Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration before the Enlightenment (review)

298 Short Notices inventories and the restauro equorum accounts, both being 'unique to the period of the three Edwardian kings' (p. 49). The horse inventories were compiled during the appraisal of mounts by royal officials when the feudal host assembled, then used as a working document during the campaign. The restauro equorum provided a record of horses lost during royal service. Given the mix of feudal and paid service to the Crown during this period, these sources cannot provide a complete record of all the m e n and mounts involved. Nevertheless, the information gleaned is impressive and provides insight into Edwardian military society, in particular the role of the warhorse. Although the destrier was bred specifically for mounted warfare, the disaster at Bannockburn was to force a paradigm shift in Edwardian military tactics. Rather than the massed charge, English armies would n o w deploy in defensive positions and fight dismounted. N o w the terrain and objectives of a campaign would influence the selection of mounts. For example, the chevauchee required hard riding, hardly a suitable role for the ponderous magnus equus, but one for which the hunter-bred courser was well suited. By the reign of Edward III, the actual battlefield value of the destrier had waned. Nonetheless, Ayton's research confirms that the cost of a horse continued to be a reliable indicator of the military and social status of the owner: 'No animal is more noble than the horse, since i t is by horses that princes, magnates and knights are separated from lower people' (p. 251). The text is informative and well, if somewhat dryly, presented, with extensive footnotes and a comprehensive bibliography. Graeme Cronin Ardross Western Australia Laursen, John Christian and Cary J. Nederman, ed., Beyond the Persecutin Society: Religious Toleration before the Enlightenment, Philadelp University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998; paper; pp. vi, 288; R.R.P. US$19.95, £18.95. This diverse collection of essays is an important contribution to th of toleration, not only in its detailed treatment of some authors and 299 subjects largely neglected in contemporary discussion, but especially because the editors have shaped the collection into a coherent structural whole with introductory essays to each section. The general introduction clearly establishes the editors' frame of reference and their polemical targets. Rejecting from the start the c o m m o notion that toleration is a kind of 'juggernaut through history that had to emerge to bring about modernity', their aim is to show that different theories and practices of toleration were contingent, local and surprisingly widespread from early times, and that in medieval and Early Modern Europe voices and practices in favour of toleration were present on a scale hitherto unappreciated. They take issue with a n u m b e r of myths, especially the 'Enlightenment stereotype' which regards John Locke as the inventor of modem toleration; the 'Inquisition cliche' which depicts the medieval and early modern period as a time of relentless persecution; the idea that in earlier times voices of toleration were always lonely souls crying in the dark; and the view that the growth of toleration was uniformly a product of secularisation. There is a healthy recognition that toleration was not limited to theories put forward in formal tracts, but emerged in m a n y places long before theories were developed, and that it could just as readily be based on a religious as on a secular world view. Paths to toleration came in many forms, practices and theories, providing no basis for a 'Whig history' of unilinear development from darkness to light, from persecution to toleration. Having established this framework, the editors present the collection of essays in three sections, covering respectively the medieval period, the 'long sixteenth century' (the 1490s to around 1640) and the seventeenth century, and each section is introduced by a short essay on the major events and contextual background of the period. The medieval section presents three individual studies—of Peter Abelard, John of Salisbury and M e n a h e m Ha-Me'iri—which call into question the view that medieval Christendom w a s a closed and monolithic persecuting society. The sixteenth...