The proverb 'Where there are three physicians there are two atheists' summed up the public perception of seventeenth century physicians. But, as the reader of Religio Medici will testify, Sir Thomas Browne, M.D., was anything but an atheist. Browne qualified as a doctor in Europe and travelled widely across the continent, living among many different Christian sects. At the age of thirty, he set down his thoughts on religion, a work that was meant for private circulation only, but when a critically annotated version was printed without his permission in 1642, Browne felt obliged to publish an authorised edition the following year. As a singularly candid piece of introspection, Religio Medici broke the mould of seventeenth century works on religion and catapulted its author to fame across Europe. The book analyses what faith and Church doctrine mean to a post-reformation Christian heavily influenced by the rationalists of the 1600s. Divided into two parts, the first looks at faith and
