Perez Zagorin, How the Idea of
Toleration Came to the West, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2003.
[$29.95 / £19.95 | ISBN: 0-691-09270-2]
Andrew Murphy, Conscience and Community: Revisiting Toleration and
Religious Dissent in Early Modern England and America,
University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001;
PB 2003 [Hardback: $45.00 | ISBN 0-271-02105-5;
Paperback: $24.95 | ISBN 0-271-02348-1]
John Coffey
University of Leicester
J.Coffey, "Review of P.Zagorin, How the Idea of Toleration Came
to the West; A.Murphy, Conscience and Community: Revisiting Toleration
and Religious Dissent in Early Modern England and America",
Cromohs, 9 (2004): 1-6
< URL: http://www.cromohs.unifi.it/9_2004/coffey.html >
1. In the 1930s, as the shadow of Fascism fell across Europe, the Harvard
historian Wilbur K. Jordan chronicled the birth of early modern liberalism
in his monumental omnibus, The Development of Religious Toleration
in England, 4 vols (1932-40). More than half a century later, in the
wake of 9/11, one of Jordan’s former students has returned to retell
the tale of How the Idea of Toleration Came to the West.[1]
Jordan’s magnum opus celebrated English tolerance in an age
of European fascism, and Zagorin’s book reasserts Western tolerance
in an age of Islamic fundamentalism. Both of these distinguished American
scholars narrate a story intended to reinforce a liberal identity in the
face of an ominous ‘other’. As Zagorin puts it, toleration
is ‘one of the predominant and most cherished attributes of modern
and contemporary Western societies’ (13). His book is a tribute
to ‘the collective achievement of the courageous minds of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries who created the intellectual and moral foundations
for the long-term development of religious tolerance, freedom and pluralism
in Western culture’ (288).
Nowadays, historians often dismiss such sentiments with amused scepticism.
Ever since Herbert Butterfield’s iconoclastic attack on The Whig
Interpretation of History (1931), and especially since the rise of
‘revisionist’ historiography in the 1970s, the weaknesses
of the traditional Whig history of toleration have been well rehearsed:
it canonises tolerationist saints and offers an anachronistically secularised
and liberalised account of early modern intellectual history; it fails
to do justice to the ‘losers’ who defended uniformity; it
gives the impression that toleration was so obviously right that its rise
was inevitable; it exaggerates the impact of tolerationist ideas and underplays
the force of political contingency. Zagorin is not invulnerable to these
criticisms, for this is a strikingly traditional account of the rise of
toleration. As in the classic Whig histories, the execution of Servetus
and the controversy it provoked is treated as a turning point in Western
history.[2] ‘If this book
has any kind of hero’, Zagorin confesses, ‘it is Castellio’
(97). Calvin, by contrast, takes the stage as a pantomime villain, and
the audience is practically invited to hiss at this man ‘of severe
and inflexible character’, devoid of ‘Luther’s human
warmth, spontaneity, or peasant humour’, who succeeded in ‘dominating
everyone around him’, set up ‘a theocracy’ in Geneva,
and achieved ‘an almost pontifical authority in his city’
(77-78). Although Zagorin admits that the theory of persecution was ‘embraced
by men of high moral character’ who acted out of a ‘sense
of duty’ (16), he makes no attempt to hide his sympathies. This
is committed historical writing by a scholar who knows where he stands.
It is a very long way from Stuart Clark’s dispassionate and avowedly
relativist exploration of the ideas of early modern demonologists.[3]
For all its traditional Whiggishness, How the Idea of Religious Toleration
Came to the West is an impressive book. Although there has been a
flood of publication on early modern toleration controversies over the
past decade or so, we have lacked an up-to-date single-author survey of
the emergence of European tolerationist thought.[4]
As a distinguished early modern historian, with an authoritative command
of intellectual history, Zagorin is well placed to deliver such an overview.
