The exercise of reason posed a serious threat to the established order. Given that the French Revolution may be seen as the culmination of enlightened thinking, it is odd to imagine that the very classes threatened by the enlightened thinkers were prepared to patronise them. It was in the interests of the privileged classes to court favour with them out of fear of possible exposure in the press, and also to show them off as acquisitions which convey the prestige of the patron. www.essayist.info

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Monarchs and Nobility as
Patrons of the Enlightenment
Catherine the Great
(reign 1762 – 1796)

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What is Enlightenment? Sapere aude! (Dare to know!) (Kant,
1784).
The Middle Ages. The clergy and the aristocracy wielded
power over the mass of the people. The king served as a
guarantor of the status quo, ideologically protected by the
dogma known as the “divine right” of kings to govern.
The Enlightenment, stretching from the latter half of the 17th
century to the French Revolution in 1789, represented a
challenge to the existing social order.

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Britain
• Locke received patronage from the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury and Lady
Masham, and a royal studentship, which lasted for three decades at
Christ Church College, Oxford.
• His studentship ended when he was thought to be plotting against
King Charles II.
• Lock’s Two Treatises of Government, which opposed the “divine right”
of kings to govern and defended the right of the people to revolt, was
published anonymously after James II was deposed.
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The Two Treatises of Civil Government
‘whenever the legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the property
of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put
themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved
from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God
hath provided for all men, against force and violence’ (§.222).
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France
• Louis XIV ‘patronized the arts much more than all of the other kings,
his contemporaries, put together’ (Voltaire)
• He, established the Académie royale des sciences and the Académie
des inscriptions et belles-lettres
• He forbade the courts to admit accusations of sorcery
• BUT
• He persecuted Protestants
• He increased censorship
• He spent fortunes on wars and on glorifying himself at Versailles.
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Louis XIV (reign1643-1715)

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Control over the courtiers was maintained by a strict code of etiquette,
as favours could be bestowed upon those who followed the code most
meticulously. The dress code meant that the nobility would spend
fortunes trying to keep up with the latest fashion and have to borrow
money from the King, thus deepening their dependence on him
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Louis XIV with Courtiers in the Hall of Mirrors
(Versailles)
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The Duchess of Maine (1676-1753)
• Dedicated herself to the pursuit of artistic activities at Châtenay and
Sceaux Château: ‘ce ne fut plus chez elle que divertissements galants,
bals singuliers, fêtes et spectacles’ (Saint-Simon)
• Wished to attract notable figures from the world of arts and letters
who might have a role to play in helping her husband influence the
choice of successor to the throne.
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Duke of Maine as Aeneas the Duchess of Maine as Dido. Also present
are the couple's children, the Duchess's maid of honor, as well as Troy,
the painter, carrying a drawing board.
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Encyclopédie (1751-1772)
The philosophes, Diderot and
d'Alembert edited the
Encyclopédie
Opened up discussion on all
topics
Challenged dogma and
established authority
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Preliminary Discourse of the Encyclopédie (d’Alembert, 1751)
A tribunal which has become powerful in the south of Europe (…)
condemned a famous astronomer for having supported the movement
of the earth, and declared him a heretic (...) That is how the abuse of
spiritual authority, united with temporal authority, forces reason to
silence; just stopping short of forbidding the human race to think.
Galileo before the Holy Office (1632)
(Robert-Fleury, 1847)
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The Marquise de Pompadour
(Louis XV’s mistress)
Supported the parti philosophique, a
reformist movement influenced by
enlightened thinking.
As a consequence, Louis XV
supported fiscal reforms which
would have imposed taxes on the
rich, thus breaching the exemption
privileges of the clergy and the
aristocracy.
This increased the antagonisms
between the monarchy and the
aristocracy.
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Frederick II of Prussia
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‘Fridericus Rex Apollini et Musis’
The ‘sacralization of culture’: ‘the emancipation of high
culture from any representational and recreational function
and its elevation to become a sacralized activity to be
worshipped in its own right’ Blanning (2016)
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Catherine II Empress of Russia
‘Diderot, d’Alembert and I—we are three who would build you
altars.… Would one ever have suspected fifty years ago that one day
the Scythians [Russians] would so nobly recompense in Paris the
virtue, science, and philosophy that are treated so shamefully among
us’. Letter to Catherine II from Voltaire
The Inauguration of the Academy of Arts, Valery Jacobi.
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