Arthur der Weduwen | Published in History Today Volume 71 Issue 4 April 2021 ‘The Prayer of Voltaire’, French, 18th century © Bridgeman Images. In Greek mythology, the Titan Prometheus defied the Gods and brought fire to mankind. He saved man from darkness, but paid for it cruelly: fastened to a rock, every day an eagle would consume his liver, which would regrow overnight. Millennia later, he would become, in the 18th century, a symbol of a radical new movement of scholarship, belief and philosophy. French and German writers described this intellectual illumination as an age of lumières or Aufklärung ; in the late 19th century, the English language canonised it as the ‘Enlightenment’. Despite wh