Taking advantage of an extended Christmas/New Year’s vacation, I’ve been working my way through Tim Blanning’s “magisterial” (i.e. very long) The Pursuit of Glory, which covers developments in Europe in the century-and-a-half between the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815.
Blanning’s approach might be described as dialectical, with each “progressive” intellectual and social trend discussed counterbalanced, and sometimes even eclipsed, by forces that can be categorized as conservative or traditional. For example, the 18th century is synonymous with the “Age of Enlightenment,” as thinkers and writers principally from France, the German states, and Scotland sought to challenge the theocentic understanding of the world that had hitherto predominated. The impetus to compartmentalize religious and secular affairs was often tinged with a strong dose of anti-clericalism: although Voltaire disingenuously explained that the target of his battle-cry “Écrasez l’infâme!” (Wipe out the infamous!) was superstition not the clergy, few believed him.
Yet Blanning argues that the period could, with equal justification, be labelled as “the age of religion” or “the Christian Century.” New, fervent religious movements such as Methodism and Jansenism emerged; the vast swathe of the peasantry remained wedded to traditional forms of worship; and “By around the middle of the [18th] century there were at least 15,000 monasteries for men and 10,000 for women, housing a total population in excess of a quarter of a million.”
Similarly, the rise of the scientific method coexisted with persistent beliefs in witchcraft, alchemy, and miracles. (The shelf space devoted to “New Age” philosophy in major bookshops suggests that irrationality is still far from a spent force.) Famously, Isaac Newton’s devotion to unravelling the prophecies embedded in the Book of Revelations puts Dan Brown’s fabrications in the shade.
Sugaring the analytical pill, Blanning litters his text with quotes, odd facts (e.g., in France pornography was still published in Latin as late as 1650), and anecdotes that bring home to the reader that even this era—which laid the foundations for what it means to be “modern”—remains a “foreign country.”
For this post, what once passed for court entertainment in the mid-18th century will have to suffice as evidence:
“…’fox-tossing’ (Fuchsprellen), in which a fox was tossed in a net or blanket held by hunt servants or gentlemen or ladies of the court until it expired. This usually took place in the courtyard of the prince’s palace, with the assembled courtiers looking on from the palace windows. The Saxons seem to have been particularly fond of this form of entertainment: in the course of 1747 Augustus III, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, had 414 foxes, 281 hares, 39 badgers and a wild cat tossed to death. It could also be found at the imperial court at Vienna, where in 1672 the Swedish envoy found it odd that the Emperor Leopold I should join the court dwarves and small boys in delivering the coup de grâce to the tossed foxes by clubbing them to death.”