The history of Catholic societies in nineteenth-century Europe was marked by the paradoxical intertwining of two transformative processes: secularisation and religious revival. On the one hand, church properties were seized and sold off; ecclesiastical privileges were removed; clerical authorities came under pressure to retreat from their positions in education and charitable provision; and liberal, national, radical and socialist political discourses were marked by an uncompromisingly anticlerical rhetoric. At the same time, however, this era saw a flowering of Catholic religious life across Europe. There was a proliferation and elaboration of popular devotions, church buildings, religious foundations and associations, and confessionally motivated newspapers and journals. This revitalisation of religious energies coincided with profound changes within the church itself. The New Catholicism of later nineteenth-century Europe was more uniform, more centralised, and more ‘Roman’ than the eighteenth-century church had been. It was marked by a convergence of elite and popular devotions, an interpenetration of lay and clerical organisation, a rhetorical vehemence and a resourcefulness in the management of communicative media that impressed contemporaries, whether sympathetic or hostile.

These transformations were a crucial precondition for the ‘culture wars’ that polarised European societies in the later nineteenth century. There had always been intermittent friction and conflict between church and state in western Europe. But the all-encompassing ideological and political struggles of the later nineteenth century would have been inconceivable had the church not acquired the means to mobilise its support base and to mount effective campaigns against its adversaries.