No volume dealing with religion in eighteenth-century Europe can avoid commenting on the relationship between Enlightenment and religion. Until the early 1990s, most scholars tended to take an antagonistic relationship between the two for granted. The Enlightenment, with its emphasis on empirical knowledge, reason, freedom and utility, the cradle of modern society, has customarily been portrayed as being in radical opposition to religion as such, and especially the powerful religious institutions upholding an ancien régime. Voltaire’s (1694–1778) famous exhortation Écrasez l’infâme! has often been quoted in order to illustrate the attitude towards religion that was evinced by all leading proponents of Enlightenment.

Since around 2000, this simplistic view has increasingly been called into question.¹ A ‘religious turn’ in Enlightenment studies is now well under way. This revision within the field of eighteenth-century historiography rests on a reconsideration of at least two conceptual propositions that have previously been taken for granted. First, should ‘Enlightenment’ be understood in the singular and with a capital ‘E’? We need only think of Peter Gay’s famous statement that ‘there were many philosophers in the eighteenth century, but there was only one Enlightenment’.² Yet after the appearance of various volumes produced by, for example, Roy Porter, J. G. A. Pocock and Mikuláš Teich, such a view now seems increasingly dated.³ Instead of imagining a unified movement sweeping across Europe and North America, with varying degrees of success, most contemporary research has tended to emphasize the local character of the Enlightenment. Hence, the number of Enlightenments has rapidly multiplied. There were Scottish, Swiss, Austrian, American and numerous other Enlightenments, all with a unique ‘dialect’. ‘Enlightenment’ was thus a transnational phenomenon with a steady flow of core texts, practices and techniques that travelled across geographical borders. However, national preoccupations and ambitions, as well as diverse political and intellectual cultures, added local flavours to the omnipresent concepts ‘reason’ and ‘scientific enquiry’. Secondly, the French Enlightenment, once seen as the given point of reference, has increasingly been identified as a ‘special case’. In other words, the French radical, sceptical and profoundly anti-clerical Enlightenment that once occupied the centre stage has been provincialized. Advanced French voices are no longer regarded as providing the template of the Enlightenment, the standard by which all other expressions of Enlightenment are eventually to be measured. Such a historiographical move does not only relate to our understanding of the centres and peripheries of eighteenth-century Europe; it has also had a profound impact on our understanding of the relationship between Enlightenment and religion. Once French Enlightenment, with its opposition to organized religion, has been pushed aside, this shift creates room for a renewed and constructive scholarly engagement with theology as a vehicle of Enlightenment, and with the churches (and various religious groups) as instruments of reform. Consequently, eighteenth-century religion has become ‘increasingly central to historians’ understanding of the way in which eighteenth-century society functioned’, to borrow the words of John Gascoigne.⁴

Since the 1990s, studies dealing with the intricate relationship between religion and Enlightenment have proliferated.⁵ When attempting to pinpoint the nature of national/local Enlightenments, religion has frequently been put forward as contributing to their distinctive flairs. As Jonathan Sheehan has remarked, ‘religion was the dominant qualification of the kind of Enlightenment peculiar to distinct geographical areas’.⁶ Presbyterianism directed the course of Enlightenment in Scotland,⁷ reform Catholicism in Austria,⁸ and in the Nordic countries there was, hardly surprisingly, a Lutheran Enlightenment.⁹ There is no shortage of examples.

Specialist historians of various kinds have pushed these insights even further. Advocacy of many of the features that we tend to associate with the Enlightenment – such as novel educational ideals and a more egalitarian social order – were in fact already to be found among reforming religious groups, for example Jansenists and Pietists, in the late seventeenth century.¹⁰ Indeed, several scholars have found the cornerstones of the French anti-clerical Enlightenment hidden within radical expressions of seventeenth-century religion.¹¹ Some have ventured even further along this path, unearthing the roots of secular ideals from within the world of early modern European Christian theology itself.¹² Others have revisited the (perhaps less contentious) site of scholarly criticism. To these researchers, new ideals of philology and textual criticism did not come from radicalized Christian phalanxes; they arose out of the operational modes and priorities of confessional orthodoxies.¹³ As Demitri Levitin has remarked: ‘Paradoxically, it could be the case that what we treat as “enlightenment” in the study of the history of religion in fact emerged far earlier than we thought, and stemmed from confessionalization, and the scholarly opportunities that it offered.’¹⁴

