Toleration in Enlightenment Europe

This is a systematic pan-European survey of the theory, practice, and very real limits to toleration in eighteenth-century Europe.

The Enlightenment is often seen as the great age of religious and intellectual toleration, and this 1999 volume is a systematic European survey of the theory, practice, and very real limits to toleration in eighteenth-century Europe. A distinguished international team of contributors demonstrate how the publicists of the European Enlightenment developed earlier ideas about toleration, gradually widening the desire for religious toleration into a philosophy of freedom seen as a fundamental attribute and a precondition for a civilized society. Nonetheless Europe never uniformly or comprehensively embraced toleration during the eighteenth century: although religious toleration was central to the Enlightenment project, advances in toleration were often fragile and short-lived.

List of contributors; Preface; 1. Toleration in Enlightenment Europe Ole Peter Grell and Roy Porter; 2. Toleration and the Enlightenment movement Martin Fitzpatrick; 3. Multiculturalism and ethnic cleansing in the Enlightenment Robert Wokler; 4. Intolerance, the virtue of Princes and Radicals Sylvana Tomaselli; 5. Spinoza, Locke and the Enlightenment battle for toleration Jonathan I. Israel; 6. Toleration and Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic Ernestine van der Wall; 7. Toleration and citizenship in Enlightenment England: John Toland and the naturalisation of the Jews, 1714–53 Justin Champion; 8. Citizenship and religious toleration in France Marisa Linton; 9. A tolerant society? Religious toleration in the Holy Roman Empire, 1648–1806 Joachim Whaley; 10. Enlightenment in the Habsburg Monarchy: history of a belated and short-lived phenomenon Karl Vocelka; 11. Toleration in Eastern Europe: the dissident question in eighteenth-century Poland-Lithuania Michael G. Müller; 12. Toleration in Enlightenment Italy Nicholas Davidson; 13. Inquisition, tolerance and liberty in eighteenth-century Spain Henry Kamen; Index.

The Enlightenment is often seen as the great age of religious and intellectual toleration. This 1999 book is a systematic pan-European survey of the theory, practice, and very real limits to toleration in eighteenth-century Europe, by a distinguished international team of contributors.