Seventeenth century

Scholars have long been fascinated by the relationship between religion and political thought during the seventeenth century. Violent, destructive wars that raged across Europe forced intellectuals to develop new ideas about the nature of political power and the legitimacy of resistance. Some justified taking up arms on religious grounds, claiming to extirpate idolatry and heresy as they formed a godly commonwealth. Others advanced legal-constitutional justifications for resistance to tyranny, ones based upon popular sovereignty and the will of the people. Yet others lamented the destructive nature of religious warfare, arguing that the state had a purely secular end that included the material security of its subjects. This chapter provides an overview of how scholars have approached these different elements of political thought in the seventeenth century, including the critical role that such ideas played in the emergence of modernity.