1. As in Carl J. Friedrich, The Age of the Baroque, 1610-1660 (New York, 1952), p. 35: "It was undoubtedly a part of this bourgeois spirit of the newer political thought, secularized and urban in its orientation, that it tended to eliminate the church from any role in the political sphere." See also Alfred von Martin, Soziologie der Renaissance (Stuttgart, 1932), p. 28, for a standard juxtaposition of "säkularisiert" and "bürgerlich."

2. Cf. H. R. Trevor-Roper, "The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century," in Crisis in Europe, 1560-1660 , ed. Trevor Aston (London, 1965), pp. 59-95. Trevor-Roper is emphatic on the difference between the first and second halves of the century, pp. 62-63. G. N. Clark made somewhat the same point in the introduction to the second edition of The Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1947), in which he spoke of the middle of the century as "one of the great watersheds of modern history" although this perception did not result in any major change from the first edition (1929), in which Clark had been content to designate the century as a period of "transition": a word that should now be treated with some suspicion.

3. For the curiously inconclusive quality of works even on major aspects of the century, see also Leonard N. Marsak, "The Idea of Reason in Seventeenth-Century France," Cahiers d'histoire mondiale 11 (1969), 407, on "the uncertainty still attached" to "the great age in France."

4. Thus in English the verb "to secularize" was first used in 1611 in the narrow sense of conversion from ecclesiastical possession or use; its meaning was enlarged, and became more ambiguous, in the eighteenth century, when it began also to signify both dissociation or separation from religion or spiritual concerns and a turn toward worldliness (Oxford English Dictionary , s.v. "secularize").

5. For a fuller account of what follows, see my Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty (Berkeley, 1968), esp. pp. 339-482.

6. Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (London, 1906), p. 39. Browne's emphasis on division and distinction is both paradoxical and poignant, since it appears as part of a thoroughly traditional celebration of man as microcosm. Cf. S. L. Bethell, The Cultural Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (London, 1951), which attempts to relate T. S. Eliot's celebrated notion of a "dissociation of sensibility" to seventeenth-century Anglican theological discussion.

7. A few examples of this emphasis must suffice. Some writers have insisted on the piety of the century as a whole, without distinction of time or place. Thus, in E. Préclin and E. Jarry, Les luttes politiques et doctrinales aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles , Histoire de l'église, 19 (Paris, 1955), 1:286, the period saw the "sanctification du travail manual" and of "la vie profane." Rosalie Colie, Light and Enlightenment: A Study of the Cambridge Platonists and the Dutch Arminians (Cambridge, 1957), p. 1, calls theology "the blood of the seventeenth-century body politic"; cf. Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), esp. p. 259. Other historians have emphasized the power of religion during particular decades or in particular parts of Europe. Thus Carl Bridenbaugh, Vexed and Troubled Englishmen (New York, 1968), p. 276: "one cannot gainsay the fact that many of the people of the generations that lived between 1590 and 1640 had undergone a spiritual quickening that made most of them less materialistic and more devout than their predecessors of the previous century." Among French historians Etienne Thuau, Raison d'état et pensée politique à l'époque de Richelieu (Paris, 1967), p. 13, appears to agree that the seventeenth is the "grand siècle chrétien de notre histoire," and P. Barrière, La vie intellectuelle en France du XVIe siècle à l'époque contemporaine (Paris, 1961), pp. 176-177, stresses the religious preoccupations of French literature throughout the seventeenth century. In his brilliant Zaharoff lecture Sur le problème religieux dans la première moitié du XVIIe siècle , Antoine Adam organizes French thought in terms of contrasting religious orientations; and even Paul Hazard's Crise de la conscience européenne , 3 vols. (Paris, 1935), 2:415, notes a resurgence of religious sentiment at the end of the century in France.

8. For Sarpi, see my Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty , esp. pp. 528-555. For Galileo, see Giorgio de Sanatillana, The Crime of Galileo (Chicago, 1955), pp. 103, 130; Ludovico Geymonat, Galileo Galilei (Milan, 1957); and Giorgio Spini, "The Rationale of Galileo's Religiousness," in Galileo Reappraised , ed. Carlo L. Golino (Berkeley, 1968), pp. 44-66. For Descartes, see the considerable literature cited by Leonard Krieger, The Politics of Discretion (Chicago, 1965), p. 266, and the passages cited by Krieger, p. 217. For Locke, see John W. Yolton, John Locke and the Way of Ideas (Oxford, 1956), pp. 116-117; the introduction by Philip Abrams to Two Tracts on Government (Cambridge, 1967); and above all John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge, 1969). For Bayle, see the magisterial work of Elizabeth Labrousse, Pierre Bayle , 2 vols. (The Hague, 1963-1964), which reflects the views of a revisionist school that also includes Paul Dibon, Walter Rex, and Richard Popkin. For Newton, see Frank Manuel, A Portrait of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). For Bacon, see Christopher Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (Oxford, 1965), pp. 85-130. For Hobbes, see Willis B. Glover, "God and Thomas Hobbes," Church History 29 (1960), 275-297; and F. C. Hood, The Divine Politics of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford, 1964).

