Histories of Heresy in Early Modern Europe : For, Against, and Beyond Persecution and Toleration

Toleration of differing religious ideas exists in parts of the contemporary world, but it is still not clear how this came about. Recent work has uncovered the enormous importance one branch of historiography has had in bringing about such tolerance as we have: histories of heresy. This book brings together experts in this field in order to attempt to map out the contours and features of the influence of these histories on early modern and modern conceptions of toleration. Perhaps by showing heretics and heresies to be more benign than once thought, these histories could tease tolerance from the intolerant. The essays in this book attempt to piece together the intentions and effects of key works from this literature in the promotion or rejection of toleration in theory and practice. Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction Histories of Heresy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries....Pages 1-6 Front Matter....Pages 7-10 “We are in strange hands, and things are come to a strange passe” Argument and Rhetoric Against Heresy in Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena [1646]....Pages 11-32 Francis Lee and The French Prophets The History of Montanism [1709]....Pages 33-49 Front Matter....Pages 51-59 Gabriel Naudé’s Apology for Great Men Suspected of Magic Variations in Editions from 1625 to 1715....Pages 61-75 Hobbes on Heresy....Pages 77-99 Between History and Politics Philipp van Limborch’s History of the Inquisition [1692]....Pages 101-117 The Public Context of Heresy Bayle, Maimbourg, and Le Clerc....Pages 119-138 Front Matter....Pages 139-143 Histories of Heresy in the Clandestine Philosophical Manuscripts....Pages 145-160 The Trinity as Heresy Socinian Counter-Histories of Simon Magus, Orpheus, and Cerinthus....Pages 161-170 Two Jewish Heresies Spinozism and Sabbatianism....Pages 171-183 Front Matter....Pages 185-187 Heinrich Corrodi’s Critical History of Chiliasm [1781–1783]....Pages 189-203 Gibbon and the History of Heresy....Pages 205-220 Front Matter....Pages 221-222 The Enlightened Orthodoxy of the Abbé Pluquet....Pages 223-238 Heresy in the Encyclopédie d’Yverdon [1770–1780]....Pages 239-262 The Abbé Nicolas-Sylvestre Bergier and the History of Heresy....Pages 263-280 Back Matter....Pages 281-290