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CHAPTER 17

T H E E I G H T E E N T H C E N T U R Y : A N A G E O F E N L I G H T E N M E N T

CHAPTER OUTLINEAND FOCUS QUESTIONS

The Enlightenment

What intellectual developments led to the emergenceof the Enlightenment? Who were the leading figures ofthe Enlightenment, and what were their main contri-butions? In what type of social environment did thephilosophes thrive, and what role did women play inthat environment?

Culture and Society in the Enlightenment

What innovations in art, music, and literature occurredin the eighteenth century? How did popular culturediffer from high culture in the eighteenth century?

Religion and the Churches

How did popular religion differ from institutionalreligion in the eighteenth century?

CRITICAL THINKING

What is the relationship between the ScientificRevolution and the Enlightenment?

The Parisian salon of Madame Geoffrin(third figure from the right in the first row)

THE EARTH-SHATTERING WORK of the ‘‘natural phi-losophers’’ in the Scientific Revolution had affected only arelatively small number of Europe’s educated elite. In theeighteenth century, this changed dramatically as a groupof intellectuals known as the philosophes popularized theideas of the Scientific Revolution and used them to under-take a dramatic reexamination of all aspects of life. InParis, the cultural capital of Europe, women took the leadin bringing together groups of men and women to discussthe new ideas of the philosophes. At her fashionable homein the Rue Saint-Honore, Marie-Therese de Geoffrin, thewife of a wealthy merchant, held sway over gatheringsthat became the talk of France and even Europe. Distin-guished foreigners, including a future king of Sweden anda future king of Poland, competed to receive invitations.When Madame Geoffrin made a visit to Vienna, she was sowell received that she exclaimed, ‘‘I am better known herethan a couple of yards from my own house.’’ MadameGeoffrin was an amiable but firm hostess who allowedwide-ranging discussions as long as they remained in goodtaste. When she found that artists and philosophers didnot mix particularly well (the artists were high-strung andthe philosophers talked too much), she set up separatemeetings. Artists were invited only on Mondays;

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The EnlightenmentFocus Questions: What intellectual developments ledto the emergence of the Enlightenment? Who were theleading figures of the Enlightenment, and what weretheir main contributions? In what type of socialenvironment did the philosophes thrive, and what roledid women play in that environment?

In 1784, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant de-fined the Enlightenment as ‘‘man’s leaving his self-causedimmaturity.’’ Whereas earlier periods had been handi-capped by the inability to ‘‘use one’s intelligence withoutthe guidance of another,’’ Kant proclaimed as the mottoof the Enlightenment: ‘‘Dare to know! Have the courageto use your own intelligence!’’ The eighteenth-centuryEnlightenment was a movement of intellectuals whodared to know. They were greatly impressed with theaccomplishments of the Scientific Revolution, and whenthey used the word reason---one of their favorite words---they were advocating the application of the scientificmethod to the understanding of all life. All institutionsand all systems of thought were subject to the rational,scientific way of thinking if only people would freethemselves from the shackles of old, worthless traditions,especially religious ones. If Isaac Newton could discoverthe natural laws regulating the world of nature, they too,by using reason, could find the laws that governed humansociety. This belief in turn led them to hope that they couldmake progress toward a better society than the one theyhad inherited. Reason, natural law, hope, progress---these

were the buzz words in the heady atmosphere of theeighteenth century.

The Paths to EnlightenmentThe intellectuals of the eighteenth century were especiallyinfluenced by the revolutionary thinkers of the sev-enteenth century. What were the major intellectualchanges that culminated in the intellectual movement ofthe Enlightenment?

The Popularization of Science Although the intellectualsof the eighteenth century were much influenced by thescientific ideas of the seventeenth, they did not alwaysacquire this knowledge directly from the originalsources. Newton’s Principia was not an easy book toread or comprehend. Scientific ideas were spread to ever-widening circles of educated Europeans not so much byscientists themselves as by popularizers. Especially im-portant as the direct link between the Scientific Revolu-tion of the seventeenth century and the philosophes ofthe eighteenth was Bernard de Fontenelle (1657--1757),secretary of the French Royal Academy of Science from1691 to 1741.

Although Fontenelle performed no scientific experi-ments and made no scientific discoveries, he possessed adeep knowledge of all the scientific work of earlier cen-turies and his own time. Moreover, he was able tocommunicate that body of scientific knowledge in a clearand even witty fashion that appealed to his upper-classaudiences in a meaningful way. One of his most suc-cessful books, Plurality of Worlds, was actually presentedin the form of an intimate conversation between a ladyaristocrat and her lover who are engaged in conversationunder the stars. What are they discussing? ‘‘Tell me,’’ sheexclaims, ‘‘about these stars of yours.’’ Her lover proceedsto tell her of the tremendous advances in cosmology afterthe foolish errors of their forebears:

There came on the scene a certain German, one Copernicus,who made short work of all those various circles, all thosesolid skies, which the ancients had pictured to themselves.The former he abolished; the latter, he broke in pieces. Firedwith the noble zeal of a true astronomer, he took the earthand spun it very far away from the center of the universe,where it had been installed, and in that center he put thesun, which had a far better title to the honor.1

In the course of two evenings under the stars, the ladylearned the basic fundamentals of the new mechanisticuniverse. So too did scores of the educated elite of Europe.What bliss it was to learn the ‘‘truth’’ in such lightheartedfashion.

Thanks to Fontenelle, science was no longer themonopoly of experts but part of literature. He wasespecially fond of downplaying the religious back-grounds of the seventeenth-century scientists. Himselfa skeptic, Fontenelle contributed to the growingskepticism toward religion at the end of the seventeenth

510510 C H A P T E R 1 7 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: AN AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

philosophers, on Wednesdays. These gatherings wereamong the many avenues for the spread of the ideas of thephilosophes. And those ideas had such a widespread impacton their society that historians ever since have called theeighteenth century the Age of Enlightenment.

For most of the philosophes, ‘‘enlightenment’’ includedthe rejection of traditional Christianity. The religious warsand intolerance of the sixteenth and seventeenth centurieshad so alienated intellectuals that they were open and eveneager to embrace the new ideas of the Scientific Revolution.Whereas the great scientists of the seventeenth centurybelieved that their work exalted God, the intellectuals ofthe eighteenth century read those scientific conclusions adifferent way and increasingly turned their backs on Chris-tian orthodoxy. Consequently, European intellectual life inthe eighteenth century was marked by the emergence ofthe secularization that has characterized the modern West-ern mentality ever since. Ironically, at the same time thatreason and materialism were beginning to replace faith andworship, a great outburst of religious sensibility manifesteditself in music and art. Clearly, the growing secularizationof the eighteenth century had not yet captured the heartsand minds of all European intellectuals and artists.


century by portraying the churches as enemies of sci-entific progress.

A New Skepticism The great scientists of the sev-enteenth century, including Kepler, Galileo, and Newton,had pursued their work in a spirit of exalting God, notundermining Christianity. But as scientific knowledgespread, more and more educated men and women beganto question religious truths and values. Skepticism aboutreligion and a growing secularization of thought wereespecially evident in the work of Pierre Bayle (1647--1706),who remained a Protestant while becoming a leadingcritic of traditional religious attitudes. Bayle attackedsuperstition, religious intolerance, and dogmatism. In hisview, compelling people to believea particular set of religious ideas (asLouis XIV was doing at the time inBayle’s France) was wrong. It sim-ply created hypocrites and in itselfwas contrary to what religionshould be about. Individual con-science should determine one’s ac-tions. Bayle argued for completereligious toleration, maintainingthat the existence of many religionswould benefit rather than harm thestate.

Bayle was one of a number ofintellectuals who believed that thenew rational principles of textual criticism should beapplied to the Bible as well as secular documents. In hismost famous work, the Historical and Critical Dictionary,Bayle demonstrated the results of his own efforts with afamous article on the Israelite King David. Undermining

the traditional picture of the heroic David, he portrayedthe king as a sensual, treacherous, cruel, and basically evilman. Bayle’s Dictionary, which attacked traditional reli-gious practices and heroes, was well known to eighteenth-century philosophes. One critic regarded it as the ‘‘Bibleof the eighteenth century.’’

The Impact of Travel Literature Skepticism about bothChristianity and European culture itself was nourished bytravel reports. In the course of the seventeenth century,traders, missionaries, medical practitioners, and explorersbegan to publish an increasing number of travel booksthat gave accounts of many different cultures. Then, too,the new geographic adventures of the eighteenth century,

especially the discovery of the Pa-cific island of Tahiti and of NewZealand and Australia by JamesCook, aroused much enthusiasm.Cook’s Travels, an account of hisjourney, became a best seller.Educated Europeans responded tothese accounts of lands abroad indifferent ways.

For some intellectuals, theexistence of exotic peoples, such asthe natives of Tahiti, presented animage of a ‘‘natural man’’ who wasfar happier than many Europeans.One intellectual wrote:

The life of savages is so simple, and our societies are suchcomplicated machines! The Tahitian is close to the origin ofthe world, while the European is closer to its old age. . . .[The Tahitians] understand nothing about our manners orour laws, and they are bound to see in them nothing but


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The Popularization of Science inthe Age of the Enlightenment.During the Enlightenment, the ideas ofthe Scientific Revolution were spreadand popularized in a variety of ways.Scientific societies funded by royal andprincely patronage were especiallyvaluable in providing outlets for thespread of new scientific ideas. Thisillustration shows the German princeFrederick Christian visiting hisAcademy of Sciences in 1739. Note themany instruments of the new sciencearound the rooms—human skeletons,globes, microscopes, telescopes, andorreries, mechanical models of thesolar system.

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THE ENLIGHTENMENT 511


shackles disguised in a hundred different ways. Thoseshackles could only provoke the indignation and scorn ofcreatures in whom the most profound feeling is a love ofliberty.2

The idea of the ‘‘noble savage’’ would play an importantrole in the political work of some philosophes.

The travel literature of the seventeenth and eight-eenth centuries also led to the realization that there werehighly developed civilizations with different customs inother parts of the world. China was especially singled out.One German university professor praised Confucianmorality as superior to the intolerant attitudes of Chris-tianity. Some European intellectuals began to evaluatetheir own civilization relative to others. Practices that hadseemed to be grounded in reason now appeared to bemerely matters of custom. Certainties about Europeanpractices gave way to cultural relativism.

Cultural relativism was accompanied by religiousskepticism. As these travel accounts made clear, theChristian perception of God was merely one of many.Some people were devastated by this revelation: ‘‘Somecomplete their demoralization by extensive travel, andlose whatever shreds of religion remained to them. Everyday they see a new religion, new customs, new rites.’’3

The Legacy of Locke and Newton The intellectual in-spiration for the Enlightenment came primarily from twoEnglishmen, Isaac Newton and John Locke, acknowl-edged by the philosophes as great minds. Newton wasfrequently singled out for praise as the ‘‘greatest andrarest genius that ever rose for the ornament and in-struction of the species.’’ One English poet declared:‘‘Nature and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night; God said,‘Let Newton be,’ and all was Light.’’ Enchanted by thegrand design of the Newtonian world-machine, the in-tellectuals of the Enlightenment were convinced that byfollowing Newton’s rules of reasoning, they could dis-cover the natural laws that governed politics, economics,justice, religion, and the arts.

John Locke’s theory of knowledge especially influ-enced the philosophes. In his Essay Concerning HumanUnderstanding, written in 1690, Locke denied Descartes’sbelief in innate ideas. Instead, argued Locke, every personwas born with a tabula rasa, a blank mind:

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper,void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to befurnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which thebusy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with analmost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials ofreason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, fromexperience. . . . Our observation, employed either aboutexternal sensible objects or about the internal operations ofour minds perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is thatwhich supplies our understanding with all the materials ofthinking.4

Our knowledge, then, is derived from our environment,not from heredity; from reason, not from faith. Locke’s

philosophy implied that people were molded by theirenvironment, by the experiences that they receivedthrough their senses from their surrounding world. Bychanging the environment and subjecting people toproper influences, they could be changed and a new so-ciety created. And how should the environment bechanged? Newton had already paved the way by showinghow reason enabled enlightened people to discover thenatural laws to which all institutions should conform. Nowonder the philosophes were enamored of Newton andLocke. Taken together, their ideas seemed to offer thehope of a ‘‘brave new world’’ built on reason.

