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A historical fallacy I sometimes see people falling into is the assumption that medieval and early modern people who died for expressing heterodox beliefs died for the *right* to express heterodox beliefs (thread)
In a handful of cases, people who were put to death for heterodoxy did indeed believe in freedom of expression. However, in most cases they simply believed they were right and their persecutors were wrong
Most English Lollards, for example, thought everyone should be a Lollard. Most evangelicals put to death in Mary I's reign thought everyone should be an evangelical. They died for their absolute belief, not for an abstract belief in toleration
It's a hard pill for many to swallow today that most medieval and early modern people - whatever their beliefs - thought those who disagreed with them were deserving of death. This wasn't really controversial for most of the period
So it may well be admirable that someone died for expressing a dissenting religious opinion (that was a pretty brave thing to do in such a society). But it doesn't follow that because they died for dissenting, they died for the *right* to dissent
Unless there is evidence that someone believed in the general right to freedom of expression, the uncomfortable truth is that most who were killed for dissenting would have been happy for their persecutors to be killed for their beliefs, too
This is a good example of how it is very difficult for us to take off the goggles of 'the Enlightenment' (whatever that was) when viewing the early modern era...
Having said all that, there *were* people who genuinely believed people who disagreed with them shouldn't be killed - such as John Foxe - and people who genuinely defended freedom of expression, such as John Milton