In sum, the relationship between Enlightenment and religion has been turned topsy-turvy since the 1990s. Bearing this in mind, it comes as no surprise that the need for Enlightenment as an analytical category has been called into question. The disappearance of the once-self-evident opposition between Enlightenment and religion has left a profound mark on the very concept of ‘Enlightenment’. What becomes of the concept and its explicatory capacity, if antagonism towards revealed religion and religious institutions is to a considerable extent removed? Some have even taken the nominalist route and proposed that the Enlightenment is, in reality, a figment of our own imagination. In historical research, there is no need for such a concept to explain what was happening during a ‘long’ eighteenth century.¹⁵

Historians dealing with the Nordic countries during the eighteenth century have been slow to introduce the concept of ‘religious Enlightenment’.¹⁶ The limited employment of this concept is best understood in relation to the character of early modern Nordic societies. Recent works on the political and religious history of this European region have tended to emphasize the continued hegemonic strength of Lutheran confessional cultures throughout the 1700s, rather than underlining the impact of fundamentally changing trends associated with that which we call Enlightenment.¹⁷ Early modern Nordic countries can be singled out from the rest of Europe by their almost completely mono-confessional Lutheran character. The process of Lutheran confessionalization had been particularly successful and far-reaching in the kingdom of Denmark–Norway and within the Swedish realm. In legal matters, these nations were modelled after the Ten Commandments and the Lutheran teaching of the Christian fundamenta (see below). Yet, on closer scrutiny, there are clear signs that new ideals of reason, rationalism and reform were establishing a foothold from the late seventeenth century onwards. For example, historians have noted the reception of natural law and contract theories, respectively,¹⁸ the emergence of new forms of historical criticism,¹⁹ and the advance of a polite taste when it came to dealing with the material remains of past centuries.²⁰ The ways in which Pietism – most clearly in Denmark–Norway during the era of so-called ‘state Pietism’ (see below) – brought a new sense of individualized religiosity has been frequently commented upon, although the correlations between such expressions and Enlightenment have not always been explored. As the eighteenth century progressed, the signs of an advance on the part of more pronounced forms of enlightened Christianity were increasingly obvious. The advanced, rational Lutheran theology, espoused by such ecclesiastics as Danish court preacher Christian Bastholm (1740–1819) and Swedish bishop Jacob Axelsson Lindblom (1746–1819), marks the apogee of the influence of German Enlightenment theology in the European North.²¹ Such tendencies have been well researched; but these studies neither venture beyond the intellectual world of clerical elites, nor have they explored the intertwined and often harmonious coexistence of Enlightenment ideas and still-tangible elements of confessional society.

Recent historiographical revisions provide a serviceable starting point from which to introduce the theme of this volume. The book offers a novel perspective on the introduction of Enlightenment ideas and practices in the Nordic countries (inspired by Alasdair MacIntyre); we understand an ‘Enlightenment practice’ to be ‘any coherent form of socially established cooperative human activity’ that we can identify as being informed by notions of, above all, rationality.²² Drawing on research into ‘religious Enlightenment’ in other parts of Europe, the contributors discuss the ways in which traditional Lutheran so-called confessional cultures merged with novel ideas during the ‘long’ eighteenth century (this volume covers the period c. 1680–1820, with most chapters focusing on the late 1700s). It is the overall contention of this book that confessional culture had a profound impact on the reception and understanding of the symbolic world of Enlightenment.²³ Several contributions also demonstrate how the introduction of Enlightenment ideals invigorated some of the long-standing reforming concerns of Lutheran ecclesiastics and public officials.

