Histories of Heresy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Introduction Histories of Heresy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

   1. Introduction Histories of Heresy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

      • John Christian Laursen

      Pages 1-6

3. Outraged Orthodoxy—The Hard Line

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 7-10

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   2. “We are in strange hands, and things are come to a strange passe” Argument and Rhetoric Against Heresy in Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena [1646]

      • Sammy Basu

      Pages 11-32

   3. Francis Lee and The French Prophets The History of Montanism [1709]

      • Stacey Searl-Chapin

      Pages 33-49

4. Heretics in Self-Defense and Calls for Toleration

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 51-59

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   2. Gabriel Naudé’s Apology for Great Men Suspected of Magic Variations in Editions from 1625 to 1715

      • Maryanne Cline Horowitz

      Pages 61-75

   3. Hobbes on Heresy

      • Martyn P. Thompson

      Pages 77-99

   4. Between History and Politics Philipp van Limborch’s History of the Inquisition [1692]

      • Luisa Simonutti

      Pages 101-117

   5. The Public Context of Heresy Bayle, Maimbourg, and Le Clerc

      • Sally L. Jenkinson

      Pages 119-138

5. Radical Heretics on the Offensive

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 139-143

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   2. Histories of Heresy in the Clandestine Philosophical Manuscripts

      • Antony McKenna

      Pages 145-160

   3. The Trinity as Heresy Socinian Counter-Histories of Simon Magus, Orpheus, and Cerinthus

      • Martin Mulsow

      Pages 161-170

   4. Two Jewish Heresies Spinozism and Sabbatianism

      • Richard Popkin

      Pages 171-183

6. A Plague on Many Houses Joining Hands Against Enthusiasm

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 185-187

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   2. Heinrich Corrodi’s Critical History of Chiliasm [1781–1783]

      • Simone Zurbuchen

      Pages 189-203

   3. Gibbon and the History of Heresy

      • John G. A. Pocock

      Pages 205-220

7. Enlightened Orthodoxy

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 221-222

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   2. The Enlightened Orthodoxy of the Abbé Pluquet

      • Patrick Coleman

      Pages 223-238

   3. Heresy in the Encyclopédie d’Yverdon [1770–1780]

      • Clorinda Donato

      Pages 239-262

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.

• heretics
• historiography
• history
• Judaism
• philosophy
• Thomas Hobbes
• work

"...fourteen stimulating essays...of interest to scholars and graduate students working in early modern intellectual history." - Andrew C. Thompson, History: Reviews of New Books

• University of California, Riverside, USA

  John Christian Laursen

JOHN CHRISTIAN LAURSEN is Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Riverside. He is the author of The Politics of Skepticism in the Ancients, Montaigne, Hume, and Kant, editor of New Essays on the Political Thought of the Hugenots, and editor of Religious Toleration: "The Variety of Rites" from Cyrus to Defoe.

Policies and ethics