Freedom and the Construction of Europe

Freedom, today perceived simply as a human right, was a continually contested idea in the early modern period. In Freedom and the Construction of Europe an international group of scholars explore the richness, diversity and complexity of thinking about freedom in the shaping of modernity. Volume 1 examines debates about religious and constitutional liberties, as well as exploring the tensions between free will and divine omnipotence across a continent of proliferating religious denominations. Debates about freedom have been fundamental to the construction of modern Europe, but represent a part of our intellectual heritage that is rarely examined in depth. These volumes provide materials for thinking in fresh ways not merely about the concept of freedom, but how it has come to be understood in our own time.

Introduction Martin van Gelderen; Part I. Religious Freedom and Civil Liberty: 1. Freedom and apocalyptic thinking in early modern Lutheranism Thomas Kaufmann; 2. Arminian trouble: Calvinist debates on freedom Martin van Gelderen; 3. Libertas Ecclesiae in post-tridentine debates on church and state Jaska Kainulainen; 4. Ecclesiastical independence and the freedom of consent Polly Ha; 5. Freedom, virtue and Socinian heterodoxy Sarah Mortimer; 6. From Selden to Mendelssohn: Hebraism and religious freedom Eric Nelson; 7. Natural religion: Pufendorf and Locke on the edge of freedom and reason Hannah Dawson; 8. Freedom of conscience, political liberty and the foundations of liberalism Tim Stanton; Part II. Liberty and Liberties in Constitutional Thought: 9. The liberty of Italian city states Serena Ferente; 10. Free and unfree states in Machiavelli's political philosophy Peter Stacey; 11. Discourses on liberty in early modern Ragusa Lovro Kuncevic; 12. Liberty and Liberties in early modern Poland-Lithuania Thomasz Gromelski; 13. Liberty and liberties in Europe's federal republics Thomas Maissen; 14. Roman law, German liberties and the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire Daniel Lee; 15. The language of liberty in early modern Hungarian political debate Márton Zászkaliczky; 16. The language of liberty in Calvinist political thought John Coffey; Bibliography; Index of names; Index of subjects.

Quentin Skinner is Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humanities, Department of History, Queen Mary, University of London.
Martin van Gelderen held the Chair of European Intellectual History at the European University from 2003 until 2012 and is now Director of the Lichtenberg Kolleg, Göttingen Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences.