Definitions It is important at the outset to dwell upon the terms used in the title. In this article, the word deconfessionalisation is employed in a sense which is not the most commonly accepted. Deconfessionalisation, as used here, will not designate the process by which the State, the institutions and the public sphere in general freed themselves from the confessional power, but rather the process of disengagement of individuals from their confessional affiliations. The latter is clearly o...

Introduction In explaining to us the object and purpose of this workshop, Jean-Pierre Cavaille has posited that the notion of persecution suffers from a “woeful lack of definition”. If this were unconditionally true, then international refugee law would be in jeopardy. It would be in jeopardy, because the concept of “persecution” is central to the universal refugee definition laid down by the 1951 Geneva Convention (GC). Indeed, Article 1A GC defines the refugee as someone who has a well-foun...

Why it be considered worthwhile to bring jurists and historians together in order to reflect on the notion of persecution? I should like to outline briefly how the project of organising this workshop was born. I initially envisaged preparing an interdisciplinary encounter on my research topic as Fernand Braudel fellow, namely on persecution and clandestinity, where my prime interest was clandestinity, by definition an illegal practice, but which is capable of acquiring a political, ethical an...

I see not how Gods way to salvation can be said to be many John Dury has regularly featured in the religious and intellectual histories of the British seventeenth century in the last sixty years. His figure has mainly been constructed around three overlapping images: the irenic champion, the educational forerunner, and the utopian type of a Puritan ‘Great Instauration’. Studies focussed at first on his irenic mission to reconcile the Protestant churches throughout Europe. Then, following the ...

The words “libertine”, “libertinage”, “libertinism”, since their appearance in sixteenth century Europe, have mainly targeted men and women, forms of behaviour, ways of acting, speaking and thinking, characterised by a misuse of freedom. Initially “libertinage” or “libertinism” was an accusation against the exercise of undue liberties, deemed negative, excessive and deleterious, in any area of human action, religious and moral, but also political and indeed in any social relation that require...

The Lettres diverses attributed to Henry Le Bret were published anonymously, without any date nor place of publication. This article deals with three problems : authorship, datation and Le Bret’s direct involvement in its publication.Le Bret’s paternity of Lettres diverses, included the only letter addressed to himself, is proven mainly by his signature found in many of them and by his attested private relationships with the majority of addressees. The publication date is resolved after a meticulous comparison of Lettres diverses and Recueil de quelques discours et lettres écrites à des personnes studieuses sur differentes matieres (1692), in which 15 letters (out of the 64 of Lettres diverses) are present with some variations. From an omission in the Recueil I theorized that a great number of pages from a published copy of Lettres diverses were detached/untied and reused as a material hypotext for the Recueil ; this theory is substantiated and confirmed by a lot of informations related to events, books, and people, especially to Bossuet, Queen Marie-Thérèse and the Clergy Assembly of 1665. All these data lead to the conclusion that Lettres diverses were published between 1678 and May 1681, which invalidates all previous datations proposed by Lacroix, Forestié, Cioranescu, and myself in 2004.And finally there is no historical evidence nor objective argument for believing that Le Bret did not want his readers to know that he was responsible for the publication of these letters : the book was obviously destined to a private and chosen group of friends, which was not uncommon in xviith century. In 1692, given his geographic and not so private new public, Le Bret withdrew from Lettres diverses all the ones addressed to his Parisian friends as well as some destined to Toulousan ladies in which good taste was questionable (like his Eloge de la petite vérole, i. e. small-pox).We can now reformulate the bibliographical description of this book : Lettres diverses par Henry Le Bret, prévôt de l’église cathédrale de Montauban, Montauban (?), ca 1678-1681.Among the addenda completing this article are a brief account of the controversy between Le Bret and the minister Pierre Isarn, a restitution of one of his remarks concerning Boileau’s Satire IX, and his quasi unknown éloge de la petite vérole.

