Barbaric Enlightenment : Swedish Media Reports on Religious Reform and Conflict in Revolutionary France, 1789-1799

This thesis examines how religious reform and conflict during the French Revolution was reported on, and interpreted, in Swedish newspapers during the period 1789-1799. The religious dimensions of the Revolution are, for the purpose of this study, understood as phenomenon such as the revolutionaries’ attacks on church and clergy, the introduction of new ideological tools like the Republican Calendar, the festivals held during the revolutionary period, as well as the establishment of new religions in the form of two cults, the Cult of Reason and the Cult of the Supreme Being. Much of this can be tied to the ‘dechristianization’ campaign during the French Revolution. Two Swedish newspapers have been investigated, that being Götheborgs Allehanda and Stockholms-Posten. The thesis shows that reports of this nature were relatively underreported in comparison to general reporting on the French Revolution. Götheborgs Allehanda mentions religious reform and conflict with several notable examples, while Stockholms-Posten appears to have largely neglected these aspects of the French Revolution. Reasons and possible explanations for why the newspapers reported the way they did are explored, related to aspects such as ideological bias, distance to the events, Protestant and Catholic animosity, as well as the radical and alien nature of the reforms.