Religion and Society at the Dawn of Modern Europe

Christianity Transformed, 1750-1850

Rudolf Schlögl, Helen Imhoff, Brian Cowan, Beat Kümin

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350099593
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This book reveals how, in confrontation with secularity, various new forms of Christianity evolved during the time of Europe's crisis of modernisation. Rudolf Schlögl provides a comprehensive overview of the development of religious institutions and piety in Protestant and Catholic Europe between 1750 and 1850; at the same time, he offers a detailed exposition of contemporary philosophical, theological and socio-theoretical thought on the nature and function of religion. This allows us to understand the importance of religion in the self-defining of European society during a period of great change and upheaval. Religion and Society at the Dawn of Modern Europe is a pivotal work – translated into English here for the first time – for all scholars and students of European society in the 18th and 19th centuries.

1

Christianity in the ancien régime

The church was an indispensible means of displaying and legitimizing royal power in eighteenth-century Europe. Empress Maria Theresa (1740–80), for example, placed particular emphasis on cultivating the concept of pietas Austriaca, the particular Catholic piety of the House of Habsburg, which had been developed by her predecessors since the seventeenth century. The Vienna court calendar shows that in 1738 alone she attended solemn mass in Vienna and the surrounding area fifty-eight times and was present at fifteen processions, turning them into state occasions. She made two pilgrimages*, arranged seven visits of the court to the Marian column and finally arranged two fraternity feasts and two other feasts for the ladies of the Order of the Star Cross. Her display of piety was matched by the French king, Louis XVI (1774–93), the ‘Most Christian Majesty’. During his coronation on 11 June 1775 in the cathedral of Reims, he was anointed with oil from the Holy Ampoule, brought into the cathedral by the Abbot of Saint Rémy with a magnificent entourage. Before this, Louis had taken the coronation oath, swearing to protect the church, to safeguard its privileges and rights, and to persecute those it proclaimed as heretics. Together with the other bishops and archbishops of the Gallican Church, the Archbishop of Reims also presented him with the sword, part of the royal insignia. This was a sign of his secular power, identifying Louis as the source of the law in his kingdom. Right down to the smallest detail, the coronation ritual expressed the idea that royal rule was entirely divine in origin, thus tying the monarch closely to the church and its priests. Church and monarchy supported each other, and they were to remain bound to one another through the sanctified person of the king. During the solemn mass which followed the coronation, the king therefore received both wine and bread during Communion; that is to say, he received the sacrament in the same way as the clergy.¹

Even Frederick II, who placed more importance on Enlightenment philosophy than on religious faith, insisted on his episcopal rank when dealing with his consistories* and occasionally even styled himself vicarius Christi. He made use of the idea that this gave him the power to bind and release in order to claim authority especially regarding marriage law. There was a strong degree of irony to this, which was based on the awareness that, with state rule now seeking to derive its legitimacy through natural law, the role which religion played in shaping society, along with religion’s consequences for the social community, should also be determined by and judged on the basis of that same natural law, which automatically meant on the basis of the needs of the state as well.

In eighteenth-century France, lawyers were also busy dismantling the remnants of medieval social order. The sacre in Reims was declared to be nothing but an edifying spectacle for the people, which no longer reflected the real foundations of royal power. Writing about Louis XVI, the French chancellor d’Aguesseau claimed that the coronation ceremony merely served as a reminder that the king should act in accordance with the Ten Commandments when carrying out his duties as a ruler. Diderot’s Encyclopédie stated that the king’s claim to power derived solely from his descent, as specified in Salic law. Furthermore, the function of the impressive display at the king’s coronation was to educate the people and sanctify the king as a person so no one might seek to kill him later. Such a rationalization of the king’s sacral aura also influenced royal practice. Louis XV (1715–74) had already refrained from healing scrofula, and, according to the sources, Louis XVI made only one attempt to prove the magical and religious power of his sacral kingship in this way. Joseph II also reinterpreted his role as ruler: he considerably reduced the number of churches he visited and cut back his attendance at public church services by two-thirds.²

These developments were not simply related to the question of how secular power derived its legitimacy. Instead, they reflected the fact that in a pre-modern society, religion, which shared the same feudal structures as the secular world, was not only closely connected to secular state rule but also competed with it. By the second third of the eighteenth century, the religious sphere, ruled by the church, and the sphere of secular power had diverged significantly. As a result, state power, which was becoming increasingly consolidated, no longer hesitated to intervene in church affairs and, if necessary, to limit the church’s influence. Conversely, religion needed to find a new place for itself within society. Increasingly, it came to be seen as a social space whose aims and inner logic were no longer accepted without question by the rest of society.