Whilst his book holds few surprises for specialists, it can be recommended
as an elegant and reliable introduction to its theme. It is a worthy successor
to earlier works of synthesis by Joseph Lecler and Henry Kamen.[5]
2. Zagorin sets the scene in chapter 2 on ‘The Christian Theory
of Persecution’, where we learn about the rise of heresy prosecutions
in the Christianised West, and the development of a theory of religious
coercion in Augustine and later theologians. Zagorin is not convinced
by the recent work of Cary Nederman and John Laursen, which claims to
have uncovered medieval theories of toleration.[6]
Rightly, I think, he argues that ‘the critical test of such a theory
[of toleration] in Christian and Catholic Europe is its attitude to heresy
and heretics and hence its willingness to argue against the long-standing
Christian theory of religious persecution’. Since most of the thinkers
discussed by Nederman fail this test, Zagorin stands by the view that
‘it was not until the religious conflicts generated in the sixteenth
century by the Protestant Reformation...that genuine theories of religious
toleration first made their appearance in Europe’ (313-14). Chapter
3 on ‘The Advent of Protestantism and the Toleration Problem’,
shows that it was not the mainstream Protestant Reformers who overthrew
the traditional theory of persecution. They remained firmly committed
to the ideal of religious uniformity. In condemning the persecution of
Protestants, they did not reject the use of religious coercion against
heresy and false religion. Even Erasmus was ‘a pioneer not of toleration
but of the ideal of religious concord’ (67-68).
It was only after 1550, Zagorin suggests, that the idea of toleration
came to the West, thanks to the writings of a remarkable group of intellectuals:
Castellio (ch. 4); Coornhert, Grotius, Episcopius and Spinoza (ch. 5);
Williams, Milton, Goodwin and Walwyn (ch. 6); Locke and Bayle (ch. 7).
This is a predictable cast, but each writer is carefully contextualised,
and their careers and key texts are explored in some depth. If the book
is traditional in its methodology and approaches, Zagorin is fully abreast
of contemporary research, and he draws on recent work by scholars like
Hans Guggisberg, Gerhard Voogt, Barbara Lewalski and Jonathan Israel.[7]
Moreover, unlike W. K. Jordan, he resists the temptation to secularise
early modern tolerationists – ‘the idea of toleration’,
he argues, ‘was itself very largely inspired by religious values
and was fundamentally religious in character’ (289). As one might
expect from a Whiggish history, all but two of the tolerationists surveyed
in chapters 4-7 are Protestants. The exceptions are Coornhert (a ‘most
unorthodox Catholic’ affiliated to the Spiritualist Family of Love)
and Spinoza (a Jew expelled from the synagogue and in regular contact
with Collegiants, Remonstrants and Quakers). Zagorin’s book lends
support to the view that prior to the eighteenth century, tolerationist
theory only really flourished in the Protestant world, and that England
and the Netherlands were the lead societies when it came to religious
toleration. This may well be a defensible position, but the neglect of
Catholic Europe is regrettable. Zagorin notes that the terms tolerance
and la liberté de la conscience ‘first began to be
used in France in 1561-62’ (90), but thereafter Catholic lands largely
disappear from view. There is clearly a need for more research on toleration
debates in the Catholic context.
Zagorin is inclined to think that ‘in a certain sense ideas rule
the world’ (8), and he wishes to reassert the importance of the
idea of toleration over against those historians (like Butterfield)
who think that toleration emerged merely as a result of religious indifference
or political expediency. This is all well and good, but it is hard to
see how this book could trouble the sceptic. Zagorin’s traditional
approach to the history of ideas, with its patient discussion of key books
by outstanding thinkers, ultimately proves inadequate to the task. The
exposition of eloquent tolerationist texts is not sufficient to show that
ideas rule the world. A more compelling case could be made for his thesis
through a newer kind of intellectual history, one that focuses on the
reception of major texts, and the development of a discourse
of toleration. As it stands, Zagorin’s book does not explain how
the writings of leading tolerationists transformed social attitudes, or
shaped political events. Nevertheless, his ‘main thesis’ is
a plausible one – that the attainment and stability of toleration
in modern Western societies depended on the widespread acceptance of ‘an
underlying rationale’ provided by tolerationists (13).
