John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture: (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History)

This book is a major new intellectual and cultural history of intolerance and toleration in early modern and early Enlightenment Europe. John Marshall offers an extensive study of late seventeenth-century practices of religious intolerance and toleration in England, Ireland, France, Piedmont and the Netherlands and of the arguments which John Locke and his associates made in defence of 'universal religious toleration'. He analyses early modern and early Enlightenment discussions of toleration; debates over toleration for Jews and Muslims as well as for Christians; the limits of toleration for the intolerant, atheists, 'libertines' and 'sodomites'; and the complex relationships between intolerance and resistance theories including Locke's own Treatises. This study is a significant contribution to the history of the 'republic of letters' of the 1680s and the development of early Enlightenment culture and will be essential reading for scholars of early modern European history, religion, political science, and philosophy.

Table of Contents:
Part I. Catholic and Protestant Intolerance in the Later Seventeenth Century: 1. Catholic intolerance, its representations in England c.1678–86, and Locke's Second Treatise; 2. Catholic intolerance and the significance of its representations in England, Ireland, and the Netherlands c.1687–92; 3. Protestant religious intolerance in England c.1660–c.1700; 4. Religious toleration and intolerance in the Netherlands and in the Huguenot community in exile; Part II. Justifications of Intolerance and the Emergence of Arguments for Toleration: Section 1: Justifications of Intolerance to c.1660: 5. Patristic and medieval sources of early modern intolerance: anathematising heretics and schismatics as seditious, pestilential poisoners, 'libertines' and 'sodomites'; 6. Heresy and schism, sedition and treason, and 'contrarities' and 'inversions' in the 'Last Days'; 7. Catholic and 'Magisterial Reformation' attacks on Anabaptism, Anti-Trinitarianism, and Atheism; 8. Anathematising heretics in sixteenth and early seventeenth century French religious polemic; 9. Antiheretical and antischismatic literature in England from the late sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century; Section 2: The Emergence of Tolerationist Arguments and their Condemnation: 10. Early tolerationist arguments and their condemnation; 11. Arguments for and against religious toleration in the Netherlands c.1579–c.1680; 12. Toleration and intolerance, Jews and Muslims; Section 3: Catholic and Protestant Defences of Intolerance in the Later Seventeenth Century: 13. Catholic justifications of intolerance in the 1680s and 1690s; 14. Huguenot justifications of intolerance and debates over resistance in the 1680s and 1690s; 15. Justifying intolerance in England c.1660–c.1700; Part III. The 'Early Enlightenment' Defence of Toleration and the 'Republic of Letters' in the 1680s and 1690s: 16. Tolerationist associations in the 1680s and 1690s and virtuous service in the cause of toleration in the 'early enlightenment republic of letters'; 17. Political and economic arguments for religious toleration in the 1680s and 1690s; 18. Toleration, 'heretics' and 'schismatics'; 19. Toleration and Jews, Muslims, and 'Pagans'; 20. The historical argument for toleration and 'early Enlightenment' advocacy of 'humanity' and 'civility'; 21. Epistemological, philological, theological, and ethical arguments for religious toleration; 22. Toleration and the intolerant, Catholics, 'Atheists', 'Libertines' and 'sodomites'.

About the Author :
John Marshall is Professor of History at The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of John Locke: Resistance, Religion, and Responsibility (1994).

Review :
"...this book is a tour de force. It synthesizes a wide range of the latest scholarship, and Marshall displays a penetrating and incisive understanding of English, Dutch, French, and Italian sources...Marshall is to be congratulated on an important study that identifies and anatomizes the intellectual history of one of the most significant moments in early modern European history." -William Gibson, Oxford Brookes University, H-Albion "A powerful piece of scholarship-brilliantly conceived, breath-taking in scope, and rich in historical insight-it will be of interest to a wide variety of scholars across a range disciplines (history, religion, political science, philosophy, history of science, literature, and queer studies), and to both Europeanists and Americanists alike...Marshall's book is surely destined to become a classic." -Tim Harris, Brown University, Catholic Historical Review "This is a vast intellectual undertaking, in some measures, comparable to Quentin Skinner's Foundations (Cambridge, 1978), which aspires to outline the historical relationship between the theory and practice of religious intolerance and intolerance in Europe in the period after the reformation and before the Enlightenment. Like Skinner's great work, it is committed to a contextual method to explain and understand the thinking of the times." -Justin Champion, Royal Holloway, University of London, Journal of British Studies "Marshall's book is an important contribution to a hot topic...stimulating and rewarding" -Gustavo Costa, Renaissance Quarterly