Ulrich L. Lehner, Michael Printy, eds.. A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe. Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition Series. Leiden: Brill, 2010. 468 pp. $233.00, cloth, ISBN 978-90-04-18351-3.
Reviewed by Carolina Armenteros
Published on H-Albion (August, 2016)
Commissioned by Jefrey R. Wigelsworth (Red Deer College)
If the concept of Enlightenment is much con‐ hibited throughout Catholic Europe from Poland- tested, the Catholic Enlightenment that Sebastian Lithuania to Spain, and including Malta and Por‐ Merkle first introduced to historiography in 1908 tugal. is still being defined. The same interpretive issues In his introduction to the volume, Lehner lo‐ that render the concept of Enlightenment a sub‐ cates the movement’s dual roots in the reforms of ject of debate also affect its Catholic variety: the Council of Trent and in the spiritual and theo‐ whether to grasp the movement from a philosoph‐ logical currents—influenced by Jansenism and ical (especially epistemological), sociocultural, or the rise of bourgeois self-esteem—that sought to political point of view; whether to understand recapture the spirit of the early church, rejecting these various aspects of it as mutually influential, modern and medieval forms of devotion along or as convergent and context-dependent; and with monastic and mendicant asceticism. For whether to break up the movement in separate Lehner, the anti-Jesuitism that was integral to national varieties or to understand it as an all-em‐ Jansenism was also a defining, if unessential, bracing European whole. The debate is unlikely to characteristic of Catholic Enlightenment, though settle down in the foreseeable future, but for those as we will see—and this will become theoretically seeking to refine Enlightenment’s definition as an crucial—some of the volume’s authors consider analytical tool, Catholic Enlightenment can offer the Jesuits as participants in the Catholic Enlight‐ a good laboratory. As a more confined movement, enment, to the point of putting them forward, in it is more readily coherent. And as a varied—even various contexts, as paradigms of it. In this re‐ fragmented—one, it can mirror many of the ambi‐ spect, Lehner’s Catholic Enlightenment—condi‐ guities of its larger counterpart. This review both tioned perhaps by his past work on the Bene‐ summarizes and engages with the Catholic En‐ dictines, who produced, at Saint Maur, moderni‐ lightenment’s very first overview: Ulrich L. Lehner ty’s first path-breaking critical works on the mon‐ and Michael Printy’s Companion to the Catholic uments of tradition—seems implicitly defined as Enlightenment. Its chief aim is to assess what, if the (frequently anti-Jesuit) drive to eliminate all any, concept of Catholic Enlightenment can en‐ compass the wide diversity that the movement ex‐ H-Net Reviews cultural, intellectual, and ecclesiastical innova‐ ish emancipation; the “reduction of monks”; the tions that postdated antiquity. legalization of “secret Protestantism”; and the for‐ Jeffrey Burson writes, by contrast, on the bidding of pilgrimages, of lights inside churches, largely pro-Unigenitus and pro-Jesuit Catholic En‐ and of the sale of rosaries. Such policies had pre‐ lightenment that developed in France from the dictable intellectual roots in French Jansenism mid-seventeenth century to the Revolution of and Protestant theology, and Klueting closes with 1789. Molinism, he points out, allowed for specula‐ the escalation of the revolt of the Catholic clergy tion about a pure state of nature succeeding the against Protestantism and Josephinism that be‐ fall and preceding corrupt civilization that drew came the Brabant Revolution of 1787. the Jesuits close to those epitomes of Enlighten‐ The understanding of Catholic Enlightenment ment, the philosophes. For Burson, in fact, the So‐ as fundamentally political returns in Printy’s ciety of Jesus was Catholicism’s enlightened van‐ chapter on the Holy Roman Empire, which bor‐ guard in epistemology and scientific innovation. rows a phrase from J. G. A. Pocock to characterize Attempting a via media between René Descartes Catholic Enlightenment as a “series of pro‐ and Baruch Spinoza, the Jesuits combined John grammes for reducing the power of either church‐ Locke with Nicolas Malebranche, extolled Newto‐ es or congregations to disturb the peace of civil so‐ nian physics, and validated church doctrine em‐ ciety by challenging its authority” (p. 171). Despite pirically in order to lend it historical certitude, go‐ this definition, though, Printy takes an intellectual ing so far as to argue that Catholicism had been historical approach, helpfully reviewing