How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the WestReligious intolerance, so terrible and deadly in its recent manifestations, is nothing new. In fact, until after the eighteenth century, Christianity was perhaps the most intolerant of all the great world religions. How Christian Europe and the West went from this extreme to their present universal belief in religious toleration is the momentous story fully told for the first time in this timely and important book by a leading historian of early modern Europe. |
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... became part of the United States Constitution in the following year, 1791, prohibits Congress from establishing any state religion, thereby forbidding the introduction of any government-imposed barrier to religious pluralism. Needless ...
... became increasingly intolerant of heresy and heretics, those persons who, although worshipers of Christ, dissented from orthodox doctrine by maintaining and disseminating beliefs—about the nature of Christ, the Trinity, the priesthood ...
... became more and more a type of despotism with theocratic trappings under the control of emperors who maintained themselves in power with the support of their armies. It was in this period, in which Roman civilization was declining and ...
... became a priest in 391 at the insistence of the people of Hippo, a port on the Mediterranean coast, and was appointed bishop of the city four years later. He spent the rest of his life there involved in the affairs of the church and as ...
... became a considerable movement, although it remained largely confined to North Africa.29 In his numerous writings against this heresy, one of Augustine's constant aims was to persuade its followers by means of reason and argument to ...
Contents
1 | |
14 | |
The Advent of Protestantism and the Toleration Problem | 46 |
The First Champion of Religious Toleration Sebastian Castellio | 93 |
The Toleration Controversy in the Netherlands | 145 |
The Great English Toleration Controversy 16401660 | 188 |
John Locke and Pierre Bayle | 240 |
Conclusion The Idea of Religious Toleration in the Enlightenment and After | 289 |
NOTES | 313 |
INDEX | 367 |