The Concept of Heresy and the Debates on Descartes's Philosophy

This article explores connotations of 'heresy' in theological traditions before and during Descartes's life. Lutheran and Reformed Protestants, themselves considered heretics by the Church of Rome, adopted the patristic heresiology while designating sixteenth-century antitrinitarian and Anabaptist teachings as heresies. Francisco Suárez and Gisbertus Voetius knew the late medieval conceptuality (e.g., Council of Konstanz, 1418). Voetius possibly thought of Descartes when describing certain philosophical views as "smacking of heresy. "This was not, however, an outright charge of heresy. In fact, Descartes's readiness to be corrected contradicted the traditional heretical quality of "stubbornness. "Plempius's expression "Cartesian heresy" seems to have been rare. For anti-Cartesians, the rich vocabulary of error made the complex term 'heresy' easily avoidable.