Guerra y paz en la emergencia de la Modernidad. Europa entre la belicosidad de los estados, las guerras de religión y el deseo de paz

Abstract

War and Peace at the Emergence of Modernity: Europe between State Belligerence, Religious Wars and the Desire for Peace

This article offers an interpretative outlook enquiring about Europe's resources to achieve peace after the period of extreme denominationalism (confessionalisation) and maximum belligerence at the end of the 16th and the early decades of the 17th centuries. Schilling studies the structural features and evolution of the European civilization model of Latin Christendom from the Late Middle Ages. A dualist religious-sociological model from which the law of nature and some separation of religious and political spheres never were totally absent. Although the peace reached in 1648 was not perpetual as I. Kant advocated, it represents a landmark and a fundamental reference point for the secularization of politics, the autonomy de Christian churchs and the resolution of conflicts between European states by congresses. However, we must not examine this Peace only from the point of view of the scope which the processes developped in the Europe of the time has for the present. It is also interesting to save some living worlds strange to us.