the work the natural religion of humankind. The Jansenists, of the theologians who propagated Catholic En‐ of course, also approached Enlightenment lightenment: Eusebius Amort, who attacked super‐ through science: their idea of the hidden nature of stition while professing anti-Jesuitism and an in‐ divine causality was readily consonant with En‐ terest in science, and Anselm Desing, who studied lightenment empiricism. One may surmise, as Protestant natural law. Printy also examines the well, that their exclusion from the universities juridical theories of the Febronian canonists who made it difficult for them to develop intellectually expanded the concept of the church law’s sources on a par with their enemies. Comparatively, in in order to diminish Rome’s power. As for the fact, Burson’s French Jansenists seem little rele‐ monastic orders, they were, for Printy, heirs of a vant to Catholic Enlightenment. Even their tri‐ German Catholic tradition that preceded the Ref‐ umph over the Jesuits in 1762, when the Society of ormation and that made possible the anti-Jesuit‐ Jesus was expelled from France, stripped them of ism that was the unifying feature of the German their significance, since on entering the main‐ Catholic Enlightenment. stream they lost their political clout. Of all European Catholic Enlightenments, per‐ The pendulum swings back to Jansenism in haps the most fertile was the Italian one, which the essay on the Catholic Enlightenment in the Mario Rosa recounts in this volume, using the Ger‐ Austrian Habsburg lands. Harm Klueting recounts man concept of Aufklärung rather than the the anti-baroque and Tridentine concern with the French Lumières to emphasize the less ideological improvement of pastoral care that characterized and polemical connotations that Enlightenment the reign of Maria Theresa, as well as its famously had in its Italian setting—and to avoid the defini‐ radical continuation under Joseph II. For this ex‐ tions that Italian research rejects: “Catholic En‐ ceedingly statist emperor, worship was synony‐ lightenment,” “enlightened Catholicism,” “re‐ mous with usefulness to the state, and Klueting un‐ formist Catholics.” Ludovico Muratori famously derstandably focuses on government policy: Jew‐ inaugurated the Italian Catholic Aufklärung, rec‐
2 H-Net Reviews ommending that religion’s regulation of daily No such struggle occurred in Poland-Lithua‐ rhythms be reduced in favor of the disciplinary re‐ nia, where more religious than secular ideas came form of social life by stressing interior over exteri‐ in from western Europe, and where the nobility or discipline. One might argue that such emphasis stood unchallenged as the major wielder of politi‐ on interiority was not entirely compatible with cal power. Richard Butterwick tells the story of the Benedict XIV’s diffidence toward mysticism in Catholic Enlightenment in this part of the world as preference of medical and scientific literature, but one of parish reforms by bishops who sought to the Italian Catholic Enlightenment that Rosa de‐ improve the quality of seminary education, make scribes followed a fluctuating and trying course, worship more accessible to the common people, opening the century by engaging with science, go‐ and encourage charity over external devotion. ing through an eudaemonist phase in the middle Far from being the enemies that defined these ef‐ decades, and intertwining with political and reli‐ forts, the Jesuits led them in the 1750s through an gious reforms in the 1780s, especially as Habsburg intellectual renewal that reduced philosophy to reforms resumed in Tuscany and Lombardy, and logic and natural science while avoiding the literal Bourbon ones in Naples and Sicily. It was in these interpretation of scripture. In literature, however, regions, Rosa remarks, that Jansenism emerged as the Polish Catholic Enlightenment seems to have a defning feature of the Catholic Enlightenment. produced little besides the Monachomachia (1778) The case of Malta, recounted by Frans Ciappa‐ —the mock-epic of Ignacy Krasicki, prince-bishop ra, is perhaps most interesting given the Knights of of Warmia, whose title (War of the monks) sug‐ Malta’s theocratic government of the island. Con‐ gests all—and novels by bishops depicting plain- sidering their order’s Crusading origins, one might speaking hero-priests. expect them to have preserved the medieval devo‐ Evergton Sales Souza’s account of the Catholic tional practices that many Catholic enlighteners Enlightenment in Portugal, by contrast, opens sought to extirpate, and this is indeed the case, as with a remark on the formative importance of a the cult of the Sacred Heart and the via