The Popes and European Revolution

Abstract

Abstract The effects of the European Revolution of 1789 to 1815 are described on the papacy and the Catholic Church of the ancient regime compared with that of the early nineteenth century. The book shows how strongly the Counter‐Reformation still worked in Italy during the eighteenth century, how it was the constitutional development of states, rather than the incoming of new ideas that forced change, and how traditional the Catholic world was even in the age of the Enlightenment. It shows reform at work, and the fierce pressure on the papacy that was marked first in the forced suppression of the Jesuits, and afterwards in the kidnapping of two successive popes by French governments. It also shows how revolution in Italy affected Church structures and brought on peasant war, yet encouraged, in a radical form, some improvements of Church life towards which the earlier reformers had striven. Finally, it shows the political swing of the Restoration after the fall of Napoleon, the way in which the Church was already associated with the political right, the great difficulties of restoring church life after the evolutionary years, and the persistence, half unnoticed, of earlier reforming ideas among Catholics. The book is arranged in two main parts (The Church of the old regime, four chapters; and Reform and revolution, four chapters), and there is a brief conclusion.