The Catholic Enlightenment: some reflections on recent research

Journal article

The Catholic Enlightenment, long ignored by scholarship, has been brought sharply into focus by numerous recent publications. After surveying some leading features of the Catholic Enlightenment, this essay considers a useful Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe and a study of Enlightenment in the intellectual and social lives of German Benedictines. Some of this research suggests that German historiography shows a Protestant bias which needs to be corrected by greater attention to the Catholic contribution to intellectual and political debates. Biographical studies of Catholic Enlightenment figures raise the question of where to draw the boundary between tradition and Enlightenment, while a wide-ranging and challenging study by David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment, argues against the secularization thesis by claiming that certain Catholic, Protestant and Jewish figures of the eighteenth century found a tenable compromise between tradition and Enlightenment.

Authors: Robertson, R

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Journal: German History
• Volume: 34
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 630–645
• Publication date: 2016-11-17
• Acceptance date: 2015-08-19
• DOI: 10.1093/gerhis/ghw120
• EISSN: 1477-089X
• ISSN: 0266-3554
• Keywords: SBTMR