Historical Reflections on Progress and Tradition

Reflecting on the tension between progressives and traditionalists in present-day Egypt, the author surveys comparable conflicts in the European past. In nineteenth-century Britain and Belgium the struggle between liberals and conservatives dominated public life. In eighteenth-century France the progressive forces of the Enlightenment were for a long time in bitter conflict with the traditional defenders of King and Church, until the latter were defeated in the French Revolution. In seventeenth-century England the Puritan Revolution overthrew Stuart absolutism, which was a democratic move, but Cromwell then established his own fundamentalist Republic, which was illiberal. In the sixteenth century Humanists and Protestants were progressive and broke with medieval modes of thought and papal domination, but were opposed by traditional forces around the House of Habsburg and the Counter-reformation, neither party claiming total victory. By the fifteenth century the progressive conciliar movement attempted to democratize the Catholic Church by putting the papal curia under the supreme authority of the general council, an assembly representing Christian people of all nations. This short-lived attempt was foiled by defenders of the traditional papal supremacy.