Divided By Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe. By Benjamin J. Kaplan. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007. xiv + 418 pp. $29.95 cloth.

摘要

The image of early modern Europe as plagued by religious persecution andnconfessional violence is familiar. In recent years, however, historians have begun to paint a more complex picture in which people of different faiths foundnways to live together. In Divided by Faith, Benjamin J. Kaplan draws on theirnwork to provide an overview and an important new analysis of how Europeansnconstructed religious pluralism. The book makes use of examples ranging fromnIreland to Lithuania to show how Europeans practiced what Kaplan callsn“toleration.” Since not all the means Europeans of different faiths found tonlive together would strike us as very tolerant, some historians might prefer anmore neutral noun like “coexistence.” But it is central to Kaplan’s argumentnthat we cannot think of toleration only in Enlightenment terms, as anwillingness to accept individual freedom of conscience and the right tonworship as one sees fit. Toleration came in many forms, and Europeansnfound a variety of ways to practice it. Their understanding of toleration wasnpragmatic, based on the need to contain religious conflict.