Our approach could be compared to Jonathan Israel’s distinction between different intellectual currents within eighteenth-century Europe: radical Enlightenment, moderate Enlightenment and anti-Enlightenment. Israel’s second category comprises those who publicly defended the position of the absolute state, the established Church and the social hierarchies of the ancien régime while privately supporting and promoting Enlightenment ideas.²⁴ The chapters in this volume will, to a considerable extent, speak about agents, institutions and practices that might, with Israel’s terminology, be described as ‘moderate’. However, instead of measuring Enlightenment by the extent and level of support for ideal-typical Enlightenment ideas, the focus here is placed on different examples of coexistence and intertwinement between the confessional society and concepts and practices related to Enlightenment. Thus, the chapters in this volume still speak about Enlightenment; but on a number of occasions it is Enlightenment lacking the definite article. In most cases, the discussion is devoid of references to the intellectual terrain of Voltaire, d’Alembert (1717–1783) and Diderot (1713–1784). Instead, it targets a more everyday world in which reason, usefulness, individualism and empiricism informed new practices and policies.²⁵

Contributors to this volume explore the merging of confessional culture and Enlightenment through the lens of novel practices and institutions. Focal points include practices of reform, implementation of policy and the impact of scholarly/scientific novelties. Implicitly, this leads us to challenge narratives that privilege the rise of a philosophical radicalism as an overarching (albeit implicit) explicatory cause of reform.²⁶ Instead, this book emphasizes the importance of intermediaries of various kinds navigating environments that seem to us to be filled with contradictory currents and concepts. To a considerable extent, the success of Enlightenment in the European North presupposed altered attitudes and practices on the part of these people.

Numerous historians testify to the difficulty of combining insights from intellectual history with a from-below perspective when studying the ‘the age of Enlightenment’.²⁷ This is partly owing to the scarcity and inaccessibility of sources, but also to the more conceptual problem of pinpointing the relationship between the world of ideas and the everyday world of eighteenth-century government officials, clergy and ordinary men and women. Instead of offering a philosophical, somewhat speculative, definition of the ways in which this relationship should be understood, our ambition is more modest: we are simply pointing at the importance of practices and institutions as sites of human interaction to be explored empirically by the present-day historian.

Enlightenment in the Nordic countries

In order to understand the introduction of Enlightenment in the Nordic countries, some turning points should be identified. In the case of the Swedish realm, the formation of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science in 1739, which assembled and fostered internationally recognized scientists such as the physicist Anders Celsius (1701–1744), the chemist Countess Eva Ekeblad de la Gardie (1724–1786) and, most prominently, the botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), needs to be mentioned.²⁸ The scientific endeavours of the Royal Academy and its members were generally perceived as being in harmony with the general drift of Lutheran theology, and they were to some extent inspired by the so-called ‘physico-theology’ of Christian Wolff (1679–1754), professor of philosophy in Halle and Marburg.²⁹ Particular attention has to be given to the effects of scientific journeys, especially those of Linnaeus’ many disciples to various locations that were exotic at the time.³⁰ With the creation of Tabellverket (The Table Office) in 1749, the Swedish realm established a remarkably diligent system for collecting medical data and population statistics of various kinds. This new institution not only implemented scientific novelties and paved the way for early forms of national censuses but also, as an unintended effect, made the local clergy into a new kind of intermediary who supplied central government agencies with countless sets of local statistics.³¹ Another example of large-scale eighteenth-century scientific endeavour can be found in the various measures taken to investigate the conditions (geography, agriculture, antiquities and natural resources) of remote rural areas. In 1743, the central administration in Copenhagen instructed public officials in Norway to provide information about local conditions in the entire country. In 1770, similar measures were taken to procure more comprehensive knowledge of Iceland.³² Such initiatives, including the various surveys conducted by the Swedish Table Office, were motivated by a mercantilist desire to measure natural resources and, if possible, increase both production and population. Ambitions to promote trade and prosperity within the population at large were greatly aided by long periods of peace around the Baltic Sea, saving both personal and material resources.³³ The honing of mercantilist principles had considerable influence on the treatment of religious outsiders. In the Swedish realm, freedom of religion for Calvinists was introduced in 1741, after having previously been granted only to heavily restricted collectives of craftsmen.³⁴ Mercantilism motivated the introduction of freedom of religion in the free towns of Altona (1664), Fredericia (1682), Fredrikstad (1682) and Kristiansand (1686) within the Danish realm. In 1771, Moravians were invited to establish the town of Christiansfeld. This was to become a successful free-trade town.³⁵ Throughout the eighteenth century, collisions between confession-orientated and mercantilist rationales can be observed. This is evident in, for example, the struggles over the abolishment of holy days and in contemporary measures to increase (or regulate) Sabbath observance.³⁶

