ABSTRACT
The great French Revolution in the last decade of the eighteenth century is a bulking landmark in the history of modern nationalism. It marks not only the transit of nationalism from England to the European Continent, but its emergence in democratic and essentially religious form. The way for this was paved during the preceding century and a half by two intellectual developments in western Europe. One was the Enlightenment; the other was Pietism. The Enlightenment involved a rationalistic skepticism concerning "revealed" or "supernatural" religion, particularly Christianity. Pietism emphasized emotion and enthusiasm in religion, a mystical "conversion" of the individual from sinner to saint, a lessening if not obliteration of distinction between clergy and laity. Both Pietism and the Enlightenment, both romanticism and classicism, were practically exemplified as supports of nationalism by the revolutionary movement in America from 1775 to 1789. Quasi-religious emblems attended the revolutionary progress of nationalism in France.
