La réception des observations arctiques moraves en France à l’époque des Lumières : The reception of Moravian knowledge about the Arctic in France during the Enlightenment Fr En

Résumé En

This article is dedicated the reception of Arctic knowledge spread originally in German by the members of the religious group called Moravian Brethren from their missions in Greenland and travels to Lapland and Iceland in the 18th century in France. I will try to reconstruct the reception of this knowledge by scholars and protestant communities as well as Moravian diaspora in France who were in contact with Moravians in other parts of Europe. I’m going to argue that communication about knowledge presented in a systematic way in print, a typical phenomenon of the Enlightenment, occurred despite the religious affiliation of involved actors. This means that no matter which Christian faith scholars belonged to, be they protestant, catholic or Roman catholic, they read about the visions of men created within the framework of Moravian ideas of fraternalism, who notably considered and treated members of Indigenous Arctic societies who had converted to their faith as their equal, as their brothers and sisters, rather than “noble savages“ imagined by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The religious background to these ideas was not always known by scholars who were not familiar with the Moravian Church and its constitution.