{"title":"John Christian Laursen","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"beyond-the-persecuting-society-book-john-christian-laursen-9780812215670","title":"Beyond the Persecuting Society","description":"There is a myth—easily shattered—that Western societies since the Enlightenment have been dedicated to the ideal of protecting the differences between individuals and groups, and another—too readily accepted—that before the rise of secularism in the modern period, intolerance and persecution held sway throughout Europe. In Beyond the Persecuting Society John Christian Laursen, Cary J. Nederman, and nine other scholars dismantle this second generalization.   If intolerance and religious persecution have been at the root of some of the greatest suffering in human history, it is nevertheless the case that toleration was practiced and theorized in medieval and early modern Europe on a scale few have realized: Christians and Jews, the English, French, Germans, Dutch, Swiss, Italians, and Spanish had their proponents of and experiments with tolerance well before John Locke penned his famous Letter Concerning Toleration. Moving from Abelard to Aphra Behn, from the apology for the gentiles of the fourteenth-century Talmudic scholar, Menahem ben Solomon Ha-MeIiri, to the rejection of intolerance in the \"New Israel\" of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Beyond the Persecuting Society offers a detailed and decisive correction to a vision of the past as any less complex in its embrace and abhorrence of diversity than the present.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50367857819921,"sku":"CIN0812215672A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50372293525777,"sku":"GOR009220447","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51126624780561,"sku":"NIN9780812215670","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0812215672.jpg?v=1752316283"},{"product_id":"millenarianism-and-messianism-in-early-modern-european-culture-volume-iv-book-john-christian-laursen-9780792368472","title":"Millenarianism and Messianism in Early Modern European Culture Volume IV","description":"Any number of misconceptions about millenarians and messianism in the early modern period will be laid to rest by a reading of this volume. It is too often thought that millenarianism was largely an English phenomenon. One of the reasons for bringing these studies together is to show, as Martin Mulsow puts it, that we can understand this European-wide movement as a millenarian international in analogy with the later socialist international. Another misconception is that millenarianism and messianism were a world apart from mainstream developments in intellectual history; but, as Mulsow also insists, a proper understanding of millenarianism places it in the context of the growth and stabilization of science, material progress, and political reform. A third mistake is to conclude too quickly that millenarianism and messianism have formed a single, monolithic bloc in history; but we learn in this volume that there were all sorts of millenarians. Readers of this volume will be struck by at least two things. One is the sheer numbers of millenarian thinkers to be found throughout Europe in the early modern period, especially north of the Mediterranean. We will not list them all 1 here, but the index to this book contains dozens and dozens of them. The second striking point is the amount of work that remains to be done. For every millenarian that we explore and explain here, several are mentioned about which little is known.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52127200542993,"sku":"NLS9780792368472","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780792368472.jpg?v=1757484405"},{"product_id":"heresy-in-transition-book-john-christian-laursen-9780754654285","title":"Heresy in Transition","description":"The concept of heresy is deeply rooted in Christian European culture. The palpable increase in incidences of heresy in the Middle Ages may be said to directly relate to the Christianity's attempts to define orthodoxy and establish conformity at its centre, resulting in the sometimes forceful elimination of Christian sects. In the transition from medieval to early modern times, however, the perception of heresy underwent a profound transformation, ultimately leading to its decriminalization and the emergence of a pluralistic religious outlook.   The essays in this volume offer readers a unique insight into this little-understood cultural shift. Half of the chapters investigate the manner in which the church and its attendant civil authorities defined and proscribed heresy, whilst the other half focus on the means by which early modern writers sought to supersede such definition and proscription. The result of these investigations is a multifaceted historical account of the construction and serial reconstruction of one of the key categories of European theological, juristic and political thought. The contributors explore the role of nationalism and linguistic identity in constructions of heresy, its analogies with treason and madness, the role of class and status in the responses to heresy. In doing so they provide fascinating insights into the roots of the historicization of heresy and the role of this historicization in the emergence of religious pluralism.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52402223612177,"sku":"NLS9780754654285","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53035281514769,"sku":"NIN9780754654285","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780754654285.jpg?v=1758757062"},{"product_id":"paradoxes-of-religious-toleration-in-early-modern-political-thought-book-john-christian-laursen-9780739172179","title":"Paradoxes of Religious Toleration in Early Modern Political Thought","description":"In today's developed world, much of what people believe about religious toleration has evolved from crucial innovations in toleration theory developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thinkers from that period have been rightly celebrated for creating influential, liberating concepts and ideas that have enabled many of us to live in peace. However, their work was certainly not perfect. In this enlightening volume, John Christian Laursen and Mar a Jos  Villaverde have gathered contributors to focus on the paradoxes, blindspots, unexpected flaws, or ambiguities in early modern toleration theories and practices. Each chapter explores the complexities, complications, and inconsistencies that came up in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as people grappled with the idea of toleration. In understanding the weaknesses, contradictions, and ambivalences in other theories, they hope to provoke thought about the defects in ways of thinking about toleration in order to help in overcoming similar problems in contemporary toleration theories.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52424585511185,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52424586232081,"sku":"NLS9780739172179","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780739172179.jpg?v=1759152409"},{"product_id":"paradoxes-of-religious-toleration-in-early-modern-political-thought-book-john-christian-laursen-9780739172162","title":"Paradoxes of Religious Toleration in Early Modern Political Thought","description":"In today's developed world, much of what people believe about religious toleration has evolved from crucial innovations in toleration theory developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thinkers from that period have been rightly celebrated for creating influential, liberating concepts and ideas that have enabled many of us to live in peace. However, their work was certainly not perfect. In this enlightening volume, John Christian Laursen and Mar a Jos  Villaverde have gathered contributors to focus on the paradoxes, blindspots, unexpected flaws, or ambiguities in early modern toleration theories and practices. Each chapter explores the complexities, complications, and inconsistencies that came up in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as people grappled with the idea of toleration. In understanding the weaknesses, contradictions, and ambivalences in other theories, they hope to provoke thought about the defects in ways of thinking about toleration in order to help in overcoming similar problems in contemporary toleration theories.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52432490627345,"sku":"NLS9780739172162","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780739172162.jpg?v=1759175126"},{"product_id":"early-french-and-german-defenses-of-freedom-of-the-press-book-john-christian-laursen-9789004130173","title":"Early French and German Defenses of Freedom of the Press","description":"This volume contains English translations of two important early French and German defences of freedom of the press. Almost unknown in the English-speaking world, these texts demonstrate that freedom of the press was an important issue in other parts of Europe in the early modern period, giving rise to articulate theories. Elie Luzac's Essay on Freedom of Expression (1749) defended freedom of the press for atheists on natural law and other grounds. Carl Friedrich Bahrdt's On Freedom of the Press and its Limits (1787) drew on natural law, religious rhetoric, and political journalism to make the case for understanding freedom of the press as a human right. 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Arguably, their predicament turned some of them into cosmopolitans and instigated their contributions to the theory and practice of freedom of the press and economic freedom. As in the case of other diaspora cultures, expulsion from France evidently drove the refugees to new levels of political awareness and new heights of argumentative creativity. The work of the famous and industrious refugee Pierre Bayle has been credited with inspiring the great figures of Enlightenment and modernity. Too often, however, the work of less famous figures who contributed to the ethos of this period has been neglected. This volume contains explorations in the originality and influence of many of those figures, while pointing to the need for more work in the area.  Contributors include: Daniel Brühlmeier, Pauline Haour, T.J. Hochstrasser, John Christian Laursen, Fabrizio Lomonaco, Bertram E. 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