ABSTRACT
Bartholomäus Keckermann (1572–1609) was an extremely prolific and widely read theologian with a short career that included teaching at the University of Heidelberg and the Gdańsk Academy in the 1590s and 1600s. Lutherans, Reformed, and Catholics lived alongside each other in Gdańsk, and Keckermann’s lectures given in that city in 1606 show him to be firmly committed to the maintenance of religious peace: we excerpt from the text printed as the Systema politicae at Frankfurt in 1625. Keckermann was more confident of purely human reason than Daneau, and carefully affirmed that the state had a worldly purpose as well as a religious one, so that a prince who did not belong to the true religion could still lead his subjects to the civil good. He also insisted that no Prince should seek to use force in advancing religion, that religious toleration was often a lesser evil than religious conflict, and commended the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as parts of Europe in which religious toleration was practiced. He praised Catholic scholastics who advocated toleration and promise-keeping with non-Catholics, and deplored the more aggressive tendencies in Catholicism. Finally, Keckermann denied that subjects should rebel against their princes for religious reasons, and made some rather sceptical remarks about the Dutch Revolt.
