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Deismus in der Schweiz: Zürcher Reaktionen auf Marie Hubers Lettres sur la Religion Essentielle à l’Homme

The Lettres sur la religion essentielle à l’homme were published in Geneva in 1738. Probably written by Marie Huber, these deistic pamphlets appeared anonymously and provoked long and ferocious controversy among leading Reformed Swiss scholars and theologians. Analysing their reactions on the basis of many unpublished sources, this study reveals the precarious theological situation in which the exponents of the so-called ‘rational Orthodoxy’ found themselves in the mid-seventeenth century. It also discusses the significance of the letters for Rousseau’s religious position, which was supported by a number of more liberal Swiss writers, including Johann Jacob Bodmer and Jakob Heinrich Meister.