The preceding chapter dealt with the legend of the three rings, which highlighted the close family relationship between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This relationship, which had been an obvious one up through the Middle Ages, began to be seen as less evident in the eighteenth century. The Enlightenment (or perhaps, rather, the Enlightenments) took many different shapes across Europe. The present chapter is devoted to a paradigm shift, one which reflects a new historicization of European cultural life, at least in the approach to religious phenomena. In France, on which this chapter focuses, the historical transformation started earlier than elsewhere, at the very beginning of the eighteenth century.
The Birth of Modern Belief: Faith and Judgment from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, written by Ethan H. Shagan