9. On the secularization of the Parlement of Paris, see, for example, J. H. Shennan, The Parliament of Paris (London, 1968), pp. 33-35, 81-82. The process had been essentially completed well before 1600.

10. Ibid., p. 91.

11. Wilbur K. Jordan, Philanthropy in England, 1480-1660 (New York, 1959), pp. 114-117.

12. For France, see Shennan, The Parlement of Paris , pp. 91-93; for England, Jordan, Philanthropy in England , p. 147; and cf. Leopold Willaert, Après le Concile de Trente: La restauration catholique, 1563-1658 , Histoire de l'église, 18 (Paris, 1960), 1:201.

13. Julian Franklin, Jean Bodin and the Sixteenth-Century Revolution in the Methodology of Law and History (New York, 1963); J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1957), pp. 1-29.

14. Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (New York, 1955), esp. p. 216; John B. Wolf, Emergence of the Great Powers, 1685-1715 (New York, 1951), p. 7.

15. Lionel N. Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV: The Political and Social Origins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton, 1965), is especially good on this aspect of mercantilism, esp. pp. 7-35.

16. For the general view of the seventeenth century as ''retreat" or "reaction," see Hazard, Crise de la conscience , vol. 1, and above all the classic work of Henri Hauser, La modernité du XVIe siècle , new ed. (Paris, 1963).

17. On the persistence and intensification of the crusading ideal in the later seventeenth century, see Frederick L. Nussbaum, The Triumph of Science and Reason, 1660-1685 (New York, 1953), pp. 239-241, although, as its title suggests, this work sees the seventeenth century quite differently from my own interpretation.

18. On the secularism of Richelieu and his circle, see Thuau, Raison d'état et pensée politique , pp. 26-27.

19. On the general point, cf. Wolf, Emergence of the Great Powers , pp. 101-102. See also Philippe Sagnac and A. de Saint-Leger, Louis XIV, 1661-1715 , new ed. (Paris, 1949), p. 1. William F. Church, "The Decline of the French Jurists as Political Theorists, 1660-1789," French Historical Studies 5 (1967), 1-40, sees in this development the general explanation for the declining role of lawyers in the formation of French political thought.

20. E. H. Kossman, "The Development of Dutch Political Theory in the Seventeenth Century," in Britain and the Netherlands , ed. J. S. Bromley and E. H. Kossman (New York, 1960), pp. 91-110, emphasizes the theoretical intolerance of the Netherlands, although he sees a progression toward a more secular conception of the state under the influence of rationalism.

21. Arthur O. Lovejoy, Reflections on Human Nature (Baltimore, 1961), p. 15.

22. These tendencies found expression in the Augustinianism emphasized by Jean Orcibal, Jean Duvergier de Hauranne, abbé de Saint-Cyran, et son temps (Paris, 1947), and by Antoine Adam, L'âge classique, 1624-1660 (Paris, 1968), esp. pp. 61ff. It helps to explain the popularity of Charron (see Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes [Assen, The Netherlands, 1950], p. 57) and of Gassendi (see Tullio Gregory, Scetticismo ed empirismo, studio su Gassendi [Bari, 1960]) in this period as well as of Montaigne. In general see also René Pintard, Le libertinage érudit dans la première moitié du XVII ^e siècle (Paris, 1943). The decline of Scholasticism in seventeenth-century Cambridge seems related to the same tendencies; see William T. Costello, The Scholastic Curriculum at Early-Seventeenth-Century Cambridge (Cambridge, Mass., 1958).

23. This famous passage is from his letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, Opere (Milan and Rome, 1936), I:888.

24. In addition to the works cited in n. 22 above, see also Paolo Rossi, Francesco Bacone: dalla magia alla scienza (Bari, 1957), and Robert Lenoble, Mersenne ou la naissance du mécanisme (Paris, 1943).

25. Orcibal, Saint-Cyran , pp. 499-500, on Saint-Cyran's attack on Richelieu; Thuau, Raison d'état , pp. 103-152, discusses the religious opposition to "la 'Raison d'Enfer.'"

26. Cf. Lucien Goldmann, Le dieu caché (Paris, 1959).

27. Cf. Adam, L'âge classique , pp. 73-74.

28. Leontine Zanta, Renaissance du stoicisme au XVI ^e siècle (Paris, 1914), pp. 75-98, associates Stoicism with the secularization of morality. Anthony Levi, French Moralists: The Theory of the Passions, 1585-1649 (Oxford, 1965), pp. 2, 11, sees an alliance between Stoicism and skepticism.

29. Popkin, History of Scepticism , p. 60, and especially Eugene F. Rice, Jr., The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), p. 203.

