One of the main achievements of the research programme has been to overcome the long-established historiographical tendency to regard states mainly from the viewpoint of their twentieth-century borders.

Major intellectual and cultural history of intolerance and toleration in early modern Enlightenment Europe.

Providing a detailed account of the emergence and development of the public disputations between D.V. Coornhert (1522-1590) and Reformed ministers, this book explores the religious and political dimensions of a controversy that reflects issues and arguments at the core of the Dutch Revolt.

Traditional historiography has always viewed Calvin's Geneva as the benchmark against which all other Reformed communities must inevitably be measured, judging those communities who did not follow Geneva's institutional and doctrinal example as somehow inferior and incomplete versions of the original. Adaptations of Calvinism in Reformation Europe builds upon recent scholarship that challenges this concept of the 'fragmentation' of Calvinism, and instead offers a more positive view of Reformed communities beyond Geneva. The essays in this volume highlight the different paths that Calvinism followed as it took root in Western Europe and which allowed it to develop within fifty years into the dominant Protestant confession. Each chapter reinforces the notion that whilst many reformers did try to duplicate the kind of community that Calvin had established, most had to compromise by adapting to the particular political and cultural landscapes in which they lived. The result was a situation in which Reformed churches across Europe differed markedly from Calvin's Geneva in explicit ways. Summarizing recent research in the field through selected French, German, English and Scottish case studies, this collection adds to the emerging picture of a flexible Calvinism that could adapt to meet specific local conditions and needs in order to allow the Reformed tradition to thrive and prosper. The volume is dedicated to Brian G. Armstrong, whose own scholarship demonstrated how far Calvinism in seventeenth-century France had become divided by significant disagreements over how Calvin's original ideas and doctrines were to be understood.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1876.

Religious intolerance, so terrible and deadly in its recent manifestations, is nothing new. In fact, until after the eighteenth century, Christianity was perhaps the most intolerant of all the great world religions. How Christian Europe and the West went from this extreme to their present universal belief in religious toleration is the momentous story fully told for the first time in this timely and important book by a leading historian of early modern Europe. Perez Zagorin takes readers to a time when both the Catholic Church and the main new Protestant denominations embraced a policy of endorsing religious persecution, coercing unity, and, with the state's help, mercilessly crushing dissent and heresy. This position had its roots in certain intellectual and religious traditions, which Zagorin traces before showing how out of the same traditions came the beginnings of pluralism in the West. Here we see how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century thinkers--writing from religious, theological, and philosophical perspectives--contributed far more than did political expediency or the growth of religious skepticism to advance the cause of toleration. Reading these thinkers--from Erasmus and Sir Thomas More to John Milton and John Locke, among others--Zagorin brings to light a common, if unexpected, thread: concern for the spiritual welfare of religion itself weighed more in the defense of toleration than did any secular or pragmatic arguments. His book--which ranges from England through the Netherlands, the post-1685 Huguenot Diaspora, and the American Colonies--also exposes a close connection between toleration and religious freedom. A far-reaching and incisive discussion of the major writers, thinkers, and controversies responsible for the emergence of religious tolerance in Western society--from the Enlightenment through the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights--this original and richly nuanced work constitutes an essential chapter in the intellectual history of the modern world.

In several landmark decisions during the mid-1920s, the U.S. Supreme Court significantly expanded the scope of the Constitution's protection of individual freedom by striking down state laws designed to repress or even destroy privateøand parochial schools. Forging New Freedoms explains the origins of na-tivistic hostility toward German and Japanese Americans, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and other groups whose schools became the object of assaults during and shortly after World War I. The book explores the campaigns to restrict foreign language instruction and to require compulsory public education. It also examines the background of Meyer v. Nebraska and Farrington v. Tokushige, in which the Court invalidated laws that restricted the teaching of foreign languages, and Pierce v. Society of Sisters, which nullified an Oregon law that required all children to attend public elementary schools. Drawing upon diverse sources, including popular periodicals, court briefs, and unpublished manuscripts, William G. Ross explains how the Court's decisions commenced the Court's modern role as a guardian of civil liberties. He also traces the constitutional legacy of those decisions, which have provided the foundation for the controversial right of privacy. Ross's interdisciplinary exploration of the complex interaction among ethnic and religious institutions, nativist groups, public opinion, the legislative process, and judicial decision-making provides fresh insights into both the fragility and the resilience of civil liberties in the United States. While the campaigns to curtail nonpublic education offer a potent reminder of the ever-present dangers of majoritarian tyranny, the refusal of voters and legislators to exact more extreme measures was a tribute to the tolerance of American society. The Court's decisions provided notable examples of how the judiciary can pro-tect embattled minorities who are willing to fight to protect their rights.