A considerable amount of research dealing with Enlightenment in Denmark–Norway has focused on the author, historian and playwright Ludvig Holberg (1684–1754).³⁷ In addition to his extensive publications in the fields of history and natural law, Holberg appealed to a wider public with his many essays and comedies. At the end of his life, Holberg transformed the ancient Sorø Academy, located eighty kilometres west of Copenhagen, into a hotspot of Enlightenment teaching inspired by the French philosophes, in particular Montesquieu (1689–1755). The academy’s illustrious teachers, such as Jens Schielderup Sneedorff (1724–1764), Johann Bernhard Basedow (1724–1790) and Tyge Rothe (1731–1795), combined this line of teaching with loyal support for the absolute monarchy and its centralizing efforts to map and reform the country, a blend that has been labelled ‘the Sorø Enlightenment’.³⁸ The absence of equivalent key figures and centres of Enlightenment within the Swedish realm has triggered the suggestion that Sweden was only sporadically influenced by Enlightenment ideas prior to the concluding decades of the eighteenth century, and then rather in the context of Romanticism, most notably represented by the poet and radical writer Thomas Thorild (1759–1808).³⁹ However, this understanding of the Swedish situation depends heavily on the argument that any Enlightenment worthy of the name should propagate the same tenets, and foster the same antagonisms, as the French Enlightenment.⁴⁰ Yet, from the 1730s onwards, books and new periodicals increased their readership significantly. One of the most prevalent figures active within this new literary milieu, the Royal Librarian and historical writer Olof von Dalin (1708–1763), started the periodical Swänska Argus, with inspiration from the British Spectator, in 1732. His magisterial work of national history, Svea Rikes historia (1747–1761), is stylistically inspired by the French Enlightenment. In much of his literary oeuvre, we find a critique – often witty – of Church and clergy (although he took care not to attack the Lutheran, or the Christian, faith as such).⁴¹ However, most printed books were still of a religious character. As the century progressed, there was an increased interest in pietist literature.⁴² Pietism also inspired various reforms aimed at an increase in overall readership levels. The Danish poor laws of 1708, which provided deprived children with the right to receive a free education, were by and large the result of pietist initiatives. A pietist understanding of the role of conversion inspired the confirmation liturgy that was introduced in the Danish and Norwegian Church in 1736. This act was preceded by lessons in reading for every child. This reform was followed in 1739 by the formation of a compulsory schooling system in all Danish and Norwegian parishes (although ambitions were not always fulfilled, and in many cases reading skills were taught in comparatively informal ways).⁴³ In Sweden, confirmation was not introduced until 1811 and mandatory rural schools in 1842. However, the Swedish Church Law of 1686 already stipulated that everyone should be able to recite and comprehend fundamental parts of the Lutheran creed in order to be admitted to communion. Literacy in the Nordic countries increased to the extent that the vast majority of the population, both men and women, were able to read (but not write) by the mid-eighteenth century.⁴⁴

The various measures that triggered this increase in reading ability tend to be understood as expressions of Lutheran confessional culture. Arguably, they were primarily aimed at forming pious subjects. Unintentionally, they also contributed to the formation of a reading public at large, and thus to the dramatic expansion of the book market in the 1750s.⁴⁵ This development takes us to a unique aspect of the Enlightenment in the Nordic countries: the ground-breaking Press Acts of 1766 (Sweden) and 1770 (Denmark–Norway). The two key agents behind the 1766 Act came from the Finnish part of the Swedish realm: Peter Forsskål (1732–1763), a botanist and the son of a clergyman, who wrote the pamphlet on civil liberty in 1759 that first triggered the debate; and Anders Chydenius (1729–1803), a country pastor who eagerly advocated the proposition in the Swedish Riksdag (parliament, or diet). The Press Act abolished the censor’s office, permitted open debate on political issues and proclaimed an unusual principle of unrestricted public access to state documents (which is still in force in both Finland and in Sweden). However, the Act prohibited criticism directed against the monarch and the Lutheran faith. From now on, the publisher was to be held responsible for the contents of works he had made available to the public.⁴⁶ None of these restrictions were included in the even more radical, albeit short-lived, Danish Press Act of 1770. It was issued by Johann Friedrich Struensee (1737–1772), counsellor to the autocratic King Christian VII (r. 1766–1808). The Danish Press Act was famously praised by Voltaire. However, it was restricted by Struensee himself as early as 1771 (after the opportunity to deliver criticism anonymously had, hardly surprisingly, backfired). The earlier practices concerning censorship were not restored, though.⁴⁷ According to Jonathan Israel, these two Press Acts mark the apogee of Scandinavian Enlightenment. With these Acts, traditional social hierarchies were transformed to a greater extent than in any other Western country.⁴⁸

