Censoring Lies

Abstract

The religious conflicts and wars of the sixteenth century have given rise to a “civilization of blasphemy”.¹ In the Netherlands the inflation of sacrilege was the direct result of the tensions during and after 1566, when religious rivalry, mainly between Catholics and Calvinists, became entwined with political dissent and led to such events as the iconoclastic fury during which ill defined groups became opposing parties. Mockery and ridicule was a weapon in their respective struggles. In general, this caused uneasiness among the population — the weapon of defamation and derision was familiar enough yet the issue went way beyond the everyday communal context and it was impossible to know what the final result would be. Also the educated elite turned the uneasiness into a moral dilemma, but not one of scale and measured outcome. Those with a theological training started to worry about mixing the sacred and the profane, even if jokes on other erroneous religious opinions decidedly helped to further their own interests. Or to put it differently, from the sixteenth century onward separating religion and the sacred from laughter became a real issue, as many have already argued. At least in principle, that is, for religion and laughter were still mixed for a very long time to come. Moreover, the different religions showed different timetables in their reaction to laughter.