578 Ch. 15 • Liberal Challenges To Restoration Europe

Postcard depicting the Houses of Parliament in Budapest.

Indeed, noble style and distinction retained great influence. In the archi­
tecture of public buildings and palaces, noble taste still predominated, as in
the enormous neo-Gothic Parliament in Budapest, where nobles held sway
as for centuries. In much of Europe, public buildings and statues affirmed
aristocratic values and moral claims that had characterized the old regimes.
European nobles retained close ties to the established churches, which still
deferred to aristocratic status.

During the revolutionary era, the established churches, particularly the
Catholic Church, had suffered. Europe now witnessed a marked religious
revival, as in the Lutheran northern German states. In France, the old reli­
gious confraternities were revived; pious families contributed money to
rebuild churches, monasteries, and convents destroyed or damaged during
the Revolution. In Britain, the Established (Anglican) Church rejected the
notion of divine-right or absolutist monarchy, yet most British conserva­
tives believed the existing social order represented by the Anglican Church
to be God-given and immutable. They strongly opposed (Protestant) Dis­
senters and, above all, Catholics.

Conservative Ideology

The conservative ideology of Restoration Europe drew on several sources.
A theory of organic change held Christian monarchies to be, as a French
writer put it, “the final creation in the development of political society and of