Interestingly, the Nordic Press Acts were issued by the two different types of government that established the respective frameworks of the two Nordic states of the eighteenth century. While Denmark–Norway had been governed by an absolute sovereign since 1660, declared in the King’s Code of 1665, the Swedish realm abolished autocracy in 1719 and became a constitutional monarchy. That event marked the beginning of what contemporaries were already referring to as the ‘Age of Liberty’ (1719–1772). This was a period when the Council of the Realm held ultimate executive power, and the Riksdag constituted the primary arena for political debate and decision-making at the national level. In the Riksdag, the peasantry had its own corporation and a vote of equal value to those of each of the other three Estates – the nobility, the clergy and the burghers – although they were carefully kept out of discussions in the Privy Council in matters relating to foreign policy.⁴⁹ In Denmark–Norway, there were no assemblies of Estates or any other institution which involved inhabitants in political decision-making. In particular, the role of the peasantry was circumscribed. From 1733, male peasants were even forbidden to move without the express permission of the landlord or of the king.⁵⁰ Members of the nobility did not enjoy any privileged access to public office, even though we can find several examples indicating that local groups did not lack opportunities to influence an autocratic ruler.⁵¹ Conditions were very different in the Norwegian part of the realm, where farms owned by the nobility were few and local societies were marked by what has famously been labelled ‘peasant communalism’.⁵² The different types of government in Sweden and in Denmark–Norway, respectively, had some effect on policies in matters of religion. In accordance with his own personal convictions, the Danish king Christian VI (r.1730–1746) developed what has been described as state Pietism, with Moravians and other radical groups sent out on missions in the Danish colonial world.⁵³ By contrast, Sweden took a particularly harsh stand against all kinds of Lutheran dissent during its Age of Liberty, perceiving Pietists as a threat against the unity of the confessional state. The Conventicle Act of 1726 limited religious meetings to family prayers, attended only by members of the household, and compelled the local clergy to perform regular examinations in households to ensure that their members possessed an adequate degree of knowledge of the Lutheran catechism. Moreover, a decree of 1735 allowed local pastors to actively interrogate parishioners suspected of silently holding radical pietist views.⁵⁴ After the coup d’état by Gustav III (r. 1771–1792) in 1772, which restored much of the former royal executive powers, a regulation for Jewish worship became operational in 1781, and Roman Catholics were granted the freedom to worship (on condition that they were foreign subjects) in 1782. These reforms came in the name of Enlightenment and tolerance. In Denmark–Norway, Crown Prince Frederik’s coup d’état in 1784 was followed by an intensified discussion on civil liberties, which resulted in some substantial concessions to the peasantry, most of whom became landowners as a result. Although this reform has been described as a peaceful and consensus-orientated path towards increasing liberties, freedom of religion was not introduced until the 1840s. Instead, these reforms were to a considerable extent motivated by the intent to foster good Christian citizens.⁵⁵

Compared to other parts of Europe, the specific setting for Enlightenment ideas and practices that materialized in the Nordic countries was marked by two specific characteristics: the rural character of these countries, and their two hundred years of almost undisturbed mono-confessional Lutheranism. Taking the continued importance of confessional culture into account, these two characteristics are placed at the centre of the first two sections of this volume, while a third section is dedicated to challenging some of the established points of reference for Enlightenment in the Nordic countries.

