Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation

The sixteen chapters in this book, written by leading experts in this period's history, offer a new and dramatically different interpretation of how religious toleration and conflict developed in the crucial period between 1500, when northern humanism had begun to make an impact, and 1648, the end of the Thirty Years War. They question the traditional view of a general progression toward greater religious toleration, and instead place religious tolerance and intolerance in their specific social and political contexts.

"This book of fifteen essays accomplishes what a landmark collection should. Cumulatively, the essays signal a pardigm shift and the reemergence of the practical political context as the analytical framework of choice for explaining advances and declines in tolerance and intolerance in Reformation Europe of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries." Ann W. Ramsey, Jrnl of Church & State

"...this fine array of essays,...ought to be required reading for all European historians of ideas as well as those in the field of religious studies." Jill Raitt, The Catholic Historical Review

"...ought to be required reading for all European historians and historians of ideas as well as those in the field of religious studies." Jill Raitt, Catholic Historical Review

"This collection of essays...ofers a fresh perspective on the history of toleration in early modern Europe. ...the collection...manages to cover an impressive chronological, geographical, and topical range; read as a whole, a coherent picture of tolerance and intolerance in early modern Europe emerges that transcends the particular focus of the individual essays." John D. Roth, Church History