Histories of Heresy in the 17th and 18th Centuries For, Against, and Beyond Persecution and Toleration

by Laursen, John Christian

• ISBN13: 9780312294045
• ISBN10: 0312294042
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-06-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Histories of heresy published in the early modern period laid the foundation for our attitudes toward difference, deviance, and defiance of orthodoxies. We cannot understand modern notions of tolerance without understanding the mentalities that led to persecution, and how they changed. Many of these mentalities were forged and reforged in polemics against and histories of heresy. This is the first volume to analyze and compare a broad range of histories of heresy written in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its chapters show how authors could mean to justify persecution of heretics, or oppose it. Readers could read these volumes in accord with or against the intentions of their authors. The cumulative effect is a better understanding of the complex and contentious history of the historiography of heresy in this period, and a sense for its lasting effects.

Author Biography

John Christian Laursen is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside and Editor of Religious Toleration: "The Variety of Rites" from Cyrus to Defoe.

Table of Contents

Contributors	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction Histories of Heresy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Why Were They Written, and how Were They Read?	1	(6)
John Christian Laursen
PART ONE OUTRAGED ORTHODOXY-THE HARD LINE
Introduction	7	(26)
``We are in strange hands, and things are come to a strange passe'': Argument and Rhetoric Against Heresy in Thomas Edwards's Gangraena (1646)	11
Sammy Basu
Francis Lee and the French Prophets: The History of Montanism (1709)	33	(28)
Stacey Searl-Chapin
PART TWO HERETICS IN SELF-DEFENSE AND CALLS FOR TOLERATION
Introduction	51	(10)
Gabriel Naude's Apology for Great Men Suspected of Magic: Variations in Editions from 1625 to 1715	61	(16)
Maryanne Cline Horowitz
Hobbes on Heresy	77	(24)
Martyn P. Thompson
Between History and Politics: Philipp van Limborch's History of the Inquisition (1692)	101	(18)
Luisa Simonutti
The Public Context of Heresy: Bayle, Maimbourg, and Le Clerc	119	(26)
Sally L. Jenkinson
PART THREE RADICAL HERETICS ON THE OFFENSIVE
Introduction	139	(6)
Histories of Heresy in the Clandestine Philosophical Manuscripts	145	(16)
Antony McKenna
The Trinity as Heresy: Socinian Counter-Histories of Simon Magus, Orpheus, and Cerinthus	161	(10)
Martin Mulsow
Two Jewish Heresies: Spinozism and Sabbatianism	171	(18)
Richard Popkin
PART FOUR A PLAGUE ON MANY HOUSES: JOINING HANDS AGAINST ENTHUSIASM
Introduction	185	(4)
Heinrich Corrodi's Critical History of Chiliasm (1781-1783)	189	(16)
Simone Zurbuchen
Gibbon and the History of Heresy	205	(18)
John G. A. Pocock
PART FIVE ENLIGHTENED ORTHODOXY
Introduction	221	(2)
The Enlightened Orthodoxy of the Abbe Pluquet	223	(16)
Patrick Coleman
Heresy in the Encyclopedie d'Yverdon (1770-1780)	239	(24)
Clorinda Donato
The Abbe Nicolas-Sylvestre Bergier and the History of Heresy	263	(18)
Kathleen Hardesty Doig
Glossary of Heresies	281	(4)
Index	285