Atheists and Atheism Before the Enlightenment

Presents detailed case-studies of the expression of atheistic opinion in early modern England and Scotland.

Anxiety about the threat of atheism was rampant in the early modern period, yet fully documented examples of openly expressed irreligious opinion are surprisingly rare. England and Scotland saw only a handful of such cases before 1750, and this book o ers a detailed analysis of three of them. Thomas Aikenhead was executed for his atheistic opinions at Edinburgh in 1697; Tinkler Ducket was convicted of atheism by the Vice-Chancellor's court at the University of Cambridge in 1739; whereas Archibald Pitcairne's overtly atheist tract, Pitcairneana, though evidently compiled very early in the eighteenth century, was first published only in 2016. Drawing on these, and on the better-known apostacy of Christopher Marlowe and the Earl of Rochester, Michael Hunter argues that such atheists showed real 'assurance' in publicly promoting their views. This contrasts with the private doubts of Christian believers, and this book demonstrates that the two phenomena are quite distinct, even though they have sometimes been wrongly con ated.

Autorentext
Michael Hunter is Emeritus Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is well known for his publications on Robert Boyle and on the early Royal Society and its milieu. His most recent book is The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment (2020).

Klappentext

Anxiety about the threat of atheism was rampant in the early modern period yet, paradoxically, examples of openly-expressed irreligious opinion are surprisingly rare. This book offers a detailed analysis of three cases, and contrasts the real 'assurance' shown by such figures with the doubts expressed, often privately, by believers.

Inhalt

Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; 2. The Problem of 'Atheism' in Early Modern England; 3. Atheism among the Godly: The Covert History of Religious Doubt; 4. 'This degenerate Age... so miserably over-run with Scepticism and Infidelity': The Culture of Atheism after 1660; 5. 'Aikenhead the Atheist': The Context and Consequences of Articulate Irreligion in the late Seventeenth Century; 6. An Atheist Text by Archibald Pitcairne: Introduction to Pitcairneana; 7. The Text of Pitcairneana: Houghton Library, Harvard, MS Eng 1114; 8. The Trial of Tinkler Ducket: Atheism and Libertinism in Eighteenth-century England; Appendix; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.