John Toland
Irish philosopher (1670-1722)
John Toland (30 November 1670 – 11 March 1722) was an Irish rationalist philosopher and freethinker, and occasional satirist, who wrote numerous books and pamphlets on political philosophy and philosophy of religion, which are early expressions of the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment. Born in Ireland, he was educated at the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leiden and Oxford and was influenced by the philosophy of John Locke.
His first, and best known work, Christianity Not Mysterious (1696), opposed hierarchy in both church and state. In Ireland, copies were burned by the public hangman, and he was forced to flee the country never to return.
Biography
Very little is known of Toland's early life. He was born in Ardagh on the Inishowen Peninsula, a predominantly Catholic and Irish-speaking region in northwestern Ireland. His parents are unknown. He would later write that he had been baptised Janus Junius, a play on his name that recalled both the Roman two-faced god Janus and Junius Brutus, reputed founder of the Roman Republic. According to his biographer Pierre des Maizeaux, he adopted the name John as a schoolboy with the encouragement of his school teacher.
Having formally converted from Catholicism to Protestantism (Anglicanism) at the age of 16, Toland got a scholarship to study theology at the University of Glasgow.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Toland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.