And as it happens literally, so metaphorically.
Last year, during a Swedish holiday, I found in a public library I can't remember A Little World History for Young Readers ("En liten världshistoria för unga läsare"/"Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser"), the masterpiece of Austrian writer Ernst Gombrich.
Its thirty-third chapter, "A Truly New Age", is dedicated to the Enlightenment. At the end of the first page, the author explains the causes of the paradigm shift in Europe (with colonies) from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century. And so, I learned the answer to a question that had been haunting me throughout the last years: "Why this shift into questioning authority, defying religion, even shaving one's face and dressing in bright colours?"
Well, I'll reproduce Gombrich's explanation (I DO NOT OWN IT!):
"Only after 1700 did things gradually change. The widespread and terrible suffering that Europeans endured during the wretched wars of religion had made some people wonder if it was really right to judge someone by his or her religious belief. Was it not more important to be a good and honest human being? Would it not be better if people got on with one another regardless of any differences of opinion or belief that they might have? Better if they respected one another and tolerated each other’s convictions? This was the first and most important idea that the people who thought about such things now voiced: the principle of tolerance. Only in matters of religion could there be differences of opinion. No rational person disputes the fact that two plus two makes four. Therefore reason – or sound common sense, as they also termed it – is what can and should unite all humans. In the realm of reason you can use arguments to convince others of the rightness of your opinions, whereas another’s religious beliefs, being beyond rational argument, should be respected and tolerated."
Betrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy (which I do not own either), agrees with Gombrich:
"In the Middle Ages, while mystics kept alive the original individualistic trends in Christian ethics, the outlook of most people, including the majority of philosophers, was dominated by a firm synthesis of dogma, law, and custom, which caused theoretical beliefs and practical morality to be controlled by a social institution, namely the Catholic Church: what was true and what was good was to be ascertained, not by solitary thought, but by the collective wisdom of Councils.
The first important breach in this system was made by Protestantism, which asserted that General Councils may err. To determine the truth thus became no longer a social but an individual enterprise.
Since different individuals reached different conclusions, the result was strife, and theological
decisions were sought, no longer in assemblies of bishops, but on the battlefield. Since neither
party was able to extirpate the other, it became evident, in the end, that a method must be found of reconciling intellectual and ethical individualism with ordered social life. This was one of the main problems which early liberalism attempted to solve.
Meanwhile individualism had penetrated into philosophy. Descartes's fundamental certainty, "I think, therefore I am," made the basis of knowledge different for each person, since for each the starting-point was the self's own existence, not that of other individuals or of the community. Descartes's emphasis upon the reliability of clear and distinct ideas tended in the same direction, since it is by introspection that we think we discover whether our ideas are clear and distinct. Most philosophy since Descartes has had this intellectually individualistic aspect in a greater or lesser degree.
The results of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, in the intellectual sphere, were at first wholly bad, but ultimately beneficial. The Thirty Years' War persuaded everybody that neither Protestants nor Catholics could be completely victorious; it became necessary to abandon the medieval hope of doctrinal unity, and this increased people's freedom to think for themselves, even about fundamentals. The diversity of creeds in different countries made it possible to escape persecution by living abroad. Disgust with theological warfare turned the attention of able ones increasingly to secular learning, especially mathematics and science. These are among the reasons for the fact that, while the sixteenth century, after the rise of Luther, is philosophically barren, the seventeenth contains the greatest names and marks the most notable advance since Greek times (read: "Hellenism"). This advance began in science."
There you have it. It takes thirty years of widespread religious war, plus the consequent casualties, famines, epidemics, and witch-hunts, for those in power to decide to start anew, feeling guilty over the international clusterf*ck they have caused, and exclaim: "Let there be light!"
And those in power after the war, the Great War of its day, were the Protestant Northern countries plus France: the nations where the Enlightenment came to be. If the Habsburgs and their cronies had won, there would not be such an idea of freedom and tolerance not confronted with violent repression.
Betrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy (which I do not own either), agrees with Gombrich:
"In the Middle Ages, while mystics kept alive the original individualistic trends in Christian ethics, the outlook of most people, including the majority of philosophers, was dominated by a firm synthesis of dogma, law, and custom, which caused theoretical beliefs and practical morality to be controlled by a social institution, namely the Catholic Church: what was true and what was good was to be ascertained, not by solitary thought, but by the collective wisdom of Councils.
