The Book That Changed Europe: Picart and Bernard’s Religious Ceremonies of the World
by Lynn Hunt, Margaret C. Jacob, and Wijnand Mijnhardt
—Reviewed by Ralph Walter
The book that changed Europe isn’t the Bible. It isn’t the Koran. It is from the Enlightenment, but it isn’t Newton’s Principia Mathematica or Spinoza’s Ethics or Diderot’s Encyclopaedia.
Instead, Lynn Hunt, Margaret C. Jacob and Wijnand Mijnhardt choose a rather obscure tome: Picart and Bernard’s Religious Ceremonies of the World, which they argue transformed European attitudes toward religious toleration by demonstrating the commonality of the world’s faiths. The authors picked well. Their choice is a masterpiece of art, erudition and persuasion.
Religious Ceremonies of the World is a massive seven-volume work, published between 1723 and 1737, that systematically describes the rituals, beliefs, and practices of the world’s known religions at the time. Its 3,415 folio-sized pages and 263 engraved plates reinforce the theme of religious commonality: rituals of worship; the rites of marriages, funerals, and initiation; the potential for exploitation and cruelty, from Hindu widow-burning to Aztec sacrifices to the Catholic inquisition. The authors’ anticlericalism shines through.
Hunt, Jacob and Mijnhardt walk us through the volumes and include copies of the original plates — helpful, even if they don’t do justice to the originals. The volumes are divided by religion or region, beginning with Jews and Roman Catholics and continuing to Hinduism, the religions of American Indians, Asian and African faiths, the orthodox, Armenians, and Protestants, and finally Islam. The seventh volume also included an extensive index, rare for its time. And though all the illustrations bring beauty to the book, the engravings executed by Picart, as opposed to those he only supervised, stand out for their richness of line and depth of character.
Picart and Bernard’s collaboration seems a natural product of the open, congenial, sophisticated and intellectually entrepreneurial atmosphere of 18th century Amsterdam. That’s where the men the authors call the two Bernards met, both members of the immigrant Huguenot community. Bernard Picart, a first-rate engraver and Protestant convert, and Jean Frederic Bernard, scion of a long line of ministers but himself a the book dealer, publisher and philosopher, thrived in the city. It was a center of religious toleration in Europe. Jews could openly practice their faith. Merchants returning from the New World, Africa, the Levant, and the Far East brought with them stories of distant religious practices. Dutch authorities only blinked at most minor religious transgressions. The Bernards were able to advocate their syncretistic and anticlerical views without objection.
Their book became both an economic success and an intellectual triumph. There are nine French editions and eight English editions, along with a German and a Dutch. Despite the dear one hundred guilder cost, subscriptions sold rapidly. As the original volumes are today locked up in rare book rooms, The Book that Changed Europe allows access to those of us outside the academy. With that, we can begin to explore the important and neglected text, and the evolution of the right to freedom of religion it helped spur.
Further Reading: A Letter Concerning Toleration
Ralph Walter is a member of the Zócalo board of directors and lay episcopal minister.
*Photo of an engraving of Nordic Sami people worshiping, by Bernard Picart, courtesy Asoka.
