The Expansion of tolerance

It is exactly that milieu and its relationship to the idea of religious tolerance
or pluralism that fascinates me. I have been carrying out a study of attitudes
of tolerance in Spain, Portugal, and their American colonies, not in terms of
government and Church policy which were by intention and conviction
intolerant, but in terms of attitudes held by people from various social strata,
lay and clerical. I have found considerable evidence of ideas of religious
relativism and tolerance that came from a variety of sources. Despite the fact
that the Catholic Church’s position by the end of the fifteenth century was
nulla salus extra ecclesia (no salvation outside the Church), there was an older
theological tradition of Pelagian thought and a tradition of natural law
that had left theologically open the possibility of salvation for those who
followed other faiths, or were ignorant of the Church’s message. Moreover,
among the many common ‘propositions’ of a heterodox, deviant, or heretical
nature that included doubts about the existence of heaven, hell or purgatory,
the efficacy of the saints, the virginity of Mary, the authority of the Pope,
the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, or the sinfulness of sex outside of
marriage, there existed an ancient belief that was commonly repeated,
that ‘cada um pode-se salvar na sua ley’ (‘each person can be saved in their
own law’).
This idea was repeated on many occasions, often by very common
people, and while it was sometimes expressed by the descendants of
converted Jews (New Christians) or of converted Muslims (moriscos) who we
might expect to hold this idea as a way of defending their former faith and
thus affirming the salvation of their ancestors, it was an idea that was also
sometimes expressed by clerics who looked back to the earlier medieval
debates and more frequently by the Old Christian lay population. During an
Inquisitorial visit to the Portuguese Alentejo from 1578 to 1579, for example,
Manuel Rodrigues, an Old Christian, raised questions about the justice of
Portugal’s campaigns in North Africa. He warned that ‘only God knew if
this war was just or unjust because the Muslims were also his creatures’, and
when told that all the Muslims were condemned to hell, he answered that
‘only God knew if they went there or not’. In that same inquest, a certain
Lianor Martins complained that Dom Sebastião’s campaigns in Morocco had
unmade many marriages and caused many people to be lost because he
had not allowed each person to live in his or her law: the Jews in theirs,
the Muslims in theirs, and the Old Christians in theirs. 8
39