Andreas Pečar - Böcker

In England, from the Reformation era to the outbreak of the Civil War, religious authority contributed to popular political discourse in ways that significantly shaped the legitimacy of the monarchy as a form of rule as well as the monarch’s ability to act politically. The Power of Scripture casts aside parochial conceptualizations of that authority’s origins and explores the far-reaching consequences of political biblicism. It shows how arguments, narratives, and norms taken from Biblical scripture not only directly contributed to national religious politics but also left lasting effects on the socio-political development of Stuart England.

This is the first comprehensive analysis of the royal and princely courts of Europe as important places of Enlightenment. The households of European rulers remained central to politics and culture throughout the eighteenth century, and few writers, artists, musicians, or scholars could succeed without establishing connections to ruling houses, noble families, or powerful courtiers. Covering case studies from Spain and France to Russia, and from Scandinavia and Britain to the Holy Roman Empire, the contributions of this volume examine how Enlightenment figures were integrated into the princely courts of the Ancien Régime, and what kinds of relationships they had with courtiers. Dangers and opportunities presented by proximity to court are discussed as well as the question of what rulers and courtiers gained from their interactions with Enlightenment men and women of letters. The book focusses on four areas: firstly, the impact of courtly patronage on Enlightenment discourses and the work as well as careers of Enlightenment writers; secondly, the court as an audience to be catered for by Enlightenment writers; thirdly, the function of Enlightenment narratives and discourses for the image-making of rulers and courtiers; and fourthly, the role the interaction of courtiers and Enlightenment writers played for the formulation of reform policies.

When the University of Halle-Wittenberg founded the Interdisciplinary Centre for European Enlightenment Studies in 1993, it was following the destiny of its history as a centre of the early Enlightenment in Germany which affected the whole of Europe. Research foci of the Centre are at the moment aesthetics, discourses of history, cultures of learning and erudition, university history and not least the wide field of early Enlightenment as a field of experimentation and the foundation of cultural models for the Modern Age. The results of this research have been published since Autumn 1995 in the Centres’ research publications series entitled University of Halle Series on the European Enlightenment. In addition, there have been relevant works produced outside the Centre. Two to four volumes are published annually (monographs, collected volumes, commentaries on sources).

How did 18th-century writers and politicians measure success and power in the ups and downs of European politics? In the history of international relations, the century between the War of the Spanish Succession and the Congress of Vienna is usually considered as a transition period, during which older categories, such as status and rank, glory and grandeur, which had been central to the value system of European court society, were being superseded by "modern", statistically measurable criteria, which supposedly allowed the rational calculation of the states’ power resources and clout. The contributions to this volume question this interpretation of a seemingly unequivocal transition from pre-modern to modern criteria in the assessment of international politics. The book chapters examine how the success of European monarchies and republics on the international stage was observed and categorised in the "long eighteenth century", and how the analytical criteria used by political actors as well as the media changed over time. Here, the emergence of new statistical methods and of entire new media genres that focussed on the analysis of states is discussed as well as the role of status conflicts into the 19th century. Other chapters ask which criteria Enlightenment authors introduced to these debates, and what their impact was when the model function of China was questioned, or the legitimacy of the partitions of Poland discussed. Finally, the volume addresses the question to what degree diplomatic theory and practices continued to hold up premises established in Europe since the peace treaties of Westphalia, or if values and guiding principles of diplomats changed fundamentally over the period under consideration. Rather than replacing old categories by new ones, different political actors and commentators evaluated a plurality of criteria, including the status and rank of rulers, the age of dynasties, the attractiveness of courts, the image of individual rulers, military clout, size of population and territory, in ever-new combinations well into the 19th century.

Die Autoren untersuchen das Verhältnis von Religion und Politik kultur- und epochenübergreifend anhand eines Extremfalls: der Theokratie, das heißt der Idee einer Gottesherrschaft auf Erden. Diese Idee gehört zur Tradition der drei großen monotheistischen Religionen. Ihre Überzeugungskraft unterliegt indes historischen Konjunkturen: Phasen des Auf- und Abschwungs, der Verschärfung und Entschärfung wechseln einander ab. Weil das theokratische Argument fest in der religiösen Tradition verankert ist, kann es in Identitätskrisen stets aktualisiert werden. In den einzelnen Beiträgen, die sich auf historische Konstellationen vom pharaonischen Ägypten und biblischen Israel bis in die Gegenwart beziehen, wird danach gefragt, unter welchen Bedingungen das theokratische Argument auf fruchtbaren Boden fällt, welche Akteure oder Statusgruppen sich des theokratischen Arguments bedienen, und welche politischen und gesellschaftlichen Folgewirkungen damit jeweils verknüpft sind.