3. Andrew Murphy’s Conscience and Community offers an intriguing
counterpoint to Zagorin’s book. It is Murphy’s first monograph,
not the grand overview of a senior scholar. Instead of sweeping across
several hundred years in the history of ‘the West’, it focuses
on England and America in the seventeenth century. Whereas Zagorin sets
out to reinforce a liberal identity, Murphy wants to challenge conventional
liberal myths. He joins a growing group of scholars who approach seventeenth-century
toleration controversies from the perspective of modern political theory.[8]
In Murphy’s case, the concern is to question the assumptions of
liberal political theorists who too easily assume that they are simply
extending the arguments of their tolerationist predecessors. As a consequence,
this is an ambitiously constructed book, which builds a bridge between
the seventeenth-century and the early twenty-first. After an introductory
chapter, Murphy devotes the major part of the book to ‘Revisiting
Early Modern Toleration and Religious Dissent’. He focuses on four
Anglo-American case studies: the Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay (chapter
2); the English Revolution, 1640-1660 (chapter 3); the Restoration and
Glorious Revolution (chapter 4); and early Pennsylvania (chapter 5). The
Pennsylvania chapter is the most original, but all four of these case
studies are richly detailed and soundly judged. Chapter 6 draws out the
main conclusions from the case studies, and argues against the three modern
myths about toleration identified in the introduction.
Myth 1 is that ‘Religious toleration is a self-evident and unqualified
good; those who (historically) opposed it were either ignorant, narrow-minded,
or concerned with preserving their own positions of social power’.
In each of his case studies, Murphy drives home the point that ‘Anti-tolerationists
were not dour, repressive killjoys dedicated to stomping out dissent at
all costs, but individuals and groups deeply concerned about social order...’
(11). In Massachusetts Bay, for example, dissenters like Roger Williams
and Anne Hutchinson represented a fundamental challenge to the authority
of the magistrates and a threat to the established order. John Winthrop
and the other magistrates emerge not as bigoted theocrats stamping on
freethinkers, but as moderate conservatives faced by perfectionist zealots.
Murphy also shows that though tolerationists insisted on the compatibility
of religious pluralism and political order, their own colonies dramatised
the tension between conscience and community. In Rhode Island, Roger Williams
lamented the almost anarchic state of affairs created by rival sectarian
factions, whilst in Pennsylvania the dissident Quaker George Keith was
prosecuted for sedition after denouncing the Quaker magistrates.
By emphasising the genuine fear of disorder, Murphy (unlike Zagorin) helps
us to understand why tolerationist claims were so controversial and implausible.
To contemporaries it was far from obvious that religious diversity was
compatible with political cohesion. ‘Antitolerationists often had
good reasons for being concerned about the social and political consequences
of toleration’ (213). However, in laying such stress on the concern
for order and community, Murphy tends to underplay the importance of the
specifically theological case for persecution. During the Puritan
Revolution, for example, the issue of heresy dominated the toleration
controversies, and conservative Calvinists emphasised their otherworldly
passion for the welfare of souls. Heresy was a less prominent issue during
the Restoration period, though Thomas Hobbes was still very worried about
the prospect of new heresy trials. It is revealing that Zagorin (who offers
a more Whiggish picture of the controversy) highlights the heresy hunting
of antitolerationists, whereas Murphy (who presents a more revisionist
analysis) foregrounds the antitolerationist concern for cohesive community.
Modern readers can grasp the concern for order, but find it harder to
appreciate the passion for theological truth. A rounded account, however,
needs to emphasise both.
