第七章：斯图亚特时期的知识界

原书简介：牛津通识读本系列的《斯图亚特英国》，”Stuart Britain：a very short introduction”，讲述在1603-1714年间统治英国的斯图亚特王朝时期的英国史。这个时期见证了英国逐渐步入现代化的种种转变，也见证了英国从绝对君主制转向君主立宪、议会共和政治框架的曲折历程。

系列上一篇：Restoration｜复辟

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Chapter 7 Intellectual and Religious Life

• 不知道是不是我的错觉，感觉作者试图在最后一点篇幅里把该提的东西都点一遍，很多问题浅尝辄止。这一章的内容，基本要么是在前文已经反复体现过的，要么不像是这本书所关心的重点，对哪些话题感兴趣的话还不如专门去找讲那个话题的专书来读。

p77 For the Church of England, if not for the monarchy, the seventeenth century was an age of disillusionment. By the time of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 it had lost the intellectual, moral, and spiritual authority it had acquired by 1603. Intellectually, Anglicanism was on the offensive at the beginning of the century. The generation living through the events of 1559, ending England’s becoming officially Protestant, witnessed a settlement cobbled together to meet political necessities, a hybrid of Protestant doctrine and Catholic practice.

1~3.The Acquiescence of Dissent

• 自从宗教改革像野火一样烧遍全欧洲，单一宗教统一版图的传统理想基本上就一路走向幻灭了。因为那种传统理想最起码需要一个国家只信奉一个宗教，重要的社会礼仪都按照一个派别的教义来，异端和异教都需要严格压制。但是宗教改革产生出一系列新的教派之后，异端变得越来越多，铁腕压制的国家和地区不是没有，只是越来越难。随后就慢慢开始出现宗教宽容和政教分离的理论和实践。
• 这个过程伴随着繁多的宗教冲突和宗教热情的总体式微，某种意义上来讲，可以说现代的多元包容杀死了前现代式的宗教虔诚。

p80 Anglican apologetics was defensive and edgy. With the disappearance of High Commission and the rust of disuse settled in its diocesan courts, the Church lacked the weapons to punish defaulters. The ignominy of its abolition left it institutionally enfeebled. In 1660 the celebration of Easter and the ubiquitous return of maypoles may have been spontaneous and have shown signs of their deep roots in popular culture. But those who chose to defy the Church were not going to be forced back into its assemblies. …… Despite the attempts to prevent unlawful conventicles, the Baptists, Quakers, and other radicals were not to be uprooted. …… The Toleration Act of 1689 was the formal recognition of the fact of religious pluralism.

p81 No such hopes survived the interregnum. The trauma of regicide left few royalists with faith in the providence of God; the much deeper sense of betrayal experienced by the radicals in 1660 largely explains their political quiescence thereafter. Psychologically, the pain of betrayal after such visible testimonies of divine favour was too great. Instead, most of the Puritans and their heirs internalized the kingdom of God. They accepted the world as the domain of sin and of imperfectibility. Within this vale of tears, each person must seek personal peace by building a temple of grace within himself or herself. This acceptance of the limits of what Church and State could achieve dominated the ideology of the late seventeenth century.

From the Dissenting side, John Locke, pleading for religious toleration, defined a church as a voluntary society of men, meeting together to worship God in such fashion as they deemed appropriate. Religion had become an unthreatening matter, almost a hobby. The authorities need not concern themselves with what consenting adults did in private meetings. The Puritans of previous generations could not have conceived anything so anaemic. (p.p. 82)

4.The Visual Arts

• 斯图亚特王朝的统治时间从启蒙运动的酝酿期覆盖到其中期左右，随着宗教元素对生活和思想的掌控里渐弱，现代化的理性主义和人的反思开始兴起。表现在视觉方面就是建筑、画作之类的艺术风格都不复那种古典的神秘气息。

p84 There was, however, a stark contrast between the intensity and devotional emphasis of early Stuart churches and chapels such as the one at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and the coolness, light, and rationalist air of Sir Christopher Wren’s London churches. Allegorical stained glass and dark wood panelling gave way to marble. The recumbent effigies of souls at rest gave way to an upright statuary of men and women reflecting on their moral duties.

5.Science

• 然后许多人就逐步从膜拜神学变为了膜拜科学，即使这一时期的科学探索只能说是刚刚起步。但是技术的进步跟不上思想的泡沫，工业革命还要等到斯图亚特王朝结束之后几十年才开始，于是对于“科学”的这种膜拜也在17世纪后期迎来了一波小幻灭。虽然之后随着启蒙运动和工业革命的兴起，对于科学和人力的膜拜马上就要进入其巅峰了。

p85 Drawing on the ideas of Francis Bacon, and led by visionary social engineers such as Samuel Hartlib and the Bohemian exile Comenius, the scientific establishment was lionized by the Puritan politicians and undertook to build a Brave New World. Man would tame and gain dominion over the natural world. Medical advances would vanquish disease, agricultural advances would conquer hunger and want. The reformation of justice and of education would bring man into peaceful enjoyment of the new order.

p86 It is astonishing how quickly the discovery of natural laws bred a confidence that everything had a natural explanation. The realm of magic, of witches and spells, was abandoned by the educated. Within a generation of 1640 the prosecution of witches almost ceased. This was not because the people at large ceased to believe in curses and in magic, but because it was impossible to secure convictions from sceptical judges and jurors. Science and technology did not in fact advance on all fronts. The economy remained almost wholly dependent on human and animal muscle-power. No progress was made towards harnessing steam, let alone gas or electricity, as energy sources. The extraction of minerals from the ground and the smelting of ore contributed another technological bottle-neck. Science was changing attitudes, not transforming the economy.

6.Political Thought

p86 Political thought was being secularized too. Thomas Hobbes stripped sovereignty of its moral basis; in Leviathan (1651), the concept of legitimacy as the justification of political authority was replaced by a concentration on de facto power and the ability to afford protection to the subjects who lived under this power. Machiavelli remained an odious name but his ideas became more and more persuasive as a counter to the divine-right pieties of Robert Filmer and of Stuart apologists.

• 题外话，因为课业指定的缘故看过一些《利维坦》和《君主论》的章节，很明显能在那个历史进程中的思想家身上感受到时代的印记。比如说霍布斯的《利维坦》一书，充斥着对战争的极度恐惧和对性恶论几乎偏执的坚信，还有从那个年代往后开始越演越烈的对精确和理性的深深崇拜——显著区别于更早些时候的著述者对神性或者自然真理的崇拜，将人性善恶都放在神学框架下讨论的世界观——还有那种著书立说的时候特别喜欢从极恶一路说到至善，有一点野心的作者都喜欢试着对能论证的话题进行一个全覆盖。
• 虽然全覆盖这点，在启蒙年代好像也有换汤不换药的表现形式，变成了试图收集概括人类目前的所有知识图谱。某种意义上而言，也可以看作只是从神学框架下的全覆盖，变成了“科学”框架下的全覆盖？

p86-87 The English Revolution does, then, stand as a turning-point. It may have achieved little that any of the parties sought after or fought for. It may have done even less to transform political and social institutions. But it deeply affected the intellectual values, at least of the political elite. An age which derived its momentum from Christian humanism, from chivalry, from a reverential antiquarianism, gave way to an age of pragmatism and individualism. When John Locke wrote in his second Treatise of Government (1690) that ‘all men are naturally in a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit without asking the leave or depending upon the will of any man’, he was proclaiming a message only made possible by the disillusionment with old ideals, but a message which was to make much possible in the decades to come.

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原书信息：Morrill, John. (1984). Stuart Britain: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-285400-3