Montesquieu

 Baron Charles Montesquieu (1689-1755) had an inherited fortune and time to write. And he mixed with Parisian higher society, where he was a celebrated conversationalist. He satirized French society. He criticized France's monarchical absolutism and the Church, offending authorities but adding to his popularity. He was a Catholic who believed that people should think for themselves.

Montesquieu traveled through much of Europe to observe people and political constitutions. He stayed in England for eighteen months and praised Britain's constitutional monarchy. He was opposed to republicanism and disliked democracy, which he saw as mob rule. He saw government as benefiting from the knowledge of society's elite, and he saw common people as unfit to discuss public affairs. The masses, he believed, were moved too much by emotion and too little by reason.

In France, history was still being described as it had been in Medieval times, with supernatural causes, and Montesquieu defied this tradition. He was hopeful that reading history would divest readers of their prejudices and contribute to improvement in contemporary society. He wrote an essay titled "Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness and Decline of the Romans," which described Rome as the product of social, political and geographic conditions.

Montesquieu admired England's John Locke – the famous liberal and empiricist of a preceding generation. And he was influenced by Newton's physics and believed in a god that had made the laws that governed the physical world. But humanity, he believed, had a free will and God did not direct human affairs. A god who directed people as if they were puppets he thought would not have produced human intelligence.

Montesquieu believed that where government was more liberal and where people thought independently, society would be less devoted to religious ritual and more devoted to morality.

Pope Benedict XIV respected Montesquieu, but various bishops did not, and they placed on the Church's index of forbidden books Montesquieu's The Spirit of Laws, published in 1748. But independence of thought prevailed and the book was a success, going into 22 editions.