The Philosophes and Their IdeasThe intellectuals of the Enlightenment were known by theFrench term philosophes, although not all of them wereFrench and few were actually philosophers. They wereliterary people, professors, journalists, statesmen, econ-omists, political scientists, and above all, social reformers.They came from both the nobility and the middle class,and a few even stemmed from lower origins. Although itwas a truly international and cosmopolitan movement,the Enlightenment also enhanced the dominant role be-ing played by French culture. Paris was its recognizedcapital, and most of the leaders of the Enlightenmentwere French (see Map 17.1). The French philosophes inturn affected intellectuals elsewhere and created amovement that engulfed the entire Western world, in-cluding the British and Spanish colonies in America.

Although the philosophes faced different politicalcircumstances depending on the country in which theylived, they shared common bonds as part of a truly in-ternational movement. Although they were called phi-losophers, what did philosophy mean to them? The roleof philosophy was to change the world, not just discuss it.As one writer said, the philosophe is one who ‘‘applieshimself to the study of society with the purpose ofmaking his kind better and happier.’’ To the philosophes,rationalism did not mean the creation of a grandiosesystem of thought to explain all things. Reason was sci-entific method, an appeal to facts and experience. A spiritof rational criticism was to be applied to everything,including religion and politics.

The philosophes’ call for freedom of expression is areminder that their work was done in an atmosphere ofcensorship. The philosophes were not free to writewhatever they chose. State censors decided what could bepublished, and protests from any number of governmentbodies could result in the seizure of books and the im-prisonment of their authors, publishers, and sellers.

The philosophes found ways to get around statecensorship. Some published under pseudonyms oranonymously or abroad, especially in Holland. The use ofdouble meanings, such as talking about the Persianswhen they meant the French, became standard procedurefor many. Books were also published and circulated se-cretly or in manuscript form to avoid the censors. As




frequently happens when censorship is attempted, thegovernment’s announcement that a book had beenburned often made the book more popular.

Although the philosophes constituted a kind of‘‘family circle’’ bound together by common intellectualbonds, they often disagreed. Spanning almost a century,the Enlightenment evolved over time, with each suc-ceeding generation becoming more radical as it built onthe contributions of the previous one. A few people,however, dominated the landscape completely, and wemight best begin our survey of the ideas of the philo-sophes by looking at three French giants---Montesquieu,Voltaire, and Diderot.

Montesquieu and Political Thought Charles de Secondat,the baron de Montesquieu (1689--1755), came from theFrench nobility. He received a classical education and thenstudied law. In his first work, the Persian Letters, publishedin 1721, he used the format of two Persians supposedlytraveling in western Europe and sending their impressionsback home to enable him to criticize French institutions,especially the Catholic Church and the French monarchy.Much of the program of the French Enlightenment iscontained in this work: the attack on traditional religion, theadvocacy of religious toleration, the denunciation of slavery,and the use of reason to liberate human beings from theirprejudices.


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MAP 17.1 The Enlightenment in Europe. ‘‘Have the courage to use your ownintelligence!’’ Kant’s words epitomize the role of the individual in using reason to understandall aspects of life—the natural world and the sphere of human nature, behavior, andinstitutions.

Which countries or regions were at the center of the Enlightenment, and what reasonscould account for peripheral regions being less involved? View an animated version of this

map or related maps at www.thomsonedu.com/history/spielvogel



Montesquieu’s most famous work, The Spirit of theLaws, was published in 1748. This treatise was a com-parative study of governments in which Montesquieuattempted to apply the scientific method to the social andpolitical arena to ascertain the ‘‘natural laws’’ governingthe social relationships of human beings. Montesquieudistinguished three basic kinds of governments: republics,suitable for small states and based on citizen involvement;monarchy, appropriate for middle-sized states andgrounded in the ruling class’s adherence to law; anddespotism, apt for large empires and dependent on fearto inspire obedience. Montesquieu used England as anexample of the second category, and it was his praise andanalysis of England’s constitution that led to his most far-reaching and lasting contribution to political thought---the importance of checks and balances created by meansof a separation of powers (see the box above). He be-lieved that England’s system, with its separate executive,legislative, and judicial powers that served to limit andcontrol each other, provided the greatest freedom andsecurity for a state. In large part, Montesquieu misreadthe English situation and insisted on a separation ofpowers because he wanted the nobility of France (ofwhich he was a member) to play an active role in runningthe French government. The translation of his work intoEnglish two years after publication ensured that it wouldbe read by American philosophes, such as BenjaminFranklin, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton,

and Thomas Jefferson, who incorporated its principlesinto the U.S. Constitution (see Chapter 19).

Voltaire and the Enlightenment The greatest figure ofthe Enlightenment was Francois-Marie Arouet, knownsimply as Voltaire (1694--1778). Son of a prosperousmiddle-class family from Paris, Voltaire received a clas-sical education in Jesuit schools. Although he studied law,he wished to be a writer and achieved his first success as aplaywright. By his mid-twenties, Voltaire had been hailedas the successor to Racine (see Chapter 15) for his tragedy�dipe and his epic Henriade on his favorite king, HenryIV. His wit made him a darling of the Parisian in-tellectuals but also involved him in a quarrel with adissolute nobleman that forced him to flee France andlive in England for almost two years.

Well received in English literary and social circles, theyoung playwright was much impressed by England. HisPhilosophic Letters on the English, written in 1733, ex-pressed a deep admiration of English life, especially itsfreedom of the press, its political freedom, and its reli-gious toleration. In judging the English religious sit-uation, he made the famous remark that ‘‘if there werejust one religion in England, despotism would threaten; ifthere were two religions, they would cut each other’sthroats; but there are thirty religions, and they live togetherpeacefully and happily.’’ Although he clearly exaggeratedthe freedoms England possessed, in a roundabout way




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Voltaire had managed to criticize many of the ills op-pressing France, especially royal absolutism and the lack ofreligious toleration and freedom of thought.

On his return to France, Voltaire’s reputation as theauthor of the Philosophic Letters made it necessary forhim to retire to Cirey, near France’s eastern border, wherehe lived in semiseclusion on the estate of his mistress, themarquise du Chatelet (1706--1749). Herself an earlyphilosophe, the marquise was one of the first intellectualsto adopt the ideas of Isaac Newton and in 1759 publishedher own translation of Newton’s famous Principia. WhileVoltaire lived with her at her chateau at Cirey, the twocollaborated on a book about the natural philosophy ofNewton.

Voltaire eventually settled on a magnificent estate atFerney. Located in France near the Swiss border, Ferneygave Voltaire the freedom to write what he wished. Bythis time, through his writings, inheritance, and cleverinvestments, Voltaire had become wealthy and now hadthe leisure to write an almost endless stream of pam-phlets, novels, plays, letters, and histories.

Although he touched on all of the themes of im-portance to the philosophes, Voltaire was especially wellknown for his criticism of traditional religion and hisstrong attachment to the ideal of religious toleration (seethe box on p. 516). He lent his prestige and skills as a

polemicist to fighting cases of intolerance in France. Themost famous incident was the Calas affair. Jean Calas wasa Protestant from Toulouse who was accused of mur-dering his own son to stop him from becoming aCatholic. Tortured to confess his guilt, Calas died shortlythereafter. An angry and indignant Voltaire publisheddevastating broadsides that aroused public opinion andforced a retrial in which Calas was exonerated when itwas proved that his son had actually committed suicide.The family was paid an indemnity, and Voltaire’s appealsfor toleration appeared all the more reasonable. In 1763,he penned his Treatise on Toleration, in which he arguedthat religious toleration had created no problems forEngland and Holland and reminded governments that‘‘all men are brothers under God.’’ As he grew older,Voltaire became ever more strident in his denunciations.‘‘Crush the infamous thing,’’ he thundered repeatedly---the infamous thing being religious fanaticism, intoler-ance, and superstition.

Throughout his life, Voltaire championed not onlyreligious tolerance but also deism, a religious outlookshared by most other philosophes. Deism was built onthe Newtonian world-machine, which suggested the ex-istence of a mechanic (God) who had created the uni-verse. Voltaire said, ‘‘In the opinion that there is a God,there are difficulties, but in the contrary opinion there areabsurdities.’’ To Voltaire and most other philosophes,God had no direct involvement in the world he hadcreated and allowed it to run according to its own naturallaws. God did not extend grace or answer prayers asChristians liked to believe. Jesus might be a ‘‘good fellow,’’as Voltaire called him, but he was not divine, as Chris-tianity claimed.

Diderot and the Encyclopedia Denis Diderot (1713--1784), the son of a skilled craftsman from eastern France,became a freelance writer so that he could study manysubjects and read in many languages. One of his favoritetopics was Christianity, which he condemned as fanaticaland unreasonable. As he grew older, his literary attacks onChristianity grew more vicious. Of all religions, he main-tained, Christianity was the worst, ‘‘the most absurd andthe most atrocious in its dogma’’ (see the box on p. 518).Near the end of his life, he argued for an essentiallymaterialistic conception of life: ‘‘This world is only a massof molecules.’’

Diderot’s most famous contribution to the Enlight-enment was the twenty-eight-volume Encyclopedia, orClassified Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Trades,that he edited and called the ‘‘great work of his life.’’ Itspurpose, according to Diderot, was to ‘‘change thegeneral way of thinking.’’ It did precisely that in be-coming a major weapon of the philosophes’ crusadeagainst the old French society. The contributors in-cluded many philosophes who expressed their majorconcerns. They attacked religious superstition and ad-vocated toleration as well as a program for social, legal,and political improvements that would lead to a society


Voltaire. Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire,achieved his first success as a playwright. A philosophe,Voltaire was well known for his criticism of traditional religionand his support of religious toleration. Maurice-Quentin de LaTour painted this portrait of Voltaire holding one of his booksin 1736.

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that was more cosmopolitan, more tolerant, more hu-mane, and more reasonable. In later editions, the priceof the Encyclopedia was drastically reduced, dramati-cally increasing its sales and making it available todoctors, clergy, teachers, lawyers, and even militaryofficers. The ideas of the Enlightenment were spreadeven further as a result.

The New ‘‘Science of Man’’ The Enlightenment beliefthat Newton’s scientific methods could be used todiscover the natural laws underlying all areas of humanlife led to the emergence in the eighteenth century ofwhat the philosophes called the ‘‘science of man,’’ orwhat we would call the social sciences. In a number ofareas, philosophes arrived at natural laws that theybelieved governed human actions. If these ‘‘naturallaws’’ seem less than universal to us, it reminds us howmuch the philosophes were people of their times

reacting to the conditions they faced. Nevertheless,their efforts did at least lay the foundations for themodern social sciences.

That a science of man was possible was a strongbelief of the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711--1776). An important figure in the history of philosophy,Hume has also been called ‘‘a pioneering social scientist.’’In his Treatise on Human Nature, which he subtitled ‘‘AnAttempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Rea-soning into Moral Subjects,’’ Hume argued that ob-servation and reflection, grounded in ‘‘systematizedcommon sense,’’ made conceivable a ‘‘science of man.’’Careful examination of the experiences that constitutedhuman life would lead to the knowledge of human naturethat would make this science possible.

