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This book offers the first comprehensive overview of the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe. It surveys the diversity of views about the structure and nature of the movement, pointing toward the possibilities for further research. The volume presents a series of comprehensive treatments on the process and interpretation of Catholic Enlightenment in France, Spain, Portugal, Poland, the Holy Roman Empire, Malta, Italy and the Habsburg territories. An introductory overview explores the varied meanings of Catholic Enlightenment and situates them in a series of intellectual and social contexts. The topics covered in this book are crucial for a proper understanding of the role and place not only of Catholicism in the eighteenth century, but also for the social and religious history of Modern Europe.
"Whoever needs an act of faith to elucidate an event that can be explained by reason is a fool, and unworthy of reasonable thought." This line, spoken by the notorious 18th-century libertine Giacomo Casanova, illustrates a deeply entrenched perception of religion, as prevalent today as it was hundreds of years ago. It is the sentiment behind the narrative that Catholic beliefs were incompatible with the Enlightenment ideals. Catholics, many claim, are superstitious and traditional, opposed to democracy and gender equality, and hostile to science. It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that Casanova himself was a Catholic. In The Catholic Enlightenment, Ulrich L. Lehner points to such figures as representatives of a long-overlooked thread of a reform-minded Catholicism, which engaged Enlightenment ideals with as much fervor and intellectual gravity as anyone. Their story opens new pathways for understanding how faith and modernity can interact in our own time. Lehner begins two hundred years before the Enlightenment, when the Protestant Reformation destroyed the hegemony Catholicism had enjoyed for centuries. During this time the Catholic Church instituted several reforms, such as better education for pastors, more liberal ideas about the roles of women, and an emphasis on human freedom as a critical feature of theology. These actions formed the foundation of the Enlightenment's belief in individual freedom. While giants like Spinoza, Locke, and Voltaire became some of the most influential voices of the time, Catholic Enlighteners were right alongside them. They denounced fanaticism, superstition, and prejudice as irreconcilable with the Enlightenment agenda. In 1789, the French Revolution dealt a devastating blow to their cause, disillusioning many Catholics against the idea of modernization. Popes accumulated ever more power and the Catholic Enlightenment was snuffed out. It was not until the Second Vatican Council in 1962 that questions of Catholicism's compatibility with modernity would be broached again. Ulrich L. Lehner tells, for the first time, the forgotten story of these reform-minded Catholics. As Pope Francis pushes the boundaries of Catholicism even further, and Catholics once again grapple with these questions, this book will prove to be required reading.
A revisionist account of the effects of the Enlightenment process on German Benedictines which contributes to a better understanding not only of monastic culture in Central Europe, but also of Catholic religious culture in general.
"This book is an edited collection of nineteen essays written by a range of experts and some newer scholars in the areas of early modern British and Irish history and religion. In addition to English Catholicism, developments in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, as well as ongoing connections and interactions with Continental Catholicism, are well incorporated throughout the volume"--
Long ghettoized within British and Irish studies, Catholicism and Recusancy in Britain and Ireland demonstrates that, despite many challenges and differences among them, English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish Catholics formed strong bonds and actively participated in the life of their nations and their Church.
A Companion to Late Medieval and Early Modern Augsburg distills the extraordinary range and creativity of recent scholarship on one of the most significant cities of the Holy Roman Empire into a handbook format.
The Catholic Enlightenment: A Global Anthology presents readers with accessible, translated selections from the writings of fifteen major Catholic Enlightenment authors. These early modern authors include women, priests, lay intellectuals, and bishops. Twelve of these figures are being brought into English for the first time. The purpose of the volume is to provide students, scholars, and interested non-specialists with a single point of departure to delve into the primary sources of the Catholic Enlightenment. This anthology shows the geographical and intellectual diversity of the Catholic Enlightenment, while also demonstrating significant threads of commonality in intellectual orientation. One strength of this volume is the geographical spread of the figures considered. Included are Catholic thinkers from England, the United States, Mexico, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, France, Portugal, and the Italian and German-speaking lands. Another strength of this volume is the breadth of subject matter treated – it features pastoral letters, mystical tracts, pedagogical treatises, political manifestos, and theological works. These texts elucidate Catholic Enlightenment views on topics such as the history of women’s education, liturgy and devotions, and the relationship between church and state. The co-editors, Ulrich Lehner and Shaun Blanchard, have assembled a team of international scholars from Europe and the Americas for this exciting project. Lehner is one of the central scholars behind the renewed interest in the Catholic Enlightenment. He co-edits the volume, contributes to the introduction, and introduces and translates two significant German-speaking figures. Shaun Blanchard, who has recently published a monograph on radical Catholic Enlightenment figures, also co-edits, contributes selections from two English-speaking figures and has completed the first English translation of a section of Lodovico Muratori’s landmark On the Regulated Devotion of a Christian since 1789.
The Blackwell Companion to Catholicism offers an extensive survey of the history, doctrine, practices, and global circumstances of Roman Catholicism, written by a range of distinguished and experienced Catholic writers. Engages its readers in an informed and informative conversation about Roman Catholic life and thought Embraces the local and the global, the past and the present, life and the afterlife, and a broad range of institutions and activities Considers both what is distinctive about Catholic life and thought, and how Catholicism overlaps with and transforms other ways of thinking and living Topics covered include: peacemaking, violence and wars; money, the vow of poverty and socio-economic life; art by and about Catholics; and men, women and sex
In spite of an upsurge in interest in the social history of the Catholic community and an ever-growing body of literature on early modern 'superstition' and popular religion, the English Catholic community's response to the invisible world of the preternatural and supernatural has remained largely neglected. Addressing this oversight, this book explores Catholic responses to the supernatural world, setting the English Catholic community in the contexts of the wider Counter-Reformation and the confessional culture of early modern England. In so doing, it fulfils the need for a study of how English Catholics related to manifestations of the devil (witchcraft and possession) and the dead (ghosts) in the context of Catholic attitudes to the supernatural world as a whole (including debates on miracles). The study further provides a comprehensive examination of the ways in which English Catholics deployed exorcism, the church's ultimate response to the devil. Whilst some aspects of the Catholic response have been touched on in the course of broader studies, few scholars have gone beyond the evidence contained within anti-Catholic polemical literature to examine in detail what Catholics themselves said and thought. Given that Catholics were consistently portrayed as 'superstitious' in Protestant literature, the historian must attend to Catholic voices on the supernatural in order to avoid a disastrously unbalanced view of Catholic attitudes. This book provides the first analysis of the Catholic response to the supernatural and witchcraft and how it related to a characteristic Counter-Reformation preoccupation, the phenomenon of exorcism.