The Book That Changed Europe
Picart and Bernard's Religious Ceremonies of the World
Published on 31. March 2010
Book
Hardback
400 pages
978-0-674-04928-4 (ISBN)
Description
Two French Protestant refugees in eighteenth-century Amsterdam gave the world an extraordinary work that intrigued and outraged readers across Europe. In this captivating account, Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob, and Wijnand Mijnhardt take us to the vibrant Dutch Republic and its flourishing book trade to explore the work that sowed the radical idea that religions could be considered on equal terms.
Famed engraver Bernard Picart and author and publisher Jean Frederic Bernard produced The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of All the Peoples of the World, which appeared in the first of seven folio volumes in 1723. They put religion in comparative perspective, offering images and analysis of Jews, Catholics, Muslims, the peoples of the Orient and the Americas, Protestants, deists, freemasons, and assorted sects. Despite condemnation by the Catholic Church, the work was a resounding success. For the next century it was copied or adapted, but without the context of its original radicalism and its debt to clandestine literature, English deists, and the philosophy of Spinoza.
Ceremonies and Customs prepared the ground for religious toleration amid seemingly unending religious conflict, and demonstrated the impact of the global on Western consciousness. In this beautifully illustrated book, Hunt, Jacob, and Mijnhardt cast new light on the profound insight found in one book as it shaped the development of a modern, secular understanding of religion.
Famed engraver Bernard Picart and author and publisher Jean Frederic Bernard produced The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of All the Peoples of the World, which appeared in the first of seven folio volumes in 1723. They put religion in comparative perspective, offering images and analysis of Jews, Catholics, Muslims, the peoples of the Orient and the Americas, Protestants, deists, freemasons, and assorted sects. Despite condemnation by the Catholic Church, the work was a resounding success. For the next century it was copied or adapted, but without the context of its original radicalism and its debt to clandestine literature, English deists, and the philosophy of Spinoza.
Ceremonies and Customs prepared the ground for religious toleration amid seemingly unending religious conflict, and demonstrated the impact of the global on Western consciousness. In this beautifully illustrated book, Hunt, Jacob, and Mijnhardt cast new light on the profound insight found in one book as it shaped the development of a modern, secular understanding of religion.
Reviews / Votes
A brilliant and important work about one of the most fascinating books in European history by three of the leading scholars in the world on the Enlightenment. -- John Marshall, Johns Hopkins University A penetrating analysis of the overlooked but highly influential book on world religions by Bernard Picart and Jean Frederic Bernard. The authors offer compelling evidence that interaction with the broader world played a vital role in the development of the European Enlightenment. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, this could well turn out to be the book that changes our view of European history and modernity. -- Charles H. Parker, author of <i>Faith on the Margins: Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age</i> Reflecting the combined expertise of three eminent historians of the Enlightenment, this important book makes a vital contribution to our understanding of the Radical Enlightenment as well as to eighteenth-century European cultural and intellectual history more generally. Well written and highly accessible, the book illuminates a major turning point in European Enlightenment thought and includes many illustrations by one of the premier engravers of the eighteenth century, which few present-day readers will have had the opportunity to see elsewhere. -- Siep Stuurman, author of <i>Francois Poulain de la Barre and the Invention of Modern Equality</i> A major study of Picart and Bernard's work...In recent years, a number of historians have reminded us that one could be Enlightened without abandoning Christianity (or Judaism). Calls for bringing religion up to date by setting it on a modern philological and historical basis and by testing its precepts and practices against the touchstone of reason formed a central part of the Enlightenment project--more central, it seems, than calls for strangling the last king in the bowels of the last priest. Hunt, Jacob, and Mijnhardt have added a distinctive chapter to the story. -- Anthony Grafton * New York Review of Books * [This] stunning new work, The Book That Changed Europe, [is] an exhaustive and exhilarating inquiry into the meaning of Picart and Bernard's massive undertaking. At once an exercise in scholarship and a tribute to its subject, this volume makes clear why Picart and Bernard ought to be household names, as familiar to us as Voltaire and Diderot...By taking its readers behind the scenes, The Book That Changed Europe helps us to understand what lay behind the enduring impact of its namesake and why it matters in the long run...Equally entertaining and instructive, it makes us care, and care deeply, about the fate of an earlier publication, underscoring the power of words to effect change and touch the heart. -- Jenna Weissman Joselit * Tablet Magazine * In The Book that Changed Europe (a book that is almost as absorbing as the book it is about, and that is high praise indeed), historians Lynn Hunt, Margaret C. Jacob, and Wijnand Mijnhardt make clear just what was at stake in Bernard and Picart's undertaking: they were mapping a way to imagine religious toleration. -- Lauren Winner * Books & Culture * With this riveting history of a seven-volume marginalized "blockbuster" about world religions (1723-37) and the fascinating men who produced it (author/editor/publisher Jean Frederic Bernard and engraver Bernard Picart), Hunt, Jacob, and Mijnhardt present a marvelous addition to 18th-century studies that meticulously explores faith and metaphysics in the context of society, culture, and biography. -- L. A. Rollo * Choice * [A] wonderful new book...Cutting-edge scholarship...One of the most exciting things about The Book That Changed Europe is that it may serve as a model of how historians should read images. -- Peter N. Miller * New Republic * The Book That Changed Europe makes a compelling case that Religious Ceremonies of the World deserves a more prominent place in studies of the Enlightenment. By example, it also makes a compelling case for collaborative historical research...Picart and Bernard's magnum opus is sure at last to receive the greater recognition it deserves. -- Daniel Stolzenberg * H-France Review *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass.
United States
Publishing group
Harvard University Press
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
76 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-674-04928-4 (9780674049284)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Lynn Hunt is Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History, University of California, Los Angeles. Margaret C. Jacob is Distinguished Professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles. Wijnand Mijnhardt is Chair of Comparative History of the Sciences and the Humanities, Utrecht University.
Content
* Illustrations * Introduction: One Book, Two Men, and a New Attitude toward Religion Part I: The World of the Book * A Marketplace for Religious Ideas * Bernard Picart: Religious and Artistic Journeys * Why Holland? * Jean Frederic Bernard: The Tumultuous Life of a Refugee Publisher * A Writer's Mental Universe * Picart's Visual Politics Part II: The Book of the World * Familiarizing Judaism * Cutting Roman Catholicism Down to Size * Idolatry: West and East * Rehabilitating Islam * Dissent, Deism, and Atheism * Conclusion: Literary Fortunes * Appendix A: The Seven Volumes of Religious Ceremonies of the World * Appendix B: Editions of Religious Ceremonies of the World * Abbreviations * Notes * Acknowledgments * Index