Gods of Revolution

The Gods of Revolution by Christopher Dawson, 166 pages

In The Gods of Revolution eminent cultural historian Christopher Dawson explores the history of the French Revolution, its development and aftermath.  As Dawson finds the cultural, spiritual, and intellectual causes and consequences more significant than the merely material, political, or economic, this is where he focuses, beginning with the end of the Wars of Religion and continuing on through the world wars.  In this analysis, the Revolution is revealed, despite its anti-clericalism, as a part of, and a key shaper of, a broader spiritual revival in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Dawson's study provides a deep understanding of the origins and progress of the Revolution, as well as insight into the rise of the competing idols of rationalism and nationalism, freedom and equality, for whose glory so much blood was, and continues to be, spilled.