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The Book That Changed Europe: Picart and Bernard's Religious Ceremonies of the World
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.
- GenresBooks About BooksHistory
400 pages, Hardcover
First published March 31, 2010
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About the author
Lynn Hunt
466 books82 followersLynn Avery Hunt is the Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her area of expertise is the French Revolution, but she is also well known for her work in European cultural history on such topics as gender. Her 2007 work, Inventing Human Rights, has been heralded as the most comprehensive analysis of the history of human rights. She served as president of the American Historical Association in 2002.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 5, 2024
I wish I could give this book a higher rating, especially considering my longstanding fascination with Bernard and Picart's Religious Ceremonies of the World. Ten years ago, I stumbled upon an engraving from Religious Ceremonies at an art dealer's store in Rome. Since then, I have continued to collect various pages and manuscripts from Religious Ceremonies and have always been curious about the contents of the work.
When I picked up this book, I was excited to finally read about the encyclopedic text I've been so intrigued by. While Hunt et al. have done a great amount of research on "the two Bernards" and the circumstances surrounding the publication of Religious Ceremonies and they have included in their work several interesting facts, the text suffers from bad prose and organization. The nominal division of chapters seems appropriate, however, each chapter would have been well-served by having section divisions; far too much information--some of it poorly integrated into a given discussion at hand--is contained in each chapter. The overabundance of information in chapters is most notable in sudden shifts in focus between paragraphs that seem justified only by content in subsequent paragraphs. Moreover, while Hunt et al. have collected and inserted plenty of valuable and interesting information, the information they have selected to discuss seems as if it is so poorly inserted into the text that I can only describe it as a "content dump." Sure, most academic press literature is dense and filled with exciting information about a given topic, but that quality is what makes it so necessary for authors and editors to produce academic prose that integrates information in a digestible way. This text simply does not present information in that manner, at least for most of its pages. Additionally, the text is quite repetitive and embarks on tangents that lead one to wonder why something is even being discussed.
As for the arguments presented in the text, I am unsure if the authors sufficiently justify their claim that Bernard and Picart's book "changed Europe." If by "changed Europe," the authors mean that Bernard and Picart had some sizable influence or effect on the dispositions of some contemporary and later authors on religion and religious ceremonies, then I believe their argument demonstrates this point and I would agree with them on this point. However, I sense that the authors suggest a much more seismic influence of Bernard and Picart than the record may reflect. No doubt, again, Bernard and Picart's work was novel and was as the authors rightly say, a perspective into what discussions on religion may have looked like in the 18th century. However, whether they were "heavyweights" of the Enlightenment remains up to debate, even though the authors seem to suggest so.
Aside for points about prose and argument, I very much enjoyed reading about recorded and likely influences on Bernard and Picart, their treatment of religions within the text of the Religious Ceremonies, and subsequent reproductions of their work.
When I picked up this book, I was excited to finally read about the encyclopedic text I've been so intrigued by. While Hunt et al. have done a great amount of research on "the two Bernards" and the circumstances surrounding the publication of Religious Ceremonies and they have included in their work several interesting facts, the text suffers from bad prose and organization. The nominal division of chapters seems appropriate, however, each chapter would have been well-served by having section divisions; far too much information--some of it poorly integrated into a given discussion at hand--is contained in each chapter. The overabundance of information in chapters is most notable in sudden shifts in focus between paragraphs that seem justified only by content in subsequent paragraphs. Moreover, while Hunt et al. have collected and inserted plenty of valuable and interesting information, the information they have selected to discuss seems as if it is so poorly inserted into the text that I can only describe it as a "content dump." Sure, most academic press literature is dense and filled with exciting information about a given topic, but that quality is what makes it so necessary for authors and editors to produce academic prose that integrates information in a digestible way. This text simply does not present information in that manner, at least for most of its pages. Additionally, the text is quite repetitive and embarks on tangents that lead one to wonder why something is even being discussed.
As for the arguments presented in the text, I am unsure if the authors sufficiently justify their claim that Bernard and Picart's book "changed Europe." If by "changed Europe," the authors mean that Bernard and Picart had some sizable influence or effect on the dispositions of some contemporary and later authors on religion and religious ceremonies, then I believe their argument demonstrates this point and I would agree with them on this point. However, I sense that the authors suggest a much more seismic influence of Bernard and Picart than the record may reflect. No doubt, again, Bernard and Picart's work was novel and was as the authors rightly say, a perspective into what discussions on religion may have looked like in the 18th century. However, whether they were "heavyweights" of the Enlightenment remains up to debate, even though the authors seem to suggest so.
Aside for points about prose and argument, I very much enjoyed reading about recorded and likely influences on Bernard and Picart, their treatment of religions within the text of the Religious Ceremonies, and subsequent reproductions of their work.
June 6, 2022
Fascinating subject, terrible execution. Unorganized, repetitive, badly written, and filled with pointless digressions. There's an irrelevant digression in the very first paragraph of the book! Maybe if a competent editor had gone to town on it...
Not to mention that the title vastly overstates the influence of _Religious Ceremonies of the World_.
Not to mention that the title vastly overstates the influence of _Religious Ceremonies of the World_.
February 14, 2024
A bit poorly organized and deviates from the topic at hand. However, it’s such a good introduction to the topic–even if the title is sensationalized–that you should read it if you’re interested in learning more.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews