A Cultural History of Tolerance: Ideas, Conflicts, and Protagonists

Covering the entire European system and its relations with the East and America, this first global history of tolerance in early modern Europe describes how the ideal of tolerance and its realisation transformed both the religious and political life of the modern world.

In the 16th century, Christianity was split apart by the Lutheran revolt, a fracture which would become a political one. Erasmus, Castellio, and the Socinians defended the freedom of conscience and of faith, and the right to belong to a heretical church. The violent political clashes in France, Holland, and Great Britain seemed to make the latter impossible, as the relationship between religion and politics was at the centre of those conflicts. The theory of a new politics was devised by Hobbes and developed by Spinoza and Locke: Sovereignty was not to be religious but secular, and tolerance would become civil liberty. A Cultural History of Tolerance shows how political power and religious doctrine together shaped both persecution and emerging ideas of tolerance, laying the groundwork for later debates.

This book is intended for professors, academic researchers, students, and general readers interested in early modern Europe, political ideas, and the history of religion.

Lucia Felici is Professor of Modern History at the University of Florence. Her research interests concern the religious, cultural, and social history of Early Modern Europe. Among her recent publications are: Senza frontiere: L’Europa di Erasmo (1538-1600) (2021); La Livornina: Alle origini di Livorno, città cosmopolita in età moderna (ed.; 2024) and Olimpia Fulvia Morata: Una vita tra Rinascimento e Riforma (2024).

Girolamo Imbruglia is Emeritus Professor of Modern History at the University ’L’Orientale’. His research interests concern the history of political ideas and the history of Christianity in Early Modern Europe. Among his recent publications are: The Jesuit Missions of Paraguay and a Cultural History of Utopia (1568-1789) (2017), Utopia. Una storia politica da Savonarola a Babeuf (2021), and ’Fausto Sozzini, la teoria del sacrificio e il socinianesimo’ (2021).