Symbiotic competition: Pre-modern ecclesiastical and secular rule in Europe

Inevitably, this transformation was a complicated and contradictory process, which involved all levels of social reality, from direct interactions between individuals to questions concerning the organization of institutions. The institutional forms of religion had always clearly reflected the fact that it was part of a society that was organized hierarchically by estates and that was essentially agrarian but included growing enclaves of commercial production and trade. In this context, the only way in which power could be established on a permanent basis was by monopolizing land ownership, linking this ownership with direct authority over people. In this way, the society of pre-Revolutionary Europe had evolved from the early medieval period, developing into a society with an aristocratic hierarchy. From the beginning of the modern period onwards, structural patterns relating to function increasingly gained importance. As a result, by the last third of the eighteenth century, the abolition of noble privileges was overdue and only seemed to be a matter of time. This had a fundamental effect on aristocratic, land-owning churches.

Of course, the historical dynamics of the relationship between secular and religious worlds in the pre-modern period were determined both by the ways in which the two differed and stood in opposition to one another and by the aspects in which they were identical. Latin Christianity continued to be influenced by the Jewish and Early Christian idea of an entirely transcendent god who no longer inhabited the world he had created. Latin Christianity could therefore present itself as being the complete opposite of this life and this world’s order, and it could thus also serve as a grounding for criticism of the world and those who ruled and shaped it. By distinguishing between a holy and a secular sphere, and by also making this distinction within the secular world, Christianity contributed to the ‘disenchantment of the world’. Moreover, for the history of Europe (as for the development of Christianity itself) it was significant that the immortal soul of man became the point at which man was connected to this one God, who observed the world. Thus, through their souls, every single person was granted a share in and access to the divine. Mankind had access to transcendence, as symbolized by Jesus, who was both man and god. In a secular context, this idea manifested itself in European history as a process of individualization and formed the basis for the inalienable rights of man, whereas, from a religious point of view, the duality of God and the divine soul meant that man was responsible for his salvation. The presence of sin in the world raised the question of why God allowed evil to occur and how one could be sure about the salvation of one’s soul, problems which have influenced the history of theology and piety in European Christianity right into modern times.

The Roman Empire shaped the non-spiritual aspects of Latin Christianity. The result was a legally based, hierarchical church, which spread throughout the entire Empire, and which, on the other hand, continued to practise its faith as a parish-based church just as it had in the early days of Christianity. Both these aspects connected the church to the social world: the hierarchy of bishops provided a link to the ruling classes and the parishes connected the church with the lives of those that were subject to those rulers.

The Roman church exercised its power to rule based on laws and on a hierarchical structure; moreover, it had access to writing, preserved and transmitted in the monasteries. This meant that, initially, its organizational power structures were clearly superior to the fragile kinship- and follower-based alliances of the Early Middle Ages, whose power was grounded in violence and force. In 1139, the Second Lateran Council drew a clear line between the church and early medieval kinship structures by introducing compulsory celibacy for major orders. The church had received considerable amounts of property through donations and this was to be prevented from circulating within kinship groups. The church’s hierarchy resulted in a network of decision-making processes that spanned all of Europe, with decisions based on the Codex Juris Canonici, itself in turn based on Roman law. The church’s emphasis on writing meant that it came to dominate society’s knowledge and memory, that is to say, its time.³

The church’s property fell into four main groups. There was monastic property, which provided the material foundation for the many monastic communities, and there were benefices*, which provided a living for ecclesiastical office holders from the curate to the bishops and popes. Furthermore, donations were made by lay people or by clerics themselves, which were used for a variety of purposes, depending on the wishes of the donor. The profits from a donation might go towards paying for benefices as well as making up regular alms donations or paying for masses for ‘poor souls’ in purgatory. Finally, the church had maintenance funds, which were usually administered by laymen and which mainly served to ensure the upkeep of the church’s buildings within a parish.