The Physiocrats and Adam Smith have been viewed asfounders of the modern discipline of economics. The leaderof the Physiocrats was Francois Quesnay (1694--1774), a





highly successful French court physician. Quesnay andthe Physiocrats claimed they would discover the naturaleconomic laws that governed human society. Their firstprinciple was that land constituted the only source ofwealth and that wealth itself could be increased only byagriculture because all other economic activities wereunproductive and sterile. Even the state’s revenuesshould come from a single tax on the land rather thanthe hodgepodge of inequitable taxes and privileges cur-rently in place. In stressing the economic primacy ofagricultural production, the Physiocrats were rejectingthe mercantilist emphasis on the significance of money---that is, gold and silver---as the primary determinants ofwealth (see Chapter 14).

Their second major ‘‘natural law’’ of economics alsorepresented a repudiation of mercantilism, specifically, itsemphasis on a controlled economy for the benefit of thestate. Instead, the Physiocrats stressed that the existenceof the natural economic forces of supply and demandmade it imperative that individuals should be left free topursue their own economic self-interest. In doing so, allof society would ultimately benefit. Consequently, theyargued that the state should in no way interrupt the freeplay of natural economic forces by government regu-lation of the economy but rather should just leave italone, a doctrine that subsequently became known by itsFrench name, laissez-faire (noninterference; literally, ‘‘letpeople do as they choose’’).

The best statement of laissez-faire was made in 1776by a Scottish philosopher, Adam Smith (1723--1790), inhis Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of

Nations, known simply as The Wealth of Nations. In theprocess of enunciating three basic principles of eco-nomics, Smith presented a strong attack on mercantilism.First, he condemned the mercantilist use of tariffs toprotect home industries. If one country can supply an-other country with a product cheaper than the latter canmake it, it is better to purchase than to produce it. ToSmith, free trade was a fundamental economic principle.Smith’s second principle was his labor theory of value.Like the Physiocrats, he claimed that gold and silver werenot the source of a nation’s true wealth, but unlike thePhysiocrats, he did not believe that soil was either. Ratherlabor---the labor of individual farmers, artisans, andmerchants---constituted the true wealth of a nation. Fi-nally, like the Physiocrats, Smith believed that the stateshould not interfere in economic matters; indeed, heassigned to government only three basic functions: toprotect society from invasion (army), defend individualsfrom injustice and oppression (police), and keep upcertain public works, such as roads and canals, that pri-vate individuals could not afford. Thus, in Smith’s view,the state should stay out of the lives of individuals. Inemphasizing the economic liberty of the individual, thePhysiocrats and Adam Smith laid the foundation for whatbecame known in the nineteenth century as economicliberalism.

The Later Enlightenment By the late 1760s, a newgeneration of philosophes who had grown up with theworldview of the Enlightenment began to move beyondtheir predecessors’ beliefs. Baron Paul d’Holbach (1723--1789), a wealthy German aristocrat who settled in Paris,preached a doctrine of strict atheism and materialism. Inhis System of Nature, written in 1770, he argued thateverything in the universe consisted of matter in motion.Human beings were simply machines; God was a productof the human mind and was unnecessary for leading amoral life. People needed only reason to live in thisworld: ‘‘Let us persuade men to be just, beneficent,moderate, sociable; not because the gods demand it, butbecause they must please men. Let us advise them toabstain from vice and crimes; not because they will bepunished in the other world, but because they will sufferfor it in this.’’5 Holbach shocked almost all of his fellowphilosophes with his uncompromising atheism. Mostintellectuals remained more comfortable with deism andfeared the effect of atheism on society.

Marie-Jean de Condorcet (1743--1794), anotherFrench philosophe, made an exaggerated claim forprogress. Condorcet was a victim of the turmoil of theFrench Revolution and wrote his chief work, TheProgress of the Human Mind, while in hiding during theReign of Terror (see Chapter 19). His survey of humanhistory convinced him that humans had progressedthrough nine stages of history. Now, with the spread ofscience and reason, humans were about to enter thetenth stage, one of perfection, in which they will seethat ‘‘there is no limit to the perfecting of the powers of


Denis Diderot. Editor of the monumental Encyclopedia,Diderot was a major figure in propagating the ideas of theFrench philosophes. He had diverse interests and penned anincredible variety of literary works. He is shown here in aportrait by Jean-Honore Fragonard.

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man; that human perfectibility is in reality indefinite,that the progress of this perfectibility . . . has no otherlimit than the duration of the globe upon which naturehas placed us.’’ Shortly after composing this work, theprophet of humankind’s perfection died in a Frenchrevolutionary prison.

Rousseau and the Social Contract No one was morecritical of the work of his predecessors than Jean-JacquesRousseau (1712--1778). Born in Geneva, he spent hisyouth wandering about France and Italy holding variousjobs. He went back to school for a while to study musicand the classics (he could afford to do so after becomingthe paid lover of an older woman). Eventually, he madehis way to Paris, where he was introduced into the circlesof the philosophes. He never really liked the social life ofthe cities, however, and frequently withdrew into longperiods of solitude.

Rousseau’s political beliefs were presented in twomajor works. In his Discourse on the Origins of the In-equality of Mankind, Rousseau began with humans in theirprimitive condition (or state of nature---see Chapter 15),where they were happy. There were no laws, no judges; allpeople were equal. But what had gone wrong?

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground,thought of saying, This is mine, and found people simpleenough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.How many crimes, wars, murders; how much misery andhorror the human race would have been spared if someonehad pulled up the stakes and filled in the ditch, and cried tohis fellow men: ‘‘Beware of listening to this impostor. Youare lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong toeveryone and that the earth itself belongs to no one!’’6

To preserve their private property, people adopted lawsand governors. In so doing, they rushed headlong not toliberty but into chains. ‘‘What then is to be done? Must


Diderot Questions Christian Sexual Standards

Denis Diderot was one of the boldest thinkers of the

Enlightenment. In his Supplement to the Voyage of

Bougainville, he constructed a dialogue between Orou,

a Tahitian who symbolizes the wisdom of a philosophe,

and a chaplain who defends Christian sexual mores.

The dialogue gave Diderot the opportunity to criticize

the practice of sexual chastity and monogamy.

Denis Diderot, Supplement to the Voyageof Bougainville[Orou, speaking to the Chaplain.] ‘‘You are young andhealthy and you have just had a good supper. He whosleeps alone sleeps badly; at night a man needs a womanat his side. Here is my wife and here are my daughters.Choose whichever one pleases you most, but if you wouldlike to do me a favor, you will give your preference to myyoungest girl, who has not yet had any children. . . . ’’

The chaplain replied that his religion, his holy orders,his moral standards and his sense of decency all preventedhim from accepting Orou’s invitation.

Orou answered: ‘‘I don’t know what this thing is thatyou call religion, but I can only have a low opinion of itbecause it forbids you to partake of an innocent pleasureto which Nature, the sovereign mistress of us all, inviteseverybody. It seems to prevent you from bringing one ofyour fellow creatures into the world, from doing a favorasked of by a father, a mother and their children, fromrepaying the kindness of a host, and from enriching anation by giving it an additional citizen. . . . Look at the dis-tress you have caused to appear on the faces of these fourwomen—they are afraid you have noticed some defect inthem that arouses your distaste. . . . ’’

The Chaplain: ‘‘You don’t understand—it’s not that.They are all four of them equally beautiful. But there is my

religion! My holy orders! . . . [God] spoke to our ancestorsand gave them laws; he prescribed to them the way inwhich he wishes to be honored; he ordained that certainactions are good and others he forbade them to do asbeing evil.’’

Orou: ‘‘I see. And one of these evil actions which hehas forbidden is that of a man who goes to bed with awoman or girl. But in that case, why did he make twosexes?’’

The Chaplain: ‘‘In order that they might cometogether—but only when certain conditions are satisfiedand only after certain initial ceremonies one man belongsto one woman and only to her; one woman belongs to oneman and only to him.’’

Orou: ‘‘For their whole lives?’’The Chaplain: ‘‘For their whole lives. . . . ’’Orou: ‘‘I find these strange precepts contrary to nature,

and contrary to reason. . . . Furthermore, your laws seem tome to be contrary to the general order of things. For intruth is there anything so senseless as a precept that for-bids us to heed the changing impulses that are inherent inour being, or commands that require a degree of constancywhich is not possible, that violate the liberty of both maleand female by chaining them perpetually to one another? . . .

I don’t know what your great workman [God] is, but I amvery happy that he never spoke to our forefathers, and Ihope that he never speaks to our children, for if he does,he may tell them the same foolishness, and they may befoolish enough to believe it.’’

What attack does Diderot make on Christian sex-

ual standards? What does this passage say about

enlightened conceptions of nature and the place of

physical pleasure in healthy human life?



societies be totally abolished? . . . Must we return again tothe forest to live among bears?’’ No, civilized humanscould ‘‘no longer subsist on plants or acorns or livewithout laws and magistrates.’’ Government was an evil,but a necessary one.

In his celebrated treatise The Social Contract, publishedin 1762, Rousseau tried to harmonize individual libertywith governmental authority (see the box on p. 520). Thesocial contract was basically an agreement on the part ofan entire society to be governed by its general will. If anyindividual wished to follow his own self-interest, heshould be compelled to abide by the general will. ‘‘Thismeans nothing less than that he will be forced to be free,’’said Rousseau, because the general will represented acommunity’s highest aspirations, whatever was best forthe entire community. Thus, liberty was achievedthrough being forced to follow what was best for allpeople because, he believed, what was best for all was bestfor each individual. True freedom is adherence to lawsthat one has imposed on oneself. To Rousseau, becauseeverybody was responsible for framing the general will,the creation of laws could never be delegated to a par-liamentary institution:

Thus the people’s deputies are not and could not be its rep-resentatives; they are merely its agents; and they cannotdecide anything finally. Any law which the people has notratified in person is void; it is not law at all. The Englishpeople believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it isfree only during the election of Members of Parliament; assoon as the Members are elected, the people is enslaved; it isnothing.7

This is an extreme and idealistic statement, but it is theultimate statement of participatory democracy.

Another influential treatise by Rousseau also ap-peared in 1762. Titled Emile, it is one of the Enlighten-ment’s most important works on education. Written inthe form of a novel, the work is really a general treatise‘‘on the education of the natural man.’’ Rousseau’s fun-damental concern was that education should foster ratherthan restrict children’s natural instincts. Life’s experienceshad shown Rousseau the importance of the promptings ofthe heart, and what he sought was a balance between heartand mind, between sentiment and reason. This emphasison heart and sentiment made him a precursor of theintellectual movement called Romanticism that domi-nated Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

But Rousseau did not necessarily practice what hepreached. His own children were sent to foundlinghomes, where many children died young. Rousseau alsoviewed women as ‘‘naturally’’ different from men: ‘‘Tofulfill [a woman’s] functions, an appropriate physicalconstitution is necessary to her. . . . She needs a softsedentary life to suckle her babies. How much care andtenderness does she need to hold her family together.’’ InEmile, Sophie, who was Emile’s intended wife, was edu-cated for her role as wife and mother by learning obe-dience and the nurturing skills that would enable her toprovide loving care for her husband and children. Noteveryone in the eighteenth century agreed with Rousseau,however, making ideas of gender an important issue inthe Enlightenment.

The ‘‘Woman’s Question’’ in the Enlightenment Forcenturies, men had dominated the debate about the na-ture and value of women. In general, many male in-tellectuals had argued that the base nature of womenmade them inferior to men and made male dominationof women necessary (see Chapter 16). In the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries, many male thinkers reinforcedthis view by arguing that it was based on ‘‘natural’’ bio-logical differences between men and women. LikeRousseau, they argued that the female constitution madewomen mothers. Male writers, in particular, were criticalof the attempts of some women in the Enlightenment towrite on intellectual issues, arguing that women were bynature intellectually inferior to men. Nevertheless, someEnlightenment thinkers offered more positive views ofwomen. Diderot, for example, maintained that men andwomen were not all that different, and Voltaire assertedthat ‘‘women are capable of all that men are’’ in intellectualaffairs.


