tered competition among political factions over the spoils available at the
center. Wuthnow’s model is a version of the structural pattern of creative
networks summarized at the end of Chapter 9: the intersection of multiple
bases for intellectuals at a central focus of attention. My analysis of the French
Enlightenment differs from Wuthnow’s on one point: not only was there
creativity among intellectuals dependent on the patronage network of civil
servants (Voltaire, the Encyclopedists), but also creativity broke out among the
feudal lords who opposed the centralizing state (Boulainvilliers, Montesquieu).
In England after the Glorious Revolution, the government Establishment was
the aristocracy; its principled moderation on the religious question was a key
element of its control through an institutionalized balance of power. In France,
the bases of political power remained deeply divided between the officialdom
of the absolutist state and the aristocracy, now politically marginalized but still
socially privileged. These bases for political factions gave rise to a new division
in intellectual space.The French Deists, unlike the English, were not merely arguing for a reasonable
toleration and an end to religious strife, but were becoming outright opponents
of the church. The comte de Boulainvilliers extolled feudalism against the
centralizing monarchy. His Three Imposters (1719) holds that revealed religion
is created by the false legislators, Moses, Christ, and Muhammad; the true
religion he builds on the philosophies of Descartes and Spinoza. Boulainvil-
liers’s freethinking circle included disciples of Fontenelle and Bayle, and copied
clandestine manuscripts that eventually became the ammunition of the Voltaire
circle.^20
The same combination of feudalism and natural religion made its biggest
splash with Montesquieu. He came from the provincial noblesse de robe,
graduated from the Oratorian College in 1705, and was initiated into intellec-
tual life by Boulainvilliers’s circle. His first literary success came with his
cosmopolitan juxtaposition of different manners and religions in his Persian
Letters (1721), not least because of its titillating scenes of sexual life in a
Muslim harem. Visiting England during 1729–31, he befriended the Tory
intellectuals around Bolingbroke, especially the young Chesterfield; when he
returned to France, he spent the next 17 years writing his Esprit des lois
(Collins, 1908). In it aristocracy is raised to a general doctrine of the separation
of powers and the defense of liberties against the crushing, oriental-style central
state, harems and all. Montesquieu’s work, published anonymously in Geneva
in 1748, was attacked by the Jesuits and placed on the Index; the attention of
controversy reinforced its success.
Rival positions sprang up to fill the anti-religious side of the field. Voltaire,604 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Western Paths