This was the basis of temporal authority and estates on which the Roman church had constructed a pyramid-like clerical hierarchy; the members of this hierarchy carried out the religious rituals, administered the sacraments and preached the word of God, and thus they became the mediators between God and the laity. In this way, the clergy also ruled the laity spiritually, or at least claimed the right to do so. In practice, then, the clergy’s mediating role manifested itself in a clerical hierarchy, the different levels of which worked together according to a set of laws. At its centre, the Pope as vicarius Dei held authority over all the clergy (potestas jurisdictionis), had the final say in administrative matters and claimed a comprehensive right to judge all spiritual and secular matters of the church (plenitudo potestas). The Pope’s judiciary and administrative powers were undisputed, but the bishops held the same power to ordain and administered both the spiritual and temporal instruments of power in the ecclesiastical provinces, each made up of several bishoprics. The priests, who were responsible for pastoral work and the administration of the sacraments, answered to the bishop, as the Council of Trent (1545–63) had repeatedly stressed. The Pope and the bishop had several other office holders and authorities at their disposal in order to help them in the duties of their office – for the Roman Curia, there was an administrative body with fixed structures, which from an early date distinguished between chancery (cancellaria apostolica), financial authority (camera apostolica), and judicial and disciplinary authority. From the High Middle Ages onwards, the bishops answered to a cathedral chapter of canons who were holders of benefices; they claimed the right to elect bishops, whose electoral capitulations required them to pledge that they would represent their own and the church’s interests. Archdeacons ensured that the parish clergy obeyed the bishops, they dispensed justice and carried out visitations. Bishops sought to transfer their judicial and disciplinary powers as well as other administrative tasks to a judicial vicar or vicar-general as early as the Late Middle Ages. Unlike the archdeacon, whose powers of office were linked to the benefices he received as a member of the cathedral chapter, judicial vicars and vicars-general acted as deputies of the bishop, and they could therefore be selected on the basis of ability and suitability and could also be removed from office. In order to form a closer link with the parish clergy, the dioceses were divided into deaneries. These were led by a dean who came from the parish clergy and who was responsible for supervising the clergy and reporting to the bishop. The various monastic orders did not fit into the episcopal hierarchy of supervision and administration. Monasteries and the convents of the mendicant orders were organized into provinces with superiors and, in this way, they were subject directly or indirectly to the Pope. For this reason, they gained wide-ranging or complete exemption from episcopal authority, as in the case of the mendicant and knightly orders. This led to serious problems with regard to pastoral care by bishops and its organization.⁴

This structure, which extended across all of Europe, was held together by the church-specific law code of the Codex Juris Canonici and by the fact that the clergy had managed to distinguish themselves as a separate group, which reserved the right to carry out ritual practices in the church and which represented the first estate in society, with a number of privileges and, in the ideal case, a distinct way of life. Tonsure, celibacy and ordination – with four minor and three major orders – ensured that this group was clearly marked off from the rest of society. Access to this group was remarkably open – only those who were illegitimate or who had serious physical disabilities were barred from admission. However, there were certain prerequisites: members had to enter of their own free will; they had to prove their resolve, through an oath and a solemn vow, to take their assigned place in the hierarchy and obey their superiors; and they had to be willing and able to acquire an education. The prerequisites for entering offices within the hierarchy were also determined by spiritual qualification (ordination) and suitability (education). Of course, life in general and the power relations of pre-Revolutionary European agrarian society placed significant limitations on a person’s chances of joining the clergy in that these prerequisites presented an almost insurmountable obstacle to the rural lower classes, in particular, but not to the nobility, whose members sought to obtain the higher offices and benefices for themselves. The frequently stark discrepancy between a candidate’s actual qualifications and what was, theoretically, required could be resolved by a dispensation from Rome. Fees were payable for such dispensations, and so it was mainly the nobility who could afford to obtain them. In many cases, however, even a dispensation was not enough to clear the way to higher ordination – the office of auxiliary bishop, which became more common from the Late Middle Ages onwards, is mainly a result of this circumstance. Nevertheless, through its admission principles, the church as an organization did open up career paths and thus became an important enabler of social mobility. The church’s intention to differentiate itself from the social structures of society and designate its own social space is indicated by the rejection of nepotism and a strict prohibition on taking payment for dispensing services relating to its temporal or spiritual authority, known as simony. On the other hand, these prohibitions also indicate how difficult this was.⁵

