BEYOND THE PERSECUTING SOCIETY

Beyond the Persecuting Society constructs a history of toleration from the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century. There is a myth--easily shattered--that Western societies since the Enlightenment have been dedicated to the ideal of protecting the differences between individuals and groups, and another--too readily accepted--that before the rise of secularism in the modern period, intolerance and persecution held sway throughout Europe. In Beyond the Persecuting Society John Christian Laursen, Cary J. Nederman, and nine other scholars dismantle this second generalization. If intolerance and religious persecution have been at the root of some of the greatest suffering in human history, it is nevertheless the case that toleration was practiced and theorized in medieval and early modern Europe on a scale few have realized