The Enlightenment and religion : the myths of modernity / S.J. Barnett.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barnett, S. J., 1960-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Church history.

Europe--Church history--18th century.

Europe.

Enlightenment.

Deism.

Physical Description:

vii, 244 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Manchester, UK ; New York : Manchester University Press ; New York : Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, [2003]

Summary:

This book offers a critical survey of religious change and its causes in eighteenth-century Europe, and constitutes a radical challenge to the accepted views in traditional Enlightenment studies. Focusing on Enlightenment Italy, France and England, it illustrates how the canonical view of eighteenth-century religious change has in reality been constructed upon scant evidence and assumption, in particular the idea that the thought of the enlightened led to modernity. For, despite a lack of evidence, one of the fundamental assumptions of Enlightenment studies has been the assertion that there was a vibrant deist movement that formed the 'intellectual solvent' of the eighteenth century. The central claim of this book is that the immense ideological appeal of the traditional birth-of-modernity myth has meant that the actual lack of deists has been glossed over, and a quite misleading historical view has become entrenched. As a consequence more traditional forces for religious change have been given little or no attention. The book also raises hitherto neglected but fundamental methodological issues relating to the study of the eighteenth century and the ability of 'interested' contemporaries to mislead posterity. Given the current pervasive topicality of notions of modernity and postmodernity in academia, this book advances a very important discussion indeed, and will be essential reading for all students studying the period.

Contents:

Introduction: The Enlightenment and modernity 1

1 The myth of Enlightenment deism 11

The myth of the deist movement 11

The deism myth and modern historians 22

The myth and the historical record 30

The myth and the construction of modernity 37

2 Historians, religion and the historical record 45

The origins of Enlightenment anticlericalism 45

John Toland, Pierre Bayle and the problem of influence 52

Enlightenment from within or without Christianity? 57

The elite and the written record 62

Scaremongering, public opinion and the construction of the deism scare 68

3 The English deist movement: a case study in the construction of a myth 81

Post-Restoration context 81

Deists and Dissent confused 87

John Toland and Christianity not Mysterious 94

Early modern politico-religious propagandists and modern historians 102

Dissent and Englightenment 121

4 France: the revolt of democratic Christianity and the rise of public opinion 130

Bourbons, Huguenots and Jansenists 131

The Nouvelles ecclesiastiques and Bourbon miscalculation 136

The revolt of the 1750s 144

Popular victory against the Jesuits and the call for toleration 150

The final decline of the absolutist dream 159

5 Italy: Roman 'tyranny' and radical Catholic opposition 168

Jansenism and Catholic Englightenment 168

Anti-curial polemic and its context 171

Regalism and Jansenism 177

The temporal imperative: Roman theology and politics fused 182

Radical Jansenism 1770s-1790s 189

6 The 'public sphere' and the hidden life of ideas 201

The hidden life of ideas 201

The 'public sphere' and the top-down model of intellectual change 204

Anachronism and toleration 215

Appendix Indicative bibliography of Protestant thought on natural religion 222.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-237) and index.

ISBN:

0719067405

0719067413

OCLC:

52749990