From Labelling and Ridicule to Understanding: The Novelty of Bernard and Picart’s Religious Comparativism

Albeit with various contradictions, the early modern derision of religion tout court was generally inspired by the need to denounce every violation of individual conscience and of religious minorities perpetrated in the name of ‘the truth’. Yet the same derision of religion ran the risk of being the prelude to a dramatically caricatural representation of religious alterity. By contrast, the indulgent consideration of human nature displayed in Jean-Frédéric Bernard and Bernard Picart’s Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde appears to have offered a more effective argument for mutual tolerance.