Epilogue

Bibliographic Data

ID23213284
AuthorsJacob Soll (corresponding author)
Year2019
Pages317-335
Publication date2019-10-08
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueFlorence after the Medici (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.4324/9780367808723-12
OpenAlexW3187991830
ISBN9780367808723
LanguageEN
Citations received11

This chapter situates Peter Leopold and his regime within the tradition of Catholic Enlightenment. It traces a non-radical and monarchical movement that was perhaps the most widely implemented program in eighteenth century Europe. Among the hallmarks of this Enlightenment were the cultivation of a more rational Christianity, the diffusion of science and scholarship, and the development of more efficient social and political institutions. Ultimately what made these projects attractive to princes like Peter Leopold was a new kind of education. This pedagogical tradition was formulated initially in the circles of Jean-Baptiste Colbert and subsequently spread by princely tutors among the Catholic monarchs of eighteenth-century Europe. This education revolved around instruction in finance as well as in the practical arts and crafts that would also be so central to Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie. The Colbertist legacy connects Tuscan reform not only to the personal inclinations of Peter Leopold, then, but to the most profound impulses of eighteenth-century Catholicism.

European Political History Analysis · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History

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