4. Myth 2 is that ‘Religious toleration came about as the result
of the efforts of sceptical Enlightenment rationalists – for example,
Locke, Voltaire, Jefferson, Madison – who were generally religiously
indifferent or moderate’ (12). In taking issue with this claim,
Murphy is singing from the same hymn-sheet as Zagorin, for both emphasise
the decidedly Christian character of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
tolerationism.[9] In chapter
3, on the English Revolution debates, Murphy provides an admirably lucid
account of the theological, philosophical and political arguments advanced
by tolerationists. He observes correctly that this was ‘a Protestant
argument carried on in a Protestant society’, a debate in which
each side marshalled ‘an impressive scriptural arsenal’ (96-97).
In a striking phrase, he suggests that ‘Seventeenth-century tolerationists...attempted
nothing less than a massive reconstruction of what it meant to be a Christian’
(12-13). He notes that tolerationist arguments were often advanced by
‘religious extremists (concerned to keep their worship pure and
free from the state)’. These sectarian Protestants promoted religious
voluntarism, and by championing individual conscience against the demands
of community, they contributed to a more subjective view of conscience.
Murphy’s discussion of ‘the subjectification of conscience’
(226) is one of the highlights of the book. He shows that conscience was
being redefined in procedural rather than substantive terms – according
to the new view, a good conscience was not necessarily a well-informed
conscience, for ‘one sinned by going against conscience even if
one’s substantive beliefs [were] mistaken’ (112). Liberty
of conscience could apply to people who believed the wrong thing (false
religion) for the right reason (because it was a dictate of their conscience).
Hence Roger Williams’s reference to ‘paganish, Jewish, Turkish,
or anti-Christian consciences and worships’.
Although Murphy offers a fine guide to the main lines of tolerationist
argument, there are a couple of significant features of the case for toleration
that deserve more attention. Firstly, he is keen to downplay ‘natural
rights’ arguments for toleration, and he rather neglects the importance
of natural law contract theory. Leading tolerationists in the English
Revolution worked on the assumption that the authority of magistrates
comes from the people, who transfer certain powers to their rulers by
means of a contract. The radical Independent John Goodwin (who is cited
by both Zagorin and Murphy) argued that in the state of nature, the people
had no coercive power over religion and were therefore unable to delegate
such a power to the magistrate. The power of magistrates was essentially
civil not spiritual, and a Christian ruler had no more authority over
religion than a pagan. ‘Nothing more accrues unto him, by way of
Duty, in his Office, by his being Christian’, wrote Goodwin. Magistrates
could punish violations of natural law, but they had no power in ‘matters
of religion’. As Goodwin put it, ‘God reserves the legislative
power over the consciences of men unto himself alone’.[10]
Secondly, Murphy could have said more about millenarianism, which
becomes such a powerful force among Independents and sectaries in the
English Revolution. At one level, the millenarian expectations of some
early modern tolerationists can make them seem less modern and less liberal.
Had they come to terms with intractable religious pluralism or were they
anticipating the rapid emergence of millennial unity? Were they more interested
in the imminent rule of God and his saints than in modern liberties? At
another level, millenarianism fuelled tolerationist convictions, persuading
radical Protestants that the centuries of Antichristian tyranny were drawing
to a close and that the age of Christian liberty was about to dawn. A
greater focus on millenarianism would have complemented Murphy’s
emphasis on the perfectionist ideals of religious radicals.
5. Richard Popkin once provocatively suggested that millenarianism and
skepticism were two major sources of tolerationism in this period. If
Murphy has relatively little to say about the former, his treatment of
skepticism is compelling. He observes that whilst tolerationists did deploy
skeptical arguments against persecuting dogmatists, theirs was generally
a ‘Christian skepticism’ allied to a ‘Christian minimalism’
– they stressed human fallibility and condemned doctrinal dogmatism.
