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History and Church History in the Catholic Enlightenment

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Ulrich L.Lehner, The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016)
Jeffrey D.Burson and Ulrich L.Lehner, eds., Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014)
Christopher M. S.Johns, The Visual Culture of Catholic Enlightenment (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015)

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2019

Michael Printy
Michael Printy*
Affiliation:
Yale University Library
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: michael.printy@yale.edu
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Extract

More than a century ago, the German Catholic historian Sebastian Merkle made the case for a specifically Catholic engagement with the Enlightenment. His audience was largely Protestant academics, who assumed that Protestantism and modernity went hand in hand. But Merkle also refuted wholesale condemnations of the Enlightenment by conservative Catholics, who blamed the movement for the ills that had beset the Church since the French Revolution and which were at the root of the liberal attack on Catholicism up through the Kulturkampf. Merkle insisted that a moderate and constructive Catholic Enlightenment had embraced some aspects of modernity, and that it was important to acknowledge this historical reality in order to fully bring the Church into the modern age.

Type
Review Essays
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 248 - 260
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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References

1 Merkle, Sebastian, Die katholische Beurteilung des Aufklärungszeitalters: Vortrag auf dem Internationalen Kongress für historische Wissenschaften zu Berlin am 12. August 1908 (Berlin, 1909)Google Scholar.

2 Plongeron, Bernard, “Recherches sur l'Aufklärung catholique en Europe occidentale (1777–1830),” Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 16/4 (1969), 555–605CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosa, Mario, Settecento religioso (Venice, 1999) 149–184Google Scholar.

3 Palmer, R. R., Catholics and Unbelievers in 18th Century France (Princeton, 1939)Google Scholar; Plongeron, Bernard, Théologie et politique au siècle des lumières (1770–1820) (Geneva, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Hersche, Peter, Muβe und Verschwendung: Europäische Gesellschaft und Kultur im Barockzeitalter, vol. 2 (Freiburg, 2006), 952–9Google Scholar.

5 For an example of Enlightenment interest in religious diversity alone see Hunt, Lynn, Jacob, Margaret C., and Mijnhardt, W. W., The Book That Changed Europe: Picart & Bernard's Religious Ceremonies of the World (Cambridge, MA, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 The Malabar and Chinese rites controversy refers to the Jesuit practice of allowing converts in India and China, respectively, to maintain traditional practices and rituals that were condemned as idolatrous by other orders, notably the Franciscans and Dominicans (Lehner, 110).

7 One of the better overviews is provided by Lehner in an earlier work which I coedited with him. See Lehner, Ulrich L., “The Many Faces of the Catholic Enlightenment,” in Lehner, Ulrich L. and Printy, Michael, eds., A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe (Leiden, 2010), 1–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 See Sorkin, David, The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna (Princeton, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Lehner, Ulrich L., Enlightened Monks: The German Benedictines, 1740–1803 (Oxford and New York, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Troeltsch, Ernst, “Aufklärung,” in Realencyclopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1897), 225Google Scholar.

11 Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor W., Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente (Amsterdam, 1947)Google Scholar.

12 Ferrone has dedicated a short monograph to this topic in Italian. See Ferrone, Vincenzo, Lo strano Illuminismo di Joseph Ratzinger: Chiesa, modernità e diritti dell'uomo (Rome, 2013)Google Scholar.

13 See also Israel, Jonathan I., Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (New York, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Pocock, J. G. A., “Clergy and Commerce: The Conservative Enlightenement in England,” in Ajello, R., ed., L'Età dei Lumi: Studi Storici sul Settecento Europeo in onore di Franco Venturi (Naples, 1985), 23–68Google Scholar; Pocock, , Barbarism and Religion (New York, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Robertson, John, The Case for the Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples, 1680–1760 (Cambridge, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Israel, Radical Enlightenment.