John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture: Religious Intolerance and Arguments for Religious Toleration in Early Modern and 'Early Enlightenment' Europe (review)

This book is about much more than its title would suggest. A history of ideas written very much in the tradition of the Cambridge school (the author studied under both Mark Goldie and John Pocock), Marshall's account is predictably big on context—some 466 pages of it! A powerful piece of scholarship—brilliantly conceived, breath-taking in scope, and rich in historical insight—it will be of interest to a wide variety of scholars across a range disciplines (history, religion, political science, philosophy, history of science, literature, and queer studies), and to both Europeanists and Americanists alike.

Marshall's premise is that in order to understand why the likes of Locke, Bayle, and other members of the emerging republic of letters of the 1680's and 1690's came to develop the particular arguments they did in favor of religious toleration, we must first understand both the practices of and intellectual justifications for religious intolerance that they were reacting against. Marshall takes us on a fascinating journey, where he first unfolds the horrors of religious persecution in early modern France, Piedmont, England, Ireland, and the supposedly tolerant Netherlands, before proceeding to unpack patristic, medieval, and early modern arguments for why those who refused to adhere to the state religion could not be tolerated. Heretics and schismatics were viewed as intrinsically seditious and treasonous (because disobedient toward authority), unable to control their lusts (and thus probably libertines and sodomites), and willfully obstinate; unless compelled to conform or silenced for good, they would spread their poison, or so it was feared, and threaten both the salvation of ordinary people's souls and the peace of the commonwealth. Thus like a cancerous growth, heresy had to be removed to prevent the whole body from becoming diseased. Although there were some early proponents of greater religious toleration—and Jews and Muslims, because not Christians, were freed from the charge of heresy—arguments for intolerance, as endorsed by both Catholics and Protestants, held the day; indeed, most western European societies were becoming less tolerant as the seventeenth century progressed. Early Enlightenment advocates of toleration, therefore, had to show that persecution was not the solution, and that heretics did not pose the threat they were alleged to, were not the monsters they were represented as being, and were arguably not even heretics. In the process they challenged conventional views on religious orthodoxy and providentialism and helped usher in new ways of thinking about the natural and supernatural worlds. Marshall has a wonderful discussion of the relationship between tolerationist thought and the growth of scientific rationalism. He is also superb on the international context (for intolerance and tolerance alike), as well as on the relationship between Protestantism and toleration, and between toleration and arguments in defense of the right to resist.

For all its brilliance, the book is too long (dare I say it?) and would have benefited from further editing. And for all his contextualization, Marshall remains an intellectual historian primarily interested in the ideas of intellectuals. For example, no mention is made of the Monmouth rebels of 1685, who proposed a remarkable degree of religious toleration which they would have been prepared to extend even to papists once they had overthrown the Catholic king. Although William Penn's advocacy of toleration under James II is touched upon, no reference is made to Henry Care's stunning proposal of 1687 that an act be passed enshrining liberty of conscience as "part of the Constitution of this Kingdom; the natural Birth-Right of every English-Man."¹ I was also left wondering about the practical impact of the ideas whose origins and development Marshall so skilfully explores. Was religious toleration, when it eventually did arrive, born of principled commitment to enlightened ideals or due instead to more pragmatic political considerations? These might be...