www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Changing Religion Not Allowed: only in Czarist Russia?

I came across the article below in a 1903 issue of The American Lawyer. I am wondering if other monarchies of the past had similar laws.

The Legal Aspect of the Czar's Manifesto.

The Manifesto issued by the Czar of Russia is being pretty thoroughly discussed in the American papers in all its bearings, and some interesting facts in relation to conditions in Russia are elicited. The clause in the new decree which attracts most attention is that in which the Czar declares: "We *** have deemed it expedient to strengthen and decree the undeviating observance of the principles of tolerance laid down by the fundamental laws of the Russian Empire, which, recognizing the Orthodox Church as the ruling one, grant to all of our subjects of our subjects of our religions, and to all foreign persuasions, freedom of creed and worship, in accordance with their rites." This paragraph, which has all the appearance of inaugurating an important reform, marks in reality merely at continuation of the status quo. Says "The Outlook":

"Mohammedans have had their mosques, Jews their synagogues, and Roman Catholics and Lutherans their churches in Russia for many years, and have worshiped in them, according to their respective creeds and rites, without let or hindrance. The thing that is denied in Russia is the right of an Orthodox Christian to think for himself in religious matters, and, as the result of such thinking, to change the form of his religious faith and leave the Orthodox Church. The denial of that right is not affected in the slightest degree by the Czar's proclamation of religious liberty. The law, as it now stands, is as follows:

"All persons who leave the Orthodox Church for the church of any other Christian denomination shall be turned over to the spiritual authorities for admonition and instructions, and shall then be dealt with in accordance with ecclesiastical rules. Until they shall return to Orthodoxy, their minor children will be taken from them in charge by the Government, in order that they may not become perverted, and their lands, if occupied by Orthodox Christians, shall be put under guardianship, and they shall not be permitted to live thereupon. (Penal Code, Revised Edition, Section 188.)

"The punishment for inducing or persuading another person to leave the Orthodox Church is much more severe. The code says:

"For inducing an Orthodox Christian to become a member of any other Christian church, the guilty one shall be deprived of all special, personal, and acquired rights, and shall be deprived of all special, personal, and acquired rights, and shall be exiled to Siberia, or imprisoned at hard labor, for a period from one year to a year and a half. (Penal Code, Section 187.)

"For persuading or inducing an Orthodox Christian to adopt the Jewish or any other non-Christian faith, the guilty one shall be deprived of all civil rights and sent into penal servitude for a period of from eight to ten years. (Penal Code, Section 184.)

"If a man or woman who is a member of the Orthodox Church marries or a woman or man who is a Lutheran or a Roman Catholic, the children must be trained up in the Orthodox faith. If parents disobey this law, they are to be punished with imprisonment for a period of from eight to sixteen months. (Penal Code, Section 190.) These laws, and many others which limit freedom of conscience, freedom of teaching, and freedom of speech in religious matters, as well as freedom to criticize and discuss the Bible and the church, remain untouched by the Czar's decree."

And I don't mean way back in the olden times - this article came out in the XXth century.

Most of the monarchies of the Ancien Regime had similar laws. In Western Europe, most of them were overturned by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. I'm not sure about the situation in Austria-Hungary, or whether, if such laws were on the books, they were actually enforced. Spain, I believe kept laws against converting from Catholicism well into the middle of the 19th century, but I am not sure when they were repealed, or whether, given the absence of Jews, Muslims and all but a handful of Protestants from Spain, there was any need to enforce them.

Thank you, Stuart.

Austria Hungary was home to large numbers of Jews. Just take the present city of Chernivtsi in Ukraine - the Jewish presence was significant all the way until WWII.

Jews were permitted to become Christians. I believe, however, there were legal barriers to Christians becoming Jews, or for Christians to marry Jews. In the same way, it remains illegal for Muslims to convert to Christianity or for Muslim women to marry Christian men, in all Islamic countries where the civil law is derived from (or is synonymous with) Sharia. This prohibition against apostasy and against Christian men marrying Muslim women, explains the gradual reduction in the Middle Eastern Christian population, and why the remaining Christians are, overwhelmingly, not ethnically Arab but the descendants of the original Syro-Phoenician-Greek population of the region in the seventh century.

Define "ethnically Arab." And, while you are at it, "overwhelmingly." Btw, the Christian Arab population of the Levant predates Muhammad, by several centuries.

You guys are so erudite you're all making me pee my pants.

Austria Hungary prosecuted plenty of people for returning to Orthodoxy, up to killing them in the concentration camp at Talerhof on the eve of WW I.

As for Czarist Russia, around that time of the article or a little after, a couple to several thousand were allowed to return to communion with the Vatican. Most, however, remained faithful to Orthodoxy-even when the Polish second republic tried to drag them back.

correction: the dawn of WW I.

