This century was marked by a very significant change in the political and social field in relation to Christianity. Since the closing of the School of Plato, in 529, by determination of the emperor Justinian I. Everything that did not agree with the Church was heresy and needed to be combated.

With this, Christianity found itself distanced, excessively, from what it had been until the 4th century. They were centuries of mistakes, which historians call the Dark Ages, or Middle Ages. In the historical sense of what happened in the past, but making very clear, and without any sense of criticism, one can ask the following question: "What right does religion have to kill people and not be punished?"

We had a very long period in which this phenomenon of dissatisfaction was being fostered, gestated in a very slow way in the minds of people, in face of so much intolerance. Until we reached this period, in which one can say that the time of the "enough!" had arrived.

The Enlightenment, or Century of Lights, was an intellectual and philosophical movement that defended the use of reason, science and critical thinking, combating ignorance, monarchical absolutism and the excesses of the Church. We had, then, left a theocentric culture for an anthropocentric culture, that is, instead of God, man. We had left the empire of religion (dogmatism) for the empire of reason (scientificism). Thus, as nothing is yet perfect and society was tired of the excesses of religion, it almost surrendered to science and to its own excesses.

This Enlightenment movement came to shake the world, causing two great events of this period to arise: the French Revolution and the Independence of the United States. Many were the Enlightenment thinkers who revolutionized history.

Jean Meslier (1664–1729) was a French Catholic priest, known posthumously as the first declared atheist of modern history. In one of his affirmations, he rejected the existence of God, of the soul and of free will, sustaining that matter was eternal and self-existent. His manuscripts deeply influenced the Enlightenment thinkers of this period. One of his phrases became famous: "Man will only be free when the last king is hanged in the guts of the last priest."

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) was a French philosopher, writer and critic, central figure of the Enlightenment. He became famous for being cofounder and editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia, composed of thirty-five volumes, gathering general knowledge of great authors and many others less known. The intention was to concentrate in this work all the knowledge of humanity, disconnected from Christian thought.

Jean le Rond d'Alembert (1717–1783) was one of the greatest thinkers of the French Enlightenment. Together with Diderot, he was coeditor of the Encyclopedia. In classical mechanics, he presented pioneering contributions to the calculation of differential equations. He also explained the precession of the equinoxes based on Newtonian physics. He combated dogmatism and defended the use of reason and science as instruments of human autonomy.

John Locke (1632–1704) was an English philosopher and physician, considered the father of political liberalism and one of the pioneers of the Enlightenment. He defended that all human beings possess natural rights, such as life, liberty and property. For him, faith was a matter of individual choice.

François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire (1694–1778), was one of the main philosophers and writers of the Enlightenment. Defender of freedom of expression, religious tolerance and the separation between Church and State, he was also a great defender of deism. He passed into history as a critic of the Church and of its orthodoxy.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was a prominent philosopher, writer and Swiss political theorist. He formulated the concept of the Social Contract, according to which power emanates from the people. He also defended that the human being is born good, but is corrupted by society and by inequality. In his natural state, he said, man was peaceful and free; it was civilization that brought corruption and vices.

Montesquieu (1689–1755) was an important French Enlightenment philosopher, worldwide known for his theory of the separation of powers into Legislative, Executive and Judiciary. He defended that this division would avoid despotism and would assure political freedom.

In this period in which the Enlightenment flourished, there existed two great forces — the political and the religious — that awakened the revolt of the Enlightenment thinkers. There were no stable rules of conduct: the monarchs decided, judged and condemned according to their will. At the same time, they were supported by the Church, in a relation of reciprocity. The Enlightenment thinkers saw in this union of powers the principal obstacles to the construction of a better society. It was necessary to review this system, for it did not seem acceptable that the mood of the monarch determined the destiny of people, nor that priests sent them to the bonfires, to tortures, confiscated their goods and practiced so many other forms of violence.

This excess of power of the State and of the Church was creating a deep discomfort and feeding the desire for change. However, it was very difficult to promote any transformation, for there were very powerful forces in the opposite direction. The State was strong, the religion was strong and the people were the weakest part. There was, therefore, a great imbalance of forces. For this reason, the desire grew to break simultaneously with political absolutism and with religious power, so that a new society could be born.

Many of the principal Enlightenment thinkers were not atheists, but deists. They believed in the existence of a creator God, a Supreme Being, however they rejected organized religions and their dogmas. For them, God created the Universe and established natural laws, but does not interfere directly in the world, does not perform miracles nor responds to prayers.

The American Independence happened in this period, motivated by the dissatisfaction of the thirteen first British colonies, located on the east coast of the American territory, in face of the increase of taxes and rates that they were obliged to pay to England after the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763). The colonists did not have representatives in Parliament. Then, they organized themselves militarily and politically, having as main leader and commander George Washington.