Jean-Jacques Rousseau. By the late 1760s, a newgeneration of philosophes arose who began to move beyondand even to question the beliefs of their predecessors. Of thephilosophes of the late Enlightenment, Rousseau was perhapsthe most critical of his predecessors. Shown here is a portraitof Rousseau by Maurice-Quentin de La Tour.

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It was women thinkers, however, who added newperspectives to the ‘‘woman’s question’’ by makingspecific suggestions for improving the condition ofwomen. Mary Astell (1666--1731), daughter of a wealthyEnglish coal merchant, argued in 1697 in A Serious Pro-posal to the Ladies that women needed to become bettereducated. Men, she believed, would resent her proposal,‘‘but they must excuse me, if I be as partial to my own sexas they are to theirs, and think women as capable oflearning as men are, and that it becomes them as well.’’8

In a later work titled Some Reflections upon Marriage,Astell argued for the equality of the sexes in marriage: ‘‘Ifabsolute sovereignty be not necessary in a state, howcomes it to be so in a family . . . ? For if arbitrary power isevil in itself, and an improper method of governing ra-tional and free agents, it ought not be practiced any-where. . . . If all men are born free, how is it that allwomen are born slaves?’’9

The strongest statement for the rights of women inthe eighteenth century was advanced by the Englishwriter Mary Wollstonecraft (1759--1797), viewed bymany as the founder of modern European feminism. InVindication of the Rights of Woman, written in 1792,Wollstonecraft pointed out two contradictions in theviews of women held by such Enlightenment thinkers asRousseau. To argue that women must obey men, she said,was contrary to the beliefs of the same individuals that a

system based on the arbitrary power of monarchs overtheir subjects or slave owners over their slaves was wrong.The subjection of women to men was equally wrong. Inaddition, she argued, the Enlightenment was based on theideal that reason is innate in all human beings. If womenhave reason, then they are entitled to the same rights thatmen have. Women, Wollstonecraft declared, should haveequal rights with men in education and in economic andpolitical life as well (see the box on p. 521).

The Social Environment of the PhilosophesThe social background of the philosophes variedconsiderably, from the aristocratic Montesquieu to thelower-middle-class Diderot and Rousseau. The Enlight-enment was not the preserve of any one class, althoughobviously its greatest appeal was to the aristocracy andupper middle classes of the major cities. The commonpeople, especially the peasants, were little affected by theEnlightenment.

Of great importance to the Enlightenment was thespread of its ideas to the literate elite of European society.Although the publication and sale of books and treatiseswere crucial to this process, the salon was also a factor.Salons came into being in the seventeenth century butrose to new heights in the eighteenth. These were theelegant drawing rooms in the urban houses of the wealthy


A Social Contract

Although Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the

French philosophes, he has also been called ‘‘the father

of Romanticism.’’ His political ideas have proved

extremely controversial. Though some people have

hailed him as the prophet of democracy, others have

labeled him an apologist for totalitarianism. This selec-

tion is taken from one of his most famous books, The

Social Contract.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

Book 1, Chapter 6: ‘‘The Social Pact’’

‘‘How to find a form of association which will defend theperson and goods of each member with the collective forceof all, and under which each individual, while uniting him-self with the others, obeys no one but himself, and remainsas free as before.’’ This is the fundamental problem towhich the social contract holds the solution. . . .

Book 1, Chapter 7: ‘‘The Sovereign’’

Despite their common interest, subjects will not be boundby their commitment unless means are found to guaranteetheir fidelity.

For every individual as a man may have a private willcontrary to, or different from, the general will that he has asa citizen. His private interest may speak with a very different

voice from that of the public interest; his absolute and natu-rally independent existence may make him regard what heowes to the common cause as a gratuitous contribution, theloss of which would be less painful for others than the pay-ment is onerous for him; and fancying that the artificial per-son which constitutes the state is a mere rational entity, hemight seek to enjoy the rights of a citizen without doing theduties of a subject. The growth of this kind of injusticewould bring about the ruin of the body politic.

Hence, in order that the social pact shall not be anempty formula, it is tacitly implied in that commitment—which alone can give force to all others—that whoeverrefused to obey the general will shall be constrained to doso by the whole body, which means nothing other thanthat he shall be forced to be free; for this is the conditionwhich, by giving each citizen to the nation, secures himagainst all personal dependence, it is the condition whichshapes both the design and the working of the politicalmachine, and which alone bestows justice on civil contracts—without it, such contracts would be absurd, tyrannical andliable to the grossest abuse.

What is Rousseau’s concept of the social con-

tract? What implications did it contain for political

thought, especially in regard to the development of

democratic ideals?



where invited philosophes and guests gathered to engagein witty, sparkling conversations that often centered onthe ideas of the philosophes. In France’s rigid hierarchicalsociety, the salons were important in bringing togetherwriters and artists with aristocrats, government officials,and wealthy bourgeoisie.

As hostesses of the salons, women found them-selves in a position to affect the decisions of kings, swaypolitical opinion, and influence literary and artistictaste. Salons provided havens for people and viewsunwelcome in the royal court. When the Encyclopediawas suppressed by the French authorities, Marie-Therese de Geoffrin (1699--1777), a wealthy bourgeoiswidow whose father had been a valet, welcomed theencyclopedists to her salon and offered financial assis-tance to complete the work in secret. Madame Geoffrinwas not without rivals, however. The marquise duDeffand (1697--1780) had abandoned her husband inthe provinces and established herself in Paris, where herornate drawing room attracted many of the Enlight-enment’s great figures, including Montesquieu, Hume,and Voltaire.

Although the salons were run by women, the repu-tation of a salon depended on the stature of the males ahostess was able to attract. Despite this male domination,however, both French and foreign observers complainedthat females exerted undue influence in French politicalaffairs. Though exaggerated, this perception led to thedecline of salons during the French Revolution.

The salon served an important role in promotingconversation and sociability between upper-class menand women as well as spreading the ideas of the En-lightenment. But other means of spreading Enlighten-ment ideas were also available. Coffeehouses, cafes,reading clubs, and public lending libraries established

by the state were gathering places for the exchange ofideas. Learned societies were formed in cities throughoutEurope and America. At such gatherings as the SelectSociety of Edinburgh, Scotland, and the AmericanPhilosophical Society in Philadelphia, lawyers, doctors,and local officials gathered to discuss enlightened ideas.Secret societies also developed. The most famous was theFreemasons, established in London in 1717, France andItaly in 1726, and Prussia in 1744. It was no secret thatthe Freemasons were sympathetic to the ideas of thephilosophes.

Culture and Societyin the Enlightenment

Focus Questions: What innovations in art, music, andliterature occurred in the eighteenth century? How didpopular culture differ from high culture in theeighteenth century?

The intellectual adventure fostered by the philosophes wasaccompanied by both traditional practices and importantchanges in eighteenth-century culture and society.

Innovations in Art, Music, and LiteratureAlthough the Baroque and Neoclassical styles that haddominated the seventeenth century continued into theeighteenth century, by the 1730s a new style known asRococo had begun to affect decoration and archi-tecture all over Europe. Unlike the Baroque, whichstressed majesty, power, and movement, Rococo em-phasized grace and gentle action. Rococo rejected strictgeometrical patterns and had a fondness for curves; itliked to follow the wandering lines of natural objects,such as seashells and flowers. It made much use ofinterlaced designs colored in gold with delicate con-tours and graceful curves. Highly secular, its lightnessand charm spoke of the pursuit of pleasure, happiness,and love.

Some of Rococo’s appeal is evident already in thework of Antoine Watteau (1684--1721), whose lyricalviews of aristocratic life---refined, sensual, civilized, withgentlemen and ladies in elegant dress---reflected a worldof upper-class pleasure and joy. Underneath that ex-terior, however, was an element of sadness as the artistrevealed the fragility and transitory nature of pleasure,love, and life.

Another aspect of Rococo was that its decorative workcould easily be used with Baroque architecture. The palaceof Versailles had made an enormous impact on Europe.‘‘Keeping up with the Bourbons’’ became important as theAustrian emperor, the Swedish king, German princes andprince-bishops, Italian princes, and even a Russian tsarbuilt grandiose palaces. While emulating Versailles’s size,they were modeled less after the French classical style of

. [Z:/Composition/Wadsworth/Spielvogel_0495502855/2nd Pass Pages/spielvogel_0495502855_ch17/spielvogel_0495502855_ch17.3d] . [] . [509–537]

CHRONOL0GY Works of the Philosophes

Montesquieu, Persian Letters 1721

Voltaire, Philosophic Letters on the English 1733

Hume, Treatise on Human Nature 1739–1740

Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws 1748

Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV 1751

Diderot, Encyclopedia 1751–1765

Rousseau, The Social Contract; Emile 1762

Voltaire, Treatise on Toleration 1763

Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments 1764

Holbach, System of Nature 1770

Smith, The Wealth of Nations 1776

Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the RomanEmpire

1776–1788

Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights ofWoman

1792

Condorcet, The Progress of the Human Mind 1794



Versailles than after the seventeenth-century Italian Ba-roque, as modified by a series of brilliant German andAustrian sculptor-architects. This Baroque-Rococo archi-tectural style of the eighteenth century was used in bothpalaces and churches, and often the same architects de-signed both. This is evident in the work of one of thegreatest architects of the eighteenth century, BalthasarNeumann (1687--1753).

Neumann’s two masterpieces are the pilgrimagechurch of the Vierzehnheiligen (Fourteen Saints) insouthern Germany and the Bishop’s Palace, known as theResidenz, the residential palace of the Schonborn prince-bishop of Wurzburg. Secular and spiritual become easilyinterchangeable in both buildings as the visitor is greetedby lavish and fanciful ornament; light, bright colors; andelaborate, rich detail.

Despite the popularity of the Rococo style, Neo-classicism continued to maintain a strong appeal and inthe late eighteenth century emerged in France as an es-tablished movement. Neoclassical artists wanted to re-capture the dignity and simplicity of the classical style ofancient Greece and Rome. Some were especially influ-enced by the recent excavations of the ancient Romancities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Classical elementsare evident in the work of Jacques-Louis David (1748--1825). In the Oath of the Horatii, he re-created a scenefrom Roman history in which the three Horatius brothersswore an oath before their father, proclaiming theirwillingness to sacrifice their lives for their country.

David’s Neoclassical style, with its moral seriousness andits emphasis on honor and patriotism, made him ex-tremely popular during the French Revolution.

The Development of Music The seventeenth andeighteenth centuries were the formative years of classicalmusic and saw the rise of the opera and oratorio, thesonata, the concerto, and the symphony. The Italianswere the first to develop these genres but were soonfollowed by the Germans, Austrians, and English. As inprevious centuries, most musicians depended on a pa-tron---a prince, a well-endowed ecclesiastic, or an aristo-crat. The many individual princes, archbishops, andbishops, each with his own court, provided the patronagethat made Italy and Germany the musical leaders ofEurope.

Many of the techniques of the Baroque musicalstyle, which dominated Europe between 1600 and 1750,were perfected by two composers---Bach and Handel---who stand out as musical geniuses. Johann SebastianBach (1685--1750) came from a family of musicians.Bach held the post of organist and music director at anumber of small German courts before becoming di-rector of church music at the Church of Saint Thomasin Leipzig in 1723. There Bach composed his Mass in BMinor, his Saint Matthew’s Passion, and the cantatasand motets that have established his reputation as oneof the greatest composers of all time. For Bach, musicwas above all a means to worship God; in his own


Antoine Watteau, Return from Cythera. Antoine Watteau was one of the most giftedpainters in eighteenth-century France. His portrayal of aristocratic life reveals a world ofelegance, wealth, and pleasure. In this painting, which is considered his masterpiece, Watteaudepicts a group of aristocratic lovers about to depart from the island of Cythera, where theyhave paid homage to Venus, the goddess of love. Luxuriously dressed, they move from thewoodlands to a golden barge that is waiting to take them from the island.

