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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow CHAP. V.: That the Catholic Religion is most agreeable to a Monarchy, and the Protestant to a Republic. - Complete Works, vol. 2 The Spirit of Laws

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CHAP. V.: That the Catholic Religion is most agreeable to a Monarchy, and the Protestant to a Republic. - Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, Complete Works, vol. 2 The Spirit of Laws [1748]

Edition used:

The Complete Works of M. de Montesquieu (London: T. Evans, 1777), 4 vols. Vol. 2.

Part of: Complete Works of Montesquieu, 4 vols.

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CHAP. V.

That the Catholic Religion is most agreeable to a Monarchy, and the Protestant to a Republic.

WHEN a religion is introduced and fixed in a state, it is commonly such as is most suitable to the plan of government there established; for those who receive it, and those who are the cause of its being received, have scarcely any other idea of policy, than that of the state in which they were born.

When the Christian religion, two centuries ago, became unhappily divided into Catholic and Protestant, the people of the North embraced the Protestant, and those of the south adhered still to the Catholic.

The reason is plain: the people of the north have, and will for ever have, a spirit of liberty and independence, which the people of the south have not; and therefore a religion, which has no visible head, is more agreeable to the independency of the climate, than that which has one.

In the countries themselves where the Protestant religion became established, the revolutions were made pursuant to the several plans of political government. Luther having great princes on his side, would never have been able to make them relish an ecclesiastic authority that had no exterior pre-eminence; while Calvin, having to do with people who lived under republican governments, or with obscure citizens in monarchies, might very well avoid establishing dignities and preferments.

Each of these two religions was believed to be the most perfect; the Calvinist judging his most conformable to what Christ had said, and the Lutheran to what the Apostles had practised.