Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T23:49:48.637Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

5 - From Christian Friendship to Secular Sentimentality: Enlightenment Re-evaluations

Barbara Caine
Affiliation:
Monash University, Australia
Get access

Summary

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries brought significant shifts in the way people thought and talked about friendship, and to some extent in the ways they experienced it. As in earlier periods, the political, economic and social context strongly shaped trends even in such an apparently personal relationship as friendship. The late sixteenth century had seen bitter civil wars over religion across Europe, after the Reformation, and sectarian tensions remained high through the seventeenth century. Many historians have linked these religious wars to the development of new structures of government, strong monarchies that little by little brought the great aristocratic families under their control and that in some cases also challenged the power of the Church. Many of the city republics of Italy, Germany and the Low Countries were taken over by princely dynasties, while increasingly powerful monarchies developed in Sweden, Spain, central Europe and England, then in France and later Prussia, dominating Europe both economically and militarily.

The courts of these rulers became the new focus of political and cultural life, initially restricted to a very small aristocratic elite. The new monarchies, building on Renaissance models, understood the symbolic power of cultural and scientific patronage, founding scientific academies and actively encouraging the arts. This had unanticipated consequences.

Type
Chapter
Information
Friendship
A History
, pp. 165 - 214
Publisher: Acumen Publishing
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×