crucis not book (and one, too, with an eminently intellectual only continued but even intensified in eighteenth- preoccupation): Verney’s The True Method of century Malta. In their relations with the papacy, Study (1746), which argued that theological and however, the Grand Masters, who styled them‐ canonical studies should be grounded in history selves as philosopher-kings, followed the lead of and erudite critique. That such methods had long other European monarchs in attempting to limit been employed by the Augustinians already an‐ ecclesiastical jurisdiction, going so far as to dis‐ nounced Verney’s theological preferences, and his credit the pope’s representatives in their adminis‐ book’s critique of scholasticism and proposals for tration of justice. Nor were the papist Jesuits the the reform of religious studies only confirmed Knights’ friends: the Society of Jesus had already them. Portugal in Verney’s day was a perfect re‐ been expelled from Malta in 1639, and was again ceptacle of his ideas, as scholasticism became in‐ driven out in imitation of the Bourbons in 1768. In creasingly marginalized by the Marquis of Pom‐ all, the Maltese Catholic Enlightenment, as Ciappa‐ bal’s anti-Jesuit government, to the extent that the ra tells it, seems to have been little governed by in‐ Royal Censors Office prohibited the reading of tellectual developments: what mainstream En‐ books by Jesuits. The extraordinary degree to lightenment ideas arrived from the continent which the government achieved control of reli‐ played out simply as the millennial struggle be‐ gious discourse within the country is perhaps best tween spiritual and temporal powers. exemplified by the austere monastic mystical movement of the Jacobeians, who had drawn gov‐ ernment persecution at the beginning of the cen‐
3 H-Net Reviews tury by attempting to reform church practice at “grassroots” she means the intellectual (as op‐ both the intellectual and pastoral levels, yet who posed to political) elite that in Spain imported for‐ by the 1760s felt sufficiently compelled by govern‐ eign books and ideas, and that elsewhere in Eu‐ ment religious policy as to defend regalist and rope imparted education and developed theology. episcopalist stances that had never been a do‐ The Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment main of their thought. Such doctrinal dominance constitutes a major reference on the Catholic En‐ by an anti-Jesuit government readily explains lightenment. It brings together an unprecedented why the Jesuits seem to have played no role in the wealth and breadth of erudition on a field until Portuguese Catholic Enlightenment, as does, of now explored in fairly dispersed ways, and pro‐ course, the fact that Portugal was the first country vides the major analytical themes needed to craft to expel the Society of Jesus in 1759. It would have a theoretical approach to its subject. Yet if this vol‐ been helpful, though, to know more about the rea‐ ume may be faulted, it is for the absence of a con‐ sons for the government’s anti-Jesuitism, especial‐ clusion reflecting on the chapters’ themes to craft ly considering that Portugal is an exception to a concept of Catholic Enlightenment sufficiently Dale Van Kley’s model of the Society of Jesus as an broad to include them all, flexible enough to be ever-staunch supporter of temporal authority.[1] adapted to different national contexts, and above The theme of the state’s dominance over reli‐ all, mindful of the movement’s status as an intel‐ gious developments recurs in Angela Smidt’s nar‐ lectual, and not just as a political or ecclesiastical, ration of the Catholic Enlightenment in neighbor‐ phenomenon. This last point is especially impor‐ ing Spain. Her main point is that the movement tant, as many of the essays presented in this vol‐ succeeded only to the extent that it was willing to ume, and in the literature on the religious Enlight‐ accommodate enlightened absolutism. As in Por‐ enment in general, suggest that the Catholic En‐ tugal, the government sided with Jansenism, lightenment may be understood primarily as a se‐ which in Spain developed out of an Erasmian hu‐ ries of reform efforts—and hence as a Jansenising manism that criticized baroque devotion, empha‐ phenomenon—rather than in primarily intellectu‐ sized individual spirituality and scriptural read‐ al terms like the Enlightenment itself—and there‐ ing, and envisioned a poor and egalitarian church fore as a movement that included the Jesuits, as modeled on that of the first centuries—a vision Burson especially seems to believe. Certainly, it is that in scholarship dovetailed with the historical fallacious to attempt to separate