Toleration in Enlightenment Europe

The Enlightenment is often seen as the great age of religious and intellectual toleration, and this volume is the first systematic pan-European survey of the theory, practice, and very real limits to toleration in eighteenth century Europe. A powerful team of contributors demonstrate how the publicists of the European Enlightenment developed earlier ideas about toleration, gradually widening the desire for religious toleration into a philosophy of freedom seen as a fundamental precondition for a civilized society. Despite this, advances in toleration remained fragile and often short-lived.