A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe (review)

Abstract

A Companion to in Europe. Edited by Ulrich L. Lehner and Michael Printy. [Brill's Companions to Christian Tradition, Vol. 20.] (Leiden: Brill. 2010. Pp. vi, 462. $230.00. ISBN 978-9-004-18351-3.) This is first of companions in Brill's series to deal with a topic that is itself questionable. A good many scholars of and probably a good many more students of Roman Church reject notion of as a contradiction in terms. That was evidently what Pope John Paul ? thought, and it also is view of Jonathan Israel, author of latest blockbuster account of Sebastian Merkle coined term as long ago as 1908, and concept has been under discussion ever since, although more intensively from about 1970. The nine authors of chapters in this volume accept it. But they define it in a variety of ways, and some of them are much concerned to distinguish it from other related tendencies. For example, Harm Hueting's valuable chapter on Austria or Habsburg Lands- a particularly tough assignment- contains this statement (p. 143): I do not use term Catholicism. I speak about in a country contrary to Catholic Enlightenment. was anti-baroque and reform-orientated. sometimes overshot mark but it was consistently Catholic.Therefore was truly - What some scholars call was not Catholic. It was heretical. There is perhaps a translation problem here, as in some other places in chapter. But this statement as it stands is more puzzling than helpful, especially since other contributors strongly disagree- for example, coeditor Michael Printy, whose fine chapter focuses on Catholic and Catholicism in Holy Roman Empire. Coeditor Ulrich Lehner claims that one root of Enlightenment was the application of Tridentine Reform (p. 18), and Jeffrey Burson tells us that the in France, as in rest of Europe, was a child of sixteenth-century Reformation (p. 66). This can reasonably be said of concept of Catholicism, but hardly of as naturally understood.The dogmatic rigor of Council of Trent was surely anti-Enlightened, and it is questionable to talk of of any kind before later seventeenth century. In a path-breaking chapter on PolandLithuania Richard Butterwick argues for formula enlightened Catholicism rather than If some of terminology used by contributors seems problematic, their essays are all thoughtful and well researched, showing continuing significance of Church and religion in a supposedly secularizing age, and bringing out interaction of with Enlightened thinking. …