Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T02:58:33.234Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter XI - RELIGION AND SECULARISATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Peter Burke
Edited by
Peter Burke
Get access

Summary

At first sight it all seems quite simple and obvious. Medieval man lived in a predominantly religious culture, but we live in a predominantly secular one, and the process of the secularisation of European culture took place, for the most part, in the period covered by this volume. The Renaissance, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment were all milestones on the road to a secular culture and society, and the secularisation process accelerated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One theological position after another was made untenable by repeated attacks and was abandoned for another, further behind the lines, in the shrinking territory of the sacred. Belief in the supernatural was gradually replaced by a more rational, scientific out-look, a process summed up by the sociologist Max Weber as ‘the disenchantment of the world’ (Die Entzauberung der Welt). The clergy lost in turn their monopoly of learning, their power to persecute the unorthodox, and their influence on the policy of governments.

The fundamental change of attitude between the sixteenth century and the twentieth may be summed up in two quotations. In his General History of the Indies (1552), Francisco López de Gómara described the discovery of America as ‘The greatest event since the creation of the world (excluding the incarnation and death of Him who created it).’ But in 1969, when men first landed on the moon, Richard Nixon spoke quite simply of ‘the greatest week in the history of the world since the creation’.

Type
Chapter
Information
The New Cambridge Modern History , pp. 293 - 317
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1979

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.)