cleanly intellect criticism of Benito Feijoo and Gregorio Mayans. from action, theology from reform. In the context As the century progressed, the initially unitary of Catholic Enlightenment, though, it seems that Spanish Catholic Enlightenment splintered for po‐ the Jesuit-Ultramontanist side was more intellec‐ litical reasons into Jesuit and Jansenist factions, tually inclined, while the Jansenist-patriotic side and the Jansenists allied with the government. Co‐ expressed itself more indirectly through action (in gently, Smidt observes that the absolutist state’s a manner probably determined by the Jansenists’ emphasis on luxury and economic progress would exclusion from the universities, as well as ironical‐ have been better suited to Jesuit theology, and that ly quite contrary to that of each side’s ideational after the Jesuit expulsion, cooperation between descendants, the early conservatives and early the state and the Jesuits’ former enemies became liberals, respectively). To understand the Catholic senseless as the state’s political priorities became Enlightenment strictly in terms of political and ec‐ irrelevant to those interested solely in the church’s clesiastical reforms is hence not only to subordi‐ spiritual needs. What seems perhaps a bit puzzling nate the intellectual aspect that should take at is her characterization of Catholic Enlightenment least equal, if not more, precedence in its identity, as a mostly grassroots movement—unless by but also to ignore the movement’s inalienable reli‐
4 H-Net Reviews gious quality. The problem is not confined to the proach God through his Creation dovetailed with Catholic Enlightenment, but reflects a general ten‐ the Enlightenment’s encouragement of scientific dency in the literature on enlightened religion. inquiry, and in this respect Catholics of all stripes, To grasp the Catholic Enlightenment as a dual‐ from Jesuits to Jansenists, could readily become ly religious and intellectual movement that intro‐ enlighteners. However, the Catholic Enlighten‐ duced a shift in perception, clarity first requires ment also had to import two types of reason. The considering the specifically religious quality that first was the Lockean empirical reason, which the set the Catholic enlightened perception apart from Jesuits, as Burson recounts, took up in order to re‐ that of nonreligious intellectual movements, and spond to Enlightenment empiricism. The second that distinguished the religious Enlightenments was a critical variety of reason—original in skep‐ more generally from the materialistic strands of ticism and best represented by Cartesian reason the enlightened movement. All religions funda‐ —that attacked superstition, baroque religiosity, mentally presuppose the existence of a dimension and external forms of devotion. This was a reason beyond physical perception—what is ordinarily aligned mostly with Augustinian and Jansenist termed the spiritual realm—the experience of Catholicism—although the Jesuits also combined it which cannot be seized by reason or articulated with their Lockean perspective—and whose em‐ through ordinary language. In this respect, the re‐ ployment as the ultimate criterion of spiritual cor‐ ligious Enlightenments differ essentially from the rectness necessarily implied setting aside the tra‐ radical and materialistic strands of Enlighten‐ ditional warning against reason’s insufficiency to ment that considered human understanding of re‐ apprehend the divine. ality to be limited not by human reason—since Critical, skeptical reason probably represent‐ through reason, as Spinoza wrote in the Ethics ed Catholicism’s greatest adaptation to the En‐ (1677), we can see things as they truly are, sub lightenment, since it had all but disappeared dur‐ specie aeternitatis—but by science’s empirical ing the first millennium of the religion’s develop‐ limitations. In the case of Catholicism, the presup‐ ment.[4] Catholic enlighteners themselves thought position of a spiritual realm traditionally resulted of this adaptation as a change from a corrupt or in a double approach to reason most influentially superstitious religiosity to a “pure” one—from a expressed by Thomas Aquinas: reason as the site religiosity that claimed to access the other-worldly of God’s self-revelation to humanity, yet reason as in a multitude of imaginative and hence dubious an instrument ultimately inadequate for grasping and potentially immoral ways, to one that ap‐ the truth of faith. In practical terms, this meant proached it in a rational and hence strictly moral that, as Aquinas succinctly put it, “it is useful for manner. But from the viewpoint of traditional the human mind to exercise its powers of reason‐ Catholicism, the change represented a closing of ing, however weak,... provided that there is no pre‐ the number of doors that opened onto the spiritu‐ sumption that it comprehend or demonstrate [the al realm. Not only that, but the closing was substance of the divine].”