ABSTRACT
While the modern notion of tolerance arose in the Enlightenment period there were of course many precursors, many ways in which strangers were welcomed, going back to Homer and the Bible, which are still relevant, not only as historical sources for contemporary attitudes to strangers, but as offering relevant ways of managing current encounters with those seeking refuge.
This history involves looking at how much intolerance was put forward as a stand against certain practices, such as heresy, as much as when tolerance was put forward as a counter perspective. In addition, one can see how the modern notion of tolerance crystallized out at a time of crisis in the European mind, the period between 1680 and 1715, after the religious wars of the previous 30 years.
It was also a time when there was an information explosion, when information first became a commodity, not through books but through what became a thriving industry of manuscript newsletters, most of them concerned with the political issues of the time. People were hungry for information and so the distribution of such material became economically profitable.
During this period, truth and reality became blurred; a new age of doubt and skepticism was the result, all of which added to the crisis of the time.
It is striking how much current concerns about truth, post truth, fake news, and such like, mirror what was taking place in Europe around the late seventeenth century, which makes it particularly pertinent to examine the period for possible lessons.
