Religion and Class
Religion and Class
Social and economic class was a crucial mediator of religious life in the early modern era. Peasants and other working-class individuals in rural and urban areas experienced religion as a structure that dictated much of their lives, and the formal Church as a governing institution in lock-step with the government. Poorer people found new religious movements, such as Protestantism and Jansenism, to be incredibly appealing due to their emphasis on individual religious experience and the decreased importance of hierarchical power structures like those of the Catholic Church. For the wealthy and powerful, religion was a key factor in the imposition and staying power of other institutions, as political organizations were still largely allied with a given religious group. The religious affiliations of individual rulers and nations changed frequently, and religious differences often undergirded the political and social conflicts that defined early modern Europe. Individual rulers (such as Henry VIII, and many other monarchs of England) would sometimes completely change the religion in place for personal convenience. Other powerful individuals, like the Medici family, gained power and flexibility in the form of appreciation from the Church for their political position and for the wide range of religious art they commissioned. Emerging religious movements provided individuals with new ways to understand and interact with the world around them, and changes in the religious sphere had massive impacts on every aspect of individuals’ lives.
Jansenism was a movement within French Catholicism that criticized the structure of the French Catholic Church and encouraged new ways of looking at church authority and personal spirituality. Jansenists took issue with the Catholic clergy’s focus on money, hierarchy, and proving one’s faith outwardly, and instead chose to emphasize “spiritual regeneration, ethical earnestness, and deep piety” (Wiesner-Hanks, 437). Founder Cornelius Jansen, a bishop from the Spanish Netherlands, addressed his book Augustinus to people of all classes, advocating for adherence to strict moral principles, and holiness-based intense individual experiences. Jansenists’ focus on individual religious study de-emphasized the role of confession and communion and therefore the clergy's authority. Jansenism was one of multiple European piety movements whose individualistic nature and decreased emphasis on a hierarchical liturgical made religion more accessible for middle and lower-class people (Wiesner-Hanks, 470).
In 1779, German philosopher and playwright Gotthold Lessing wrote Nathan the Wise, a play deeply concerned with bringing Enlightenment values, particularly concerning religion, to the masses. Plays and novels were important ways for thinkers to communicate ideas to a wider audience, which accompanied the rise of the public sphere during the Enlightenment. Lessing’s work appealed to a broad audience, as it dealt with “realistic, middle-class people, rather than ancient kings or mythical heroes” (Wiesner-Hanks, 411). Nathan the Wise provided an Enlightened perspective on the role of reason within religion and toleration, as its plot argued that the “moral values and basic teachings” of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are more similar than different (Wiesner-Hanks, 411). The main character was heavily inspired by Lessing’s friend Moses Mendelssohn, another philosopher who highlighted reason’s importance to understanding the world and led the Haskalah movement to modernize and “enlighten” the Jewish community (Wiesner-Hanks, 403). Nathan the Wise encapsulated the emerging Enlightenment values of reason’s capacity for understanding and the importance of religious tolerance.
The Divine Right of Kings was the idea that the sovereignty of Kings came from God Himself. The power of kings was subject to natural and religious laws, but leaders like Louis XIV established their power through increased taxes and expanded their control of spheres of life which had “previously been the province of the church, the family, or local organizations” (Wiesner-Hanks, 339). Louis himself described the sovereign as one whose “brilliance spreads like wildfire into foreign lands,” and felt that Scripture itself evidenced the God-granted power of the King over his state: “Heaven has made the [Kings] sovereign trustees of the public fortune” (Louis XIV, 165, 136). Henri de Gissey’s reproduction of Louis XIV’s costumed appearance as Apollo in the 1653 royal ballet Le Ballet de la Nuit marked the beginning of Louis’ identification as “The Sun King,” an honorific which directly linked the power of the King to his pseudo-divine status.
The Encyclopédie was a French encyclopedia that used enlightenment theories and reason to explain natural law as well as theology. Scientific writings in the vernacular were part of the emerging public sphere, as they allowed the lower classes, marginalized groups, and women to participate in intellectual conversations (Wiesner-Hanks, 37). In this engraving from the Encyclopédie, the French artist Charles-Nicolas Cochin portrays Truth as a woman in a sheer robe displaying her nude figure framed by clouds, columns, and brilliant light. The two women gently removing the robe are Reason and Philosophy, who quite literally “discover” truth. Cochin’s imagery comes from Deism, the philosophy that God created humanity to have reason and seek Truth but was mostly absent after its conception. Deists believed in a clockwork God who, after establishing “physical and moral laws in creating the universe,... largely left it alone,” which elevated the pursuit of Truth and understanding God’s law to a spiritual practice (Wiesner-Hanks, 403). The illustration depicts reason and philosophy as devices to uncover an idolized Truth, just as enlightenment thinkers were doing in reality.
Bibliography
Work on this page credited to Chris O'Mara, Kiera Block, Julia Tassava, and Tabitha Jones. See complete Bibliography for all sources used in the Religion exhibit.