One of the characteristic elements of the provincial life depicted in Flaubert's Madame Bovary is the contradiction between philosophes and Church. The philosophes are among others represented by Madame Bovary's father, who takes every opportunity to critisize and ridicule the Church, referring to the epigones of the French Enlightenment, especially Voltaire. Also the German Enlightenment criticized the Church, however, its criticism didn't imply a rejection as the English did. Translators couldn't therefore develop the same clichés as they existed in the English source culture. The author analyses how translators dealt with this issue in different translations of Madame Bovary ranging from 1858 to 1925.