[2] In parallel with the prompted by a foreign version of the very reason instrumentality of reason was the instrumentality to which orthodoxy had long granted mere auxil‐ of devotion: in Catholicism, love and devotion are iary status on divine matters. It was aided in this major means of spiritual enhancement. Again task by Lockean empirical reason, which as the Aquinas: “The love of God ... infuses and creates new “proof” of divine truth, tended to pull the di‐ goodness in things.”[3] vine down to the physically perceptible and logi‐ In the Catholic Enlightenment, the Catholic cally apprehensible, so that it seemed that no idea that reason can and should be used to ap‐ doors onto it were even needed at all. Plainly worded, from a traditional perspective, the
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Catholic Enlightenment was inherently seculariz‐ interior forms of devotion, developed critical his‐ ing. toriography, erudition, and grammars in order to Socially, it was also egalitarian in its drive to eliminate the modern and medieval devotional make religious practice reasonable and hence ac‐ practices that it associated with superstition, and cessible to all, and in restructuring the church to to render social relations generally less subject to look less like a monarchy and more like a repub‐ the vagaries of arbitrary power and more akin to lic. Yet, paradoxically and simultaneously, the at‐ the imagined ideal of the early church. Febronian‐ tempt to make religion reasonable also had hier‐ ists, Gallicans, Jacobeians, Jansenists, and other archizing results. The internalization of devotion, types of anti-Jesuitists all represented it in some or the elimination of sensible supports of devotion way. This dual model resonates with the one that (like saints), accompanied by the rise of an intel‐ Van Kley proposes when describing the national- lectual devotion centered on scriptural reading, Molinist and patriotic-Augustinian sensibilities was necessarily tailored to an educated class. The that Jesuits and Jansenists respectively developed illiterate majority of Europe’s Catholics would in the Age of Enlightenment, with Jesuit “national‐ have been faced with the dual alternative of con‐ ists” preaching an anthropology of human good‐ tinuing their old devotional practices, or, in cases ness, a theology of individual liberty, and a politics where government and ecclesiastical reforms ef‐ of submission to authority, and Jansenist “patri‐ fectively prohibited them, simply reducing their ots” insisting on human evil and developing a the‐ participation in religious rituals. There remained, ory of constraint by grace that wore ironically of course, the Muratorian option of exercising de‐ revolutionary colors in the feld of politics.[6] votion through charitable social relationships, but We must be wary, though, of treating Jesuit this could be done as much in a religious as in a and Jansenist theologies as unitary forces that secular spirit. In all, what Sales Souza observes in tended invariably toward political conservatism Portugal probably applies to the rest of Europe: and liberalism, respectively. In Portugal and that the extent to which Catholic enlightened poli‐ Spain, as this companion shows, clerics sympa‐ cies affected the religious practice of the common thetic to Jansenism played roles of submission to people is difcult to gauge.[5] the absolutist state that might have shocked their It should come as no surprise by now to say French counterparts. Theological styles could also that the Catholic Enlightenment was divided into change across continents. In India, for instance, two, frequently opposed streams. One encouraged the Jesuits critiqued Hindu superstition, speculat‐ the application of an inherently revelatory reason ed on Satanic iniquity, and idealized the early to the understanding of Creation, and thereby to church in ways that would have had little reso‐ the development of the arts, crafts, and natural nance with the Jesuit message in Europe, but that sciences. This kind of Catholic Enlightenment— were still readily consistent with Jesuit identity.[7] well, if not best, represented by the Jesuits—ac‐ Thus if as an intellectual movement the Catholic cepted more readily the retention of traditional Enlightenment constituted a shift in perception, devotional practices and of traditional social rela‐ this understanding has limited value when it tionships, including subordination to the pope. It comes to predicting how the new perception actu‐ was well served in this endeavor by Locke’s empir‐ ally manifested socially, politically, and even ec‐ ical reason, which, in its attentiveness to facts, clesiastically—that is, how it translated practical‐ could become inherently valorizing of existing in‐ ly into “reform” or lack thereof. On this point log‐ stitutions. The other strand of Catholic Enlighten‐ ic, no matter how rigorous, cannot compensate ment, esteeming critical reason and insisting on for detailed knowledge of national contexts. Per‐ haps the one consistent consequence that Catholic
