Death and the Enlightenment: Changing Attitudes to Death among Christians and Unbelievers in Eighteenth-Century France

by John McManners

Death and the Enlightenment is an unusual survey of the daily rituals, customs, and attitudes surrounding death and dying in 18th-century France. Focusing on the tension between the faithful and the growing ranks of unbelievers bred on Enlightenment philosophy, McManners charts the course of pestilence and plague, and examines the terrible fears connected with childbirth, disease, disfigurement, mortality, and the hereafter. He also examines suicide, public execution, and the rites surrounding the deathbed, and demonstrates how the period's ever-present concern with death and dying was transformed into the Romantic cult of melancholy that occupied the creative imagination of generations to come.

Genres: History, France

628 pages, Hardcover

First published February 18, 1982

About the author

John "Jack" McManners CBE FBA was an English clergyman and historian of religion who specialized in the history of the Church and other aspects of religious life in 18th century France. He was Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford from 1972 to 1984. He also served as Fellow and Chaplain of All Souls College, Oxford from 1964 to 2001.

Reviews

[Celeste · Rating 4 out of 5]

McManners is as good as it gets concerning France and the Catholic Church in the XVIII century. Some chapters were tougher than others to come through, but generally it's an incredibly great and interesting book.

[Geof Sage · Rating 2 out of 5]

une série de récitations insipides entrecoupées de rares moments de profondeur