De (in)tolerantia Judaeorum: A Hitherto Almost Forgotten Source of Tolerance Studies in German Protestant University Archives—The Dissertationes

In 1685, Pierre Bayle commented on Adriaan Paeets’s anonymously published dispatch on tolerance with the words: There are a great many works on this matter. However, they have a similar destiny to that of books of devotion; namely, they have been widely read without having changed the lives or conduct of the world. (Bayle 1685, 1847–1848) This is abundantly clear. At the end of the seventeenth century, a huge num- ber of publications on tolerance appeared, but their impact on political life was minuscule, if it existed at all. Independent from the philosophical, social, or legal understanding of tolerance and how it was practically defined in the publications of this epoch, it is obviously true that it had almost no effect on the politics of the European kingdoms or the Holy Roman Empire.