References

Acomb, E., The French Laic Laws (New York, 1941)Google Scholar
Bax, E. B., The Religion of Socialism (London, 1887)Google Scholar
Bennett, G. V., ‘Conflict in the Church’, in Holmes, G. (ed.), Britain after the Glorious Revolution (London, 1969).Google Scholar
Bergström, I., Dutch Still-Life Painting in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1956).Google Scholar
Blumernberg, H., Die Legitimität der Neuzeit (Frankfurt, 1966), ch. I.Google Scholar
Bouchard, G., Le Village Immobile: Sennely-en-Sologne au XVIIIe Siècle (Paris, 1972)Google Scholar
Boulard, F., An Introduction to Religious Sociology (Eng. trans., London, 1960)Google Scholar
Bouwsma, W. J., ‘The Secularisation of Society in the Seventeenth Century’, in Thirteenth International Congress of Historical Sciences, Proceedings (Moscow, 1970).Google Scholar
Bras, G. Le, Études de Sociologie Religieuse, vol. I (Paris, 1955).Google Scholar
Budd, S., Varieties of Unbelief (London, 1977).Google Scholar
Capp, B. S., The Fifth Monarchy Men (London, 1972)Google Scholar
Chadwick, O., The Secularisation of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1975).Google Scholar
Charlton, D. G., Secular Religions in France 1815–1870 (Oxford, 1963)Google Scholar
Cohn, N., The Pursuit of the Millennium, third edition (London, 1970)Google Scholar
Davis, N. Z., ‘Some Tasks and Themes in the Study of Popular Religion’, in Trinkaus, C. and Oberman, H. (eds.), The Pursuit of Holiness (Leiden, 1974).Google Scholar
Delumeau, J., Catholicism from Luther to Voltaire (London, 1977).Google Scholar
Dickens, A. G., The German Nation and Martin Luther (London, 1974), chs. 7–8Google Scholar
Dijksterhuis, E. J., The Mechanisation of the World Picture (1950: Eng. trans., Oxford, 1961)Google Scholar
Durkheim, É., The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912: New York, 1961 edition)Google Scholar
Edwards, T., Gangraena (London, 1646)Google Scholar
Elliott, J. H., The Old World and the New (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar
Emerson, R. L., ‘Deism’, in Wiener, P. (ed.), Dictionary of the History of Ideas (4 volumes, New York, 1973)Google Scholar
Everitt, A., ‘Nonconformity in Country Parishes’, in Agricultural History Review, 18, 1970, SupplementGoogle Scholar
Forster, L., ‘Lipsius and Renaissance Neostoicism’, in Stephens, A. et al. (eds.), Festschrift for R. Farrell (Bern, 1977).Google Scholar
Galpern, N., The Religions of the People in Sixteenth-Century Champagne (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), chs. 2–3.Google Scholar
Gay, P., The Enlightenment: an Interpretation (2 volumes, London, 1967–70)Google Scholar
Gilbert, A. D., Religion and Society in Industrial England (London, 1976)Google Scholar
Gillispie, C. G., Genesis and Geology (Cambridge, Mass., 1951)Google Scholar
Gouldner, A., The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (London, 1971).Google Scholar
Groethuysen, B., The Bourgeois (1927–30: abridged Eng. trans., London, 1968).Google Scholar
Hampson, N., The Enlightenment (Harmondsworth, 1968)Google Scholar
Hazard, P., The European Mind 1680–1715 (1935: Eng. trans., London, 1953), part 2Google Scholar
Hazard, P., European Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1946: Eng. trans., London, 1954), part IGoogle Scholar
Hill, C., The World Turned Upside Down (London, 1972), esp. chs. 3 and 5.Google Scholar
Hill, C., ‘Plebeian Irreligion in Seventeenth-Century England’, in Kossok, M. (ed.), Studien über die Revolution, second edition (Berlin, 1971)Google Scholar
Hill, C., ‘Puritans and the Dark Corners of the Land’ in his Change and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1974).Google Scholar
Horton, R., ‘African Traditional Thought and Western Science’, in Marwick, M. (ed.), Witchcraft and Sorcery (Harmondsworth, 1970)Google Scholar
Howard, D., The Three Temptations (New York, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Illich, I., Deschooling Society (London, 1971)Google Scholar
Inglis, K. S., ‘Patterns of Religious Worship in 1851’ in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, II, 1960Google Scholar
Inglis, K. S., Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England (London, 1963)Google Scholar
Jung, C. G., ‘Psychotherapists or the Clergy’, in his Modern Man in Search of a Soul (London, 1933)Google Scholar
Kantorowicz, E. H., The King's Two Bodies (Princeton, 1957)Google Scholar
Koenigsberger, H. G., ‘Music and Religion in Modern European History’, in Elliott, J. and Koenigsberger, H. G. (eds.), The Diversity of History (London, 1970).Google Scholar
Kristeller, P. O., Renaissance Thought (New York, 1961)Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, C., Totemism (1962: Eng. trans., Boston, 1963).Google Scholar
Löwith, K., Meaning in History (Chicago, 1949), ch. 2Google Scholar
Lübbe, H., Säkularisierung (Munich, 1965)Google Scholar
Laslett, P., The World We have Lost, second edition (London, 1971)Google Scholar
Lifton, R. J., ‘Protean Man’ in Wolan, B. B. (ed.), The Psychoanalytic Interpretation of History (New York and London, 1971).Google Scholar
Luckmann, T., The Invisible Religion (London, 1967).Google Scholar
Mailer, N., A Fire on the Moon (London, 1970).Google Scholar
Mandrou, R., De la Culture Populaire aux XVIIe et XVIIIe Siècles: la Bibliothèque Bleue de Troyes (Paris, 1964)Google Scholar
Manuel, F., The Prophets of Paris, second edition (New York, 1965), chs, 1–2.Google Scholar
Manzi, P., Cronistoria di un Monumento: Giordano Bruno in Campo de'Fiori (Nola, 1963).Google Scholar
Marcilhacy, C., Le Diocèse d'Orléans au Milieu du XIXe Siècle (Paris, 1964)Google Scholar
Martin, D., The Religious and the Secular (London, 1969).Google Scholar
Martin, J. R., Baroque (London, 1977), ch. 4Google Scholar
McLeod, H., Class and Religion in the late Victorian City (London, 1974).Google Scholar
McManners, J., The French Revolution and the Church (London, 1969).Google Scholar
McManners, J., Church and State in France, 1870–1914 (London, 1972)Google Scholar
Moeller, B., ‘Religious Life in Germany on the Eve of the Reformation’, in Strauss, G. (ed.), Pre-Reformation Germany (London, 1972).Google Scholar
Morin, E., The Stars (New York, 1961).Google Scholar
Oakley, F., ‘Jacobean Political Theology: the Absolute and Ordinary Powers of the King’, in Journal of the History of Ideas, 29, 1968CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Obelkevich, J., Religion in a Rural Society (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar
Péiouas, L., Le Diocèse de La Rochelle de 1648 à 1724 (Paris, 1964).Google Scholar
Paulson, R., Emblem and Expression (London, 1975).Google Scholar
Popkin, R. H., The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes, second edition (Assen, 1964), esp. ch. I.Google Scholar
Rice, E., The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom (Cambridge, Mass., 1958)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Royle, E., Victorian Infidels (Manchester, 1974)Google Scholar
Schmitz, A., ‘Die Beethoven-Apotheose als Beispiel eines Säkularisierungsvorgangs’, in Weinmann, K. (ed.), Festschrift P. Wagner (Leipzig, 1926).Google Scholar
Secker, T., Articles of Enquiry, ed. Jukes, H. A. Lloyd, in Oxfordshire Record Society, 38, 1957.Google Scholar
Southern, R. W., ‘Medieval Humanism’ in his Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar
Spink, J. S., French Free Thought from Gassendi to Voltaire (London, 1960)Google Scholar
Stern, J. P., Hitler: the Führer and the People (London, 1975)Google Scholar
Strauss, G., ‘Success and Failure in the German Reformation’, in Past and Present, 67, 1975.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, K. V., Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971).Google Scholar
Thompson, D. M., ‘The 1851 Religious Census’, in Victorian Studies, II, 1967–8Google Scholar
Thompson, D. M., ‘The Churches and Society in Nineteenth-Century England’, in Cumings, G. J. and Baker, D. (eds.), Popular Belief and Practice (Cambridge, 1972)Google Scholar
Tocqueville, A., L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution Français (1856), Book I, ch. 3
Toussaert, J., Le Sentiment Religieux en Flandre à la Fin du Moyen Age (Paris, 1963)Google Scholar
Trinkaus, C., In Our Image and Likeness (2 vols, London, 1970), esp. ch. 14.Google Scholar
Ullmann, W., The Medieval Foundations of Renaissance Humanism (London, 1977).Google Scholar
Vovelle, M., Religion et Révolution (Paris, 1976).Google Scholar
Vovelle, M., Piété Baroque et Déchristianisation en Provence (Paris, 1973)Google Scholar
Wearmouth, R. F., Methodism and the Common People of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1945), especially section 3Google Scholar
Weber, E., Peasants into Frenchment (Stanford, 1976), chs. 19–20.Google Scholar
Weber, M., The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–5: Eng. trans., London, 1930), ch. 4.Google Scholar
Westfall, R. S., Science and Religion in Seventeenth Century England (New Haven, 1958)Google Scholar
Williams, G. A., Rowland Detrosier, a Working-Class Infidel (York, 1965)Google Scholar
Wilson, B., Religion in Secular Society (London, 1966)Google Scholar
Wilson, B., Contemporary Transformations of Religion (London, 1976).Google Scholar
Wilson, D. H., King James VI and I (London, 1956).Google Scholar
Wilson, E. C., England's Eliza (Cambridge, Mass., 1939).Google Scholar
Yeo, S., ‘A New Life: the Religion of Socialism in Britain 1883–1896’, in History Workshop Journal, 4, 1977.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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
×