Minimal Religion, Socinianism and Deism: Grotius’s intentions and the early
reception of De veritate
Potsdam Paper H. Nellen
In the spring of 1625, the Dutch humanist Hugo Grotius, who lived as an exile in
Paris, published his seminal study on the law of war and peace, De iure belli ac
pacis. One of the most controversial parts of this book was a courageous plea for
toleration of heresy, based on ideas that a couple of years later would also be
expressed in another famous work, De veritate (1627). The core of these ideas
consists in the argument that civil authorities and believers in general had to
distinguish between essential religious tenets whose truth could be made rationally
acceptable, and a set of supernatural dogmas, derived from divine revelation, that did
not pass a certain, albeit often high degree of probability. Regarding the second
category civil toleration was called for.
In his paper, H. Nellen proposes to go into the relationship between both
books and to describe Paris, and in particular the circle around the French monk
Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), as a kind of greenhouse for the development of a
minimal Christian creed. Within a subgroup of learned society in the French capital,
attempts were made to reduce the chance that religious dispute would fuel political
strife, which was rightly taken as detrimental to the advancement of learning. All
members of his group saw promotion of a minimal creed as a solution for current
religious controversies and ensuing political turmoil and (civil) war. It is also apparent
that overt adherence to such an ideal was considered to be dangerous, because it
would at least evoke the embarrassing and even repressive attention of the
authorities in church and government. An additional problem was that by defending
such a religious stance, members of Mersenne’s circle made themselves liable to
accusations of endorsing ‘rational beliefs’ like Socinianism.