Persecution and pluralism - Richard Bonney

With one exception, the papers collected here were first presented at a conference sponsored by the British Academy held at Newbold College, Berkshire, in 1999. This volume provides a historical perspective to the emerging literature on pluralism. A range of experts examine how Calvinists in early modern France, England, Hungary and the Netherlands related to members of other faith communities and to society in general. The essays explore the importance of Calvinists' separateness and potent sense of identity. To what extent did this enable them to survive persecution? Did it at times actually induce repression? Where Calvinists held political power, why did they often turn from persecuted into persecutors? How did they relate to (Ana)Baptists, Quakers and Catholics, for example? The conventional wisdom that toleration (and, in consequence, pluralism) resulted from a waning in religious zeal is queried and alternative explanations considered. Finally, the concept of 'pluralism' itself is investigated.

The Editors: Richard Bonney is Professor of Modern History at the University of Leicester, where he is also Director of the Centre for the History of Religious and Political Pluralism. The Founding Editor of French History, he has served as President of the Society for the Study of French History and Director of the European State Finance Project, and is a non-stipendiary priest in the Church of England.
D.J.B. Trim is Lecturer in History at Newbold College, and Visiting Research Fellow, School of History, at the University of Reading. His publications include The Chivalric Ethos and the Development of Military Professionalism(Brill, 2003) and Cross, Crown and Community: Religion, Government and Culture in Early Modern England 1400-1800(Peter Lang, 2004).

...this is a worthwhile and highly scholarly volume which adds greatly to our understanding of how and why religious pluralism and toleration, that defining principle of modern western society, first developed. (Benjamin Carter, Huguenot Society Proceedings)