Hugh Trevor-Roper, Intellectual History and 'The Religious Origins of the Enlightenment'

Taking 'The Religious Origins of the Enlightenment' (1967) as its starting-point, this study in historiography traces the development of Hugh Trevor-Roper's interest in the history of ideas. While an identification with Erasmus and enjoyment of the great Enlightenment historians are evident from the early 1950s, the key to the evolution of his interests, it is argued, lies in his critical engagement in the mid and late 1950s with Weber's theses about Protestantism, capitalism, and the modern state. Reading undertaken while in Paris in 1963 brought this new direction in his interests sharply into focus, and it was reinforced later in the decade in correspondence with Frances Yates, whose work he admired and promoted. The idea of an Erasmian, Arminian or Socinian alternative to Calvinism as the religious predecessor of the Enlightenment would then inform a range of later writings, from essays on Grotius and Great Tew to the posthumous book on Mayerne. The article draws on correspondence and notes in the Trevor-Roper archive, and concludes with a characterisation of Trevor-Roper's conception of intellectual history. © 2009 The Author. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.