Religion and Freedom of Expression in the Early Modern Period: Practices and Ideas in Post-Reformation Europe

More often than not, debates around free speech in the early modern period had to do with religious speech and expression. This interdisciplinary volume extends the discussion of free speech to look at the broader concept of free of expression in relation to religious practice and religious belief in early modern Europe. It includes exploration of actual speech and freedom of press, but also moves beyond this to look at in practice, theory, and writing. Chapters span a wide range of geographical and linguistic contexts, including the Netherlands, Italy, England, Switzerland, and Poland. Authors provide essays sharing insights from different scholarly fields including church history, intellectual history, cultural studies, history of the press, literary studies, theology, philosophy, and art history. Ultimately, the case studies explored here shed light on both freedom and its curtailment as this relates to religious experience from the post-Reformation times up to the early enlightenment period.