Toleration in Early Modern Times

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4456953
AutoresHerbert Butterfield (autor de correspondencia)
Año1977
Volumen38
Número4
Páginas573
Fecha de publicación1977-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of the History of Ideas (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0022-5037 • E-ISSN: 1086-3222
EditorialJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2708688
OpenAlexW2323937651
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas6

I. The present paper will deal with toleration only in the restricted sense of the word, involving a system in which a society has ceased to insist on an absolute unanimity in faith and practice. Following some modern students, like De Ruggiero, I would regard the rather different system of what we call religious liberty as a higher class of article altogether, since it involves freedom to be Christian or Mohammedan, Protestant or Catholic, liberal or fundamentalist; and it involves the freedom to bring up one's children in that way too, or, alternatively, to have no religion at all, no children at all-this freedom including of course the right to reject the whole theory and practice of religion. Toleration, like liberty, can perhaps best be regarded as a system or a regime. It was not so much an ideal, a positive end, that people wanted to establish for its own sake; but, rather, a pis aller, a retreat to the next best thing, a last resort for those who often still hated one another, but found it impossible to go on fighting any more. It was hardly even an idea for the most part-just a happening-the sort of thing that happens when no choice is left and there is no hope of further struggle being worth while. During the second half of the sixteenth century there were both Catholics and Protestants who became politiques, declaring that persecution (and a national unanimity in the faith) was the ideal but the bloodshed must be ended-the body politic itself was being destroyed, and further conflicts would make the tragedy irremediable

Political science · Politics · Toleration · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Religious Freedom and Discrimination