Moreover, skepticism could also underpin a programme of conformity. If
some antitolerationists (like Samuel Rutherford) were fiercely antiskeptical,
others (like Thomas Hobbes) were ‘skeptical, starkly Erastian advocates
of uniformity’. Like Zagorin, Murphy is not persuaded by recent
efforts to enrol Hobbes in the ranks of the tolerationists, and for good
reason. Tolerationists denied the magistrate’s authority over religion;
Hobbes insisted upon it. Tolerationists demanded the free exercise of
conscience in public worship; Hobbes merely guaranteed internal liberty
of thought.[11]
The final part of the book (chapters 7 and 8) forms a bridge between seventeenth-century
history and modern political theory. It tackles Myth 3: ‘Religious
toleration generalizes fairly easily and unproblematically to divisive
social and political issues such as gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality
and provides a basis for multicultural and ‘identity’ politics’
(14). In a surprising move, Murphy turns the arguments of early modern
tolerationists against contemporary political theorists. His claim is
that modern liberals like John Rawls and David Richards have failed to
understand early modern liberalism, and have consequently betrayed or
misapplied it. On Murphy’s reading, the great achievement of early
modern tolerationists was to develop a modus vivendi politics,
‘a way of negotiating differences without resorting to the bloodshed
that had littered the European landscape for years’. In contrast
to Erasmus and earlier proponents of concord, they recognised that deep
religious differences were intractable, but that society could learn to
live with pluralism and disagreement. This modus vivendi approach,
Murphy suggests, is ‘one of the great legacies of toleration for
the history of liberal thought and practice’ (242). However, it
stands in contrast with the more ambitious goals of modern identity politics,
which declares that toleration is not enough, and calls for equality of
respect or recognition for alternative lifestyles. Whereas early modern
tolerationists asked their fellow citizens to put up with pluralism and
difference, identity theorists ask them to celebrate it. Murphy believes
that the early moderns were more realistic. ‘Citizens must be willing
to live with each other; they need not approve of each other’s commitments,
religious or otherwise’ (289). Instead of expecting ‘overlapping
consensus’ on controversial matters like religion or sexuality,
we should settle for ‘a chastened politics, a politics that realizes
that deeply held and fundamentally conflicting values are with us to stay’
(291).
6. In a related argument, Murphy takes Rawls to task for restricting
liberty of conscience. The Rawlsian doctrine of public reason requires
liberal citizens to set aside their ‘comprehensive doctrines’
(not least religious ones) when participating in public life. For Murphy,
this introduces a dangerous dichotomy, ‘a split between belief and
action that has historically worked against liberty of conscience’
(249). Early modern tolerationists always insisted that liberty of conscience
requires free ‘exercise’ of conscience, and they rebuked regimes
which required outward conformity and so turned dissenters into ‘hypocrites’.
Murphy alleges that this is precisely the effect of ‘Rawls’s
restrictive, repressive system’ (268). Traditional religious believers,
in particular, are left with limited options: they can either alter their
comprehensive doctrine, dissemble, protest at the rules, or accept a schizophrenic
divide between their private beliefs and their public actions. Far from
extending and completing the liberty of conscience advocated by Locke,
Murphy concludes that Rawlsian liberalism shrinks it.
Murphy’s stringent critique of Rawls sits rather awkwardly alongside
his sympathetic treatment of early modern antitolerationists. Rawls after
all, shares with these earlier writers a common concern about disorder
and the divisive potential of controversial religion in public life. But
perhaps this is Murphy’s point. Rather than expanding the tolerationist
emphasis on the free exercise of religious conscience, Rawls is actually
following the logic of antitolerationists and pursuing a Hobbesian trajectory
– restricting the free exercise of religion on grounds of public
order. Were Rawls still alive, it would be intriguing to hear his verdict
on the recent French ban on Islamic headscarves and other religious symbols
in schools. Of course, in sharp contrast to early modern anti-tolerationists,
neither Rawls nor the French state has the slightest intention of undermining
freedom of worship or freedom of the press. Do their attempts to secularise
public life really constitute a violation of liberty of conscience? Some
would argue not, but Murphy is surely correct in thinking that seventeenth-century
tolerationists would disagree.
