where the brilliant polemics during the period of the first Stuarts
mark the birth of a new age.

* * *

The word 'tolerance' needs some preliminary explanation. It
existed in the sixteenth century and the Latin term tolerantia, from
which it is derived, was used by the classical writers of antiquity.
But it should be noted that with great authors such as Calvin and
Montaigne the word kept its passive meaning of 'endurance'. The
author of the Essais, for instance, reproached the Stoics for their
haughty attitude towards suffering, their 'too calm and disdainful
bearing towards the endurance of evil' (t. II, 37 ). In the sense of
permission or concession concerning religious freedom, the word
'tolerance' appears in the second half of the sixteenth century in
Germany (Toleranz) and the Low Countries (Tolerantie), and
doubtless a little later in France (cf. H. H. Mispelblom Beyer,
Tolerantie en Fanatisme, Arnhem, 1948, pp. 4-5, 202-203). The
expression 'tolerance of the Reformed' is found in the Histoire univer-
selle of Agrippa d'Aubigné (t. II, 25). It appears even before that
in a pamphlet of about the same date as the Edict of Nantes ( 1598).

In the absence of a noun, the verb 'to tolerate' had been in use
for a long time in connection with religious freedom. A whole
article in Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica is devoted to the
question: Utrum ritus infidelium sint tolerandi? (IIa IIae, qu. 10,
art. 11). During the period of the Reformation Catholic theolo-
gians had but to revive St Thomas's terms. Actually the problem
of tolerance is usually expressed thus: Can one 'permit' or
'tolerate' two or more religions within a Christian State? At first
the word 'permission' was preferred to 'tolerance', which became
current later. And the theologians did not fail to specify, as in a
defence of the Edict of Amboise ( 1563), that 'Permission is not
the same as approval'. So, in spite of a terminology which differed
slightly from ours, the theologians and writers of the sixteenth
century did in fact treat of the problem of 'tolerance'.

The present work has not been inspired by the desire to prove
a thesis or to write apologetics. It is a history with no other end
in view than to set out, in all their diversity, the reactions of
theologians, humanists, and rulers towards a grave issue brought
about by the Reformation: religious pluralism within the State
and within Christendom.

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