Jeudi 4 décembre 2025 à 17h : Antti Taipale (Helsinki), “Perspectives on religion as a tool of war in the English Civil War”
Maison de la Recherche de Sorbonne Université (28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e, M° Odéon ou Saint-Michel), salle S001.
Abstract: My paper provides insight into how religion was used as an instructional, encouraging, and motivational device for soldiers in the First English Civil War (1642-1646). Moreover, spiritual advice was given for both dehumanising and propaganda purposes, targeted at different audiences in the public press. I argue that by comparing the content and rhetoric of Parliamentarian and Royalist instruction it is possible to discern vast differences in the emphases, language, purpose and targets of such advice. This makes distinct strategies and religious interpretations visible between the parties. These include, for instance, exhorting to violence as opposed to advising to refrain from cruelty and praying that was completed with vigorous action vis-à-vis passive supplication.
My claim is that, in general, Royalist ministers focused on regulating the morality of the King’s soldiers and advised them to fight without unnecessary cruelty. They addressed Parliamentarians and tried to make them see their error and cease their rebellion. Meanwhile, Parliamentarian preachers concentrated strictly on their own soldiers, instructing them in military knowledge and discipline, and dehumanising their Royalist enemies with religious rhetoric, including comparisons to the Irish and Catholics. Moreover, they painted the conflict as an eschatological battle between Christ and the Devil, that required harsh measures such as shedding the blood of the guilty.
Examining these differences provides us novel views on the role of religion in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It also gives us a survey on how soldiers of the English Civil War were instructed by clerical authorities in sermons, catechisms and prayer manuals.
Antti Taipale, visiting scholar à l’université d’Helsinki, est l’auteur de Religious Instruction for Soldiers in the First English Civil War, 1642–1646 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)