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CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT 523


words, his task in life was to make ‘‘well-ordered musicin the honor of God.’’

The other great musical giant of the early eighteenthcentury, George Frederick Handel (1685--1759), was, likeBach, born in Saxony in Germany and in the same year.In contrast to Bach’s quiet provincial life, however,Handel experienced a stormy international career andwas profoundly secular in temperament. After studyingin Italy, where he began his career by writing operas inthe Italian manner, in 1712 he moved to England, wherehe spent most of his adult life attempting to run an operacompany. Although patronized by the English royalcourt, Handel wrote music for large public audiences andwas not averse to writing huge, unusual-sounding pieces.The band for his Fireworks Music, for example, wassupposed to be accompanied by 101 cannons. Althoughhe wrote more than forty operas and much other secularmusic, the worldly Handel is, ironically, probably bestknown for his religious music. His Messiah has beencalled ‘‘one of those rare works that appeal immediately

to everyone, and yet is indisputably a masterpiece of thehighest order.’’10

Although Bach and Handel composed many in-strumental suites and concerti, orchestral music did notcome to the fore until the second half of the eighteenthcentury, when new instruments such as the piano appeared.A new musical period, the classical era (1750--1830), alsoemerged, represented by two great innovators---Haydnand Mozart. Their renown caused the musical center ofEurope to shift from Italy and Germany to the AustrianEmpire.

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732--1809) spent most of hisadult life as musical director for the wealthy Hungarianprinces, the Esterhazy brothers. Haydn was incrediblyprolific, composing 104 symphonies in addition to stringquartets, concerti, songs, oratorios, and Masses. His visitsto England in 1790 and 1794 introduced him to anotherworld, where musicians wrote for public concerts rather


Vierzehnheiligen, Exterior View. Balthasar Neumann,one of the most prominent architects of the eighteenth century,used the Baroque-Rococo style of architecture to design someof the most beautiful buildings of the century. Pictured here isthe exterior of his pilgrimage church of the Vierzehnheiligen(Fourteen Saints), located in southern Germany.

Vierzehnheiligen, Interior View. Pictured here is theinterior of the Vierzehnheiligen, the pilgrimage church designedby Balthasar Neumann. Elaborate detail, blazing light, richcolors, and opulent decoration were blended together to createa work of stunning beauty. The pilgrim in search of holiness isstruck by an incredible richness of detail. Persuaded by joyrather than fear, the believer is lifted toward heaven on a cloudof rapture.

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than princely patrons. This ‘‘liberty,’’ as he called it, in-duced him to write his two great oratorios, The Creationand The Seasons, both of which were dedicated to thecommon people.

The concerto, symphony, and opera all reachedtheir zenith in the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart(1756--1791), a child prodigy who gave his first harp-sichord concert at six and wrote his first opera attwelve. He, too, sought a patron, but his discontentwith the overly demanding archbishop of Salzburgforced him to move to Vienna, where his failure to finda permanent patron made his life miserable. Never-theless, he wrote music prolifically and passionatelyuntil he died a debt-ridden pauper at thirty-five.Mozart carried the tradition of Italian comic opera tonew heights with The Marriage of Figaro, based on aParisian play of the 1780s in which a valet outwits andoutsings his noble employers, and Don Giovanni, a‘‘black comedy’’ about the havoc Don Giovanni wroughton earth before he descended into hell. The Marriage ofFigaro, The Magic Flute, and Don Giovanni are three ofthe world’s greatest operas. Mozart composed with anease of melody and a blend of grace, precision, andemotion that arguably no one has ever excelled. Haydnremarked to Mozart’s father that ‘‘your son is the greatestcomposer known to me either in person or byreputation.’’

The Development of the Novel The eighteenth centurywas also decisive in the development of the novel. Thenovel was not a completely new literary genre but grewout of the medieval romances and the picaresque storiesof the sixteenth century. The English are credited withestablishing the modern novel as the chief vehicle forfiction writing. With no established rules, the novel wasopen to much experimentation. It also proved especiallyattractive to women readers and women writers.

Samuel Richardson (1689--1761) was a printer bytrade who did not turn to writing until his fifties. His firstnovel, Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded, focused on a servantgirl’s resistance to numerous seduction attempts by hermaster. Finally, by reading the girl’s letters describing herfeelings about his efforts, the master realizes that she hasa good mind as well as body and marries her. Virtue isrewarded. Pamela won Richardson a large audience as heappealed to the growing cult of sensibility in the eigh-teenth century---the taste for the sentimental and emo-tional. Samuel Johnson, another great English writer ofthe century and an even greater wit, remarked, ‘‘If youwere to read Richardson for the story . . . you would hangyourself. But you must read him for the sentiment.’’

Reacting against the moral seriousness of Richardson,Henry Fielding (1707--1754) wrote novels about peoplewithout scruples who survived by their wits. His best workwas The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, a lengthy novel


Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii. The Frenchman David was one of the mostfamous Neoclassical artists of the late eighteenth century. To immerse himself in the world ofclassical antiquity, he painted the Oath of the Horatii in Rome. Thanks to its emphasis onpatriotic duty, the work became an instant hit in both Paris and Rome.

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about the numerous adventures of a young scoundrel.Fielding presented scenes of English life from the hovels ofLondon to the country houses of the aristocracy. In anumber of hilarious episodes, he described characters akinto real types in English society. Although he emphasizedaction rather than inner feeling, Fielding did his ownmoralizing by attacking the hypocrisy of his age.

The Writing of History The philosophes were respon-sible for creating a revolution in the writing of history.Their secular orientation caused them to eliminate therole of God in history and freed them to concentrate onevents themselves and search for causal relationships inthe natural world. Earlier, the humanist historians of theRenaissance had also placed their histories in purelysecular settings, but not with the same intensity andcomplete removal of God.

The philosophe-historians also broadened the scopeof history from the humanists’ preoccupation with pol-itics. Politics still predominated in the work of Enlight-enment historians, but they also paid attention toeconomic, social, intellectual, and cultural developments.As Voltaire explained in his masterpiece, The Age of LouisXIV: ‘‘It is not merely the life of Louis XIV that wepropose to write; we have a wider aim in view. We shallendeavor to depict for posterity, not the actions of asingle man, but the spirit of men in the most enlightenedage the world has ever seen.’’11 In seeking to describe the‘‘totality of past human experience,’’ Voltaire initiated themodern ideal of social history.

The weaknesses of these philosophe-historiansstemmed from their preoccupations as philosophes.

Following the ideals of the classics that dominated theirminds, the philosophes sought to instruct as well as en-tertain. Their goal was to help civilize their age, and historycould play a role by revealing its lessons according to theirvision. Their emphasis on science and reason and theirdislike of Christianity made them less than sympathetic tothe period we call the Middle Ages. This is particularlynoticeable in the other great masterpiece of eighteenth-century historiography, the six-volume Decline and Fall ofthe Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (see the box onp. 527). Although Gibbon thought that the decline of Romehad many causes, he portrayed the growth of Christianity asa major reason for Rome’s eventual collapse.

The High Culture of the Eighteenth CenturyHistorians and cultural anthropologists have grown ac-customed to distinguishing between a civilization’s highculture and its popular culture. High culture usuallymeans the literary and artistic world of the educated andwealthy ruling classes; popular culture refers to thewritten and unwritten lore of the masses, most of whichis passed down orally. By the eighteenth century, Europeanhigh culture consisted of a learned world of theologians,scientists, philosophers, intellectuals, poets, and drama-tists, for whom Latin remained a truly internationallanguage. Their work was supported by a wealthy andliterate lay group, the most important of whom were thelanded aristocracy and the wealthier upper classes in thecities.

Especially noticeable in the eighteenth century wasan expansion of both the reading public and publishing.


Mozart as Child Prodigy. This painting,done in Paris in 1763 or 1764, shows the seven-year-old Mozart playing at the harpsichord whilehis composer father, Leopold, plays the violinand his sister, Nannerl, sings. Crowds greetedthe young Mozart enthusiastically throughout thefamily’s three-year tour of northern Europe.

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One study revealed that French publishers were issuingabout sixteen hundred titles yearly in the 1780s, up fromthree hundred titles in 1750. Though many of these titleswere still aimed at small groups of the educated elite,many were also directed to the new reading public of themiddle classes, which included women and even urbanartisans. The growth of publishing houses made it pos-sible for authors to make money from their works and beless dependent on wealthy patrons.

An important aspect of the growth of publishing andreading in the eighteenth century was the development ofmagazines for the general public. Great Britain, an im-portant center for the new magazines, saw 25 periodicals

published in 1700, 103 in 1760, and 158 in 1780. Al-though short-lived, the best known was Joseph Addisonand Richard Steele’s Spectator, begun in 1711. Its goal was‘‘to enliven Morality with wit, and to temper Wit withMorality. . . . To bring Philosophy out of the closets andlibraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and as-semblies, at tea-tables and coffeehouses.’’ In keeping withone of the chief intellectual goals of the philosophes, theSpectator wished to instruct and entertain at the sametime. With its praise of family, marriage, and courtesy,the Spectator also had a strong appeal to women. Some ofthe new magazines were aimed specifically at women,such as The Female Spectator in England, which was also


Gibbon and the Idea of Progress

Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

was one of the great historical masterpieces of the

eighteenth century. Like some of the philosophes, Gib-

bon believed in the idea of progress and, in reflecting

on the decline and fall of Rome, expressed his opti-

mism about the future of European civilization and the

ability of Europeans to avoid the fate of the Romans.

Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fallof the Roman EmpireIt is the duty of a patriot to prefer and promote the exclu-sive interest and glory of his native country; but a philoso-pher may be permitted to enlarge his views, and toconsider Europe as one great republic, whose variousinhabitants have attained almost the same level of polite-ness and cultivation. The balance of power will continue tofluctuate, and the prosperity of our own, or the neighbor-ing kingdoms, may be alternately exalted or depressed; butthese partial events cannot essentially injure our generalstate of happiness, the system of arts, and laws, and man-ners, which so advantageously distinguish, above the restof mankind, the Europeans and their colonies. The savagenations of the globe are the common enemies of civilizedsociety; and we may inquire, with anxious curiosity,whether Europe is still threatened with a repetition ofthose calamities, which formerly oppressed the arms andinstitutions of Rome. Perhaps the same reflections willillustrate the fall of the mighty empire, and explain theprobable causes of our actual security. . . .

Should these speculations be found doubtful or falla-cious, there still remains a more humble source of comfortand hope. The discoveries of ancient and modern naviga-tors, and the domestic history, or tradition, of the mostenlightened nations, represent the human savage, nakedboth in mind and body, and destitute of laws, of arts, ofideas, and almost of language. From this abject condition,perhaps the primitive and universal state of man, he hasgradually arisen to command the animals, to fertilize theearth, to traverse the oceans, and to measure the heavens.His progress in the improvement and exercise of his mental

and corporeal faculties has been irregular and various;infinitely slow in the beginning, and increasing by degreewith redoubled velocity: ages of laborious ascent havebeen followed by a moment of rapid downfall; and the sev-eral climates of the globe have felt the vicissitudes of lightand darkness. Yet the experience of four thousand yearsshould enlarge our hopes, and diminish our apprehensions:we cannot determine to what height the human speciesmay aspire in their advances toward perfection; but it maysafely be presumed, that no people, unless the face ofnature is changed, will relapse into their original barbar-ism. . . . Fortunately for mankind, the more useful, or, atleast, more necessary arts, can be performed without supe-rior talents, or national subordination. . . . Each village, eachfamily, each individual must always possess both abilityand inclination, to perpetuate the use of fire and of metals;the propagation and service of domestic animals; the meth-ods of hunting and fishing; the rudiments of navigation;the imperfect cultivation of corn, or other nutritive grain;and the simple practice of the mechanic trades. Privategenius and public industry may be extirpated; but thesehardy plants survive the tempest, and strike an everlastingroot into the most unfavorable soil. The splendid days ofAugustus and Trajan were eclipsed by a cloud of igno-rance: and the Barbarians subverted the laws and palacesof Rome. But the scythe . . . still continued annually to mowthe harvests of Italy. . . .

