre of Verden in 782, when Charlemagne reportedly had 4,500 captive Saxons massacred for rebelling, and the Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae, a law imposed on conquered Saxons in 785, after another rebellion and destruction of churches and killing of missionary priests and monks, that prescribed death to those who refused to convert to Christianity.For the Massacre of Verden, see Barbero, Alessandro (2004).
Forced conversion that occurred after the seventh century generally took place during riots and massacres carried out by mobs and clergy without support of the rulers. In contrast, royal persecutions of Jews from the late eleventh century onward generally took the form of expulsions, with some exceptions, such as conversions of Jews in southern Italy of the 13th century, which were carried out by Dominican Inquisitors but instigated by King Charles II of Naples.
Jews were forced to convert to Christianity by the Crusaders in Lorraine, on the Lower Rhine, in Bavaria and Bohemia, in Mainz and in Worms (see Rhineland massacres, Worms massacre (1096)).
Though he strongly condemned and prohibited forced conversion and baptism by decree, Pope Innocent III suggested in a private letter to a bishop in 1201 that those who agreed to be baptized to avoid torture and intimidation might be compelled to outwardly observe Christianity:Chazan, Robert, ed., Church, State, and Jew in the Middle Ages, West Orange, NJ:Behrman House, 1980, p. 103.
[T]hose who are immersed even though reluctant, do belong to ecclesiastical jurisdiction at least by reason of the sacrament, and might therefore be reasonably compelled to observe the rules of the Christian Faith. It is, to be sure, contrary to the Christian Faith that anyone who is unwilling and wholly opposed to it should be compelled to adopt and observe Christianity. For this reason a valid distinction is made by some between kinds of unwilling ones and kinds of compelled ones. Thus one who is drawn to Christianity by violence, through fear and through torture, and receives the sacrament of Baptism in order to avoid loss, he (like one who comes to Baptism in dissimulation) does receive the impress of Christianity, and may be forced to observe the Christian Faith as one who expressed a conditional willingness though, absolutely speaking, he was unwilling ...
During the 12th–13th century Northern Crusades against the pagan Finnic, Baltic, and West Slavic peoples around the Baltic Sea forced conversions were a widely used tactic, which received papal sanction.Christiansen, Eric. The Northern Crusades. London: Penguin Books. pg. 71 These tactics were first adopted during the Wendish Crusade and became more widespread during the Livonian Crusade and Prussian Crusade, in which tactics included killing hostages, massacre, and devastation of the lands of tribes that had not yet submitted.Christiansen, Eric. The Northern Crusades. London: Penguin Books. pg. 95 Most of the populations of these regions were converted only after the repeated rebellion of native populations that did not want to accept Christianity even after initial forced conversion; in Old Prussia, the tactics employed in the initial conquest and subsequent conversion of the territory resulted in the death of most of the native population, whose language consequently became extinct.The German Hansa, P. Dollinger, page 34, 1999, Routledge
Early modern Iberian Peninsula
After the end of Islamic control of Spain, Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492. In Portugal, following an order for their expulsion in 1496, only a handful of them were allowed to leave and the rest of them were forced to convert. Muslims were expelled from Portugal in 1497, and they were gradually forced to convert in the constituent kingdoms of Spain. The forced conversion of Muslims was implemented in the Crown of Castile from 1500 to 1502 and it was implemented in the Crown of Aragon in the 1520s. After the conversions, the so-called "New Christians" were those inhabitants (Sephardic Jews or Mudéjar Muslims) who were baptized under coercion as well as in the face of execution, becoming forced converts from Islam (Moriscos, Conversos and "secret Moors") or converts from Judaism (Conversos, Crypto-Jews and Marranos).
After the forced conversions, when all former Muslims and Jews had ostensibly become Catholic, the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions primarily targeted forced converts from Judaism and Islam, who came under suspicion, because they were either accused of continuing to adhere to their old religion, or they were accused of falling back into it. Jewish conversos who still resided in Spain and frequently practiced Judaism in secret were suspected of being Crypto-Jews by the "Old Christians". The Spanish Inquisition generated much wealth and income for the church and individual inquisitors by confiscating the property of the persecuted. The end of Al-Andalus and the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula went hand in hand with the increasing amount of Spanish and Portuguese influence in the world, influence which was exemplified by the Christian conquest of the aboriginal Indian populations of the Americas. The Ottoman Empire and Morocco absorbed most of the Jewish and Muslim refugees, but a large majority of them remained in Spain and Portugal by choosing to be Conversos.
European wars of religion
The Peace of Augsburg (1555), signed by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, stated that German princes could choose the religion (Lutheranism or Catholicism) of their realms according to their conscience (the principle of cuius regio, eius religio). Subjects, citizens, or residents were generally forced to convert to their prince's religion, through a principle called ius reformandi. Those who did not wish to conform to the prince's choice were given a grace period in which they were free to emigrate to different regions in which their desired religion had been accepted. However, serfs were essentially excluded from this right to emigrate.