Conscience and Community is a dense and richly rewarding work.
It is the most searching examination of seventeenth-century Anglophone
toleration debates to be published in the half century since W. K. Jordan’s
magnum opus. Unlike Jordan’s work, it is conceptually sophisticated,
and its willingness to revisit conventional liberal assumptions about
early modern toleration gives it a provocative edge. Nevertheless, for
all his revisionist tilting at liberal myths, Murphy concurs with Zagorin
and Jordan and Rawls that ‘the early liberal struggle for religious
toleration’ lies at the roots of the liberal tradition (247). It
seems that for both historians and political theorists, early modern toleration
debates still matter.
[1] In the preface to his first book, A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution (1954), Zagorin notes that Jordan ‘has inspired me by his scholarship, and his friendship has meant much to me’.
[2] For a popular overview and refurbishment of the Servetus myth, see Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone, Out of the Flames: The Story of One of the Rarest Books in the World, and How it Changed the Course of History (London: Century, 2003).
[3] S. Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford University Press, 1997).
[4] Zagorin is able to build on a series of edited collections on early modern toleration published in the second half of the 1990s: O. P. Grell and R. Scribner, eds, Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation (Cambridge: CUP, 1996); Cary Nederman and John C. Laursen, eds, Difference and Dissent: Theories of Toleration in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996); C. Berkvens-Stevelinck, J. Israel, and G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes, eds, The Emergence of Tolerance in the Dutch Republic (Leiden: Brill, 1997); John C. Laursen and Cary J. Nederman, eds, Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration before the Enlightenment (Philadelphia: Penn State University Press, 1998); John C. Laursen, ed., Religious Toleration (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999); Alan Levine, ed., Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 1999); O. P Grell and R. Porter, eds, Toleration in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge: CUP, 1999).
[5] Joseph Lecler, Toleration and the Reformation, 2 vols (1955; English Translation: New York: Association Press, 1960); Henry Kamen, The Rise of Toleration (London: Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1967).
[6] See especially Cary J. Nederman, Worlds of Difference: European Discourses of Toleration, c. 1100-c.1550 (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000).
[7] Although Zagorin draws on French, German and Italian scholarship, he is clearly most familiar with English-language historiography. For example, he does not cite the international research project promoted and headed by Professor Antonio Rotondò, Europe et Pays-Bas. Évolution, réélaboration et diffusion de la tolérance aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Firenze, Università degli Studi, Dipartimento di Storia, 1992). See also Henry Méchoulan, Richard H. Popkin, Giuseppe Ricuperati, and Luisa Simonutti, eds, La formazione storica della alterità: studi di storia della tolleranza nell'età moderna offerti a Antonio Rotondò, 3 vols (Firenze: Olschki, 2001).
[8] The others include Richard Vernon, The Career of Toleration: John Locke, Jonas Proast and After (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1997); Alex Tuckness, Locke and the Legislative Point of View: Toleration, Contested Principles, and the Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Ingrid Creppell, Toleration and Identity: Foundations in Early Modern Thought (New York: Routledge, 2003).
[9] I have made the same point in my book Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558-1689 (Harlow: Longman, 2000), ch. 3.
[10] I discuss Goodwin’s tolerationist thought in some detail in my forthcoming book, John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution (Boydell and Brewer).
[11] For a tolerationist reading of Hobbes see Alan Ryan, ‘Hobbes, toleration and the inner life’, in D. Miller and L. Siedentrop, (eds.), The Nature of Political Theory (Oxford: OUP, 1983); Ryan, ‘A more tolerant Hobbes’, in S. Mendus, (ed.), Justifying Toleration (Cambridge: CUP, 1988), ch. 2; Richard Tuck, ‘Hobbes and Locke on toleration’, in M. Dietz, (ed.), Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1990), ch. 8. The case against Hobbes as a tolerationist is well presented in Johann Sommerville, Thomas Hobbes: Political Ideas in Historical Context (London, 1992), ch. 6.
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