For this reason, it was important, both for the clergy and the laity, that the church remained a clearly delimited legal sphere. Spiritual rule also manifested itself as the right to make judgements, including ones that affected secular matters, and this was put into practice through a judicial structure with multiple levels. With regard to the laity, the church claimed the right to adjudicate in matters of marriage law and areas of property law if the problem related to marriage, usury or benefices. All offences against the faith (heresy, apostasy) as well as perjury and offences against the order of the sexes (adultery, bigamy, rape) were, of course, brought before ecclesiastical courts. The clergy were subject to the church courts in all matters. Civil proceedings before ecclesiastical courts were always brought in writing. In criminal cases, a distinction was made between cases that required an accuser and cases of inquiry, which could be initiated by the church authorities ex officio if there was sufficient grounds for believing an offence had been committed. Written proceedings and the process of inquiry proved to be important and influential innovations in the history of European legal organization and the power structures. While the church did not hand out corporal or capital punishment and turned serious criminals over to the brachium saeculare – the secular arm – the ecclesiastical courts represented instruments of authority, which placed noticeable restrictions on secular rule.⁶

Spiritual and secular existed in a kind of symbiotic competition, which was manifested in the church’s secular authority and which derived its dynamic from them. The distinction between spiritualities and temporalities on a material level and the distinction between clergy and laity on the level of personnel never constituted more than a superficial compromise that hid the contradiction underlying it but could not serve to resolve the tensions that existed in the relationship between the church and the secular world. Because the church held property, it wielded significant secular power in addition to its spiritual claims of sovereignty. In this way, the church became a competitor to the slowly emerging state of pre-modern Europe. Conversely, secular rule extended into the church’s sphere through its secular estates.

The church’s right to tithes, which it had held since the Middle Ages, meant that it had an almost universal right to tax the laity. Occasionally, there were also other forms of indirect taxation. The church not only benefited from the economic profits that its manorial rights provided, but it also, as a rule, exercised the associated judicial rights. However, because the church declared that it did not wield the secular sword, its property was often administered by a secular reeve. Bishops, monasteries and the holders of ecclesiastical benefices often also had these rights by way of purchase, donation and occasionally usurpation. If this property was manorial property, it was, then, no different from the property of the nobility. The special conditions regarding constitutional law in the feudally structured Holy Roman Empire even meant that church property, if it was a direct fief from the king, could serve as the basis for the authority of territorial princes. In these cases, a distinction was made between the direct ecclesiastical revenue granted to the church official in question (mensa) and the accompanying imperial fiefdoms. However, as bishops, abbots and prelates of the Imperial Church, these church officials with their territorial prince-bishoprics and imperial abbeys participated directly in the state-building process and in this regard were equal to the secular princes.⁷

Pope Gregory VII had sought to separate church property and ecclesiastical offices from the influence of secular rule in the Investiture Controversy, but this had failed. The church’s worldly property and goods continued to mean that its organization could not be entirely autonomous because all ecclesiastical positions were dependent on benefices. Lay people and secular rulers could, therefore, exert significant influence on the church by allocating benefices. Consequently, both sides were willing to enter into disputes. As a result of the compromises that resolved the Investiture Controversy, cathedral chapters now elected the bishop, an office which was particularly significant from the point of view of the princes. The relevant archbishop and the Pope invested the newly elected bishop in his spiritual office, but the king provided him with the corresponding secular assets. The church generally reserved the right to make the final decision when it came to granting offices and benefices, but the laity could influence the process if they held the right of patronage* for a particular position. They suggested a candidate in a process known as presentation, and this candidate was usually confirmed by the collator of the post, usually the bishop. The bishop then also inducted the candidate into his new position (investiture). Lay patronage was important with regard to parish priests, in particular.⁸

The way in which the Investiture Controversy played out showed that secular rulership had not yet gained much organized structure but was determined to shape events. In the Late Middle Ages, however, the authority of princes slowly began to be consolidated into states, and t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• Introduction: Religion as a System within Society
• 1 Christianity in the ancien régime
• 2 Christianity and civil society
• 3 Christianity in modern society
• 4 Religion as culture
• 5 Secularization: A valid concept?
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Imprint