Religion has often played a central role in conflicts throughout history. The Religion and Peace Studies series published by Equinox places this history into conversation with more recent religious calls for peaceful coexistence. As part of that series, Narratives of Peace in Religious Discourses: Perspectives from Europe and the Mediterranean in the Early Modern Era considers ideological as well as performative aspects of peace discourses. Through an Introduction and twelve essays, the volume offers a rich range of studies that utilize a diversity of sources and elevate a number of significant themes that emerge from early modern thought and history.

Peace as understood in this volume is dialectical (relational and liminal) and as such it highlights acceptance and tolerance on one hand and delegitimization and doctrinal division on the other. The essays examine some well-known thinkers and topics, highlighting the complexity of peace and tolerance in a historical context. Two essays on Nicholas Cusanus, for example, reveal an openness to religious and theological difference as well as the impact of contemporary political conditions and agendas, including support of religious crusade. Similarly, the ecumenical approach of Erasmus is balanced with a presentation of his critical and polemical approach to Lutheranism. In many of the essays, the contributions of Renaissance humanists to the discussion and language of peace are presented along with the implications of the connections between peace and power, including the divergences between utopian sensibilities and political realities. Indeed, writing about co-existence and day-to-day realities of interaction across difference could be quite complicated, as the discussion of material culture and the regulation of private life in sumptuary laws uncovers. Similarly, especially in local contexts, early modern individuals of different religious backgrounds could find themselves in coexistence (including regular business contact and relationships), even during periods of religious strife and war.

Together, the contributions in this volume cover a lot of important ground. They provide a rich and nuanced discussion of peace and its limitations, and they open fresh thinking about the nature of peace that is historically situated, thoughtful, non-binary, and relevant to contemporary concerns as well.