Catholicism, Identity and Politics in the Age of Enlightenment

Catholicism, Identity and Politics in the Age of Enlightenment
Author: Alexander Lock
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2016
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1783271329

Explores the changing aspirations, attitudes and identities of English Catholics in the late eighteenth century This book explores the changing aspirations, attitudes and identities of English Catholics in the late eighteenth century, a period which marked a critical moment of transition in their spiritual, political and intellectual culture. It is based on the experiences of the English Catholic baronet, Grand Tourist and politician Sir Thomas Gascoigne (1745-1810). Gascoigne was born on the Continent into a devout Catholic family based in Yorkshire; however, following an unusual Continental upbringing and extensive series of Grand Tours to the courts of Catholic Europe, he would abjure his faith for a seat in Parliament. Throughout his life, he was an important advocate of agricultural reform, a considerable coal owner interested in mining engineering, as well as a keen developer of spa culture. By examining the experiences of Gascoigne and his milieu, this book explores English Catholic attitudes towards continental Catholicism, the influence of the European Enlightenment upon their education and outlook, and how this affected their Christianity, their estates and their conception of national identity. It demonstrates how increased toleration entailed a gradual rejection amongst English Catholics of a pious separatism for a more ecumenical and, ultimately, Enlightened approach to religion. Although this risked the loss of English Catholics to Anglicanism, many - like Gascoigne - remained crypto-Catholic in sympathy. They adapted their faith to the Enlightenment and regarded it as a matter of personal conviction and private choice. ALEXANDER LOCK is Curator of Modern Historical Manuscripts at the British Library.

Enlightenment and the Creation of German Catholicism

Enlightenment and the Creation of German Catholicism
Author: Michael Printy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2009-02-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 0521478391

The first account of the German Catholic Enlightenment, this book explores the ways in which 18th-century Germans reconceived the relationship between religion, society, and the state.

The Catholic Enlightenment

The Catholic Enlightenment
Author: Ulrich L. Lehner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2016
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190232919

"Whoever needs an act of faith to elucidate an event that can be explained by reason is a fool, and unworthy of reasonable thought." This line, spoken by the notorious 18th-century libertine Giacomo Casanova, illustrates a deeply entrenched perception of religion, as prevalent today as it was hundreds of years ago. It is the sentiment behind the narrative that Catholic beliefs were incompatible with the Enlightenment ideals. Catholics, many claim, are superstitious and traditional, opposed to democracy and gender equality, and hostile to science. It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that Casanova himself was a Catholic. In The Catholic Enlightenment, Ulrich L. Lehner points to such figures as representatives of a long-overlooked thread of a reform-minded Catholicism, which engaged Enlightenment ideals with as much fervor and intellectual gravity as anyone. Their story opens new pathways for understanding how faith and modernity can interact in our own time. Lehner begins two hundred years before the Enlightenment, when the Protestant Reformation destroyed the hegemony Catholicism had enjoyed for centuries. During this time the Catholic Church instituted several reforms, such as better education for pastors, more liberal ideas about the roles of women, and an emphasis on human freedom as a critical feature of theology. These actions formed the foundation of the Enlightenment's belief in individual freedom. While giants like Spinoza, Locke, and Voltaire became some of the most influential voices of the time, Catholic Enlighteners were right alongside them. They denounced fanaticism, superstition, and prejudice as irreconcilable with the Enlightenment agenda. In 1789, the French Revolution dealt a devastating blow to their cause, disillusioning many Catholics against the idea of modernization. Popes accumulated ever more power and the Catholic Enlightenment was snuffed out. It was not until the Second Vatican Council in 1962 that questions of Catholicism's compatibility with modernity would be broached again. Ulrich L. Lehner tells, for the first time, the forgotten story of these reform-minded Catholics. As Pope Francis pushes the boundaries of Catholicism even further, and Catholics once again grapple with these questions, this book will prove to be required reading.

A Companion to Catholicism and Recusancy in Britain and Ireland

A Companion to Catholicism and Recusancy in Britain and Ireland
Author: Robert E. Scully Sj
Publisher: Brill's Companions to the Chri
Total Pages: 692
Release: 2021-12-16
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9789004151611

"This book is an edited collection of nineteen essays written by a range of experts and some newer scholars in the areas of early modern British and Irish history and religion. In addition to English Catholicism, developments in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, as well as ongoing connections and interactions with Continental Catholicism, are well incorporated throughout the volume"--

The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism

The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism
Author: Liam Chambers
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2023-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198843445

