Well, my question here was maybe too vague, as of course that sort of thing (attitudes towards religion and politics) varies over time and between places, and "religion" and "politics" are huge and varied things in themselves! But yeah, I get the point: asking questions is good. : )
I'll just say that religion was more of a big deal in the 18th century than it is today, less than in previous centuries, and maybe less than you think. And it's worth noting that we may not care (much) about whether Biden is a Catholic or Protestant (there were concerns about Kennedy, as I recall from history class, but it turned out not to be a big deal), but when was the last time the US had an atheist, Muslim, or Jewish president, and are you holding your breath for us to get one?
I mean, it wasn't obvious that the answer would be in a bill at all, it all could just have been contained in informal discussions between the main Hanoverian actors so that we would never know, or was contained in archived letters. But nope, actually debated in Parliament.
When in doubt about a legal fine point of 18th century Great Britain, try Blackstone first! I wasn't hoping for anything this explicit, but I hoped he'd have something applicable. And he delivered.
Meanwhile, I am getting nowhere on your question about the primary sources for BPC:s conversion to Anglicanism.
Huh. Thanks for checking, though!
It seems unreasonable to me that reputable historians would keep claiming it if the evidence wasn't there
I wish this were true! But after two years of source criticism on Frederick the Great historiography, the one thing we've learned in salon is that reputable historians draw on other reputable historians, who were drawing on less reputable historians, who were probably drawing on Voltaire, who was probably intentionally trolling you. :P
The number of reputable historians publishing books up through 2021 who claim Fritz was behind the First Polish Partition is, like, all of them except one, but that one has the evidence to prove he wasn't.
Almost every historian will cite multiple eyewitness reports to say that Fritz could see Katte's execution from where he was imprisoned--and yet there's good reason to believe he couldn't.
Ditto the eyewitness reports that baby Joseph II was at Maria Theresia's appeal to the Hungarian estates in 1741. Everyone I've read repeats this claim, except one historian citing a study that presents documentary evidence that Joseph wasn't even in the city at the time.
For two hundred years, everyone believed Voltaire's letters to Madame Denis in 1750-1753 were genuine, up until someone proved they were doctored after the fact in the 1990s, and only gradually is awareness of this catching on. Reputable historians are still treating them as valuable sources to this day.
The former head of the Prussian secret state archives, one of the most meticulous historians I've encountered, who's working solely with archival sources, makes 4 chronological mistakes in a 100-page monograph that I've caught him in. One is a typo, one is outside his specialty, two are in his specialty. Of the two in his specialty, one had been pointed out by a previous historian but is nonetheless repeated over and over again in the literature.
Catt's memoirs are treated like a goldmine of eyewitness reports by everyone, except the one ignored nineteenth-century scholar who proved Catt had plagiarized half the material from other sources and pretended he'd gotten it from Fritz's mouth, which makes the other half highly suspect.
Just a couple months ago, I traced the claim that Johann Friedrich von Pfeiffer was found innocent of embezzlement, a claim that's found in the Neue Deutsche Biographie and used by reputable historians, back to an eighteenth-century source who admitted he had a hard time finding out material about Pfeiffer and was cobbling together hearsay; whereas an obscure self-published monograph by a local historian quotes from a cabinet order showing that he was found guilty and imprisoned for several years.
A few days ago, I pointed Selena to a letter by Sophia of Hanover that appears to contradict the claim in her memoirs that her fiance had an STD. The letter said that was just a lie to get Sophia's brother to agree to the fiance swap.
We could go on and on. You have to assume that reputable historians aren't doing source criticism unless you see them doing it. Almost no one will track down the evidence for or against every claim they make. By and large, they don't consider that their job. (Duffy certainly doesn't. Kloosterhuis does, but he's human and he makes mistakes.) Further, you have to assume that some percentage of eyewitness accounts are forged, lying, or mistaken, and you have to assess the reliability of the author of any eyewitness claims and look for counterevidence. (In a court setting, eyewitness testimony is considered by experts, but unfortunately not by jurors, to be one of the least reliable kinds of evidence.)
Now, maybe BPC converted to Anglicanism in 1750 and whoever I read who said that was an oft-repeated romantic legend was crazy. But nothing about it being repeated by numerous historians who by and large don't cite their sources makes it sound any different from any of the claims above.
(I once emailed an author, admittedly not a historian but a medical doctor who was interested in Fritz and had published two books on him, and asked him where he got the claim that Fredersdorf was found guilty of embezzlement. He'd gotten it from Wikipedia. Wikipedia didn't cite a source. I eventually traced the claim down to that local historian's self-published monograph mentioned above, in which she draws heavily on the archives for most of her claims, except the one about Fredersdorf being found guilty, which has no citations and is apparently pure speculation based on a coincidence of timing. This claim is now in 3 books I can name and getting propagated. I am seriously working on an article that combines "Fredersdorf wasn't found guilty" and the "Pfeiffer wasn't found innocent" claim above into a critique of other scholars' source criticism and hoping to publish it, if I can do the necessary archive work to back up my claims at some point.)
So much like the claim that Charles didn't take off his boots for a week, or that he prevented looting in Saxony, I'm treating this as possibly true, possibly untrue, until further evidence one way or the other emerges.
