Chapter 6 - “The Protestant Bossuet”: De la religion in political context (1824–1830)

Summary

DE LA RELIGION, VOLUME I (MAY 1824)

The first volume of Constant's De la religion appeared in the highly polarized context just described. A book of remarkable erudition, based on years of research, it had gone through major transformations over the course of Constant's life. While writing it, his perspective had evolved from one inspired by the French Enlightenment and hostile to religion, to one inspired by the German Enlightenment and favorable to religious sentiments, if and when left free. At the height of his career during the second Restoration, and as his health steadily declined, Constant worked feverishly to get his tomes to press, quite literally “exhausting himself to death” in the process. Volume I appeared in May 1824, volume II in October 1825, and volume III in 1827. Volumes IV and V were published posthumously in 1831.

Constant knew that his book would be controversial. Coming in the midst of a period of Catholic triumphalism and royalist reaction, it offered an essentially Protestant view of history meant to undergird his liberal politics. To his friend Sismondi, he confided:

I have decided to attempt to publish my book, even though we live under Jesuit rule, but I shall publish it in installments, because the first, which I don't think will alarm anyone, will I hope establish its reputation sufficiently for no one to dare stop me later on.

After the first volume's appearance, in September 1824, he wrote to his cousin, Rosalie:

thank you for approving of my book. I am hard at work on the second volume which is more shocking than the first. It's impossible to foresee or calculate today what it will be permissible to print or say, but I must work on in the meantime.