Parmi les sujets examinés par l’historiographie hobbesienne, la religion du philosophe anglais a toujours été l'un des thèmes les plus attractifs et débattus. Cependant, les premiers lecteurs de Hobbes au xviie siècle doutaient déjà fortement de son orthodoxie et certains d'entre eux, tels l’évêque John Bramhall, le tenaient pour un athée caché. Les spécialistes hobbesiens du xxe siècle ont longuement débattu de cette question, mais de nombreux chercheurs se sont souvent concentrés sur les questions théologiques et théologico-politiques présentes dans la pensée hobbesienne, sans considérer soigneusement la relation qui subsiste entre les idées religieuses de Hobbes et la soi-disant « philosophia prima ». Cet article vise à aborder directement cette relation, d’une part en analysant les différents aspects de la religion examinés par Hobbes, tels que l’analyse anthropologique du phénomène religieux et les fondements du double « Royaume de Dieu », naturel et prophétique. D’autre part, ces éléments seront comparés aux fondements philosophiques de la pensée hobbesienne, présentés notamment dans le De Motu, Loco et Tempore (ou Anti-White) et dans le De Corpore. Cette analyse a pour but de mettre en évidence certains contrastes radicaux qui rendent l'interprétation de la pensée religieuse de Hobbes résolument problématique, et qui nous amènent à développer quelques considérations sur la possibilité d’une présence de Hobbes dans une histoire de l'athéisme d’époque moderne.

This article deals mainly with Henry Le Bret, Cyrano’s friend and editor. Only Le Bret’s Parisian years are concerned here, the ones which preceeded his clerical career in Montauban.Till now very little was known of Le Bret’s Parisian period and nothing at all of his career as a « avocat au Conseil Privé du Roi ». Long investigations in Archives Nationales (Paris, CARAN), mainly in notarial deeds (Minutier Central) and in Conseil Privé’s archives (series V6), as well as in Archives départementales de Tarn-et-Garonne (Montauban), allowed me to revive many of his friends and clients : in the second category can be found Bishop of Albi, Gaspard de Daillon du Lude, related to the Roquelaures, and to Cyrano through the wealthy Feydeau family ; in the first category appear many people named in Le Bret’s posthumous preface of Cyrano’s Etats et Empires de la Lune (1657), like the Cuigys, the Durets, Captain Carbon de Casteljaloux, the engraver Bignon and the dramatist and historian Royer de Prade. They were all living in a delimited area of the « Marais » (Right Bank : rues de la Verrerie, des Billettes, Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie, Simon Lefranc and Sainte-Avoye) ; even Cyrano’s protectors were there, Regnault des Boisclairs at rue de la Verrerie, and Duke of Arpajon, whose residence partly burnt in January 1655, at Vieille rue du Temple. A precious notarial deed reveals that Le Bret was a cleric before Cyrano died, situation which should bring a new light on the making of the posthumous edition, published with numerous cuts (« lacunes ») and variants ; another notarized document concerns the donation of Clamard « seigneurie » to Cuigy junior in 1656, donation which not only explains a variant of the posthumous edition but also provides an irrefutable evidence that Cyrano’s novel was altered after his death.Among the addenda completing this article are the autograph last will of Casteljaloux, written in 1642 in Clamard where he died in 1654, the donation of Clamard to Cuigy junior (1656) and a substantial repayment to Le Bret by Royer de Prade (1657) just before the former went to Montauban.

In La Mothe Le Vayer’s Dialogues Made in Imitation of the Ancients, Nature, studied from various aspects, appears in particular as the object of physics. However, if the Dialogues claim to reject skeptically all physics, in fact Aristotle is particularly concerned. Specifically, three approaches converge in a questioning of Aristotelian scholasticism. The first is to use Aristotle’s physics against metaphysics and theology. The second is to question this very Aristotelian physics by attacking its principles. The third is to put forward the critique of the Aristotelian cosmos led by Copernicanism. While most authors quoted by La Mothe Le Vayer are chosen among the philosophers of the Antiquity, the text is still enrolled in the movement of questioning of Aristotelianism in the first seventeenth century, and part of the conditions for the development of a "new science". The fact remains that for La Mothe Le Vayer, the implications of the examination of physics exceed a strictly scientific framework.

Nowadays, local knowledge seems to be synonymous with indigenous knowledge, traditional knowledge and seems to be linked with the idea of small territory. Unesco organizes a vast gathering and collect of local knowledge all over the world, “ to understand the relations between indigenous knowledge and NGO’s with respect to the preservation of biodiversity ”. Numerous disciplines try to rediscover indigenous knowledge, take into account local representation or practices of nature. After severa...