Since the first discovery of the arts, war, commerce,and religious zeal have diffused, among the savages of theOld and New World, these inestimable gifts: they havebeen successively propagated; they can never be lost. Wemay therefore acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion, thatevery age of the world has increased, and still increases,the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhapsthe virtue of the human race.

What is Gibbon’s view of progress? How did the

typical interests and concerns of enlightened philosophes

reshape the writing of history in eighteenth-century

Europe?



edited by a woman, Eliza Haywood, and featured articlesby female writers.

Along with magazines came daily newspapers. Thefirst was printed in London in 1702, but by 1780, thirty-seven other English towns had their own newspapers.Filled with news and special features, they were relativelycheap and were provided free in coffeehouses. Books, too,received wider circulation through the development ofpublic libraries in the cities as well as private circulatinglibraries, which offered books for rent.

Education and Universities By the eighteenth century,Europe was home to a large number of privately en-dowed secondary schools, such as the grammar andpublic schools in England, the gymnasiums in German-speaking lands, and the colleges in France and Spain.These schools tended to be elitist, designed to meet theneeds of the children of the upper classes of society.Basically, European secondary schools perpetuated theclass hierarchy of Europe rather than creating avenuesfor social mobility. In fact, most of the philosophesreinforced the belief that education should function tokeep people in their own social class. Baron d’Holbachsaid, ‘‘Education should teach princes to reign, theruling classes to distinguish themselves by their meritand virtue, the rich to use their riches well, the poor tolive by honest industry.’’

The curriculum of these secondary schools still largelyconcentrated on the Greek and Latin classics with littleattention paid to mathematics, the sciences, and modernlanguages. Complaints from philosophe-reformers, as wellas from merchants and other middle-class people whowanted their sons to have a more practical education, led

to the development of new schools designed to provide abroader education. In Germany, the first Realschule wasopened in Berlin in 1747 and offered modern languages,geography, and bookkeeping to prepare boys for careers inbusiness. New schools of this kind were also created forupper-class girls, although they focused primarily on re-ligion and domestic skills.

The most common complaint about universities,especially from the philosophes, was the old-fashionedcurriculum that emphasized the classics and Aristotelianphilosophy and provided no training in the sciences ormodern languages. Before the end of the century, thiscriticism led to reforms that introduced new ideas in theareas of physics, astronomy, and even mathematics intothe universities. It is significant, however, that very few ofthe important scientific discoveries of the eighteenthcentury occurred in the universities.

Crime and PunishmentBy the eighteenth century, most European states haddeveloped a hierarchy of courts to deal with crimes. Ex-cept in England, judicial torture remained an importantmeans of obtaining evidence before a trial. Courts usedthe rack, thumbscrews, and other instruments to obtainconfessions in criminal cases. Punishments for crimeswere often cruel and even spectacular. Public executionswere a basic part of traditional punishment and wereregarded as a necessary means of deterring potential of-fenders in an age when a state’s police forces were tooweak to ensure the capture of criminals. Although nobleswere executed by simple beheading, lower-class criminalscondemned to death were tortured, broken on the wheel,


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A London Coffeehouse.Coffeehouses first appeared inVenice and Constantinople butquickly spread throughout Europeby the beginning of the eighteenthcentury. In addition to drinkingcoffee, patrons of coffeehousescould read magazines andnewspapers, exchange ideas, playchess, smoke, and engage inbusiness transactions. In this scenefrom a London coffeehouse of 1705,well-attired gentlemen make bids oncommodities.



or drawn and quartered (see the box above). The deathpenalty was still commonly used for property crimes aswell as for violent offenses. By 1800, more than twohundred crimes were subject to the death penalty inEngland. In addition to executions, European states re-sorted to forced labor in mines, forts, and navies. En-gland also sent criminals as indentured servants tocolonies in the New World and, after the AmericanRevolution, to Australia.

Appalled by the unjust laws and brutal punish-ments of their times, some philosophes sought to createa new approach to justice. The most notable effort wasmade by an Italian philosophe, Cesare Beccaria (1738--1794). In his essay On Crimes and Punishments, writtenin 1764, Beccaria argued that punishments should serveonly as deterrents, not as exercises in brutality: ‘‘Suchpunishments . . . ought to be chosen as will make thestrongest and most lasting impressions on the minds ofothers, with the least torment to the body of thecriminal.’’12 Beccaria was also opposed to the use ofcapital punishment. It was spectacular, but it failed tostop others from committing crimes. Imprisonment---the deprivation of freedom---made a far more lastingimpression. Moreover, capital punishment was harmfulto society because it set an example of barbarism: ‘‘Is itnot absurd that the laws, which detest and punishhomicide, should, in order to prevent murder, publiclycommit murder themselves?’’

By the end of the eighteenth century, a growingsentiment against executions and torture led to a declinein both corporal and capital punishment. A new type ofprison, in which criminals were placed in cells and sub-jected to discipline and regular work to rehabilitate them,began to replace the public spectacle of barbarouspunishments.

The World of Medicine

In the eighteenth century, medicine was practiced by ahierarchy of practitioners. At the top stood the physi-cians, who were university graduates and enjoyed a highsocial status. Despite the scientific advances of the sev-enteenth and eighteenth centuries, however, universitymedical education was still largely conducted in Latinand was based primarily on Galen’s work. New methodsemphasizing clinical experience did begin to be in-troduced at the University of Leiden, which replacedPadua as the foremost medical school of Europe in thefirst half of the seventeenth century, only to be surpassedin the second half of that century by Vienna. A graduatewith a doctorate in medicine from a university needed toreceive a license before he could be a practicing memberof the physicians’ elite corporate body. In England, theRoyal College of Physicians licensed only one hundredphysicians in the early eighteenth century. Only officiallylicensed physicians could hold regular medical con-sultations with patients and receive payments, alreadyregarded in the eighteenth century as outrageously high.

Below the physicians were the surgeons, who werestill known as barber-surgeons well into the eighteenthcentury from their original dual occupation. Their pri-mary functions were to bleed patients and perform sur-gery; the latter was often done crudely, without painkillersand in filthy conditions, because there was no under-standing of anesthesia or infection. Bleeding was widelybelieved to be beneficial in reducing fevers and combatinga variety of illnesses.

The surgeons underwent significant changes in thecourse of the eighteenth century. In the 1740s, they beganto separate themselves from the barbers and organizetheir own guilds. At the same time, they started to





undergo additional training by dissecting corpses andstudying anatomy more systematically. As they becamemore effective, the distinction between physicians andsurgeons began to break down, and surgeons were ex-amining patients in a fashion similar to physicians by theend of the century. Moreover, surgeons also began to belicensed. In England, the Royal College of Surgeons re-quired clinical experience before granting the license.

Other medical practitioners, such as apothecaries,midwives, and faith healers, primarily served the com-mon people in the eighteenth century. Although theirmain function was to provide herbs and potions as rec-ommended by physicians, apothecaries or pharmacistsalso acted independently in diagnosing illnesses andselling remedies. In the course of the eighteenth century,male doctors increasingly supplanted midwives in deliv-ering babies. At the same time, the tradition of faithhealing, so prominent in medieval medicine, continuedto be practiced, especially in the rural areas of Europe.

Hospitals in the eighteenth century seemed more aproblem than an aid in dealing with disease and illness.That conditions were bad is evident in this description bythe philosophe Denis Diderot, who characterized theHotel-Dieu in Paris, France’s ‘‘biggest, roomiest, andrichest’’ hospital, in these words:

Imagine a long series of communicating wards filled withsufferers of every kind of disease who are sometimes packedthree, four, five or even six into a bed, the living alongsidethe dead and dying, the air polluted by this mass of un-healthy bodies, passing pestilential germs of their afflictionsfrom one to the other, and the spectacle of suffering andagony on every hand. That is the Hotel-Dieu. The result isthat many of these poor wretches come out with diseasesthey did not have when they went in, and often pass themon to the people they go back to live with.13

Despite appeals, efforts at hospital reform in the eigh-teenth century remained ineffectual.

Popular CulturePopular culture refers to the written and unwritten lit-erature and the social activities and pursuits that arefundamental to the lives of most people. The dis-tinguishing characteristic of popular culture is its col-lective and public nature. Group activity was especiallyevident in the festival, a broad name used to cover avariety of celebrations: community festivals in CatholicEurope that celebrated the feast day of the local patronsaint; annual festivals, such as Christmas and Easter, thatwent back to medieval Christianity; and Carnival, themost spectacular form of festival, which was celebrated inSpain, Italy, France, Germany, and Austria. All of thesefestivals were special occasions when people ate, drank,and celebrated to excess. In traditional societies, festivalwas a time for relaxation and enjoyment because much ofthe rest of the year was a time of unrelieved work. As thepoet Thomas Gray said of Carnival in Turin in 1739:

‘‘This Carnival lasts only from Christmas to Lent; onehalf of the remaining part of the year is passed in re-membering the last, the other in expecting the futureCarnival.’’14

Carnival Carnival was celebrated in the weeks leadingup to the beginning of Lent, the forty-day period offasting and purification preceding Easter. Carnival was,understandably, a time of great indulgence, just the re-verse of Lent, when people were expected to abstain frommeat, sex, and most recreations. Hearty consumption offood, especially meat and other delicacies, and heavydrinking were the norm during Carnival; so was intensesexual activity. Songs with double meanings that wouldbe considered offensive at other times could be sungpublicly at this time of year. A float of Florentine ‘‘key-makers,’’ for example, sang this ditty to the ladies: ‘‘Ourtools are fine, new and useful; We always carry them withus; They are good for anything; If you want to touchthem, you can.’’15 Finally, Carnival was a time of ag-gression, a time to release pent-up feelings. Most oftenthis took the form of verbal aggression, since people wereallowed to openly insult other people and even criticizetheir social superiors and authorities. Certain acts ofphysical violence were also permitted. People pelted eachother with apples, eggs, flour, and pig’s bladders filledwith water.

Taverns and Alcohol The same sense of communityevident in festival was also present in the chief gatheringplaces of the common people, the local taverns or caba-rets. Taverns functioned as regular gathering places forneighborhood men to talk, play games, conduct smallbusiness matters, and drink. In some countries, the fa-vorite drinks of poor people, such as gin in England andvodka in Russia, proved devastating as poor people reg-ularly drank themselves into oblivion. Gin was cheap; theclassic sign in English taverns, ‘‘Drunk for a penny, deaddrunk for two pence,’’ was literally true. In England, theconsumption of gin rose from 2 million to 5 milliongallons between 1714 and 1733 and declined only whencomplaints finally led to laws restricting sales in the1750s. Of course, the rich drank too. Samuel Johnsononce remarked, ‘‘All the decent people in Lichfield gotdrunk every night and were not the worse thought of.’’But unlike the poor, the rich drank port and brandy,usually in large quantities.

This difference in drinking habits between rich andpoor reminds us of the ever-widening separation betweenthe elite and the poor in the eighteenth century. In 1500,popular culture was for everyone; a second culture for theelite, it was the only culture for the rest of society. Butbetween 1500 and 1800, the nobility, clergy, and bour-geoisie had abandoned popular culture to the lowerclasses. This was, of course, a gradual process, and inabandoning the popular festivals, the upper classes werealso abandoning the popular worldview as well. The newscientific outlook had brought a new mental world for




the upper classes, and they now viewed such things aswitchcraft, faith healing, fortune telling, and prophecy asthe beliefs of those who were, as one writer said, ‘‘of theweakest judgment and reason, as women, children, andignorant and superstitious persons.’’