Enlightenment in rural societies

The Nordic countries of the eighteenth century were largely rural: 90 per cent of the inhabitants of the Swedish realm lived in rural areas, and so did about 85 per cent of the inhabitants of Denmark–Norway.⁵⁶ Moreover, the urban population was concentrated in Copenhagen, Stockholm and Bergen; there were few towns that exceeded five thousand inhabitants. Consequently, the first section of the book focuses on agents and pastoral practices in rural societies.

The first two contributions offer detailed overviews of the geographical and institutional frameworks of the two Nordic states. Arne Bugge Amundsen introduces the concept of ‘pastoral Enlightenment’ in the first chapter. He explores the ways in which Enlightenment was introduced in rural Norway through the lens of three eighteenth-century pastors. This concept returns in the following chapter, written by Erik Sidenvall, which is a study of how a bureaucratic model of oversight could be turned into a vehicle of individualizing religious practices in late eighteenth-century Sweden. The literary output of the Finnish disabled and self-taught writer Tuomas Ragvaldinpoika (1724–1804) is explored in the next chapter of this section. Tuija Laine offers a close reading of his various works. This chapter offers a unique view of how old and new ideals blended in a rural voice placed very much at the margins of society. In the final chapter of this section, written by Joonas Tammela, the religio-political messages conveyed from rural Swedish pulpits are placed at the centre of attention. This chapter argues for the continued strength of a traditional, Lutheran orthodox definition of the social order, but also for its adaptability at a time when new ways of life increasingly came to influence local societies. Taken together, these contributions reveal some of the long-standing continuities of rural Nordic societies; but they also show how clerical intermediaries negotiated Enlightenment ideals and explored the ambiguities of Lutheran orthodoxy in an endeavour to promote reform.

Dealing with the Catholic past (and present)

In various ways, agents of Enlightenment in the European North were driven to comment on the countries’ Catholic, medieval past. In spite of two centuries of Lutheran hegemony, there had been moments when the Lutheran confession was threatened. For Sweden, this was primarily during the short reign of Sigismund Vasa as king of both Sweden and Poland (r.1592–1599) before he was defeated by his uncle Duke Charles, later Charles IX (r.1604–1611), who also reinforced the Lutheran confession of the state in alliance with the Church at the Uppsala Synod of 1593. Religious minorities had also been present and visible in both Denmark–Norway and Sweden with Finland, the Russian Orthodox minority in eastern Finland forming a noteworthy example. In addition to that, freedom of worship had been granted to skilled craftsmen of Reformed and Catholic faiths, inhabitants of certain free towns and foreign subjects associated with the embassies established in both Stockholm and Copenhagen during the second half of the seventeenth century. As mentioned above, judging from what caused stricter confessional legislation in the early eighteenth century, (Lutheran) Pietists emerged as embodying the most tangible ‘threat’ to the Lutheran Church in Sweden. This might be seen as a ‘light’ crisis of pluralism when compared to the historical experiences of other early modern states, but these were nevertheless events that triggered a militant confessional response.

The most fundamental opponent was, however, the Papal Church. A counter-identity built around the notion of ‘the Other’ in the shape of the Papal Church was forged as early as the sixteenth century; but interestingly enough, the Reformed, Calvinist churches were also frequently dressed in enemy colours. The Lutheran Reformation differed from other stances evinced by Protestant Christianity. For example, this difference is evident in its attitude to religious images. During the eighteenth century, a willingness to do away with ‘superstitious’ uses of remaining images intermingled with a renewed interest in antiquities and a re-evaluation of what might be described as historical narratives.

