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1. Concept and history up to 18th centuryThe “history of religions” denotes both the academic study of religion as a discipline (Religionswissenschaft) and a specific methodic program that was developed alongside the historico-philological approaches in the 19th century. The historicization of religion in line with other cultural fields admittedly remains a bone of contention in the study of the subject, and even many specialists in the discipline who call themselves historians of religion, as Mircea Eliade did, tend to question how historical it is [11]. The fundamental po…

Culminating in the 18th century, the word polytheism (coined by Jean Bodin [8. 1088]; “worship of many gods”) acquired new connotations in the early modern period distinct from its former existence as a mere accusation of the “pagan” veneration of multiple deities, idolism, or idolatry (Ancient religions; Paganism; Superstition). What has been called the first systematic program of German idealism, for example, contrasted a “polytheism of imagination and art” with a “monotheism of reason and the heart.” Even before this, in his preface to Braut von Messina, Schiller breathed …

The term  religious pluralism generally describes a situation in which various religions exist “side by side” within a territorially and historically defined cultural context. With reference to the early modern period, the mere fact of a multiplicity (pluralism [2]) of religions is frequently reinterpreted to mean the postulate of positive co-existence [6] and incorporated into a globalizing perspective. Co-existence with minimal conflict presupposes a prior “deregulation of the religious marketplace” on the part of the state and a readine…

1. Definition and Concept The research concept and presentation model of a history of European religion [11] relate to specific developments in Europe that reached an initial climax in the Renaissance and were fully developed in the early modern period. After the phase of evangelization between the 6th and 14th centuries, traditional histories of Europe’s religion (Religion, history of) [4]; [18]; [7] – with varying chronological and territorial boundaries –  divide the continent neatly into distinct Christian and non-Christian components.Instead of such an “additive” hist…