Piety and Politics: Religion and the Rise of Absolutism in England, Wurttemberg and Prussia (Cambridge Book Library)

223 Pages·1984·6.73 MB·English

by  Mary Fulbrook

Piety and Politics

Piety and Politics
Religion and the Rise of
Absolutism in England,
Wiirttemberg and Prussia
MARY FULBROOK
Lecturer in German History,
University College, London
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge
London New York New Rochelle
Melbourne Sydney
Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP
32 East 57th Street, New York, NY 10022, USA
296 Beaconsfield Parade, Middle Park, Melbourne 3206, Australia
© Cambridge University Press 1983
First published 1983
Library of Congress catalogue card number: 83-5316
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Fulbrook, Mary
Piety and politics.
1. Protestantism
2. Great Britain - Politics and government - 1603-1714
3. Great Britain - Politics and government - 1714-1760
4. Germany - Politics and government - 1517-1648
5. Germany - Politics and government - 1648-1789
I. Title
280'.4'0942 BX4838
ISBN 0 521 25612 7 hard covers
ISBN 0 521 27633 0 paperback
Transferred to digital printing 2003
CE
Contents
Preface vii
1 Introduction: cases and controversies 1
2 In pursuit of further reformation 19
3 State and society: the attempts at absolutism 45
4 The established church and toleration 76
5 From reform to revolution: Puritanism in England 102
6 From reform to retreat: Pietism in Wurttemberg 130
7 From reform to state religion: Pietism in Prussia 153
8 Conclusions and implications 174
Bibliography 190
Index 111

