Conclusion

The aim of this book has been to investigate a number of aspects of the historical foundation on which the modern discourse of liberty and toleration is based. It has taken as its specific moment of time the period frequently referred to as “the long sixteenth century,” between 1500 and approximately 1650, specifically between the time of Niccolò Machiavelli and John Milton, for that was the period in which the principal concepts and themes concerning liberty in the modern world began to emerge against a background of unprecedented violence and oppression. Clearly there can be no question of denying the importance of earlier historical periods, which acted in their turn as the foundation on which the early modern idea of liberty developed. Classical antiquity was essential in offering an original series of historical perspectives and conceptual elaborations of the idea of liberty that the figures considered in this study were often eager to claim as their direct forbears and inspiration. The medieval experiences of the Scholastics and the neo-Thomists, in particular, offered an important basis for the formulation of ideas about civil jurisdiction and relations between church and state that were undoubtedly remembered in the early modern world; even if the strong anti-Scholastic bias of Renaissance culture as a whole led to them being present in more muted forms. It should not be forgotten, however, that the long sixteenth century witnessed a series of dramatic crises that altered the map of European society and culture, bringing about changes so radical and lasting that all the values that had guided the previous centuries had to be recast in entirely different and unfamiliar molds.

Two principal crises deeply affected the traditional thinking about liberty and toleration in this period. On the one hand there was a rapid and rigorous entrenchment of centralized forms of monarchical power, or the process seen by Machiavelli as the arrival of a new prince; on the other hand the long-established power of the Catholic Church as the unique guardian of the religious life of Europe was dramatically challenged by the Protestant Reformation. Religious conflict, fragmentation, and dissent, which for centuries had occupied a place at the margins of European society, moved in the course of a few convulsed years to take center stage. These two forces moved in diametrically opposite directions, creating an antimony between the principles of authority and liberty that would act as a signpost toward the modern world. They also created a series of conflicts of unprecedented violence. On one side of the picture, the pressure was toward ever more centralized and systematic power structures on the part of the late Renaissance princes and their courts, including (especially after the Council of Trent) the papal court in Rome. These power structures did not consider liberty a desirable value and were often concerned above all with stamping it out. On the other side, new forces of religious dissent tended to break up old and new allegiances, fragmenting the religious map of Europe and powerfully affecting the political discourses of the time. From this situation an entirely different Europe emerged for which historical experiences were available only as distant models or conceptual instruments with which to forge new values and ideas. It was at this moment in time that thinking about liberty and toleration assumed an unusual intensity, forging a new discourse that would eventually establish them as the primary values of the modern Western world.

Other crises in the background of this story served to undermine even further the traditional certainties of the Christian, feudal Europe of the Middle Ages. The collapse of the eastern empire, the advance of Islam toward the boundaries of the Christian world, and the increasingly active process of colonization of the recently discovered New World all played their part in creating new and unfamiliar roles for the traditional European powers. Attention in the present study, however, has been largely limited to the central conflicts within the Christian world itself, seen as the locus in which the earliest modern discourses on liberty were principally being forged. The texts discussed here belong exclusively to the European culture of the period under consideration. Even within that limited context, they make no pretense of offering either the only possible picture or a picture that is in any way complete. They should rather be taken as a series of exemplary case studies, designed to illustrate the ways—or at least some of the principal ways—in which a discourse about liberty emerged in Europe in a century and a half that saw it convulsed in the throes of unprecedented conflict and war. As the study of these texts has shown, there was no linear movement forward as far as the values of liberty and toleration were concerned. Significant moments of progress often caused violent backlashes, in many cases overwhelming those very figures who had done most to promote new ideas of diversity, discussion, and dissent. More often than not those ideas themselves remained in the form of a utopian vision, to be implemented successfully only in the decades, if not centuries, to come.