The definition of "Arab" you are using is based on Roman administrative boundaries. For the Romans, "Arabia" was the area we call the East Bank of the Jordan, and its inhabitants, the Nabateans, were a heterogenous mix of Syrians, Phoenicians and Greeks. If by "Arab" we speak strictly of people from the Arabian Peninsula, there were very few in Syria or Palestine in late antiquity. The Romans built and manned extensive border fortifications (limes) to keep them out.

There were Arab Christians in Arabia, but most of them were adherents of the Church of the East, outside of the Oikumene, and under the political control first of the Parthians, then of the Persians. Most of them were either eradicated by the early Muslims, or absorbed into the Uma. Which is ironic, since Mohammed cribbed so much of his theology from the so-called "Nestorians".

I know people find this annoying, but the genes don't lie. Think how the Japanese and Koreans must feel, upon discovering that, genetically, they are the same people.

No, on the language in the inscriptions: the oldest extant verse of Arabic poetry was carved in Avdat in the central Negev before 150 AD. The Namara inscription, which contains the date 328 A.D., located just outside of Damascus, served as the epitaph of Imru' al-Qays b. 'Amr "King of the Arabs" as the inscription records, the first Christian King of the Lakhmid tribe, which came from Yemen. Both adopt the Aramaic alphabet, but earlier (like the last half millenium BC) inscriptions in Arabic used the South Arabian alphabet of Yemen, and such inscriptions by rulers identified as "King of the Arabs" as well as thousands of graffitti are found all over Syria as well into Lebanon.
and the Negev, a large chunk of the Sinai, all southern Palestine (Herodotus describes Gaza as the major city of the Arabs-the terminus of the incense route from Arabia Felix in Yemen-and notes that the Persian Shah Cambysses could enter Egypt only with the agreement of the "King of the Arabs", and mentions their chief goddess Allat, the same one who vexed Muhammad over a millenium later. A votive offering to her from Gershem the Arabian (Nehemiah 6:1) has been found in an Arabian temple in Egypt (the Suez canal zone) from before his time), and southern present day Syria (the governor of Aretas the King from whom St. Paul fled in Damascus (II Corinthians 11:32) was part of the Nabataean kingdom).

Syrians? What's that?

They did use Aramaic as an administrative language, and became hellenized, and if by Syrian you mean Canaanite, they intermixed with them as well. However, the main Nabataeans came out of the fusion of Arabian tribesmen pouring along the incense route into Palestine and Sinai up to the Mediterranean in the last millenium BC.

Alas! They were already in: Shalmanesar III immortalized his defeat in north Syria at Qarqar in 853 BC of a coallition which included "Gindibu the Arab" alongside King Ahab of Israel and King Ben Haddad of Damascus. Sargon records settling Arabs in Samaria after deporting the Israelites, and the Hebrews, Assyrians, Persians and Greeks document their dealings with the confederation of Qedar (named, according to the Bible, after the son of Ishmael) and its "Queen of the Arabs" in present day Western Iraq and Eastern Syria and Jordan, expanding through the rest of Jordan into Sinai onto the fringe of the Eastern Nile Delta. The related Yatur settled in the Beqa' valley in Lebanon and, with the fall of the Seleucids, set up their kingdom of Iturea.

By the time the Romans came, the Arabs had set up their kingdoms from Nabataen in the West through Iturea, Emesa (Homs today in Syria), Palmyra, Osroeni to Hatra in the East (Northern Iraq). One, Emesa, gave Rome a dynasty (the Severan), another, Palmyra, arose as rival. Another Arab center, Bostra, gave, according to the Church Fathers, the first Christian Emperor (albeit crypto-Christian) Philip "the Arab."

When the Empire became Christian, it employed the Ethnarch of the Arab Ghassanids to guard (and rule) the Syrian limes, as the rival Shah employed the Lakhmids to guard (and rule) the Mesopotamian frontier. The scattered tens of thousands of inscriptions in Arab in Lebanon, Syria and Mesopotamia attest to quite a number of them in the Late Antiquity there.

The Ghassanids were Orthodox, and one of their number became the Emperor Nikephoros. Imru al-Qays, mentioned above, embraced Christianity before Nestorius was born.

Btw, it's "Umma(h)"
Language isn't in the genes, and Arabism is in the language.

That said, I don't know why that matters: most Arabs, Christian and Muslim, share the same J grouping-Haplogroup J-P209 is the most prevalent in Southern Arabia and Jordan/Southern Palestine, as is J-M267, which spreads across the Arabian peninsula and into both Mesopotamia and Syria.

Btw, the genes do lie: my former in-laws only had daughters who survived to have children, and they bore only sons. As such, the Y chromosome, then the mitochondrial DNA, was wiped out in their progeny. Their ancestry simply ceased to exist in the genome record you are referring to, although their genes were passed on and continue (and Lord willing will continue to do so-I entertain hopes of grandchildren!).