Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh

by Richard B. Sher

Overview

Since its original publication in 1985, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment has come to be regarded as a classic work in eighteenth-century Scottish history and Enlightenment studies. It depicts Hugh Blair, Alexander Carlyle, Adam Ferguson, John Home, and William Robertson as an intimate coterie that played a central role in the Scottish Enlightenment, seen here not only as an intellectual but as a cultural movement. These men were among the leaders in the University of Edinburgh, in the Moderate party in the Church of Scotland, and in Edinburgh's thriving clubs. They used their institutional influence and their books, plays, sermons, and pamphlets to promulgate the tenets of Moderatism, including polite Presbyterianism, Christian Stoicism, civic humanism, social and political conservatism, and the tolerant, cosmopolitan values of the international Enlightenment. Using a wide variety of sources and an interdisciplinary methodology, this collective biography portrays these "Moderate literati" as zealous activists for the cause in which they believed, ranging from support for a Scots militia, Ossian, and Roman Catholic relief to opposition to the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 and the American and French Revolutions.

The Edinburgh Classic Editions series publishes influential works from the archive in context for a contemporary audience. These works shifted boundaries on first publication and are considered essential groundings in their disciplines. New introductions from contemporary scholars explain the cultural and intellectual heritage of these classic editions to a new generation of readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474407434
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	12/21/2015
Series:	Edinburgh Classic Editions
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Richard B. Sher is Distinguished Professor of History in the Federated History Department of New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, Newark. He is the author of The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and America (2006) and co-editor of The Glasgow Enlightenment (1995), Sociability and Society in Eighteenth-Century Scotland (1993), and Scotland and America in the Age of the Enlightenment (1990).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Note on the Illustrations ix

Tables xi

Abbreviations xiii

Preface to the Edinburgh Classic Edition xv

Preface to the 1985 Edition xxxvii

Introduction: The Problem of the Scottish Enlightenment 3

Part I The Making of the Moderate Regime

1 Students, Ministers, Volunteers

Points of Biographical Convergence 23

Crisis and Commitment: The '45 37

2 The Moderate Revolution

Patronage and Politeness 45

From Infidel Philosophy to Virtuous Tragedy 65

3 The Institutionalization of Moderate Authority

Positions of Prestige, Power, and Pecuniary Gain 93

The Moderate Regime, or "Dr. Robertson's Administration" 120

Part II Moderatism and the Scottish Enlightenment

4 The Moderate Spirit and Style

The Enlightenment of the Clerics 151

The Religion of Virtue and the Virtue of Religion 166

5 The Teaching and Preaching of Moderate Morality

Christian Stoicism, or "Private Virtue" 175

Whig-Presbyterian Conservatism, or "Public Virtue" 187

6 For the Glory of Scotland

The Call to Arms 213

The Call of the Highland Bard 242

7 The Tolerant Conservatives

"Dangerous and Unnatural Rebellion" 262

The Cry of Intolerance 277

8 The Passing of the Moderate Enlightenment

"Ghosts … on Their Midnight Tombs" 298

The Meaning of Moderatism 324

Bibliography 329

Index 377

Editorial Reviews

Produced as an Edinburgh Classic Edition, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment is positioned now as what it was when it first appeared in print: a magisterial consideration of the society that undergirded a particular Scottish enlightenment. This text is no less important now than it was in 1985… He opens with ‘Reflections’ that position the book more fully in its academic context in 1985, and in the debates thereafter. (There is also a helpful update to the bibliography.) What emerges brings the historian of 1985 into focus, a move increasingly necessary, and increasingly revealing, as we move toward the third decade of the twenty-first century.

Journal of Scottish Historical Studies - Caroline McCracken-Flesher