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Real and Nominal Belief in God: Evidence from Wills, England: 1300-1850

Neil J. Cummins of LSE and his co-author use the full-texts of ~36,000 English wills to generate estimates of religiosity, 1300-1850. They distinguish between pro-forma performative statements of belief in a creator God in the preamble, which they term “nominal” religiosity, from “real” religiosity, non-template religious statements in the latter part of the will, and bequests to religious entities. They code wills algorithmically for a set of religious variables, such as mentions of God, Jesus, the Saints, a Soul, separately for the preamble, and the rest of the will. They then construct unitary indices using Principal Component Analysis. The broad picture as understood by historians is confirmed by the dramatic and large rise in nominal religiosity from 1400 to 1650, from an index value ~20 to ~60, on a 0-100 scale. This rise appears to track the cultural shift of the period well and quantitatively captures the social milieu that would result in the English reformation. Even more dramatic than this long run rise is the relatively sudden decline in nominal religiosity after its 1650 peak to an index value just over 10 in 1850. This decline is coincident with both scientific and Industrial Revolutions. However, real religiosity has a very different historical evolution than nominal religiosity. Real religiosity rises ~1300 to ~1450. The Black Death of 1346 is at the right time to be considered a potential causal factor in this rise. And they demonstrate this emphatically using a separate sample of will abstracts for the 14th century. The decline in real religiosity, after 1450, of the English precedes the decline in nominal religiosity, after 1650, by about two centuries. Performative religious statements thus hid an early and previously hidden social evolution in the sincere religious belief of the English. They next divide their sample of will makers by wealth tercile. The poor are always less likely to have highly religious preambles. They show that the rise in real religiosity 1300-1400 is driven by the richest group. Thereafter the decline is also driven by the richest with a very sharp decline 1400 to 1550 that is hidden in the aggregate score by the stable real religiosity of the poor. The early decline of real religiosity amongst the rich of England represents a surprising and important new stylized fact of history. This is only detectable through the reading of the full text of wills and splitting them into a nominal and real complement as is done here.

During this Quantitative History Webinar, Neil J. Cummins will explain how this behavior change occurs at the same time as the decline in aristocratic violence (Cummins (2017)), and like violence, precedes the behavior change of the poor by many centuries. Here they find new evidence of the emergence of modern behavior, and the roots of the enlightenment, and the scientific and Industrial Revolutions.

Neil J. Cummins’s co-author: Aurelius Noble (Transkribus)

Discussant: Ji Li, Associate Professor of History, HKU School of Modern Languages and Cultures and IHSS

Date: June 5, 2025

Time: 16:00 – 17:30
16:00 (Hong Kong/Beijing/Singapore)
04:00 (New York)|01:00 (Los Angeles)|09:00 (London)|17:00 (Tokyo)|18:00 (Sydney)

Venue: Zoom Webinar

Language: English

The Quantitative History (QH) Webinar Series aims to provide researchers, teachers, and students with an online intellectual platform to keep up to date with the latest research in the field, promoting the dissemination of research findings and interdisciplinary use of quantitative methods in historical research. The QH Webinar Series, now entering its fifth year, is co-organized by the Centre for Quantitative History at the HKU Business School and the International Society for Quantitative History in partnership with the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Series is now substantially supported by the Areas of Excellence (AoE) Scheme from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. [AoE/B-704/22-R]).

量化歷史網上講座系列由香港大學陳志武和馬馳騁教授聯合發起，旨在介紹前沿量化歷史研究成果、促進同仁交流，推廣量化方法在歷史研究中的應用。本系列講座由香港大學經管學院量化歷史研究中心和國際量化歷史學會承辦，及香港人文社會研究所全力支持。從2023年開始，系列得到中國香港特別行政區研究資助局卓越學科領域計劃的重要資助 (項目編號[AoE/B-704/22-R])。

Conveners:
Zhiwu Chen
Chicheng Ma