Dissidence, ministère pastoral et liberté de conscience dans l’espace romand autour des années 1720 : le cas Henry Pury

Maria-Cristina Pitassi

Abstract

In 1726 Henry Pury, a young minister from Neuchâtel, asked for a reference from the ecclesiastical authorities in Geneva, where he had spent a year. His request was refused because of suspicions about his ideas and morality. The affair occupied the Genevan Company of Pastors and the Classis of Neuchâtel for several months, before concluding, in May 1727, with Pury’s deposition from his pastoral office. The present article, which is based entirely on unpublished sources, analyzes the case from a factual (reconstruction of the events) and intellectual (analysis of the young pastor’s ideas) point of view, and at the end suggests ways to interpret it. The case of Pury has a twofold interest: it allows us, first, to retrace a marginal path influenced by pietism and rationalism, and, second, to study the degree of tolerance exercised by the churches in French-speaking territory towards dissident ideas and practices.
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