They took advantage of the Boston Tea Party to protest against the abuses of the British Crown. The protests continued until they culminated in the War of Independence, whose declaration occurred on July 4, 1776.

The Declaration of Independence was written mainly by Thomas Jefferson, inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment, defending the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The colonists received military and financial support from rivals of England, mainly France and Spain.

In 1787 the Constitution of the United States was elaborated. George Washington, because of his enormous prestige, became the first president of the country, governing from 1789 to 1797.

Another important movement, also inspired by the Enlightenment, happened in South America, more precisely in Brazil. It was formed by intellectuals, priests, miners and military men, deeply influenced by the new ideas and saturated with the high taxes charged by the Portuguese Crown due to the decline of gold extraction in the captaincy of Minas Gerais.

The proposal was to make that territory independent from the rest of Brazil and, mainly, from Portugal. There occurred, then, on April 21, 1789 — the tragic mark — a separatist conspiracy against Portuguese domination: the Inconfidência Mineira. However, the plan to begin the rebellion was betrayed and denounced to the authorities. Its leaders were arrested and judged. The only one condemned to death, for assuming the leadership of the movement, was Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, better known as Tiradentes. He was hanged, quartered and had parts of his body exposed on posts and public squares of Minas Gerais, as a warning to whoever dared to promote new rebellion.

It is interesting to observe that both the American Independence and the Inconfidência Mineira happened shortly before the French Revolution. This had its initial mark with the Storming of the Bastille, on July 14, 1789. They were three revolutionary events. However, it was the French Revolution that promoted the deepest change in history.

There was an enormous discontent both with religion and with the State. Social pressure increased continuously. In this period, the king of France, Louis XVI, trying to calm the spirits and find a point of balance, convened an assembly with representatives of the State, of the Clergy, of the Nobility and of the people. However, the meeting did not produce the expected results. The people decided to assume political protagonism, forming the so-called Third Estate.

A National Constituent Assembly was convened to elaborate a Constitution to which the king should obey. In a first moment, they did not intend to break with the monarchy; they only desired that the king submit himself to the new Constitution elaborated by the Third Estate.

Soon rumors began to circulate that the king did not accept the changes and that the royal troops would begin the persecution of the constituents. This was the trigger of the Revolution. On July 14, 1789 occurred the Storming of the Bastille, fortress used as prison, in Paris. The principal objective was to take possession of the great quantity of gunpowder and ammunition there stored. From there on, the political imbalance of the French nation became irreversible.

At the same time that they dethroned the king and combated the political power, the revolutionaries also turned their actions against the religious power. A rupture was produced, for, since the previous period, when the Encyclopedia had arisen and the Enlightenment thinkers began to spread their ideas, the Church had already been intensely questioned. Thus, in the impulse to promote deep changes, the Revolution turned itself equally against the religious institutions.

Not only nobles were persecuted and executed: priests were also killed inside their own temples. The goods of the Church were confiscated, and its buildings ceased to be its property. Christianity was widely prohibited and persecuted in various regions of France. A new civil religion was created, called Cult of the Supreme Being or Cult of Reason. Even the Cathedral of Notre-Dame suffered acts of vandalism and was transformed into Temple of Reason, where philosophical debates began to occur, ceasing to exercise its religious functions.

In the first period of the French Revolution, they tried to establish a constitutional monarchy. However, when Louis XVI realized that he would lose absolute power, he tried to flee to Austria in search of support to restore absolutism. The royal family, however, was recognized and captured in the city of Varennes.

This episode provoked a deep crisis inside the Revolution. It was then that Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794), principal leader of the Jacobins, assumed control of the revolutionary process. The Jacobins were the most radical political group of the Revolution. They defended the republic, social equality and the definitive end of the monarchy. In a first moment, the ideas of Robespierre seemed even noble. His republican ideal existed long before the Revolution.

However, the Jacobins wanted to transform the whole society at once. Whoever opposed the new regime would be sent to the guillotine. Robespierre, initially, tried to conduct the Revolution in an organized way and contain the excesses. Before the Revolution, he had manifested himself against the death penalty, as a juridical principle. However, he understood that Louis XVI represented a threat to the survival of the Republic. During the trial of the king, he voted for his immediate execution and, in face of internal crises, external wars and conspiracies against the new regime, he began to defend more and more severe measures. It was in this context that the idea attributed to him was consolidated: "For the Republic to be born, it is necessary that the king die."

From that moment on, the summary trial of Louis XVI and of his wife, Marie Antoinette, began. The so-called Period of Terror started. People only suspected of treason were arrested, tortured and guillotined, without any legal process. The executions became continuous. Women and children were also not spared. There are records of minors executed during the Terror.

