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.
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.
Table of Contents
* Illustrations
* Introduction: One Book, Two Men, and a New Attitude toward Religion
Part I: The World of the Book
1. A Marketplace for Religious Ideas
2. Bernard Picart: Religious and Artistic Journeys
3. Why Holland?
4. Jean Frederic Bernard: The Tumultuous Life of a Refugee Publisher
5. A Writer’s Mental Universe
6. Picart’s Visual Politics
Part II: The Book of the World
7. Familiarizing Judaism
8. Cutting Roman Catholicism Down to Size
9. Idolatry: West and East
10. Rehabilitating Islam
11. 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
383 pages, Hardcover