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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... sects, and confessions, that there has appeared a massive body of writings by many different authors exploring the problem of religious toleration from many angles and presenting an array of arguments in behalf of the principles of ...
... sects, such as Anabaptists, Spiritualists, and Antitrinitarians, who dissented from both Catholicism and the major Protestant denominations. To the medieval church and papacy, coexistence with heretics was unthinkable, and its ...
... sects or schools that professed them.10 Transliterated into classical Latin, the word appeared as haeresis, retaining its meaning of a philosophical or religious sect or its tenets.11 Understood in this sense, it had no negative ...
... sects among Christians through the propagation of false and evil opinions. This impression is further confirmed by such passages as Paul's warning in his letter to the Romans to avoid those who “cause divisions and offences contrary to ...
... sects he commanded that their members be hunted down and executed. In his attempt to enforce uniformity of belief he also instituted legislation against paganism, including a comprehensive enactment in 395 forbidding anyone of whatever ...
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 |