Damien Sullivan wrote: > > > The Dutch did take in the Spanish middle class -- I mean, Jews -- in 1492, for > that that's worth. Going back aways I recall some level of tolerance in the > Roman Empire, apart from Christians, and I'm wondering about China. Religious > tolerance per se seems to have existed elsewhere, basically wherever religious > persecution hadn't been invented et. Not that there weren't other nasty bits, > like slavery. > There was some tolerance in various places, but counterbalanced by other nasty elements. Just for example, the first thing Constantine abolished after stopping the persecution of Christians were the two punishments of crucifixion (for obvious reasons) and branding on the face (because it "destroyed the image of God"). In most places, religion and what we would now call "nationality" were so bound up together that discrimination on the basis of one usually went together with the other, cf. the status of strangers (xenoi) in the Greek city-states. -- James Burbidge jamesandmary.burbidge at sympatico.ca