Despotic Absolutism: 1721–1784

Abstract

This chapter analyses the state religious politics of the early Danish absolutist state (confer Reeh N, Religion and the state of Denmark—state religious politics in the elementary school system from 1721 to 1975, an alternative approach to secularization. Ph.d.-afhandling, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, 2006;, Reeh N, Soc Comp 56(2):179–188, 2009b; Reeh N, Ideas Hist 3:83–110, 2009c). The state’s efforts to provide compulsory schooling in the first part of the eighteenth century shows that the state used schools as a way of disciplining different groups in the population. Important impulses towards the introduction of mandatory schooling in both 1721 and 1739 as well as mandatory Christian confirmation thus came from the military. The absolutist state of the first part of the eighteenth century was not a secular state and instead recognized and enforced an official state religion. In this period, beliefs of the individual were a matter of concern for the state and were not a private matter. This circumstance was not unique to the absolutist period from 1660 onwards. But the advent of absolutism brought with it a significant extension of the state’s hold over its people. The chapter concludes that the existence of the Sacred Canopy in the early eighteenth century did not exist in itself. Instead, it was constructed by a deliberate effort from the Danish state.