Idol Temples and Crafty Priests The Origins of Enlightenment Anticlericalism [Hardcover]

Barnett traces the Christian critique of the Church and its history in Protestant (English) and Catholic (Italian) thought from the Reformation to the Enlightenment. More than one hundred and fifty years of bitter polemic between the two great confessions and their religious dissidents produced an unprecedented, comparative historical and sociological anticlericalism. In the last decades of the seventeenth century, English dissenting thought was pregnant with a devastating critique of the church, which came to be termed the 'Deist' view of Church history: by 1700 the cornerstone of high 'Enlightenment anticlerical thought' was in ascent.Preface: Enlightenment or Long Reformation? Introduction: Anticlericalism and Historical Revolutions Priestcraft Theory: Text and Context From Free Christendom to Papal Despotism Church, State and Priest-Kings Martyrs, Fanaticism and Empire Defended The Book of Priestcraft Open: Fraud and Idolatry The Birthpangs of 'Deist' Historiography Conclusion: Religion, Politics and Social Class Notes Bibliography IndexS. J. BARNETT is Lecturer in History of Ideas, University of Kingston-upon-Thames