30. Adam, L'âge classique , pp. 98-99.

31. Bouwsma, Venice and Republican Liberty , ch. 10.

32. Quoted by Mary A. Scott in the introduction to her edition of Bacon's Essays (New York, 1908).

33. This pamphlet is discussed at length by Friedrich Meinecke, Die Idee der Staatsräson in der neueren Geschichte (Munich and Berlin, 1925), ch. 6.

34. See Thuau, Raison d'état , esp. pp. 166-409.

35. See, in general, Geoffroy Atkinson, Les nouveaux horizons de la Renaissance française (Paris, 1935), and cf. Boccalini's idealization of the Turks, as discussed by Meinecke, Staatsräson , ch. 3.

36. The point was made long ago by J. N. Figgis, Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius, 1414-1625 (Cambridge, 1907), pp. 88-89.

37. This suggestive phrase is used by Henri Hauser, La prépondérance espagnole, 1559-1660 , 3d ed. (Paris, 1948), p. 215, and by R. Hooykaas, Humanisme, science et réforme: Pierre de la Ramée, 1515-1572 (Leiden, 1958), p. 18.

38. This movement is well discussed, especially for Lutheranism, by John Dillenberger, Protestant Thought and Natural Science: A Historical Study (New York, 1960), esp. pp. 50-74.

39. This is a major thesis of Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (New York, 1939), esp. pp. 100-108.

40. Hazard, Crise de la conscience , vol. 1; Adam, L'âge classique , p. 565, for the attraction of Cartesianism for some Jansenists.

41. De potestate pontificis temporali , bk. I, ch. 2.

42. De clericis , chs. 18, 29.

43. On the general importance of this distinction in the earlier seventeenth century, see Meinecke, Staatsräson , ch. 5.

44. Cf. Thuau, Raison d'état , p. 333, on the decline of Machiavellianism, and the suggestive remarks of A. J. Krailsheimer, Studies in Self-Interest from Descartes to La Bruyère (Oxford, 1962), p. 7, on the shift in attitudes after the Fronde.

45. Krieger, Politics of Discretion , p. 66; Wolf, Emergence of the Great Powers , pp. 306-307.

46. Church, "French Jurists," pp. 13ff.

47. Quoted by Thuau, Raison d'état , p. 369.

48. Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV , p. 9.

49. See B. H. G. Wormald, Clarendon: Politics, Historiography, and Religion, 1640-1660 (Cambridge, 1964), pp. 179ff. Bossuet is an even more obvious example in a later generation; cf. Adalbert Klempt, Die Säkularisierung der universalhistorischen Auffassung zum Wandel des Geschichtsdenkens im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1960), p. 11, and Karl Löwith, Meaning in History (Chicago, 1949), pp. 137-144.

50. Barrière, Vie intellectuelle en France , pp. 208-209.

51. Otto von Gierke, Natural Law and the Theory of Society, 1500-1800 , tr. Ernest Barker (Cambridge, 1934), p. 40, emphasizes this point.

52. Cf. Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy: Ockham to Suarez (London, 1953), p. 149.

53. Cf. Krieger, Politics of Discretion , pp. 663, 78-79, 222.

54. Cf. Krailsheimer, Studies in Self-Interest , p. 215.

55. Hazard, Crise de la conscience , vol. 2, with particular attention to Saint-Evremond, Halifax, Temple, and Shaftesbury.

56. Cf. M. M. Goldsmith, Hobbes's Science of Politics (New York, 1967), introduction, p. xv; Hood, Divine Politics of Hobbes , p. 19, makes him out a kind of schoolman because of the deductive tendencies of his rationalism.

57. For Hobbes, cf. Hood, Divine Politics of Hobbes , pp. 2-3; F. S. McNeilly, The Anatomy of Leviathan (London, 1968), p. 31, which notes the failure of Hobbes even to acknowledge the question, so important to Descartes, whether there are objects corresponding to the images registered by the senses; and Samuel I. Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan: Seventeenth-Century Reactions to the Materialism and Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (New York, 1926), pp. 26-27, contrasting Hobbes with Hooker. For Locke, cf. Yolton, Locke and the Way of Ideas , esp. pp. 1-25, and Richard Ashcraft, "Faith and Knowledge in Locke's Philosophy," in John Locke: Problems and Perspectives , ed. John W. Yolton (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 194-223.

58. Cf. Goldsmith, Hobbes's Science of Politics , p. 125.

59. For the attack on Hobbes, see Mintz, Hunting of Leviathan , esp. pp. 39-62, 134ff.; Thuau, Raison d'état , pp. 96-97, compares the "scandal provoked by Leviathan " with the detestation of Machiavelli; on Locke as dangerous, see Yolton, Locke and the Way of Ideas , pp. 1-25; for Bayle, see Labrousse, Bayle , 1:259-265.

This article owes much to the critical reading of my colleagues Gerard E. Caspary, Thomas G. Barnes, and John T. Noonan, Jr.; the latter two are themselves lawyers as well as historians.