The Book That Changed Europe: Picart and Bernard's Religious Ceremonies of the World

An enjoyable and well written study of an important aspect of the Enlightenment. The authors have 3 major aims in this book. The first is to tell the story of the publication and features of a book that had a large impact on discussions of religion during the Enlightenment. The second and related aim is to explore changing European attitudes towards religion. The last aim is to demonstrate the importance of lesser known figures, often from artisan or craft backgrounds in the generation and dissemination of Enlightenment ideas. The authors achieve their aims with an interesting description and analysis of Religious Ceremonies of the World, an impressive survey of world religions published in the early 18th century.This opening chapters of this book provide a general background for the Enlightenment, stressing the key role of the relatively tolerant Netherlands, and in particular, cosmopolitan Amsterdam. The authors follow with biographical chapters on the authors of Religious..., the talented engraver Picart and the author-publisher-entrepeuner Bernard. Both Protestant emigres from France, the authors demonstrate these 2 individuals as strongly influenced by a variety of currents, particularly ideas of more radical Enlightenment thinkers, and dedicated to furthuring Enlightenment ideals of tolerance, cosmopolitanism, and rationality. The authors do a very nice job of exposing the impressive and international connections of these men and the considerable body of prior scholarship and thought on which their work rested.The second half of the book is a description and analysis of Religious Ceremonies... itself. Essentially a work of compilation and synthesis, Picart and Bernard assembled the first real work of comparative religion. Their work is distinguished by an even-handed, ethnographic treatment of as many world religions as they could reliably describe. Notably, Judaism received very sympathetic treatment and many non-European religions, notably Islam, were treated is a scholarly, fair-minded manner. Religious Ceremonies... was notable for treatment of religion as a social phenomenon with universal common features, a undertaking typical of scientifically oriented scholarship of much of the Enlightenment. As the authors point out, this book was popular, apparently had a significant impact, adn contributed to the spread of Enlightenment ideals.While the book reproduces many of Picart's outstanding engravings, the reproductions are relatively small and make some details difficult to see. The bibliography, as commented by a prior Amazon reviewer, could have been significantly better. The title is unfortunate, proabably an effort by the publisher to capitalize of the fad for titles of this type, and does this interesting work a disservice.

This book is a history and analysis of "Religious Ceremonies of the World," a key early study of world religions with a remarkably factual and non-judgmental approach (for its time)by the master engraver Bernard Picart and the writer Jean Frederic Bernard, both French Protestants who fled to the intellectually open and religiously tolerant Netherlands. Their work has long been known by scholars of religion, but the authors have presented the scholarly findings in a well-written account that is accessible to the general reader interested in the subject. They may overestimate the influence of Picart and Bernard's book just a bit, as well as its degree of tolerance for non-Western non-monotheistic religion, but these are debatable points. The major fault I find in this book is attributable to the publisher; Picart's engravings are the heart of the book, yet most of the reproductions are in a small format (the actual dimensions are not given), and the details difficult to distinguish. A larger book with better reproductions would have greatly improved this book for the general reader and as a research tool. Luckily both the French text and English translation are available online, along with large digital reproductions of the plates. It seems strange that none of these online resources are mentioned in the book, and the references in general seem a bit skimpy. For example, the book on Jewish religion by Leone da Modena is mentioned, but the title is never given (Historia de riti hebraica), or any publication references. Similarly, the great French Jesuit writer on Hinduism, Jean Venant Bouchet,is never given his full name (referred to only as "the Jesuit Bouchet"), nor is there any reference to the scholarship on his work, which also heavily influenced Bernard. I can only ascribe these deficiencies to the publisher, and the regrettable tendency of even academic presses to save a few dollars by gutting scholarly apparatus, which they also think will make the book more appealing (and just makes it less useful, non-scholarly readers can just skip the end-notes). Too bad, Belknap Press used to be known for its beautifully produced editions---ou sont les livres d'antan?

Commenting as a non-historian, but rather as an interested layperson who tremendously admires the graphic art of Bernard Picart, this book offered me the opportunity to gain some insight in his and Jean Fréderic Bernard's philosophy. This is a tremendously important book. Unbeknown to many, until reading this book, including myself, Bernard and Picart were at the very root of the Enlightenment, the fairly tolerant atmosphere in The Netherlands of the late 17th and early 18th century allowing them to do so. Both had left France after Louis XIV struck down on all that not adhere to Catholicism. Most amazing and revealing is the way in which the authors of the present book describe Bernard's and Picart's openness to about every religion in existence on earth those days, e.g., including those of American Indians, Buddhism, Sufi, and the many Protestant sects, eventually concluding that, though differently approached, all religions have a lot of similarities. Religious tolerance was what Bernard and Picart advocated. In this they were far ahead of their time. Even, and perhaps, especially, now there is a need for similar vocal advocates, with persistent and intolerant fundamentalism present in about every major and also minor religious group, and this includes Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists as well as religions smaller in number. I consider this book compulsory reading for anyone interested in religion and the history of religion.