In this section, the contributors demonstrate various ways of dealing with the pre-Lutheran past. The first two chapters, written by Terese Zachrisson and Martin Wangsgaard Jürgensen, approach the theme from the vantage point of material culture. To a considerable extent, the material remnants of the medieval Church were preserved in the parish churches of both Denmark–Norway and Sweden. Just as historians became increasingly hostile towards the Middle Ages during the eighteenth century, numerous leading clerics and aristocratic patrons felt a growing discomfort at the still-existing material remains of the Papal Church. Paradoxically, these chapters also reveal how new ideals could contribute to the preservation of remnants of bygone times. The two ensuing chapters focus on historiographical interpretations of the nations’ medieval, Catholic past. Whereas previous generations of historians had been relatively tolerant towards some of the expressions of medieval Christendom, the chapters written by Henrik Ågren and Rolv Nøtvik Jakobsen reveal how an emphasis on common-sense rationality led to increasingly hostile views of the ‘Catholic past’. As is shown in Nøtvik Jacobsen’s contribution, Norwegian historical writing eschewed the Middle Ages in pursuit of a pre-Christian past in which it found the nucleus of proto-national sentiment. In the final chapter of this section Yvonne Maria Werner explores not a relationship to historic Catholicism but the attraction of Sweden’s Gustav III to contemporary Roman Catholic liturgical practices. This chapter reveals how a longing for aesthetic pleasure and liturgical splendour could be combined with a relatively advanced, ‘enlightened’ reform agenda.

Milestones of Enlightenment challenged

The final section of the book challenges some of the hitherto taken-for-granted points of reference for Enlightenment in the Nordic countries. The implementation of natural law, the abolition of censorship, mitigations of confessional legislation and mass vaccination campaigns have generally been understood as the outcomes and expressions of Enlightenment. That notion is questioned by the five chapters included in this section. In different ways, the writers reveal how changes that we tend to associate with the Enlightenment were intertwined with changing practices and rationales within Lutheran confessional culture.

The section begins with a chapter, co-authored by Tine Reeh and Ralf Hemmingsen, on so-called ‘melancholic murders’ in Denmark. Instead of discussing how novel legislation was inspired by natural law, the writers direct our attention to how jurisprudence was increasingly influenced by a pietist anthropology. In the ensuing contribution by Jesper Jakobsen and Lars Cyril Nørgaard, the received view of the Press Act of 1770 in Denmark–Norway as a radical break with previous practices is challenged. By examining the institutional practices of censorship at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Copenhagen in the mid-eighteenth century, this chapter reveals how several rationales, both confessional and commercial, transformed the practice of censorship long before 1770. Johannes Ljungberg’s chapter demonstrates how the implementation of the Danish Sabbath ordinance, a reform introduced by the confessional state, was invigorated by the implementation of police regulations in the eighteenth century. Taking the extreme example of Altona, the first free town of the Danish realm, the chapter demonstrates how Sabbath legislation caused tension between two Enlightenment values: commercial interest and tolerance of religious pluralism. The following contribution, written by Christina Petterson, also dwells on the borderland between religious and commercial rationales, offering a close analysis of the state initiative to invite Moravians to build and settle in the Danish town of Christiansfeld. Medical themes return in the final chapter in this section; in his contribution to this volume, Esko Laine provides a detailed account of the implementation of vaccination policies as they were performed by pastors in rural Finland.

The people of eighteenth-century Nordic societies used the terms ‘enlightened’ and ‘enlightenment’ in ways that could simultaneously be associated with a pious Lutheranism, with rational reform and with a clandestine esoterism. By way of a conceptual analysis, Anders Jarlert’s epilogue explores the tensions that arose from these different uses, thereby adding further dimensions to the theme of the book.

In sum, this volume deals with several well-rehearsed themes of Enlightenment studies. Scientific novelties, realized policies, reading and printing practices are all themes that return in this book; but here they are understood in relation to various modes and rationales of confessional culture. Furthermore, all the contributions to the present volume deal with ideas related to three ‘R’s: reason, rationalism and reform. But the eighteenth century encountered here is not only a story of oppositions. Reason is not necessarily seen as replacing religious belief; nor is rationalism viewed as opposed to rationales occurring within religious policies or institutions. Evidence of reform may in some cases be interpreted as expressions of Enlightenment; but there is also a recurring echo of previous religious reforms and measures promoting renewal, not least in relation to the historical experience of the Lutheran Reformation. Therefore, we have chosen to place the notion of ‘religious Enlightenment’ at the core of this book, whose various chapters all proceed from this fundamental conception in their explorations of ideas and practices that were embedded in a landscape shaped by both reason and orthodoxy.