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Responses to luzula from last post
Date: 2021-11-06 04:17 pm (UTC)I'll just say that religion was more of a big deal in the 18th century than it is today, less than in previous centuries, and maybe less than you think. And it's worth noting that we may not care (much) about whether Biden is a Catholic or Protestant (there were concerns about Kennedy, as I recall from history class, but it turned out not to be a big deal), but when was the last time the US had an atheist, Muslim, or Jewish president, and are you holding your breath for us to get one?
I mean, it wasn't obvious that the answer would be in a bill at all, it all could just have been contained in informal discussions between the main Hanoverian actors so that we would never know, or was contained in archived letters. But nope, actually debated in Parliament.
When in doubt about a legal fine point of 18th century Great Britain, try Blackstone first! I wasn't hoping for anything this explicit, but I hoped he'd have something applicable. And he delivered.
Meanwhile, I am getting nowhere on your question about the primary sources for BPC:s conversion to Anglicanism.
Huh. Thanks for checking, though!
It seems unreasonable to me that reputable historians would keep claiming it if the evidence wasn't there
I wish this were true! But after two years of source criticism on Frederick the Great historiography, the one thing we've learned in salon is that reputable historians draw on other reputable historians, who were drawing on less reputable historians, who were probably drawing on Voltaire, who was probably intentionally trolling you. :P
The number of reputable historians publishing books up through 2021 who claim Fritz was behind the First Polish Partition is, like, all of them except one, but that one has the evidence to prove he wasn't.
Almost every historian will cite multiple eyewitness reports to say that Fritz could see Katte's execution from where he was imprisoned--and yet there's good reason to believe he couldn't.
Ditto the eyewitness reports that baby Joseph II was at Maria Theresia's appeal to the Hungarian estates in 1741. Everyone I've read repeats this claim, except one historian citing a study that presents documentary evidence that Joseph wasn't even in the city at the time.
For two hundred years, everyone believed Voltaire's letters to Madame Denis in 1750-1753 were genuine, up until someone proved they were doctored after the fact in the 1990s, and only gradually is awareness of this catching on. Reputable historians are still treating them as valuable sources to this day.
The former head of the Prussian secret state archives, one of the most meticulous historians I've encountered, who's working solely with archival sources, makes 4 chronological mistakes in a 100-page monograph that I've caught him in. One is a typo, one is outside his specialty, two are in his specialty. Of the two in his specialty, one had been pointed out by a previous historian but is nonetheless repeated over and over again in the literature.
Catt's memoirs are treated like a goldmine of eyewitness reports by everyone, except the one ignored nineteenth-century scholar who proved Catt had plagiarized half the material from other sources and pretended he'd gotten it from Fritz's mouth, which makes the other half highly suspect.
Just a couple months ago, I traced the claim that Johann Friedrich von Pfeiffer was found innocent of embezzlement, a claim that's found in the Neue Deutsche Biographie and used by reputable historians, back to an eighteenth-century source who admitted he had a hard time finding out material about Pfeiffer and was cobbling together hearsay; whereas an obscure self-published monograph by a local historian quotes from a cabinet order showing that he was found guilty and imprisoned for several years.
A few days ago, I pointed Selena to a letter by Sophia of Hanover that appears to contradict the claim in her memoirs that her fiance had an STD. The letter said that was just a lie to get Sophia's brother to agree to the fiance swap.
We could go on and on. You have to assume that reputable historians aren't doing source criticism unless you see them doing it. Almost no one will track down the evidence for or against every claim they make. By and large, they don't consider that their job. (Duffy certainly doesn't. Kloosterhuis does, but he's human and he makes mistakes.) Further, you have to assume that some percentage of eyewitness accounts are forged, lying, or mistaken, and you have to assess the reliability of the author of any eyewitness claims and look for counterevidence. (In a court setting, eyewitness testimony is considered by experts, but unfortunately not by jurors, to be one of the least reliable kinds of evidence.)
Now, maybe BPC converted to Anglicanism in 1750 and whoever I read who said that was an oft-repeated romantic legend was crazy. But nothing about it being repeated by numerous historians who by and large don't cite their sources makes it sound any different from any of the claims above.
(I once emailed an author, admittedly not a historian but a medical doctor who was interested in Fritz and had published two books on him, and asked him where he got the claim that Fredersdorf was found guilty of embezzlement. He'd gotten it from Wikipedia. Wikipedia didn't cite a source. I eventually traced the claim down to that local historian's self-published monograph mentioned above, in which she draws heavily on the archives for most of her claims, except the one about Fredersdorf being found guilty, which has no citations and is apparently pure speculation based on a coincidence of timing. This claim is now in 3 books I can name and getting propagated. I am seriously working on an article that combines "Fredersdorf wasn't found guilty" and the "Pfeiffer wasn't found innocent" claim above into a critique of other scholars' source criticism and hoping to publish it, if I can do the necessary archive work to back up my claims at some point.)
So much like the claim that Charles didn't take off his boots for a week, or that he prevented looting in Saxony, I'm treating this as possibly true, possibly untrue, until further evidence one way or the other emerges.