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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... civil war between French Catholics and Calvinist Protestants, or Huguenots, of the Reformed Church, which had continued for more than thirty years.20 A religious compromise that sprang from the urgent need to restore peace, order, and ...
... civil wars, pressure on the frontiers, and invasion of the Roman provinces by migratory Germanic tribes. Government regimentation of society steadily grew as various occupations were made hereditary and prices and wages regulated in an ...
... civil authorities was a familiar phenomenon. Heresy was understood to be religious error maintained in willful and persistent opposition to religious truth as authoritatively defined and declared by the church. From the orthodox ...
... civil authorities.38 Augustine elaborated his position in favor of coercion in religion in a number of letters. In a lengthy epistle to the Donatist Vincent, he argued for the utility of coercion in inducing fear that can bring those ...
... civil authorities. While he never supposed that heretics could be converted by force, he regarded their fear of pain and suffering as conducive to their repentance and acceptance of the truth. It is rather appalling that Augustine was ...
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 |