page_title: Toleration
section_title: The Warsaw Confederation, 1573
hierarchical_section_title: Toleration / In the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation / The Warsaw Confederation, 1573
context_page_description: Toleration is the allowing, permitting, or acceptance of an action, idea, object, or person which one dislikes or disagrees with. Political scientist Andrew R. Murphy explains that "We can improve our understanding by defining "toleration" as a set of social or political practices and "tolerance" as a set of attitudes.". Where Random House Dictionary defines tolerance as "a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, beliefs, practices, racial or ethnic origins, etc., differ from one's own;" toleration is the practice of applying those attitudes within a social or political setting.
  Both these concepts inherently contain the idea of alterity, the state of otherness. Additional choices of how to respond to the "other," beyond toleration, do exist. Therefore, in some instances, toleration has been seen as ‘a flawed virtue’ because it concerns acceptance of things that were better overcome. Toleration cannot, therefore, be defined as a universal good, and many of its applications and uses remain contested.
context_section_description: The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth had a long tradition of religious freedom. The right to worship freely was a basic right given to all inhabitants of the Commonwealth throughout the 15th and early 16th centuries, however complete freedom of religion was officially recognized in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1573 in the Warsaw Confederation. The Commonwealth kept religious-freedom laws during an era when religious persecution was an everyday occurrence in the rest of Europe.
  The Warsaw Confederation was a private compact signed by representatives of all the major religions in Polish and Lithuanian society, in which they pledged each other mutual support and tolerance. The confederation was incorporated into the Henrican articles, which constituted a virtual Polish–Lithuanian constitution.
caption: Original act of the Warsaw Confederation 1573 – the official sanctioning of religious freedom in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
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