Utopia as Heresy

Abstract

During the Renaissance, the medieval topos of the Garden of Eden, lost by the human race because of the original sin, was replaced by the humanist topos of Utopia. If the Terrestrial Paradise was no longer accessible and God’s eschatological promise envisaged a Celestial Kingdom, then, according to Thomas More and his followers, man was to build, by his own forces, a better place to live in. Many of the early modern utopias, such as those by Denis Veiras, Gabriel de Foigny, Gabriel Plattes, Claude Gilbert, Simon Tyssot de Patot, etc., imagined exotic ideal societies, populated by prelapsarian people, which offere contrastive models to contemporary European societies. The aim of this paper is to examine the main topics that rendered utopianism suspect in the eyes of the ecclesiastical and political establishments of early modern times. It explores the secular alternatives that early modern utopianism opposed to Christian salvation promises, starting with scenarios for the social, technological and moral redemption of the original sin. This explains why utopian writings were soon to be considered heretical by the Roman and Protestant Churches, because they implied that Christ’s sacrifice, and consequently religion, priests and the Church, were no longer necessary for the emancipation of humankind.