Literacy and Primary Education Popular culture hadalways included a vast array of traditional songs andstories that were passed down from generation to gen-eration. But popular culture was not entirely based on anoral tradition; a popular literature existed as well. So-called chapbooks, printed on cheap paper, were shortbrochures sold by itinerant peddlers to the lower classes.They contained both spiritual and secular material: livesof saints and inspirational stories competed with crudesatires and adventure stories.

It is apparent from the chapbooks that popularculture did not have to remain primarily oral. Its abilityto change was dependent on the growth of literacy.Studies in France indicate that literacy rates for menincreased from 29 percent in the late seventeenth centuryto 47 percent in the late eighteenth century; for women,the increase was from 14 to 27 percent during the sameperiod. Of course, certain groups were more likely to beliterate than others. Upper-class elites and the uppermiddle classes in the cities were mostly all literate. Nev-ertheless, the figures also indicate dramatic increases forlower-middle-class artisans in urban areas. Recent re-search in the city of Marseilles, for example, indicates that

literacy of male artisans and workers increased from28 percent in 1710 to 85 percent in 1789, though the ratefor women remained at 15 percent. Peasants, who con-stituted as much as 75 percent of the French population,remained largely illiterate.

The spread of literacy was closely connected to pri-mary education. In Catholic Europe, primary educationwas largely a matter of local community effort, leading tolittle real growth. Only in the Habsburg Austrian Empirewas a system of state-supported primary schools (Volk-schulen) established, although only one in four school-agechildren actually attended.

The emphasis of the Protestant reformers on readingthe Bible had led Protestant states to take a greater interestin primary education. Some places, especially the Swisscantons, Scotland, and the German states of Saxony andPrussia, witnessed the emergence of universal primaryschools that provided a modicum of education for themasses. But effective systems of primary education werehindered by the attitudes of the ruling classes, who fearedthe consequences of teaching the lower classes anythingbeyond the virtues of hard work and deference to theirsuperiors. Hannah More, an English writer who set up anetwork of Sunday schools, made clear the philosophy ofher charity school for poor children: ‘‘My plan of in-struction is extremely simple and limited. They learn onweekdays such coarse work as may fit them for servants. Iallow of no writing for the poor. My object is to train upthe lower classes in habits of industry and piety.’’


Popular Culture: Carnival. Pictured here in a painting by Giovanni Signorini is a scenefrom the celebration of Carnival on the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence, Italy. Carnival was aperiod of festivities before Lent, celebrated in most Roman Catholic countries. Carnival becamean occasion for indulgence in food, drink, games, practical jokes, and merriment, all of whichare evident here.

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Religion and the ChurchesFocus Question: How did popular religion differ frominstitutional religion in the eighteenth century?

The music of Bach and the pilgrimage and monasticchurches of southern Germany and Austria make usaware of a curious fact. Though much of the great art andmusic of the time was religious, the thought of the timewas antireligious as life became increasingly secularizedand men of reason attacked the established churches. Andyet most Europeans were still Christians. Even many ofthose most critical of the churches accepted that societycould not function without religious faith.

The Institutional ChurchIn the eighteenth century, the established Catholic andProtestant churches were basically conservative in-stitutions that upheld society’s hierarchical structure,privileged classes, and traditions. Although churches ex-perienced change because of new state policies, they didnot sustain any dramatic internal changes. In bothCatholic and Protestant countries, the parish church runby a priest or pastor remained the center of religiouspractice. In addition to providing religious services, theparish church kept records of births, deaths, and mar-riages; provided charity for the poor; supervised whateverprimary education there was; and cared for orphans.

Church-State Relations Early on, the Protestant Ref-ormation had solved the problem of the relationshipbetween church and state by establishing the principle ofstate control over the churches. In the eighteenth century,Protestant state churches flourished throughout Europe:Lutheranism in Scandinavia and the north Germanstates, Anglicanism in England, and Calvinism (or Re-formed churches) in Scotland, the United Provinces, andsome of the Swiss cantons and German states (see Map17.2). There were also Protestant minorities in otherEuropean countries.

In 1700, the Catholic Church still exercised muchpower in Catholic European states: Spain, Portugal,France, Italy, the Habsburg Empire, Poland, and most ofsouthern Germany. The church also continued to possessenormous wealth. In Spain, three thousand monasticinstitutions housing 100,000 men and women controlledenormous landed estates.

The Catholic Church remained hierarchically struc-tured. In most Catholic countries, the highest clerics,such as bishops, archbishops, abbots, and abbesses, weremembers of the upper class, especially the landed no-bility, and received enormous revenues from their landedestates and tithes from the faithful. A wide gulf existedbetween the upper and lower clergy. While the Frenchbishop of Strasbourg, for example, received 100,000 livresa year, parish priests were paid only 500.

In the eighteenth century, the governments of manyCatholic states began to seek greater authority over thechurches in their countries. This ‘‘nationalization’’ of theCatholic Church meant controlling the papacy and inturn the chief papal agents, the Society of Jesus. TheJesuits had proved extremely successful, perhaps toosuccessful for their own good. They had created specialenclaves, virtually states within states, in the French,Spanish, and Portuguese colonies in the New World.As advisers to Catholic rulers, the Jesuits exercised con-siderable political influence. But the high profile theyachieved through their successes attracted a wide range ofenemies, and a series of actions soon undermined Jesuitpower. The Portuguese monarch destroyed the powerfulJesuit state in Paraguay and then in 1759 expelled theJesuits from Portugal and confiscated their property. In1764, they were expelled from France and three years laterfrom Spain and the Spanish colonies. In 1773, whenSpain and France demanded that the entire society bedissolved, Pope Clement XIV reluctantly complied. Thedissolution of the Jesuit order, one important pillar ofCatholic strength, was yet another victory for Catholicgovernments determined to win control over theirchurches.

The end of the Jesuits was paralleled by a decline inpapal power. Already by the mid-eighteenth century, thepapacy played only a minor role in diplomacy and in-ternational affairs. The nationalization of the churches bythe states meant the loss of the papacy’s power to appointhigh clerical officials.

Toleration and Religious Minorities One of the chiefbattle cries of the philosophes had been a call for reli-gious toleration. Out of political necessity, a certainlevel of tolerance of different creeds had occurred in theseventeenth century, but many rulers still found itdifficult to accept. Louis XIV had turned back the clockin France at the end of the seventeenth century, in-sisting on religious uniformity and suppressing therights of the Huguenots (see Chapter 15). Even devoutrulers continued to believe that there was only one pathto salvation; it was the true duty of a ruler not to allowsubjects to be condemned to hell by being heretics.Persecution of heretics continued; the last burning of aheretic took place in 1781.

Nevertheless, some progress was made toward theprinciple of religious toleration. No ruler was moreinterested in the philosophes’ call for religious toler-ation than Joseph II of Austria. His Toleration Patent of1781, while recognizing Catholicism’s public practice,granted Lutherans, Calvinists, and Greek Orthodox theright to worship privately. In all other ways, all subjectswere now equal: ‘‘Non-Catholics are in future admittedunder dispensation to buy houses and real property, topractice as master craftsmen, to take up academic ap-pointments and posts in public service, and are not tobe required to take the oath in any form contrary totheir religious tenets.’’16




Toleration and the Jews The Jews remained the de-spised religious minority of Europe. The largest number ofJews (known as the Ashkenazic Jews) lived in easternEurope. Except in relatively tolerant Poland, Jews wererestricted in their movements, forbidden to own land orhold many jobs, forced to pay burdensome special taxes,and also subject to periodic outbursts of popular wrath.The resulting pogroms, in which Jewish communities werelooted and massacred, made Jewish existence precariousand dependent on the favor of their territorial rulers.

Another major group was the Sephardic Jews, whohad been expelled from Spain in the fifteenth century.

Although many had migrated to Turkish lands, some ofthem had settled in cities, such as Amsterdam, Venice,London, and Frankfurt, where they were relatively free toparticipate in the banking and commercial activities thatJews had practiced since the Middle Ages. The highlysuccessful ones came to provide valuable services to rulers,especially in central Europe, where they were known asthe court Jews. But even these Jews were insecure becausetheir religion set them apart from the Christian majorityand served as a catalyst to social resentment.

Some Enlightenment thinkers in the eighteenthcentury favored a new acceptance of Jews. They argued


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Catholic majority

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MAP 17.2 Religious Populations of Eighteenth-Century Europe. Christianity wasstill a dominant force in eighteenth-century Europe—even many of the philosophes remainedChristians while attacking the authority and power of the established Catholic and Protestantchurches. By the end of the century, however, most monarchs had increased royal power at theexpense of religious institutions.

To what extent were religious majorities geographically concentrated in certain areas,and what accounted for this? View an animated version of this map or related maps at

www.thomsonedu.com/history/spielvogel

RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES 533


that Jews and Muslims were human and deserved thefull rights of citizenship despite their religion. Manyphilosophes denounced persecution of the Jews butmade no attempt to hide their hostility and ridiculedJewish customs. Diderot, for example, said that the Jewshad ‘‘all the defects peculiar to an ignorant and super-stitious nation.’’ Many Europeans favored the assim-ilation of the Jews into the mainstream of society, butonly by the conversion of Jews to Christianity as thebasic solution to the ‘‘Jewish problem.’’ This, of course,was not acceptable to most Jews.

The Austrian emperor Joseph II attempted to adopt anew policy toward the Jews, although it too was limited.It freed Jews from nuisance taxes and allowed them morefreedom of movement and job opportunities, but theywere still restricted from owning land and worshiping inpublic. At the same time, Joseph II encouraged Jews tolearn German and work toward greater assimilation intoAustrian society.

Popular Religion in the Eighteenth CenturyDespite the rise of skepticism and the intellectuals’ beliefin deism and natural religion, religious devotion re-mained strong in the eighteenth century.

Catholic Piety It is difficult to assess precisely the reli-giosity of Europe’s Catholics. The Catholic parish churchremained an important center of life for the entirecommunity. How many people went to church regularlycannot be known exactly, but it has been established that90 to 95 percent of Catholic populations did go to Masson Easter Sunday, one of the church’s most specialcelebrations.

Catholic religiosity proved highly selective, however.Despite the Reformation, much popular devotion wasstill directed to an externalized form of worship focusingon prayers to saints, pilgrimages, and devotion to relicsand images. This bothered many clergymen, who felt thattheir parishioners were ‘‘more superstitious than devout,’’as one Catholic priest put it. Many common peoplecontinued to fear witches and relied on the interventionof the saints and the Virgin Mary to save them frompersonal disasters caused by the devil.

Protestant Revivalism: Pietism After the initial centuryof religious fervor that created Protestantism in the six-teenth century, Protestant churches in the seventeenthcentury had settled down into well-established patternscontrolled by state authorities and served by a well-educated clergy. Protestant churches became bureau-cratized and bereft of religious enthusiasm. In Germanyand England, where rationalism and deism had becomeinfluential and moved some theologians to a more ‘‘ra-tional’’ Christianity, the desire of ordinary Protestantchurchgoers for greater depths of religious experience ledto new and dynamic religious movements.

Pietism in Germany was a response to this desire fora deeper personal devotion to God. Begun in the sev-enteenth century by a group of German clerics whowished their religion to be more personal, Pietism wasspread by the teachings of Count Nikolaus von Zinzen-dorf (1700--1760). To Zinzendorf and his MoravianBrethren, as his sect was called, it was the mysticaldimensions---the personal experience of God---in one’slife that constituted true religious experience. He wasutterly opposed to what he perceived as the rationalisticapproach of orthodox Lutheran clergy, who were beingeducated in new ‘‘rational’’ ideas. As Zinzendorf com-mented, ‘‘He who wishes to comprehend God with hismind becomes an atheist.’’

