(1685€“1815)
led to a more secular society for several reasons. The Enlightenment is also known as the Age of
Reason; reason replaced faith for many people during this period. People often met in
coffeehouses to exchange ideas and debate the issues of the day.
The
Christian Church had dominated the Middle Ages. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the
West in 476 CE, the popes of the Catholic Church wielded enormous power. Great rulers, such as
Charlemagne, were crowned by popes. But Napoleon grabbed the crown from Pope Pius VII and put it
on his own head at his coronation in 1804; such a bold act would have been unthinkable before
the Enlightenment.
Isaac Newton, John Locke, and other Enlightenment figures
(philosophes) strongly believed that knowledge was attainable through human
reason and calculation. Denis Diderots Encyclop©die summarized human
knowledge; it, not the Bible, had the answers. Philosophes believed that
natural lawnot the hand of...
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