A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

The Diffusion and Expansion of the Enlightenment 327

sity of Oxford, the brooding Wesley began to believe that his mission was to
infuse ordinary people—who seemed ignored by the Established Church—
with religious enthusiasm.
Wesley never formally broke with the Anglican Church nor claimed to be
setting up a new denomination. Yet that was the effect of his lifetime of
preaching directly to ordinary people on grassy hills and in open fields and
of writing religious tracts directed at ordinary Britons. Wesley attracted
about 100,000 followers to Methodism. Stressing personal conversion,
Methodism suggested that all people were equal in God s eyes. This offended
upper-class Englishmen and -women, not the least because Methodists
shouted out their beliefs and sometimes publicly confessed sins that the
upper classes thought best left unnamed. A duchess explained that she
hated the Methodists because “it is monstrous to be told that you have a
heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl on the earth.”
Methodist evangelism was both a dynamic and a stabilizing force in
British society. There was little or nothing politically or socially radical about
Wesley, as shown by his unwillingness to break formally with the Established
Church. Far from preaching rebellion, Wesley encouraged work, self­
discipline, and abstinence from dancing, drinking, and gambling.
The Anglican Church, in turn, began to seek more followers among the
lower classes. It established the Society for the Promotion of Christian
Knowledge and Anglican Sunday schools, which provided poor children
with food and catechism. The evangelical Hannah More (1745-1833), the
“bishop in petticoats,” abandoned the material comforts of upper-class life
for the challenges of bringing religion to the poor.
Despite all of the evangelistic efforts, by the middle of the eighteenth
century religion seemed to play a significantly smaller role in the lives of
people of all classes, particularly in regions with expanding economies and
relatively high literacy rates. The numbers of men and women entering the
clergy in France declined, and male and female monastic orders lost a third
of their members between 1770 and 1790 alone. Fewer wills requested that
Masses be said for the deceased or for souls in Purgatory. A Venetian theolo­
gian at mid-century claimed that the people of his state had become “de­
christianized.” In France, popular dislike of the exemption of the clergy
from taxes increased, although the Church still provided the monarchy a
sizable yearly contribution from its great wealth. Thus, the philosophes
who challenged the role of the established churches in public life were
addressing many readers who had lost interest in organized religion.

Expansion of the Cultural Base

The expanding influence of the middle classes in England and northwest­

ern Europe also began slowly to transform cultural life, expanding interest

in literature, music, and the arts. The increasing number of literary associ­

ations reflected this change. A rise in literacy expanded the size of the