The question of defining the most appropriate modes of implementation of the ideas of liberty and toleration that emerged in this period has nevertheless been considered of primary importance throughout this book. It was not immediately obvious to those concerned what form of political or religious power structure would prove most successful in offering the necessary guarantees for a pluralistic and tolerant society to emerge. From the time of Machiavelli onward the political sphere, and in particular the republican ideal, appear as closely linked to discourses on liberty, though there was much discussion as to what form of republicanism was to be preferred. The most extreme form of republicanism, which envisaged modes of communal government without a hereditary prince, was not accepted by many at that time, and has been a point of particularly lively discussion among modern commentators of today. Often republicanism meant mixed forms of government in which a prince was more or less involved in the constitutional arrangements of the state. What does appear essential is instead the emergence of some kind of parliamentary forum, which Machiavelli called the council chamber, whose door needed to be kept open if liberty, tolerance, and diversity were to be secured for the community at large rather than flying off like sparks into the atmosphere as pure ideas or exhilarating but powerless words. That is why, throughout this book, attention has been continually paid not only to the libertarian ideas being discussed but also to the forms of institutional support they could or could not command. Ultimately, even in these early years, parliaments of some kind proved essential, even if experiences such as those of Machiavelli or Milton dramatically illustrate the necessity for parliaments themselves to develop forms of checks and balances designed to limit the ambition for an excess of power from which, as our story so eloquently demonstrates, they too are never entirely immune.

Another defining characteristic of this study has been the interdisciplinary impetus behind the choice of texts. The tendency of scholars concerned with defining the historical background to the modern discourse on toleration and liberty has often been to limit the field of vision to their own specific discipline, be it political philosophy, theology, natural philosophy, ethics, or at times the arts. These distinctions, however, were seldom present, let alone essential, to the figures discussed in this book. The discourse on liberty that emerged in the sixteenth century as a challenge to the increasingly absolutist tendencies of monarchical and ecclesiastical power pervaded every aspect of the culture of the time, from religion to politics, from the new science to the new drama. It united the public sphere to the domestic sphere, the formation of new confessional groups to the formation of new political experiences, and the investigation of the world of nature to the investigation of the human mind. It was without boundaries, either disciplinary or national, and it invested (and at times rocked to their foundations) all the religious confessions and political structures of a tempestuous and violent age.

A characteristic of much of the Anglo-American study of this subject has been a perception of the new “liberty speech” as belonging primarily to the Protestant world. This is not an approach this study has adopted nor its results have confirmed. Just as Protestant dogmatism and oppression were often in the period studied here as merciless and unrelenting as those of the post-Tridentine Catholic Church, so the rich texture of Catholic culture produced voices raised in the name of liberty as eloquent and forward-looking as those of Protestant derivation. On both sides there were those who moved away from a Christian viewpoint altogether; and often their formulation of the problems with which this study has been concerned were particularly radical and profound. To limit the discourse on liberty to its most radical voices, however, has not been an objective of this book. More moderate positions were often able to reach and influence, at times more directly, the public of the time; and men like Erasmus of Rotterdam or Jacques Auguste de Thou on the Catholic side, or Richard Hooker or Jacobus Arminius on the Protestant side—who never renounced their Christian beliefs while still vigorously protesting the ways in which they were being enforced—gave powerful expression to ideas of liberty and tolerance within the early modern world.

It has to be emphasized that the discourse on liberty that emerged in the period considered here remains in many respects fragmentary and at times still unrefined. On the other hand, it seldom lacks in dramatic intensity, often related to direct experiences of oppression and personal suffering or affliction. Inevitably these tended to limit the power and depth of attempts to elaborate a theoretical concept of liberty. The development of a more rigorously philosophical libertarian discourse would be one of the major achievements, at a later date, of the European and American Enlightenments. This study limits itself to the claim that the long sixteenth century began to elaborate the fundamental, conceptual building blocks with which a more refined discourse on liberty, justice, and democracy could then be developed. It did so in a world in which many were still unable to understand, let alone to appreciate, the idea of difference as a source of variety and progress rather than of evil and confusion. That was not an ideal setting for formulating an articulate theory of liberty; but what the principal actors of our drama lacked in theoretical refinement, they gained in vigor, intensity, and at times in wit.

This study has advanced the claim that the sixteenth-and early seventeenth-century discourses on liberty deserve closer attention than they often receive. It was a century and a half of appalling destruction and violence, but also of remarkable creativity and change. Its fortunes have recently sagged with respect to the attention paid to the medieval world and the seventeenth-century Enlightenment. This study has attempted to demonstrate that any modern discourse on liberty, justice, and democracy that ignores the convulsions of the long sixteenth century, and the first, often bright, glimmerings of a modern concept of liberty and tolerance which emerged from them risks denying the importance of the very moment in which modernity began to take shape.