Religion and Politics in the Ancien Régime

Abstract

The article addresses the question of how to understand the role of religion in the European society of the Ancien Régime. The first part aims to provide a critical overview of a few established historiographical approaches to the understanding of religion and religious conflicts. It was established that they often fall into the ahistorical or teleological understanding of religion. Building on the political Marxists’ findings on the role of the monarchical apparatus of the authority as the principal expropriator, the second part of the article places religion of the Ancien Régime in the then-current social relations, thinking it as being imbedded in the social formation of the period in a specific manner.