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Enlightenment had in the political arena across [3]. Ibid., 33. Europe is an increase in public consciousness,[8] [4]. See the article Charles Bolyard, “Medieval and indeed if the Thomistic reason that once ide‐ Skepticism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ally mused on the divine directly was now reori‐ (Spring 2013), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ ented toward profane things, it made sense that it skepticism-medieval/#ThoAquSigBra. should include the public sphere among its new [5]. Interestingly, if critical reason was the En‐ objects of contemplation. lightenment’s contribution to the Catholic Enlight‐ Whatever form it adopted, though—whether enment, Christianity’s input into the Enlighten‐ Jesuit or Jansenist—Catholic Enlightenment re‐ ment was the valorization of love and devotion— sulted in a lessened use of human faculties to ac‐ as demonstrated by the strictly rational models of cess the spiritual sphere. Reason was now encour‐ progress put forward by Enlightenment strands aged to exercise itself on those “objects of the uninformed by Christianity. senses” that Aquinas had deemed “completely in‐ [6]. See Van Kley, “Religion and the Age of ‘Pa‐ sufficient to manifest the substance of God,”[9] triot’ Reform.” while devotion’s path was narrowed—at least for the majority—as the new critical reason abolished [7]. See the Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, devotional practices. Of course the intellectual écrites des missions étrangères, 34 vols. (Paris: and socially conscious devotions that Catholic en‐ 1702-76). lighteners preached could have compensated for [8]. David Sorkin identifies reasonableness, the loss of the old devotions, but both intellectual tolerance, and the public sphere as concerns exercise and social construction can be easily defining of the religious Enlightenment (The Reli‐ emptied of religious referents and become secu‐ gious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and larized. This was especially the case in a context Catholics from London to Vienna [Princeton, NJ: where history and empirical science were being Princeton University Press, 2008]). Reasonable‐ used by both sides as proofs of Catholic truth and ness was important as explained above. But the not the other way around—where God, to put it essays presented in this companion do not suggest briefly, was becoming more available to logic. that tolerance was paramount, at least within the Thus while David Sorkin, The Religious Enlighten‐ Catholic Enlightenment: on the contrary, persecu‐ ment (2008), has been right to underline that reli‐ tion seems to have been frequent. As for the public gion was pervasive in the Enlightenment, from the sphere, although the essays in this volume do not perspective of traditional religion, entering the theorize explicitly how the Catholic Enlighten‐ Enlightenment implied losing a portion of the sa‐ ment encouraged engagement with it, they pro‐ cred. For the Catholic Enlightenment at least, the vide sufcient evidence that it did. secularization model retains its validity.[10] [9]. Aquinas, St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics Notes and Ethics, 5. [1]. See Dale Van Kley, “Religion and the Age of [10]. I am grateful to Van Kley for his com‐ ‘Patriot’ Reform,” The Journal of Modern History ments on a previous draft of this review. 80, no. 2 (2008): 252-295. [2]. See Thomas Aquinas, St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics, trans. and ed. Paul E. Sig‐ mund (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co., 1988), 5.
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Citation: Carolina Armenteros. Review of Lehner, Ulrich L.; Printy, Michael, eds. A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe. H-Albion, H-Net Reviews. August, 2016.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=42449
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