The third volume of The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism examines the period from the defeat of the Jacobite army at the battle of Culloden in 1746 to the enactment of Catholic emancipation in 1829. The first part of the volume offers a chronological overview tracing the decline of Jacobitism, the easing of penal legislation which targeted Catholics, the complex impact of the French Revolution, the debates about the place of Catholics in the post-Union state, and - following the mass mobilisation of Irish Catholics - the passage of emancipation. The second part of the volume shows that this political history can only be properly understood with reference to the broader transformations that occurred in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The period witnessed the expansion of Catholic infrastructure (pastoral structures, chapel building, elementary education and finances) and changes in Catholic practice, for example in liturgy and devotion. The growing infrastructure and more public profession of Catholicism occurred in a society where anti-Catholicism remained a force, but the volume also addresses the accommodations and interactions with non-Catholics that attended daily life. Crucially, the transformations of this period were international, as well as national. The volume examines the British and Irish convents, colleges, friaries and monasteries on the continent, especially during the events of the 1790s when many institutions closed and successor or new ones emerged at home. The international dimensions of British and Irish Catholicism extended beyond Europe too as the British Empire expanded globally, and attention is given to the involvement of British and Irish Catholics in imperial expansion. This volume addresses the literary, intellectual and cultural expressions of Catholicism in Britain and Ireland. Catholics produced a rich literature in English, Irish, Scots Gaelic and Welsh, although the volume shows the disparities in provision. They also engaged with and participated in the Catholic Enlightenment, particularly as they grappled with the challenges of accommodation to a Protestant constitution. This also had consequences for the public expression of Catholicism and the volume concludes by exploring the shifting expression of belief through music and material culture.

Civil Religion and the Enlightenment in England, 1707-1800

Civil Religion and the Enlightenment in England, 1707-1800
Author: Ashley Walsh
Publisher: Boydell Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024-05-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781837651498

This innovative book reveals how Enlightened writers in England, both lay and clerical, proclaimed public support for Christianity by transforming it into a civil religion, despite the famous claim of Jean-Jacques Rousseau that Christians professed an uncivil faith. This innovative book reveals how Enlightened writers in England, both lay and clerical, proclaimed public support for Christianity by transforming it into a civil religion, despite the famous claim of Jean-Jacques Rousseau that Christians professed an uncivil faith. In the aftermath of the seventeenth-century European wars of religion, civil religionists such as David Hume, Edward Gibbon, the third earl of Shaftesbury, and William Warburton sought to reconcile Christian ecclesiology with the civil state and Christian practice with civilized society. They built their arguments in the context of England's long Reformation, syncretizing 'primitive' gospel Christianity with ancient paganism as they attempted to render Christianity a modern version of Roman republican civil religion. They believed that outward observance of the reformed Protestant faith was vital for belonging to the Christian commonwealth of Hanoverian England. Uncovering a major theme in eighteenth-century intellectual and religious history that connected classical Rome with Italian Renaissance humanism and the Enlightenment, this deeply interdisciplinary book draws from recent post-secular trends in social and political theory. Combining intellectual history with the political and ecclesiastical history of the Church of England, it will prove as indispensable for historians as studentsof political theory, theology, and literature.

A Companion to Catholicism and Recusancy in Britain and Ireland

A Companion to Catholicism and Recusancy in Britain and Ireland
Author: Robert E. ..Scully SJ
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 690
Release: 2021-12-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004335986

Long ghettoized within British and Irish studies, Catholicism and Recusancy in Britain and Ireland demonstrates that, despite many challenges and differences among them, English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish Catholics formed strong bonds and actively participated in the life of their nations and their Church.

English Convents in Catholic Europe, c.1600–1800

English Convents in Catholic Europe, c.1600–1800
Author: James E. Kelly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2020-01-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108479960

Re-orientates our understanding of English convents in exile towards Catholic Europe, contextualizing the convents within the transnational Church.

Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque

Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque
Author: Marc R. Forster
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2001-02-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1139431803

This book is a study of Catholic reform, popular Catholicism and the development of confessional identity in southwest Germany. Based on extensive archival study, it argues that Catholic confessional identity developed primarily from the identification of villagers and townspeople with the practices of Baroque Catholicism - particularly pilgrimages, processions, confraternities and the Mass. Thus the book is in part a critique of the confessionalization thesis which dominates scholarship in this field. The book is not however focused narrowly on the concerns of German historians. An analysis of popular religious practice and of the relationship between parishioners and the clergy in villages and small towns allows for a broader understanding of popular Catholicism, especially in the period after 1650. Local Baroque Catholicism was ultimately a successful convergence of popular and elite, lay and clerical elements, which led to an increasingly elaborate religious style.