"Political Lexicon" is a book series edited by Carlo Galli. Since its inauguration in September 1999 eleven titles have been published: Constitution, Representation, Liberty, State, Democracy, Interest, Revolution, Government, Community and Authority. The series goal is to build an essential encyclopaedia offering a description of the principal concepts that underpin political discourse, especially as regards their historical evolution. The non-specialist reader may thus appreciate the historical and theoretical touchstones of contemporary political debate. The series eighth volume deals with tolerance, a concept that has become topical in contemporary political debate, given the general crisis of the political paradigm centred on the state. This historical-conceptual reconstruction of the evolution of tolerance - from its theological origins in the works of St. Augustine, through the devastating religious civil wars in Europe, from Bayle to Locke, from Voltaire to the French Revolution - highlights its role in the processes of state-building and its relevance for the two principal actors of those processes: the sovereign and the citizenry.

Maria Laura Lanzillo teaches History of Political Doctrines in the Faculty of Political Science at the Forl campus of the University of Bologna.