Eric Voegelin The People of God - Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für ...

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is the connection between movement and middle-class. In the
English Civil War of the 17 th century the lines were not quite
clearly drawn, but on the whole the peasants were royalists,
while the middle-class and merchants were Parliamentarians.
On the other side the movements find political support with
the feudal nobility which resists the monarchic centralization
in the early middle-ages ; the Albigensian crusade for instance
had the double aspect of a crusade of the Church against the
heretics, and of a war of the Northern French nobility,
depending from the Capetians, against the independent
Southern barons. In the German Reformation the success of
the movement was largely due to the support of the antiimperial
territorial princes, while the French religious wars of
the 16 th century were again wars between factions of the
nobility. The same situation occurs in the 17 th century in the
aristocratic Fronde siding with the bourgeois Parliaments.
Wiclif received over a time support from John of Gaunt; and
the Puritan Revolution is characterized by the goodly
sprinkling of great nobility on the Parliamentarian side. In
recent years we notice a comparable alliance of an upper class
with the movements in the curious support given by the great
bourgeoisie to the Fascist and National Socialist movements –
a connection which has led some observers to the rash
assumption that these movements are “capitalistic” or
“reactionary”.
f. The Structure of Sentiment of the Movement
aa. The Problem of Oriental Influence. The
structure of sentiment in the movements to which we have
now to turn, is rather complicated. The materials fill volumes,
and we can do no more than select two or three topics which
seem to have a special bearing on the formation of political
ideas. We have to become clear, first, about the earlier
mentioned methodological question. The type of religious
experiences with which we have to deal may roughly be called
“Eastern” or “Oriental” in the sense that the great religious