The first important breach in this system was made by Protestantism, which asserted that General Councils may err. To determine the truth thus became no longer a social but an individual enterprise.
Since different individuals reached different conclusions, the result was strife, and theological
decisions were sought, no longer in assemblies of bishops, but on the battlefield. Since neither
party was able to extirpate the other, it became evident, in the end, that a method must be found of reconciling intellectual and ethical individualism with ordered social life. This was one of the main problems which early liberalism attempted to solve.
Meanwhile individualism had penetrated into philosophy. Descartes's fundamental certainty, "I think, therefore I am," made the basis of knowledge different for each person, since for each the starting-point was the self's own existence, not that of other individuals or of the community. Descartes's emphasis upon the reliability of clear and distinct ideas tended in the same direction, since it is by introspection that we think we discover whether our ideas are clear and distinct. Most philosophy since Descartes has had this intellectually individualistic aspect in a greater or lesser degree.
The results of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, in the intellectual sphere, were at first wholly bad, but ultimately beneficial. The Thirty Years' War persuaded everybody that neither Protestants nor Catholics could be completely victorious; it became necessary to abandon the medieval hope of doctrinal unity, and this increased people's freedom to think for themselves, even about fundamentals. The diversity of creeds in different countries made it possible to escape persecution by living abroad. Disgust with theological warfare turned the attention of able ones increasingly to secular learning, especially mathematics and science. These are among the reasons for the fact that, while the sixteenth century, after the rise of Luther, is philosophically barren, the seventeenth contains the greatest names and marks the most notable advance since Greek times (read: "Hellenism"). This advance began in science."
There you have it. It takes thirty years of widespread religious war, plus the consequent casualties, famines, epidemics, and witch-hunts, for those in power to decide to start anew, feeling guilty over the international clusterf*ck they have caused, and exclaim: "Let there be light!"
And those in power after the war, the Great War of its day, were the Protestant Northern countries plus France: the nations where the Enlightenment came to be. If the Habsburgs and their cronies had won, there would not be such an idea of freedom and tolerance not confronted with violent repression.
Thanks to Gustavus Adolphus, the Catholics were vanquished for good and the idea of separating church and state, already pronounced by Jesus, forgotten with the third-century crisis and rescued by Luther, to be adopted by the Protestant North, was reborn: its worldly rulers (royals, electors) seceded from the Church and cashed in its wealth for the State Treasury. Furthermore, translations of sacred texts and the fact that every person was free to interpret them contributed to lay the foundations of Catholic decline. Without the prowess and intelligence of Gustavus Adolphus, the grandson of Sweden's national father and Protestant reformer, the Catholic ranks would have been unstoppable and victorious, perpetuating the unholy matrimony of church and state with iron coils.
I would like to end this post with some verses from Mikael Wiehe, a renowned Swedish poet (I do not own this poem either!):
"When else in this world
could the light be seen,
if not at midnight,
when the darkness is thickest?
Tell me, when will the warmth
seek out more warmth,
if not in midwinter,
when the cold is harshest?
Where should a voice be raised,
become a roar of wrath,
if not in that silence
where no word can be spoken?
Where can courage be born
and spread its wings,
if not in that fear
where life confronts death?
Struggling...
Desiring...
Expecting...
Gasping for breath like true love...
Living...
Faltering...
Persuading...
Again, and again, and again..."
Voltaire once boastingly said: "I am weary of hearing people repeat that twelve men established the Christian religion. I will prove that one man may suffice to overthrow it."
He was not the first, nor the last, nor the only one to undermine the power of organised religion (in general).
POST SCRIPTUM. On clean-shaven faces:
Even the eighteenth-century vogue for clean-shavenness, in particular the smoothly shaven upper lip, replacing the moustache and "handlebar" of the seventeenth century, has a partial historical and cultural justification. Snuff-taking demanded a direct access to the nostrils unimpeded by facial hair. "Tastes of Paradise," Wolfgang Schivelbusch.
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