After the civil wars of the seventeenth century,England too had arrived at a respectable, uniform, andcomplacent state church. A pillar of the establishment,the Anglican Church seemed to offer little spiritual ex-citement, especially to the masses of people. The dis-senting Protestant groups---Puritans, Quakers, Baptists---were relatively subdued, while the growth of deismseemed to challenge Christianity itself. The desire fordeep spiritual experience seemed unmet until the adventof John Wesley.

Wesley and Methodism An ordained Anglican min-ister, John Wesley (1703--1791) experienced a deep


John Wesley. In leading a deep spiritual revival in Britain,John Wesley founded a religious movement that came to beknown as Methodism. He loved to preach to the masses, andthis 1766 portrait by Nathaniel Hope shows him as he mighthave appeared before a crowd of people.

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spiritual crisis and underwent a mystical experience: ‘‘Ifelt I did trust in Christ alone for salvation; and anassurance was given me, that He had taken away mysins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin anddeath. I felt my heart strangely warmed.’’ To Wesley,‘‘the gift of God’s grace’’ assured him of salvation andled him to become a missionary to the English people,bringing the ‘‘glad tidings’’ of salvation to all people,despite opposition from the Anglican Church, whichcriticized this emotional mysticism or religious enthu-siasm as superstitious nonsense. To Wesley, all could besaved by experiencing God and opening the doors to hisgrace.

In taking the Gospel to the people, Wesley preachedto the masses in open fields, appealing especially to the

lower classes neglected by the socially elitist AnglicanChurch. He tried, he said, ‘‘to lower religion to the levelof the lowest people’s capacities.’’ Wesley’s charismaticpreaching often provoked highly charged and evenviolent conversion experiences (see the box above).Afterward, converts were organized into so-calledMethodist societies or chapels in which they could aideach other in doing the good works that Wesley con-sidered a component of salvation. Although Wesleysought to keep Methodism within the Anglican Church,after his death it became a separate and independentsect. Methodism was an important revival of Chris-tianity and proved that the need for spiritual experiencehad not been expunged by the eighteenth-centurysearch for reason.


The Conversion Experience in Wesley’s Methodism

After his own conversion experience, John Wesley

traveled extensively to bring the ‘‘glad tidings’’ of

Jesus to other people. It has been estimated that he

preached over 40,000 sermons, some of them to

audiences numbering 20,000 listeners. Wesley gave

his message wherever people gathered—in the

streets, hospitals, private houses, and even pubs. In

this selection from his journal, Wesley describes how

emotional and even violent conversion experiences

could be.

The Journal of the Reverend John WesleySunday, May 20 [1759], being with Mr. B——ll at Everton,I was much fatigued, and did not rise: but Mr. B. did,and observed several fainting and crying out, whileMr. Berridge was preaching: afterwards at Church, I heardmany cry out, especially children, whose agonies wereamazing: one of the eldest, a girl of ten or twelve yearsold, was full in my view, in violent contortions of body,and weeping aloud, I think incessantly, during the wholeservice. . . . The Church was equally crowded in the after-noon, the windows being filled within and without, andeven the outside of the pulpit to the very top; so that Mr.B. seemed almost stifled by their breath; yet feeble andsickly as he is, he was continually strengthened, and hisvoice, for the most part, distinguishable; in the midst ofall the outcries. I believe there were present three timesmore men than women, a great part of whom came fromfar; thirty of them having set out at two in the morning,from a place thirteen miles off. The text was, Having aform of godliness, but denying the power thereof. When thepower of religion began to be spoken of, the presence ofGod really filled the place: and while poor sinners felt thesentence of death in their souls, what sounds of distressdid I hear! The greatest number of them who cried or fell,were men: but some women, and several children, felt the

power of the same almighty Spirit, and seemed just sink-ing into hell. This occasioned a mixture of severalsounds; some shrieking, some roaring aloud. The mostgeneral was a loud breathing, like that of people halfstrangled and gasping for life: and indeed almost all thecries were like those of human creatures, dying in bitteranguish. Great numbers wept without any noise: othersfell down as death: some sinking in silence; some withextreme noise and violent agitation. I stood on the pew-seat, as did a young man in the opposite pew, an able-bodied, fresh, healthy countryman: but in a moment,while he seemed to think of nothing less, down hedropped with a violence inconceivable. The adjoiningpews seemed to shake with his fall: I heard afterwardsthe stamping of his feet; ready to break the boards, as helay in strong convulsions, at the bottom of the pew.Among several that were struck down in the next pew,was a girl, who was as violently seized as he. . . . Amongthe children who felt the arrows of the Almighty, I saw asturdy boy, about eight years old, who roared above hisfellows, and seemed in his agony to struggle with thestrength of a grown man. His face was as red as scarlet:and almost all on whom God laid his hand, turned eithervery red or almost black. . . .

The violent struggling of many in the above-mentionedchurches, has broken several pews and benches. Yet it iscommon for people to remain unaffected there, and after-wards to drop down on their way home. Some have beenfound lying as dead on the road: others, in Mr. B.’s garden;not being able to walk from the Church to his house,though it is not two hundred yards.

What was a conversion experience? How does

the emotionalism of this passage relate to enlightened

thinkers’ fascination with the passions and the workings

of human reason?

RELIGION AND THE CHURCHES 535


NOTES

1. Quoted in Paul Hazard, The European Mind, 1680--1715 (New

York, 1963), pp. 304--305.

2. Quoted in Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (Cambridge,

1995), p. 67.

3. Quoted in Hazard, The European Mind, p. 12.

4. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (New

York, 1964), pp. 89--90.

5. Baron Paul d’Holbach, Common Sense, as quoted in Frank E.

Manuel, ed., The Enlightenment (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1965),

p. 62.

6. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse on Inequality, trans. Maurice

Cranston (Harmondsworth, England, 1984), p. 109.


TIMELINE

France

Germany

1700 17401720 1760 1780 1800

England

Work of Watteau

Diderot, Encyclopedia

Montesquieu,The Spirit of the Laws

Voltaire, Candide

Rousseau, The Social Contract, Émile

Wollstonecraft,Vindication of theRights of Woman

Smith, The Wealthof Nations

Bach, Mass in B Minor

Handel, Messiah

Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro

Haydn,The Creation

CONCLUSION

The eighteenth was a century of change but also of tradition.Highly influenced by the new worldview created by theScientific Revolution and especially the ideas of Locke andNewton, the philosophes hoped that they could create a newsociety by using reason to discover the natural laws thatgoverned it. Like the Christian humanists of the fifteenthand sixteenth centuries, they believed that education couldcreate better human beings and a better human society. Byattacking traditional religion as the enemy and creating anew ‘‘science of man’’ in economics, politics, justice, andeducation, the philosophes laid the foundation for a modernworldview based on rationalism and secularism.

But despite the secular thought and rational ideas thatbegan to pervade the mental world of the ruling elites,most people in eighteenth-century Europe still lived byseemingly eternal verities and practices—God, religiousworship, and farming. The most brilliant architecture andmusic of the age were religious. And yet the forces ofsecularization were too strong to stop. In the midst ofintellectual change, economic, political, and social trans-formations of great purport were taking shape and wouldlead to both political and social upheavals before thecentury’s end.



7. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, trans. Maurice

Cranston (Harmondsworth, England, 1968), p. 141.

8. Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, in Moira Ferguson,

ed., First Feminists: British Women Writers, 1578--1799 (Bloo-

mington, Ind., 1985), p. 190.

9. Mary Astell, Some Reflections upon Marriage, in ibid., p. 193.

10. Kenneth Clark, Civilization (New York, 1969), p. 231.

11. Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV, trans. Martyn P. Pollack (New

York, 1961), p. 1.

12. Cesare Beccaria, An Essay on Crimes and Punishments, trans.

E. D. Ingraham (Philadelphia, 1819), pp. 59--60.

13. Quoted in Rene Sand, The Advance to Social Medicine (London,

1952), pp. 86--87.

14. Quoted in Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe

(New York, 1978), p. 179.

15. Quoted in ibid., p. 186.

16. Quoted in C. A. Macartney, The Habsburg and Hohenzollern

Dynasties in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (New

York, 1970), p. 157.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Eighteenth-Century Europe Surveys of eighteenth-century

Europe include I. Woloch, Eighteenth-Century Europe (New York,

1986); M. S. Anderson, Europe in the Eighteenth Century, 4th ed.

(London, 2000); R. Birn, Crisis, Absolutism, Revolution: Europe,

1648--1789, 3d ed. (Fort Worth, Tex., 2005); and T. C. W. Blanning,

ed., The Eighteenth Century: Europe, 1689--1815 (Oxford, 2000).

The Enlightenment Good introductions to the

Enlightenment can be found in U. Im Hof, The Enlightenment

(Oxford, 1994); D. Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural

History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994); and

D. Outram, The Enlightenment, 2d ed. (Cambridge, 2005). A more

detailed synthesis can be found in P. Gay, The Enlightenment: An

Interpretation, 2 vols. (New York, 1966--69). See also P. H. Reill

and E. J. Wilson, eds., Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, rev. ed.

(New York, 2004); the beautifully illustrated work by D. Outram,

Panorama of the Enlightenment (Los Angeles, 2006); and

M. Fitzpatrick et al., The Enlightenment World (New York, 2004).

On the social history of the Enlightenment, see T. Munck, The

Enlightenment: A Comparative Social History, 1721--1794 (London,

2000). Also of value is J. W. Yolton, ed., The Blackwell Companion

to the Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass., 1995). Studies of the

major Enlightenment intellectuals include J. Sklar, Montesquieu

(Oxford, 1987); R. Pearson, Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of

Freedom (New York, 2005); P. N. Furbank, Diderot: A Critical

Biography (New York, 1992); and L. Damrosch, Jean-Jacques

Rousseau: Restless Genius (Boston, 2005). On women in the

eighteenth century, see N. Z. Davis and A. Farge, eds., A History

of Women: Renaissance and Enlightenment Paradoxes (Cambridge,

Mass., 1993); C. Lougee, Le Paradis des Femmes: Women, Salons,

and Social Stratification (Princeton, N.J., 1976); O. Hufton, The

Prospect Before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe,

1500--1800 (New York, 1998); and M. E. Wiesner-Hanks, Women

and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2000).

Culture and Society Two general surveys on the arts are

E. Gesine and J. F. Walther, Rococo (New York, 2007), and D. Irwin,

Neoclassicism (London, 1997). On the eighteenth-century novel, see

G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in

the Eighteenth-Century English Novel (Chicago, 1992). On Gibbon,

see W. B. Carnuchan, Gibbon’s Solitude: The Inward World of the

Historian (London, 1987). On the growth of literacy, see R. A.

Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe: Culture and Education,

1500--1800 (New York, 1988). Different facets of crime and

punishment are examined in the important works by M. Foucault,

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1977), and

J. Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof (Chicago, 1977). On the

medical profession, see A. Cunningham and R. French, eds., The

Medical Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1990).

The impact of the Enlightenment on modern views of the body can be

examined in R. Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason (New York, 2004).

Popular Culture Important studies on popular culture

include P. Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New

York, 1978); J. Mullan, ed., Eighteenth-Century Popular Culture

(Oxford, 2000); and R. Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and

Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York, 1984).

Eighteenth-Century Religious History A good

introduction to the religious history of the eighteenth century can

be found in G. R. Cragg, The Church and the Age of Reason,

1648--1789, rev. ed. (London, 1990). The problem of religious

toleration is examined in J. I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of

Mercantilism, 1550--1750, 2d ed. (New York, 1989). On Pietism, see

R. Gawthorp, Pietism and the Making of Eighteenth-Century

Prussia (New York, 1993). On John Wesley, see H. Rack,

Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism,

3d ed. (New York, 2002).

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CONCLUSION 537


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