According to our research, the guillotine was designed by the surgeon Antoine Louis, but it was Joseph-Ignace Guillotin who suggested to the National Assembly its use as a "humanitarian" method of execution. For this reason, the device ended up receiving his name.

At the same time that they destroyed the monarchy, they also destroyed Christianity, for this was being erased from France and, later, from Europe, together with absolutist monarchy. No longer a monarchy that governed alone, nor a clergy that determined the death of people. In France, the Revolution put an end to the inquisitorial bonfires and to the repressive power of the Church. The Revolution ended this power of the Church, being that it was the State that gave it support, and both were removed from the center of power. The tortures and the Inquisition ended in France. The Revolution extirpated from the heart of many the idea of religiosity, for religion came to be seen as something highly pernicious.

The terror spread through France, causing reactions of fear in neighboring nations, which began to see the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity also as a mortal danger. They feared that the same could happen in their own countries. Thus, there was an anticipated movement of various nations in the sense of accepting a constitutional monarchy before they faced a revolution similar to the French.

The Austrian Empire (House of Habsburg), perceiving that the French Revolution had shaken the entire European continent and that the monarchies were threatened — being that the only Portuguese monarchy was already strategically installed in Brazil — saw with good eyes the marriage of its archduchess Maria Leopoldina with prince Dom Pedro (future emperor of Brazil and king of Portugal, as Dom Pedro IV), after the arrival of the royal family to Brazil.

Vienna fed the expectation that, after that revolutionary wave passed, its princess would return to Europe with the prince and his descendants. In this way, it was believed that the continent could be again populated by noble blood of the House of Habsburg, whose descendants would eventually unite with other royal families, strengthening again the monarchies.

Maria Leopoldina left, then, Austria and came to Brazil, at seventeen years of age, to unite herself to prince Dom Pedro, in a political-diplomatic alliance between Austria and Brazil. She was an extraordinary woman, endowed with great virtues and talents. She exercised important political action and played decisive role in the Independence of Brazil. It was she who sent one of the decisive letters to Dom Pedro, together with the political recommendations of José Bonifácio, when he was on the margins of the Ipiranga stream, recommending that he declare, once and for all, the Independence.

The Enlightenment thinkers supplied the ideology for the revolutionaries, who even modified the names of the months in France, for considering that they possessed religious connotations. These names would be restored in the 19th century. After the Period of Terror, a third phase of the Revolution began: the Directory, which passed to the control of the Girondins, more moderate political group, representative of the high bourgeoisie and contrary to Jacobin radicalism. It was in this context that a figure of extraordinary military talent began to stand out: Napoleon Bonaparte. And those who before sent people to the guillotine ended up, themselves, guillotined.

This was an extremely important century for the History of Christianity, because it represented a true "turnaround" in the Christian trajectory. Christianity was born, walked initially through the hands of the martyrs, institutionalized itself later as official religion and came to manifest strong intolerance. During approximately one thousand years, society witnessed its abuses.

We saw, throughout this historical path, persecutions, tortures, deaths and destructions, until there came a moment in which the own structure of power, which should never have assumed this posture, ended up provoking the revolt of the people, suffocating exactly the message that it should proclaim: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your understanding; and your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew, 22:37-40).

It was exactly as consequence of the French Revolution and of the aversion to the religious phenomenon — fed by the excesses committed by religion throughout the centuries — that the great banners of atheism began to arise, movement that would gain even more strength in the following century. During all its history, Christianity had never suffered such a violent blow. The Church was practically without reaction. The Revolution was so fierce and so violent that little or nothing could be done, for any contrary manifestation was repressed by the guillotine. It was a terrifying period, without precedents, and religion suffered deeply with it.

In this same period also occurred the First Industrial Revolution, an extraordinary process of transformation initiated in England, with the development of the steam engine. This was a cumulative work, involving Savery, Papin, Newcomen and Watt, making possible large-scale production and opening the path for the progress that would mark the following centuries.

We are never completely deprived of the beautiful. This century witnessed the flourishing of classical music. Some of the greatest geniuses of humanity marked this period and the transition to the next: Johann Sebastian Bach, exponent of the Baroque; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of the greatest representatives of Classicism; and Ludwig van Beethoven, central figure of the transition between Classicism and Romanticism. All of them definitively transformed the art of composition and continue, until the present day, to enchant us with an incomparable musical beauty, capable of transporting us to another dimension.

This process of transformation lived by humanity is truly fascinating. The French Revolution, despite the terror that it spread, was extremely important, for it marked the end of the Modern Era and the beginning of the Contemporary Era. It represented the rupture with absolutism, the confrontation of religious intolerance and the emergence of the secular State, that is, the separation between State and religion, which until then remained deeply connected.

In 1789 was proclaimed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, establishing the principle that every human being is born free and equal in rights.