Preface
The relationship of Protestant religious movements to social and political
changes in early modern Europe has long intrigued historians and socio-
logists. Did religious ideas have an independent influence on the course of
social and political development, or were they rather dependent on
deeper, underlying socioeconomic changes? Marx, Weber, Tawney, and
many others have sought to interpret the complex interrelationships
among elements of cultural, political and socioeconomic changes in a
formative period for the modern world.
In the context of continuing historical and theoretical controversies,
this book undertakes a systematic comparative-historical analysis of
religion and politics in three carefully selected cases. In England, Wiirt-
temberg, and Prussia, at the times when the rulers were attempting to
introduce the apparatus of absolutist rule, there were very similar reli-
gious movements for the further reform of the Protestant state churches:
the Puritan and Pietist movements. Yet, while sharing similar religious
aims and ethos, Puritans and Pietists developed very different attitudes
and activities in relation to would-be absolutist rule in each case. These
ranged from the activism and anti-absolutism of English Puritans,
through the passive anti-absolutism of Pietists in Wurttemberg, to the
activism and support of absolutism of the Prussian Pietists. Such surpris-
ingly different patterns of political contribution to the success or failure
of absolutism - with its fundamental historical consequences - represent
promising terrain for the generation and testing of a coherent explana-
tion.
In the course of examining these three cases, it became clear that
approaches focussing on inherent characteristics of a religious move-
ment, whether idealist or materialist in emphasis, were essentially inade-
quate. Neither religious ideas, nor social class bases, appeared to account
for the different political stances developed by the Puritan and Pietist
movements. Instead, it was only by examining the different sociopolitical
environments in which Puritans and Pietists sought to establish the
Kingdom of God upon earth that the different patterns of political
attitude and alliance became comprehensible. There was a complex
interplay of historically given aspirations and capacities, in the context of
differing structural opportunities and constraints, which in combination
explain the different paths of political development.
vn
viii Piety and politics
This work is one of historical sociology. Combining a structural analy-
sis with an account of agency, it seeks to cut across the boundaries of the
institutionally separated disciplines of history and sociology, in the inter-
ests of gaining a more adequate understanding of the patterns of the past
as they appear to us today. As well as proposing a particular solution to a
specific historical problem, the book is intended to contribute towards a
more adequate theoretical approach to the study of ideas and sociopoliti-
cal change.
In an earlier incarnation, the argument was presented as a doctoral
dissertation at Harvard University. I would like to thank my thesis
advisers for their stimulation and advice: Daniel Bell, Theda Skocpol,
and Ann Swidler. Hartmut Lehmann also provided help on Pietists at a
very early stage. During the lengthy process of revising and rewriting the
thesis into its present form, a number of individuals have been particu-
larly helpful. I am most grateful to John Morrill for his challenging
scepticism about the entire enterprise, combined with some excellent
historical advice; and to Christopher Hill for his generous support of the
project. Geoffrey Hawthorn, John Morrill, and Valerie Pearl very kindly
took the trouble to read through the entire draft of the book, and made
comments which helped me to reduce the historical inaccuracies and to
clarify the presentation of the argument. Theda Skocpol assuaged my
doubts about the concluding chapter, and was a constant source of
stimulus and encouragement for the writing of both thesis and book.
None of these, of course, bears any responsibility for the inadequacies
which remain. The Fellowship of New Hall, Cambridge, where my
rewriting was carried out, provided a congenial and lively atmosphere in
which to work. My husband, Julian, sustained my endeavours through-
out.
The work was supported by Harvard graduate scholarships; by a
Harvard Center for European Studies Krupp Fellowship, held at the
London School of Economics; and by a Lady Margaret Research Fellow-
ship at New Hall, Cambridge. A small grant from the LSE staff research
fund enabled me to spend some time working at Tubingen University
Library. I am grateful not only for the financial support of these institu-
tions, but also for the academic communities and environments which
make work such as this both possible and pleasurable.
London MARY FULBROOK
September 1982
1
Introduction: cases and controversies
In seeking to understand the patterns of the past, we are frequently
confronted with questions of religion. Men and women assess the
inequities of this world in the light of transcendent standards, and strive to
bring about a better society. Sometimes religious movements have seemed
merely expressive of intolerable conditions: momentary outbursts of
inefficacious revolt. Sometimes they have appeared to render the intoler-
able more bearable: to interpret present sufferings in ways which make it
possible to continue living with them. And sometimes religious move-
ments have appeared to act as autonomous creative forces, with a capacity
to transform the nature of the societies in which they arose.
One such movement, which has been credited with a powerful role in
the making of the 'modern world', is English Puritanism. In the century
prior to the 'Puritan Revolution', a set of religious ideas and orientations
arose which has been linked, in a variety of ways, with aspects of
innovation in early modern Europe: with the beginnings of modern
rational capitalism, science, democratic liberalism, individualism.1 This
movement has been seen, in particular, as playing a crucial part in the
overthrow of attempts at absolutist rule in England, thus laying the
foundations of the parliamentary state in which capitalist and industrial
development could flourish. Interpretations of the part played by Puritan-
ism vary, from those allowing it an independent causal role, to those
representing it as a dependent factor, reflecting more basic underlying
socioeconomic conditions.
A movement inherently similar to Puritanism, considered in terms of its
religious ethos and aspirations, arose also under conditions of attempted
1 There is a vast literature on Puritanism and its supposed historical consequences. The
classics include: Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1930, transl. T. Parsons); R.K. Merton, Science, Technology
and Society in Seventeenth-Century England (New York: Howard Fertig, 1970; orig.
1938); R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1938); and the controversies ensuing. In relation to the topic of this study, the various
works of Christopher Hill are particularly relevant, as are: Michael Walzer, The Revolu-
tion of the Saints (New York: Atheneum, 1974) and Walzer, 'Puritanism as a Revolution-
ary Ideology' in S.N. Eisenstadt (ed.), The Protestant Ethic and Modernization (New
York: Basic Books, 1968); and for a guide to approaches to the 'Puritan Revolution' from
the seventeenth century onwards, see generally R.C. Richardson, The Debate on the
English Revolution (London: Methuen, 1977).
1
2 Piety and politics
absolutist rule in certain continental European states. This was Pietism: a
variant, like Puritanism, of what may be termed a 'precisionist' religious
orientation. Pietism too has been credited with the paternity of various
aspects of the 'modern world'.2 Yet it played a very different part in the
development of the absolutist states in which it arose. In one state,
Wurttemberg, Pietists generally shared the parliamentary sympathies of
the English Puritans. Yet when, in the mid-eighteenth century, the Wurt-
temberg Estates found themselves embroiled in constitutional struggles
with their ruler, attempting to defend the representative tradition against
prerogative rule, Wurttemberg Pietists remained on the whole politically
passive and quietistic. In another state, Brandenburg-Prussia, Pietists did
make a major political contribution; but in this case, they positively
supported the development of absolutist rule. Pietist institutions, ideo-
logy, and organisation were integral to the successful establishment of
absolutism in Prussia.3
How can these different patterns of political attitude and activity be
accounted for? What made three essentially similar religious movements
make such different contributions to the politics of absolutism in early
modern Europe? Some historians and sociologists have sought the
answer in theological and social-psychological aspects of Puritanism and
Pietism; others have focussed rather on material interests and class bases
of the movements. The field is mined with theoretical controversies, as
scholars with different assumptions and inclinations suggest different
answers in each case. Marxists and anti-Marxists, Whigs and revision-
ists, neo-Weberians and 'a-theoretical' narrative historians have all,
explicitly or implicitly, suggested different answers to the problem.
2 See for example: Kurt Aland, Pietismus und Moderne Welt (Witten: Luther-Verlag,
1974); Koppel Pinson, Pietism as a factor in the Rise of German Nationalism (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1934); A. Lindt and K. Deppermann (eds.), Pietismus
und Neuzeit (Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, vol. 1, 1974, vol. 2, 1975); Martin Schmidt,
'Einleitung' to M. Schmidt and W. Jannasch (eds.), Das Zeitalter des Pietismus (Bremen:
Carl Schiinemann Verlag, 1965).
3 The classic study of Pietism is Albrecht Ritschl, Geschichte des Pietismus (Bonn: Adolph
Marcus, 3 vols., 1880—6); the most important recent studies, for present purposes, are:
Hartmut Lehmann, Pietismus und Weltliche Ordnung in Wurttemberg vom 17. bis zum
20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1969); Klaus Deppermann, Der
Hallesche Pietismus und der Preussische Staat unter Friedrich III. (I.) (Gottingen: Van-
denhoek und Ruprecht, 1961); Carl Hinrichs, Preussentum und Pietismus (Gottingen:
Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1971); and the series of articles on Puritanism, Jansenism,
and Pietism, edited by Angermann under the title 'Religion - Politik - Gesellschaft im 17.
und 18. Jahrhundert. Ein Versuch in Vergleichender Sozialgeschichte', Historische Zeit-
schrift 214 (1) (1972): 26-95.
In this study, the terms 'Prussia' and 'Brandenburg-Prussia' are used interchangeably,
to refer to the various territories over which the Hohenzollerns ruled during the period
under study. The investigation is concerned particularly with Pietism in Halle, in the
province of Magdeburg-Halberstadt; Berlin, in Brandenburg; and Konigsberg, East Prus-
sia. For the complexities of Prussian politics, see Chapter 3, below; and for the general
historical background, see the dated but still useful book by W.H. Bruford, Germany in
the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935).